Kitabı oku: «A History of Lancashire», sayfa 7
At Kirkham a free grammar school had been, or was just about to be, founded in 1551, when Thomas Clifton, of Clifton, bequeathed “towards the grammar schole xxˢ.” And in 1585 the parish authorities took possession of the school–house in right of the whole parish. This school appears subsequently to have fallen into decay or been given up, for in 1621 Isabel Birley, who had been all her life an alehouse–keeper in Kirkham, being “moved to compassion with pore children shee saw often in that town,” went to the church (where the thirty sworn men were assembled) with £30 in her apron, which she wished to give for the building of a free school; her example fired the others with enthusiasm, and the requisite sum was soon raised. The history of this well–known school is interesting.
When Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne, besides these schools there were free grammar schools at Prescot, Lancaster, Whalley, Clitheroe, Bolton, and Liverpool, but within the next fifty years many more were added, amongst them being those at Burnley, Hawkshead, Leyland, Rochdale, Middleton, and Rivington (near Bolton). To most of these early–founded schools libraries were attached, in some of which still remain many valuable sixteenth–century books.
The belief in witchcraft and its kindred superstitions was firmly rooted amongst the people; on this subject something will be said in another chapter, but en passant it may be stated that in 1597 a pardon was granted to one Alice Brerley, of Castleton (in Rochdale), who had been condemned to death for slaying by means of witchcraft James Kershaw and Robert Scholefield.118
The condition into which Lancashire was thrown through the religious crisis consequent upon the Reformation will be treated of elsewhere, but it must here be noted that in the time of good Queen Bess churches were said to be almost emptied of their congregations, alehouses were innumerable, wakes, ales, rushbearing, bearbaits, and the like, were all exercised on the Sunday, and altogether a general lawlessness appears to have prevailed all over the county. In the reign of Henry VIII. the old commissions of array (whose duty it was to get together in each county such armed forces as were required from time to time) were done away with, and their places occupied by lord–lieutenants.
In 1547 the Earl of Shrewsbury was Lord–Lieutenant of the county of Lancaster and six other counties, but in 1569 the county had a Lord–Lieutenant of its own in the person of Earl Stanley, third Earl of Derby. The duties of these newly appointed officers of the Crown were manifold; but one of their chief services was to assemble and levy the inhabitants within their jurisdiction in the time of war, and to prescribe orders for the government of their counties; and from the proceedings of the Lancashire lieutenancy we may glean a few details relating to the civil and religious life of the period.119 For the military muster of 1553 the quota required from the respective hundreds was: West Derby 430, Salford 350, Leyland 170, Amounderness 300, Blackburn 400, Lonsdale 350.
These numbers were to be raised by each town in the hundred in proportion to the wealth or number of its inhabitants: West Derby, Wigan, and Ashton, in the parish of Winwick, had to find 11 each, whilst Liverpool only sent 5. In Leyland the greatest number (10) came from Wrightington with Parbold; in Amounderness Preston found 26, whilst the parish of Kirkham contributed over 100. Blackburn parish sent 113 men, and the parish of Whalley 175; unfortunately, the particulars for the towns and parishes of Salford are wanting. In 1559–60 the county was called upon to raise no less than 3,992 soldiers.
During all these troubled times the highest hills in the district were used as beacon stations, where a system of signalling was practised; thus, in 1588 the hundred of Salford was called upon to pay £5 9s. 4d. for watching the beacon on Rivington Pike from July 10 to September 30.
Some further details about this particular are furnished in the original “accompt” of Sir John Byron, who was a Deputy–Lieutenant of the county:
Notwithstanding the wars and rumours of wars which were then so common, and notwithstanding the religious excitement created by the persecution, first of the Roman Catholics and then of the Puritans, people seem to have prospered in the county. The towns and villages greatly increased in number, size and importance, and the time of Elizabeth especially witnessed the erection and rebuilding of some of Lancashire’s finest halls. The ancient domestic houses which had been the residences of the old feudal lords were now remodelled or entirely swept away, and the subdivision of the land brought out a new class of proprietors, who, though not descended directly from the old owners of the soil, soon took up the rank of gentry, and built for themselves those smaller though not less interesting mansions which at one time were found all over the county.
