The Lancashire Witches

During 1846 and 1847 Ainsworth visited all of the major sites involved in the story, such as Pendle Hill and Malkin Tower, home of the Demdikes, one of the two families accused of witchcraft.

The ten chapters of the Introduction, subtitled "The Last Abbot of Whalley", are set against the backdrop of the 1536 Pilgrimage of Grace, an uprising by northern Catholics against the English Reformation instituted by King Henry VIII.

Eight men, prominent among them John Paslew, Abbot of Whalley and the self-styled Earl of Poverty, are gathered together by a beacon at the top of Pendle Hill.

An uneasy armistice has been declared in the Pilgrimage, and beacons have been built on high ground to act as a renewed summons to arms should they ever be lit; that is the signal the eight men are waiting for.

As the abbot and his guards are entering the abbey he is once again confronted by Nicholas Demdike, this time accompanied by his wife Bess and their unbaptised infant.

[9] After a specially granted Midnight Mass, the abbot is overcome by remorse for his treatment thirty-one years earlier of a rival for the position of head of the abbey, Borlace Alvetham, and asks that a priest be sent to hear his confession.

He further reveals that the demon promised him vengeance against his enemy, the abbot, and that when he returned to the area of Whalley twenty-nine years after his escape he had adopted the name of Nicholas Demdike.

But the abbot has given his word to his captors not to escape in return for being allowed to celebrate the Midnight Mass, and so refuses to follow the man down the ladder by which he had ascended.

Moments before the appointed time, Demdike whispers to the abbot that he can spare him the indignity of a public execution by stabbing him to death if he would but retract the curse he had put on his daughter.

In a cottage on the outskirts of the village, Alizon Device is being dressed as Maid Marion, Queen of May, ready to take her place of honour in the pageant which will soon be arriving at her door.

She is a beautiful young woman, in stark contrast to her little sister Jennet, nine or ten years old, who is watching the preparations in a sullen silence.

He is the great-grandson of the Richard Assheton who had led the group of men up Pendle Hill to apprehend the Abbot of Whalley, and almost been killed by the torrent of water conjured up by Nicholas Demdike.

Alice Nutter is dressed in mourning clothes for her husband Richard, who had been suddenly taken ill and died an unexplained death within three or four days.

Alice has been persuaded from her secluded life at Rough Lee because she wishes to secure the help of Sir Ralph in a dispute she is having with her neighbour Roger Nowell over the boundary between their two estates.

Potts is also acting for another member of the local gentry, Sir Thomas Metcalfe, "a man of violent disposition",[13] who is claiming ownership of a neighbouring house and estate.

Alizon is formally presented to Sir Ralph and Lady Assheton, and asked to choose her partner for the evening's dance to be held at the abbey.

[14] Their conversation is overheard by Thomas Potts, and it gives him the idea to search out the witches that Nicholas refers to, and by so doing gain favour with King James, who is well known to have an interest in witchcraft.

Dorothy then shares her fear that because Mother Demdike is widely believed to be a witch, the same accusation might be made about the members of her family, and that Alizon may suffer the same fate as Nan Redferne.

Nicholas Assheton then joins them, telling them that Potts has just told him that he suspects Alice of being a witch after overhearing a conversation she had had with Elizabeth Device.

One night shortly after Millicent's birth Richard Nutter and Jem Device had burst into Alice's bedroom, grabbed the baby and thrown it on the fire.

But as the clock strikes twelve Dorothy sees another figure behind the hangings, this time a woman dressed in white, and once again seeks refuge in the room next door.

She drinks a few drops of the bright liquid before anointing her face and hands with the unguent, chanting "Emen hetan" repeatedly as she does so, before leaving the room.

There is no sign of the events of the previous evening when the party assembles to visit the boundary between the estates belonging to Alice Nutter and Roger Newell to settle their dispute.

After passing over one of the ridges of Pendle Hill they encounter an agitated cowherd, who tells them that a pedlar named John Law has collapsed in a fit and will die without their assistance.

From the look of the pedlar, Nicholas Assheton believes him to have suffered from a paralytic stroke, but the man himself is convinced that he has been bewitched by Mother Demdike, because he had refused to give her the scissors and pins she had asked him for.

[23] Richard rushes forward and seizes the image, throwing it to the ground and smashing it, but Chattox succeeds in making good her escape before he can apprehend her.

To Nowell's increasing frustration, several large boulders and a stream marking the extremities of his property are not where he knows them to be, and as there are no signs of them having been moved he voices his suspicion that Alice Nutter has used witchcraft to win her boundary dispute with him.

Consequently they leave the group and ride ahead to Alice Nutter's home in Rough Lee to warn her and to help defend her against Nowell and his remaining men.

They beat a hasty retreat, before Alice Nutter appears at the gate and proposes that she and Roger Nowell have a private meeting to see if they can come to a mutual understanding.

Realising now that he has no choice, Nowell agrees to Alice's terms, to which she binds him by making him repeat the words "May I become subject to the Fiend if I fail in my promise".