In Pendle Forest, in the parish of Whalley, in a small cottage near Malkin Tower, lived in the beginning of the century a woman known as "Old Demdike," and her daughter; the mother's real name was Elizabeth Southerns, her daughter was Elizabeth Device _alias_ young Demdike. Old Demdike, who was over eighty years of age, was supposed to have made her house into a meeting-place for all the witches in the neighbourhood, and this led to a score of suspected persons (most of them women) being arrested and tried at Lancaster. Eight of these were known as the Witches of Samlesbury, the rest being associated with Pendle Forest. This trial created so much interest in the county that Thomas Potts, the clerk of the court, was ordered by the judges to collect and publish the particulars of the case. From this scarce book[126] may be obtained the full details of this notorious trial; for our present purpose a few particulars must suffice. The wretched old crone, Elizabeth Southerns, died in prison before the trial took place, having first made a confession to the effect that the devil had twenty years before appeared to her, and to him she had sold her soul, and had thus obtained her power; she also described the well-known method of taking away a man's life by means of the insertion of pins into a "picture of clay like unto the shape of the person" upon whom the revenge was sought. Anne Whittle, _alias_ Chattox, before the assizes not only admitted that she was a witch, but gave the names of many persons whom she had "bewitched to death," and several of the others made similar confessions. It seems somewhat strange that these prisoners should so easily be led to condemn themselves, and the reason may be either that they expected by so doing to escape capital punishment, or, what is equally likely, that they, having so long lived by the profession of witchcraft, really did imagine that they had the power they claimed to possess. The whole trial appears to have partaken far more of the nature of persecution than an attempt to ascertain the truth. The leader of this persecution was Roger Nowell, of Read Hall, who, according to the clerk of the court, was "one of his Majesty's Justices in these parts, a very religious, honest gentleman, painful in the service of his country." Another agent against the Samlesbury prisoners was a priest called Thompson, who tutored the principal witness, Grace Sowerbutts, a girl of fourteen years of age, to accuse three of the prisoners of having bewitched her. To strengthen the evidence for the prosecution, Roger Nowell produced the deposition taken before him at his house, and it appears that he did not scruple to make the sons and daughters condemn their parents, and thus make them instruments for their destruction.