During the Tudor time were built such houses as Speke Hall, near Liverpool; Ordsall Hall, near Manchester; Little Mitton, the home of the Sherburns; Ince Hall, Cleworth Hall, Smithell’s Hall, Lostock Hall, Lydiate Hall, Rufford Hall, Belfield Hall, Rawcliffe, Rossal Grange, and a host of others far too numerous to mention. Many of these date back to very early days, and were originally built with a view to make every man’s house his castle; but with the end of the sixteenth century other views began to obtain, and an Englishman, for the first time probably in the country’s history, commenced to feel that his house was really his castle, and that it was defended for him by the strong arm of the law.
The houses of the middle and lower classes were nearly always built of wood and clay (“daub”); the richer people had houses which were usually divided on the ground–floor into a common hall, a small withdrawing room or parlour, and a kitchen, the upper stories being reached by wide staircases, often with ornately carved oak banisters. The higher class of houses or halls consisted of many chambers, and not infrequently there was a private chapel, and the rooms were wainscoted. Many views have been preserved of the exterior of most of our old halls (which were highly picturesque), but of the interior and general domestic arrangements we are left to glean such items as have been handed down to us through the medium of inventories and kindred records. These inventories, taken after the proving of wills, are often (where they exist at all) meagre and incomplete, yet they furnish particulars which we should look elsewhere for in vain. The inventory of the goods of Sir Thomas Butler, of Bewsey (near Prescot), knight, taken in 1579, will give some details of the contents of one of Lancashire’s old houses. The following are selected items:
Plate and Jewellery. – Basin and ewer, silver engraved bowls, silver salts with covers, silver spoons, a crystal cross.
Linen, etc. – Table–cloths, damask work, towels, napkins, flax sheets, bed–hangings, quilted and woollen blankets, mattresses, curtains of taffeta, curtains of darynx (a kind of damask made at Tournay), green silk coverlet, etc.
Furniture, etc. – Tables, chairs, stools, truckle beds, pair of playing tables, brass candlesticks, pewter in considerable quantities, and the usual kitchen and brewing apparatus.
Apparel. – Velvet hose, satin doublets, taffeta doublets, velvet breeches, riding–cloak lined with unshorn velvet, Spanish leather jerkins, a long gown of silk grogram (a silk material), velvet cloaks, black jersey stockings, a taffeta hat, a black felt hat.
Sundries. – Cross–bows, clock and bell, pictures of Christ and of the Queen’s majesty, drinking glasses, “a sylver toth pyke,” armour, weapons, guns, corslets, “cote of plate,” daggers, bucklers, “a black brydd and her cage, bought by Sir Thomas in London,” “the honey and wax of certen hyves,” an English Bible and other books (valued at £4), etc.
As a contrast to this house, furnished with all the luxuries of the time, take the inventory of one John Rodes, a husbandman fairly well–to–do, who lived at Inchfield, near Todmorden. By his will, which was dated November, 1564, he left his goods to his children, together with £5 apiece; his wains, carts and implements were also to go to his children; he left over £25 in legacies, and he held a lease of a farm for an unexpired term of years; yet, besides his horses and cows, hay and corn, and other farm stock, all his goods consisted of:
Bedding, £4 6s. 8d. (valued at); pans, £2 0s. 10d.; pots, 13s. 4d.; pewter, 3s. 4d.; a tub, 2d.; “in husslements” (odds and ends) belonging to the household, and in iron gear, 10s.
This was no doubt a fair sample of the contents of the house of a labouring farmer in these times; his household furniture was not worth £10. In some of the moorland districts sheep were kept in large quantities, and in some houses websters’ looms were common enough pieces of furniture, as many of the clothes worn were now home–made, which also accounts for the presence of spinning–wheels and wool–cards. In many of the wills of this period, even where no inventory has been preserved, the bequests are often very numerous and defined, and consist of every imaginable kind of household goods, so that from them we are enabled to get a glimpse at the contents of the houses of the testators. Articles of plate, amongst the wealthier classes, were much prized, and often made the subject of special bequests, as was frequently the case with gold rings and other jewellery. There often occur such items as silver goblets, parcel–gilt goblets, salt–cellars with and without covers, silver spoons “with the image of the twelve apostles” and the like; and hanging in the hall were nearly always old swords, old calverts, pistols, cross–bows and quivers with arrows, and not infrequently more or less complete suits of armour.
