The Trial

When the prisoners are led into the Lancaster Assizes, Master Potts produces his prize witness: little Jennet Device.

So small and underfed is she that she has to be stood on a table to give her evidence.

One by one as they are brought in, she points them all out, the members of the coven gathered that Good Friday at Malkin Tower.

Jem Device can’t walk. He hasn’t walked more than twelve paces each way for four months. He has lost what fat he had. His eyes shine like fireflies in the waste ground of his body.

Chattox is demented. She spits and raves. She curses. She wants to be what they say she is; a witch. What else is left for her to be?

Elizabeth Device believes that Satan has taken her mother. She sits in the courtroom with her hands tied, livid and vile. She still has the energy to shout obscenities.

Nance Redfern and Alizon Device lie down. They can no longer stand. Both have been infected with syphilis by the gaoler.

Mouldheels sits on the floor and pulls blisters from her pus-soaked feet. She can feel her way through to the bone.

The Bulcocks never knew if they were brother and sister or man and wife. No one told them you couldn’t be both. He has his arm round her. She pulls her few strands of matted hair and hides her head. He shields what is left of her mind against what is left of his body.

Jennet Device tells the court all about their Familiars, Fancy and Dandy and Ball. She says she has flown on a broomstick and seen the Dark Gentleman with her grand-dam, Old Demdike. Jennet pays special attention to her mother. She tells the court all about the poppet and the head.

Her mother is so overcome with rage that she has to be led out of the courtroom and drenched with water. Jennet Device shows no emotion; she has no emotion to show.

Jennet looks at them. Her brother who sold her. Her mother who neglected her. Her sisters who ignored her. Chattox who frightened her. Mouldheels who stank.

She names them one by one and condemns them one by one.

Then they lead in Alice Nutter.

‘Do you recognise this woman?’ asks Justice Bromley. Jennet smiles and goes and takes Alice’s hand. ‘She has a falcon who is a spirit. She has a pony who can jump over the moon. She has food and drink and money and jewels. She is the most powerful of them all.’

Justice Bromley asks Alice Nutter how she pleads. Alice answers, ‘Not guilty.’ After that she remains silent.

*

They were all convicted. Potts wrote it down. Convicted of ‘practices, meetings, consultations, murthers, Charmes and villanies’.