During the Lancaster Assizes in August 1612, a nine-year-old girl is ushered into the courtroom, placed high on a table so that all who had gathered there can see her, and from this position, she denounces her mother as a witch.
Jennet Device was a star witness in the most notorious English witch trials of all time: The Lancashire Witch Trials. Twenty people living in Pendle Hill's shadow were accused of using charms, effigies, and familiar spirits to harm and even murder their enemies. It is said that many of the accused also confessed to selling their souls to the Devil.
Jennet's own family and seven of the other alleged witches were found guilty, condemned, and hanged publicly on Gallows Hill. The magistrates (turned witch-hunters) who arrested and prosecuted them congratulated themselves for a job well done; King James I (a monarch hellbent on persecuting witches) was bound to be impressed by their endeavours to cleanse the land of evil. Justice had been served. But of course, it hadn't...
The so-called Pendle Witches have endured more than 400 years of wrongful persecution for crimes they could not have possibly committed.
Combining a decade's worth of research with her mother's gift as a Spiritualist medium, author Charlotte Meredith's unprecedented methods of investigation finally uncover the truth behind the claims, explode the myths, and reveal who the Pendle Witches really were, what they believed, and how they came to lose their lives.
This is the true story, in their own words.
It is time for the Pendle Witches to be heard.