From the very rare mention of books in either the wills or inventories, it is evident that very few were among the possessions of the sixteenth–century Lancashire householders. In the few instances where books are named, they are referred to in a manner showing that they were considered valuable and rare. The Rev. Richard Jones, Rector of Bury, by his will, dated June 15, 1568, directed that his “four bokes of Crysostum be chened [chained] in the churche, there to remayne for ever.” Another testator, in 1574,120 left “one litle bible,” which he enjoined his son to see used every Sabbath day when there were no sermons nor sacraments; and during the week–day this precious volume was to be lent to his “poorest kinsfolk.” Pictures were also very uncommon, and those which adorned the walls of the rich were nearly always sacred subjects; one article of furniture appears in nearly every case – the old oak chest; sometimes it is simply called “a chist,” at other times the “carven oak chest,” and it was used invariably as a store place for sheets and linen.
The representation of Lancashire in Parliament was slightly increased in 1559 by the addition of two members – one for Clitheroe and another for Newton–in–the–Willows; the latter was not a borough even by prescriptive right, and the selection of its representative rested almost exclusively with the lord of the manor as late as 1797, when a contested election resulted in a poll of only 66 votes. Except some slight alterations during the Commonwealth, the representation of the county remained unchanged until the passing of the Reform Act in 1832. As illustrating the everyday life in Lancashire in the time of Elizabeth, the following list of prices and wages is interesting. It is taken from the steward’s accounts of the Shuttleworths, of Gawthorp Hall (near Burnley).
Provisions. – A salt salmon, a fresh salmon, a salt fish and two salt eels, 2s.; red herring and a hundred sprats, 1s.; a quart of vinegar, 4d.; a quart of wine, 6d.; a pound of figs, 4d.; a quarter of veal, 12d.; a quarter of mutton, 1s. 6d.; 10¾ gallons of claret wine, 14s. 4d.; for three quarters of sack, 2s.; five chickens, 6d.; a pound of pepper, 4s.; thirty–two snipes, 22d.; four lapwings and two plovers, 8d.; half a fat lamb, 2s. 6d.; three geese, 15d.; half a peck of pears, 6d.; white wine, 2s. a gallon; ten woodcocks, 22d.; fine couple of rabbits, 3s. 9d.; a peck of cockles, 4d.; a pike and a bream, 3s. 8d.; two dozen dace and a perch, 5d.; a peck of apples, 2s. 4d.; a peck of oysters, 6d.; a fat pig, 2s.; five eggs, 1d.; eight gosling, 20d.; a stone of butter, 3s. 4d.
Wages. – A smith, per day, 6d.; a day’s mowing, 6d.; for ditching, 4d. a rood; working in the delph (stone quarry) six days, 15d.; for blending and spinning 5½ stone of wool, 13s. 9d.; for weaving and colouring part of the said wool, 3s. 8d.; for fulling and dressing the said cloth, 4s. 10d.; soleing a pair of shoes, 5d.; spinning wool for blankets, 2s. a stone; weaving pieces of blankets, ¾d. a yard; whitewashing, 2d. to 4d. a day; a stonemason, 4d. a day; weaving 24 yards of canvas, 22d.
Sundries. – A load of wheat, 10s.; a cow, 26s.; twinters (calves two winters old), 22s.; an ox, £2 8s.; 100 bricks, 1s.; two sheepskins for arrow–case, 10d.; a quire of paper, 4d.; six chaldrons (of 36 bushels each) of sea coal121 at the ship, £4 16s.; for bringing the same to the house, 12s.; and for watching them one night, 1s.; three pairs of shoes for the children, 3s. 10d.
