All language subtitles for Suranne.Jones.Investigating.Witch.Trials.S01E01.1080p.HDTV.H264-DARKFLiX

This program me contains
some strong language

Hi, team.
Hello. Hello.

Are we ready to talk witches?

We are ready. How are you feeling?

I'm good. I'm feeling it,
yes, I'm feeling witchy.

I'm Surannejones.

And for as long as I can remember,
I've been intrigued

by the idea of witches.

I love that, yeah.

BLEEP the cleaning -
I'm going to ride the broomstick.

Exactly!

No, Jackson, don't follow me.

Shall I send you one
and you can respond?

Yeah.

THEY HOWL LIKE WOLVES

But for much of history,

witches and witchcraft have been
viewed with fear and suspicion.

You have 200 years where women are
terrified of being called a witch.

I'm going on an epic journey
to uncover what led

to some of the biggest trials
in history.

There is a worry that witches
are rampant,

and they are out to hurt
the King and society.

Starting in Pendle,
close to where I was born...

This is the dungeon where
the witches were imprisoned.

Oh, my gosh.

..|'ll travel to Germany...

If disaster strikes, we become
ready to see evil in other people.

...and to the American town of Salem -
site of the most

infamous witch trials of all...

If it was the last moment I was
to live, God knows I am innocent.

...to discover why so many women
were accused of witchcraft...

This really laid the foundations
for a hundred thousand

trials of witches,
75% of whom were women.

...and what their history means
for us today.

Women were silenced,
women didn't have a voice,

they were repressed.

And it has been repeated
and repeated and repeated.

What do people think that they are
going to achieve by sending those?

They want to shut you up.

They want you to be so scared
that you'll stop talking.

Argh! Yes! ARGHHH!

As an actor,

I've always loved
strong female roles.

But I've never played a witch.

I guess for most people
a witch is...

...a pointy hat, green skin,
old, crone,

one eye up here
and one eye down there

and she laughs like this.
SHE CACKLES

Ooh, that's a good laugh,
I'm taking that.

Someone cast me as a witch.
I mean, come on.

Growing up, I would much
rather play the witch.

To me it's just always been
more intriguing.

Popular culture has given us
countless portrayals of the witch,

from fairytale crone
to magical teenager.

But none of these get us
anywhere close

to how dark the real story is.

The story of the thousands of women
who were accused of witchcraft in

the 17th century.

And to understand that,
I need to head north.

Sol grew up in Oldham,
it's near Pendle,

near enough, certainly,
to know about the Pendle Witches.

In 1612, ten people from
the area of Pendle were executed

for witchcraft, eight of
them were women.

It's one of the most
notorious executions

for witchcraft in English history.

So this area is called
the Forest of Boland

and the walk that I'm doing now
is what's known as

the walk that the witches did.

Ancl they knew that in all
likelihood they would be walking

to their death.

I mean, that just gives me a chill.

By exploring what happened here
in Lancashire,

I'm hoping to shed light on events
far beyond 17th century Pendle.

What prompted witch hunts in
Britain and Europe?

Who was accused of
witchcraft and why?

And what can this horror story from
400 years ago tell us about events

in the present day?

In the early 17th century,
Lancashire was a sparsely populated

rural area still coming to terms
with the religious

and political upheaval of
the last century.

England in the 16th century went
through lots of different monarchs

as most people know.

So they went from Catholic
to Protestant,

to Catholic to Protestant, erm...

And obviously people's religious
allegiances couldn't change

so quickly.

But Lancashire was quite interesting
because it did have

a high Catholic community.

Lancashire had an inclination
towards Catholicism,

while the rest of England was
a broadly Protestant country.

So that set it apart - it was
seen as a kind of edge place,

as a rebellious place, as a place
where problematic people might live.

Lancashire was known as
the dark corner of the land,

the dark corner
of England where traitors

and misfits ran away to.

I kind of like that.

I like that I'm from
the dark corner.

But being a Catholic stronghold in
a now Protestant country

meant that many suffered hardship.

Pendle is particularly down on its
knees at this point in time

so some people are well-to-do
farmers who do have money

and land and then you have various
families who are just eking out

a living on what little
they have got.

So there was more vagrancy,
more poverty.

One of the key explanations
for witchcraft in England

was this idea of charity refused.

So this is often a very destitute
society where women

are particularly vulnerable.

They might be asking for money
and then being refused money,

that old woman mutters something
under her breath as she walks off

and then some harm befalls
a person who's refused

the woman and they think it's her.

According to the account of the
trials written by clerk of the court,

Thomas Potts, the Pendle Witch Trials
were sparked by a similar incident.

Alison Device, a young
beggar's daughter,

is walking through the woods.

She comes across a pedlar
on the road

and she asks him for some pins.
The pedlar refuses.

Alison is angry about that
and she turns

and she whispers a curse
uncler her breath.

The pedlar falls down
partially paralysed.

Alison, confused and alarmed
at her own strength

and believes that she now does
indeed have magical powers.

This belief might seem
strange to us today

but in 17th century Pendle,
the Device family

were known to practise folk magic.

They are known locally as being
"cunning folk",

and "cunning folk" is this kind
of really interesting way

of thinking about people where
there's this idea that

they have access to
the supernatural.

