for half a century. The year in which occurred the incidents I am about to describe was, so to speak, her jubilee.
Mother Dundike must have been a woman of lively imagination, if we may form conclusions from her graphic account of the circumstances attending her initiation into the great army of ‘the devil’s own.’ One day, when returning from a begging expedition, she was accosted by a boy, dressed in a parti-coloured garment of black and white, who proved to be a demon, or evil spirit, and promised her that, in return for the gift of her soul, she should have anything and everything she desired. On inquiring his name, she was told it was Tib; and here I may note that the ‘princes and potentates’ of the nether world seem to have had a great predilection for monosyllabic names, and names of a vulgar and commonplace character. The upshot of the conversation between Tib and the woman was the surrender of her soul on the liberal conditions promised, and for the next five or six years the said devil frequently appeared unto her ‘about daylight-gate’ (near evening), and asked what she would have or do. With wonderful unselfishness she replied, ‘Nothing.’ Towards the end of the sixth year, on a quiet Sabbath morning, while she lay asleep, Tib came in the shape of a brown dog, forced himself to her knee, and, as she wore no other garment than a smock, succeeded in drawing blood. Awaking suddenly, she exclaimed, ‘Jesu, save my child!’ but had not the power to say, ‘Jesu, save me!’ Whereupon the brown dog vanished, and for a space of eight weeks she was ‘almost stark mad.’
The matter-of-fact style which distinguishes Mother Dundike’s confession may also be traced in the statements of her children and grandchildren, who all speak as if witchcraft were an everyday reality, and as if evil spirits in various common disguises went to and fro in the land with edifying regularity. Let us turn to the evidence, if such it may be called, of Alison Device, a girl of about thirteen or fourteen years of age. Incriminating her grandmother without scruple, she declared that when they were on the tramp, the old woman frequently persuaded her to allow a devil or ‘familiar’ to suck at some part of her body, after which she might have and do what she would—though, strange to say, neither she nor anyone else ever availed themselves of their powers to improve their material condition, but lingered on in poverty and privation. James Device, one of Mother Dundike’s grandsons, said that on Shrove Tuesday she bade him go to church to receive the sacrament—not, however, to eat the consecrated bread, but to bring it away, and deliver it to ‘such a Thing’ as should meet him on his way homeward. But he disobeyed the injunction, and ate the sacred bread. On his way home, when about fifty yards from the church, he was met by a ‘Thing in the shape of a hare,’ which asked him whether he had brought the bread according to his grandmother’s directions. He answered that he had not; and therefore the Thing threatened to rend him in pieces, but he got rid of it by calling upon God.
Some few days later, hard by the new church in Pendle, a Thing appeared to him like to a brown dog, asked him for his soul, and promised in return that he should be avenged on his enemies. The virtuous youth replied, somewhat equivocatingly, that his soul was not his to give, but belonged to his Saviour Jesus Christ; as much as was his to give, however, he was contented to dispose of. Two or three days later James Device had occasion to go to Cave Hall, where a Mrs. Towneley angrily accused him of having stolen some of her turf, and drove him from her door with violence. When the devil next appeared—this time like a black dog—he found James Device in the right temper for a deed of wickedness. He was instructed to make an image of clay like Mrs. Towneley; which he did, and dried it the same night by the fire, and daily for a week crumbled away the said image, and two days after it was all gone Mrs. Towneley died! In the following Lent, one John Duckworth, of the Launde, promised him an old shirt; but when young Device went to his house for the gift, he was denied, and sent away with contumely. The spirit ‘Dandy’ then appeared to him, and exclaimed: ‘Thou didst touch the man Duckworth,’ which he, James Device, denied; but the spirit persisted: ‘Yes; thou didst touch him, and therefore he is in my power.’ Device then agreed with the demon that the said Duckworth should meet with the same fate as Mrs. Towneley, and in the following week he died.