In considering the rate of wages, it must be borne in mind that at this period the labourer often had board as well as wages.
As bearing upon the social condition of the people, it may be noted that at the Herald’s visitation of Lancashire in 1533 only forty–seven families entered their descent, and even these furnished very meagre genealogical particulars. This may in a great measure be accounted for by the fact that the visitation was made at a time when the King was struggling with the Pope for religious supremacy, and that the growing feeling in favour of the Reformers had not yet made much progress in this county, and consequently the Herald, though armed with a royal warrant, was received with coldness, some families point–blank refusing even to speak with him, whilst others, having granted an audience, dismissed him “with the utmost rudeness.”122 The Herald appears to have taken his revenge in full, and recorded of one well–known knight (Sir Richard Houghton) that he “hath putt away his lady and wife, and kepeth a concobyne in his house”; and he adds, “he gave me nothing nor made me no good chere, but gave me proude woordes”; of another gentleman (Robert Holt of Stubley) he reported “that he married an olde woman, by whom he hedd no yssue, & therefore he wold not have her name entered”; as for Sir John Townley of Townley, near Burnley, he “sogt hym all day rydinge in the wylde countrey, & his reward was ijˢ of wʰ the guyde hedde the most p’te,” and he winds up with, “I hed as evill a jorney as evʳ I hedd”; in addition to all this, Sir John refused to tell him the name of his first wife, and asserted that there were no gentlemen in Lancashire but Lord Derby and Lord Monteagle.
The next visitation was in 1567, when Elizabeth had been nearly ten years on the throne, and the Roman Catholics and Puritans in this county had become specially marked for persecution (see Chapter IX.); notwithstanding this, 129 families entered their pedigrees, and most of them claimed the right to bear arms. The marked increase between 1533 and 1567 bears evidence to the growing wealth and importance of Lancashire. Arising from a desire to add “field to field” and found county families, a custom had obtained a footing in Lancashire at this time to marry children when of tender age. Many examples might be quoted to illustrate this, but one will suffice. In 1562 two sisters, Elizabeth and Anne, co–heiresses of Ralph Belfield, of Clegg Hall, were married, at Middleton Church, respectively to Alexander Barlow of Barlow and Richard Leigh of Highleigh; twenty–two years afterwards both the couples applied for divorce, Barlow testifying that he did not remember any marriage having taken place, and Anne Leigh, née Belfield, declaring that at the time of her marriage she was only seven years old, and that after it was celebrated she went to live with her grandmother, whilst her youthful husband was sent to Shrewsbury School, and whilst he was there she sent him a “gilt book,” and he sent her a knife, which she wore at her girdle: both marriages were dissolved.123 There were, however, many other instances where divorce was neither obtained nor applied for.
The close of the Tudor age found Lancashire in a very different state to that which marked its advent. Commerce with other countries across the seas was beginning to show effects, and the wool and other products of the county found a ready market. The population had greatly increased, yet still there was no large town in the modern sense of the word, and the manufactures of the day were mostly carried on in the houses of the manufacturers, and the new fabrics composed of silk and wool, introduced by the Flemish exiles at Norwich, had not yet been added to any great extent to the trade of this district.
The social position was everywhere improved: a better class of domestic architecture had supplanted the old order, and now the people lived in fairly comfortable houses, built frequently of stone or brick, which, though internally not furnished with the luxurious appliances of a nineteenth–century villa, were yet princely palaces compared with the wretched dwelling–places which had preceded them.
The glorious literature which distinguished the reign of the Virgin Queen, and which embraced alike history, poetry, and the drama, must have had some effect upon the Lancashire people, although as yet we find no printing–press in any of her towns.
CHAPTER VIII
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Allusion has been already made to the superstitious side of the character of the Lancashire people; their belief in omens, charms, witchcraft and demoniac possessions lingered long. This is a fitting place to tell the tale of the “Lancashire Witches” and the so–called “demoniac possessions.”
The belief that demons or evil spirits took possession of human beings is of very great antiquity, and the popular mind had firmly taken hold of this; whenever a case of this kind occurred, the priest was called in to exorcise the devil, and the Puritan divines were not slow in asserting that if a Roman Catholic could perform a miracle, they at least could turn out an evil spirit, and thus the superstition appears to have been rather fostered than rebuked. One of these demoniac cases124 took place at an old half–timbered house called Cleworth Hall125 (in the parish of Leigh), where there lived Nicholas, the eldest son of Edmund Starkie of Huntroyd (near Burnley); he had issue a son John and a daughter Ann, who, with five others, were said to have become “possessed,” when John Darrell was called in to exorcise the evil spirit. This Darrell was a graduate of one of the Universities, and was subsequently domestic chaplain to Archbishop Whitgift, and Rector of St. Mary’s, Nottingham.
An account of this singular instance of ignorance and credulity was written by Darrell and secretly printed in 1600. The various symptoms described are not incompatible with many diseases now known to the medical profession, and need not be described; to cure the patients, however, a conjurer of the name of Hartley was called in, who for his services was to receive 40s. a year and bed and board; but this did not satisfy him long, and on being refused additional pay, in the shape of a house and the land it stood on, he so affected the possessed ones that (as Darrell puts it) they “sent forth such a strange supernatural and fearful noyse and loud whupping as the like was neuer hard at Cleworth nor in England.”
Mr. Starkie was naturally not satisfied with the treatment, and having applied to a Manchester physician in vain, he went to the famous Dr. Dee, then Warden of Manchester, who advised him to consult “some godly preachers” and get them to call a public or private fast day. The eldest son’s vagaries were certainly peculiar: he would at times act like a madman or a mad dog, and he and his sisters, we are told (by Darrell), would howl and bark and join in a chorus “like a ring of five bells.” The whole affair was doubtless a fraud, but, nevertheless, it shows in a marked degree the dense ignorance even of some of the well–to–do classes at that time: for we find that Mr. Starkie, after his futile appeal to the Manchester physician, Dr. Dee, and others, could only resort to the justices of the peace, who in their wisdom sent Hartley to the Lancaster assizes, where he was in solemn manner tried, condemned and hanged, not for the evident imposition and fraud, but for witchcraft, the strongest evidence against him being that he had on several occasions “drawn magic circles.” But perhaps the most curious circumstance about the case is that at his execution the rope broke, whereupon, probably thinking to save his neck, he confessed that he was guilty; the plea, however, failed, and he was quietly hung up a second time. After Hartley’s execution, John Darrell and the pastor of Calke, in Derbyshire, were called to Cleworth (in 1596), and they with thirty others spent a day in fasting and prayer, the result being (so we are told) that the whole seven were dispossessed, the devil coming out of their mouths in various forms, as a crow’s head, a hedgehog, a toad, etc.
This and other impostures practised by Darrell and his associates led to a prolonged controversy, in which several pamphlets were printed in London, the author of one of them being Samuel Harsnett, who was afterwards Archbishop of York. Not very long after this, King James issued his “Dæmonologie,” in which he advocated the putting to death of all witches.
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 book126 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.
On the indictment against Anne Whittle being read, she pleaded not guilty, whereupon “Mr. Nowell, the best instructed of any man of all these particular poyntes of evidence against her and her fellows,” requested that the prisoner’s own confession made before him should now be “published against her,” and this was forthwith done. Of the character of the evidence given by the various witnesses, the following are samples: Anne Whittle, to spite the wife of one John Moore, “called for her Deuill Fancie and bad him goe bite a browne cow of Moore’s by the head and make the cow goe madde; and the Deuill then in the likenesse of a brown dogge went to the said cow and bit her, which cow went madde accordingly and died within six weekes.” Alice Chattox “at a buriall at the new church in Pendle did take three scalpes of people which had been buried, and then cast them out of a grave, and took eight teeth out of the said scalpes,” which were afterwards used for purposes of witchcraft. They were not only accused of causing the deaths of various people and cattle by charms, but also of being the means of bringing about evil of every description. In the case of Elizabeth Device (the daughter of old Demdike), her own child, nine years of age, was “set upon the table in the presence of the whole court,” and there declared that she knew her mother to be a witch, for she had several times seen her spirit in the shape of a brown dog come to her at her house.