It is a curious fact that the old woman Chattox, the head of the rival faction of practitioners in witchcraft, accused Mother Dundike of having inveigled her into the ranks of the devil’s servants. This was about 1597 or 1598. To Mrs. Chattox the Evil One appeared—as he has appeared to too many of her sex—in the shape of a man. Time, midnight; place, Elizabeth Dundike’s tumble-down cottage. He asked, as usual, for her soul, which she at first refused, but afterwards, at Mother Dundike’s advice and solicitation, agreed to part with. ‘Whereupon the said wicked spirit then said unto her, that he must have one part of her body for him to suck upon; the which she denied then to grant unto him; and withal asked him, what part of her body he would have for that use; who said, he would have a place of her right side, near to her ribs, for him to suck upon; whereunto she assented. And she further said that, at the same time, there was a Thing in the likeness of a spotted bitch, that came with the said spirit unto the said Dundike, which did then speak unto her in Anne Chattox’s hearing, and said, that she should have gold, silver, and worldly wealth at her will; and at the same time she saith there was victuals, viz., flesh, butter, cheese, bread, and drink, and bid them eat enough. And after their eating, the devil called Fancy, and the other spirit calling himself Tib carried the remnant away. And she saith, that although they did eat, they were never the fuller nor better for the same; and that at their said banquet the said spirits gave them light to see what they did, although they had neither fire nor candle-light; and that there be both she-spirits and (he-)devils.’
In a later chapter I shall have occasion to refer to the confessions of the various persons implicated in this ‘Great Oyer’ of witchcraft. What comes out very strongly in them is the hostility which existed between the Chattoxes and the Dundikes, and their respective adherents. In Pendle Forest there were evidently two distinct parties, one of which sought the favour and sustained the pretensions of Mother Dundike, the other being not less steadfast in allegiance to Mother Chattox. As to these two beldams, it is clear enough that they encouraged the popular credulity, resorted to many ingenious expedients for the purpose of supporting their influence, and unscrupulously employed that influence in furtherance of their personal aims. They knowingly played at a sham game of commerce with the devil, and enjoyed the fear and awe with which their neighbours looked up to them. It flattered their vanity; and perhaps they played the game so long as to deceive themselves. ‘Human passions are always to a certain degree infectious. Perceiving the hatred of their neighbours, they began to think that they were worthy objects of detestation and terror, that their imprecations had a real effect, and their curses killed. The brown horrors of the forest were favourable to visions, and they sometimes almost believed that they met the foe of mankind in the night.’ To the delusions of the imagination, especially when suggested by pride and vanity, there are no means of putting a limit; and it is quite possible that in time these women gave credence to their own absurd inventions, and saw a demon or familiar spirit in every hare or black or brown dog that accidentally crossed their path.
For awhile the witches created a reign of terror in the forest. But the interlacing animosities which gradually sprang up between its inhabitants were the fertile source of so much disorder that, at length, a county magistrate of more than ordinary energy, Roger Nowell, Esq., described as a very honest and religious gentleman, conceived the idea that, by suppressing them, he should do the State good service. Accordingly he ordered the arrest of Dundike and Chattox, Alison Device, and Anne Redfern, and each, in the hope of saving her life, having made a full confession, he committed them to Lancaster Castle, on April 2, 1612, to take their trials at the next assizes.
No attempt was made, however, to search Malkin Tower. This lonely ruin was regarded with superstitious dread by the peasantry, who durst never approach it, on account of the strange unearthly noises and the weird creatures that haunted its wild recesses. James Device, when examined afterwards by Nowell, deposed that about a month before his arrest, as he was going towards his mother’s house in the twilight, he met a brown dog coming from it, and, of course, a brown dog was the disguise of an evil spirit. About two or three nights after, he heard a great number of children shrieking and crying pitifully in the same uncanny neighbourhood; and at a later date his ears were shocked by a loud yelling, ‘like unto a great number of cats.’ We have heard the same sounds ourselves, at night, in places which did not profess