Another extraordinary piece of evidence was that of James Device, a son of young Demdyke’s, who first put himself out of court as a creditable witness by confessing that he had recently stolen a sheep, and then swore that he had seen a number of witches at his grandmother’s house, who first partook of the stolen mutton and then went out of doors, where they “were gotten on horsebacke, like unto foales, some one colour, some of another, and Preston’s wife was the last, and when shee got on horsebacke they all presently vanished out of sight.”
Amongst the witches was one Alice Nutter, of the Forest of Pendle, whom Potts describes as “a rich woman” with “a great estate and children of good hope, and in the opinion of the world of good temper, free from envy or malice,” and he adds, “Whether by the means of the rest of the witches or some unfortunate occasion shee was drawne to fall to this wicked course of life I know not; but hither she is now come to receive her triall both for murder and many other vile and damnable practices.” The witnesses against this prisoner were the other accused and members of their families only.
At the conclusion of the trial, Alice Whittle, Elizabeth Device, Anne Redferne, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewet, John Bulcock, Jane Bulcock, Aliza Device and Isabel Robey were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, which sentence was duly carried out. Margaret Pearson was ordered to stand in the pillory in open market at Clitheroe, Padiham, Whalley and Lancaster, on four market days; the other prisoners were acquitted.
But this did not stamp out the Lancashire witches, for so long as the people continued to believe in their supernatural powers, so long would the supply be equal to the demand. In 1633 another batch of seventeen witches of Pendle were commanded to take their trial at Lancaster assizes, and, singularly enough, one of the convicting justices was the John Starkie who in 1596 was himself the subject of demoniac possession (see p. 114).
The chief witness in this case was a stonemason, who on oath declared that he had seen two greyhounds, with which he tried to hunt a hare; but they refused to run, and on his beating them, they immediately became transformed, one into Dickonson’s wife, and the other into a little boy; the former put a kind of bridle on the head of the latter, and he became a white horse, upon which she jumped, and, placing the witness before her, she rode away with him to a place called Hoarstones (in Whalley), which was about a quarter of a mile off, where he found a number of persons coming, all riding on “horses of several colours.” After this interesting congregation had feasted in the house, they adjourned to the barn, where he saw six of them kneeling and pulling at six ropes fastened to the roof, “at or with which pulling came flesh smoakeinge, butter in lumps, and milk.” Whilst they were thus exercised they “made such foule faces that feared him, so that he was glad to steale out and run home.” Margaret Johnson, though not one of the accused, confessed that she had been at a meeting at Hoarstones, where there were present between thirty and forty witches; she also said that “men witches usually have women spirits, and women witches men spirits,” and that Good Friday was the “constant day for a yearly meeting of witches.” All these prisoners were found guilty by the jury, but the judge delayed the execution of the sentence, and the matter in the meantime coming to the ears of the King, four of the convicted were sent up to London to be examined by the royal physicians and surgeons, and ultimately were brought before the King himself. The result of all this was an acquittal of the lot. It was upon this case of witch–finding that Heywood and Broome founded their play of “The Late Lancashire Witches,” London, 1634, and Mother Demdike is one of the characters in Shadwell’s “Lancaster Witches,” a comedy, London, 1682. Harrison Ainsworth’s novel, “The Lancashire Witches,” has the same subject. After this, the “profession” of witchcraft appears to have gradually died out, but the demoniac possession was harder to slay, as the exorcising of these spirits was a power highly valued alike by Roman Catholic priest and Puritan divine. At Downham, near Clitheroe, a case was reported, with the usual “godly minister” as voucher127 again, in 1696, and the Vicar of Walton–on–the Hill furnished an account of another case which had taken place about half a century earlier, and in which the priest at Madame Westby’s (of Mowbrick in Kirkham) and the Rector of Croston having failed to effect a cure, the possessed one was sent to Dr. Sylvester, of Liverpool, who physicked the “devil out of him.”