Ancl it doesn't necessarily mean that
they are consorting with the devil.

It could mean that they understand
plants and herbs particularly well.

Magic was part of
the fabric of everyday life.

It was how people made sense
of the world

and how people made sense
of misfortune as well.

And people could make money from
magical healing.

But while magic might offer
comfort and a way for

the Devices to make a living,
Alison was convinced it

had given her the ability to harm.

She was devastated about this
so she went to the family

and she begged for forgiveness
for something that she believed

she was capable of,
that she'd clone.

I feel that that moment,
the choice that she made,

kicked off this huge thing.

Alison's confession was made
at a time when

the idea of "witchcraft", and who
could do it, was rapidly changing.

It's really uncommon in
the mediaeval period to have

an accusation of someone
being a witch.

Sometimes people are denounced
as having clone magic,

but a lot of times, the people who
are seen to be doing bad magic

with demons are monks, for example -
people who speak Latin,

who can draw up a magic circle
and bring up the dead

in order to learn things.

So, the witch -
the fear of the witch -

completely, exponentially rises from
the early 15th century onwards

because the idea of
the witch fundamentally changes.

So rather than it being sort of a
learned male magician

getting their power from magic
books, it's this idea that

a witch is fundamentally giving
their soul to the devil,

and they are therefore
committing heresy.

When we think about the word
"witch", it's a derogatory term.

Whereas, if we think about
the word "wizard",

we would use that in a way of,
"He's a wizard at that".

He's... You know, that's a positive,
that's bigging someone up.

You would never use
the word "witch" like that,

in fact you'd say, "Mm,
she's a bit of a witch."

So when did "witch" become
a term to describe

a woman intent on evil?

I'm meeting feminist art historian
Luisa McCormack.

So have you ever heard of
the Malleus Maleficarum?

No, I haven't.

So, the name roughly translates
to the Hammer of Witches

and it was written
and published in 1487 by

a German guy called
Heinrich Kramer.

Ancl it's basically your kind
of handy user's guide on how

to spot, capture, torture
and kill your local witch.

So it's a really, really
horrible piece of text,

it's incredibly misogynistic.

So do you know the things
we should look out for?

Is that in there, for a witch?

I mean, basically all women.
THEY LAUGH

All women... There we go,
we just need to stop there, Luisa.

Pretty much.

So one of the things
the Malleus did,

which had been around in
previous scholarship

but really was cemented by
Heinrich Kramer,

was this idea that women were
uniquely positioned to be witches.

Kramer's text describes in detail the
evil in the heart of every woman.

Kramer believed women were tempted
by Satan to become witches

because of their
uncontrolled sexuality.

It goes into extreme detail
as to the kinds of things

that witches got up to.

That included keeping nests
of penises in trees, erm...

Like you do. Yeah, as you do.
We've all been there.

THEY LAUGH

MARION: One of the things he
thinks that witches do is keep

men's penises, having cut them off
and severed them,

or leave them on the male body
and hide them, make them invisible.

The Malleus Maleficarum details
incidents of his type of witchcraft.

So what the Malleus does
is that it really changes

the understanding of the witch -
not just about someone who

has made a pact with the devil,
but a woman who has made

a sexual pact with the devil.

It is one of the most bonkers books
that was ever written,

so included in it, he has large
notations about the orgies

that witches have with the devil.

He wants you to know that when
the devil has orgies

with witches and ejaculates, his
semen is cold because the devil has

to steal semen from unsuspecting
men in the night.

There is just more penis stealing
than has ever been talked about in

any other book before or since.

It really tells you about
his psyche,

that he was that obsessed
with women's sexuality,

and I think it is worth remembering
that he was a monk

and therefore celibate.

People were really sceptical about
it, they very much took it

with a grain of salt.

The powers that be weren't
necessarily convinced

that witches needed to be dealt
with in the kind of ways

that he had detailed in the book.

But how did this idea spread
through Europe

and then the new world and beyond?

It very much has to do with a
contemporary piece of technology

that was invented in the 1440s, and
that's Johannes Gutenberg

creating the printing press.

Cos what the printing press enables
for the first time ever

in human history is the mass
dissemination of ideas and imagery.

MARION: It's got everything -
it's got sex, it's got conflict,

it's got witches, it's got magic,
it's got the devil.

Why wouldn't it become popular?

A book that was absolutely
laughed at

ancl considered to be of
no account at all whatsoever in

a few decades kind of has
a massive turnaround

and is treated as if it's
the absolute truth.

So then he wrote this.
Mhm.

Printing press allowed it
to get out and all his ideas

and its almost a form
of something going viral.

It's like... Very much so.
..when something goes on

Twitter, then everyone
can comment about it.

40 years ago the internet
was created.

We could never have conceived of how
the internet kind of put power

in people's hands and, you know,
all the ways it's changed us

as a society.

The printing press very much was
the 1400s equivalent of that so

the Malleus Maleficarum is
written sort of at

the birth of this brand
new technology.

Kramer's concept of the evil witch
was also popularised

by artists of the time.

The most famous print was by
Albrecht Durer.

This is the, kind of the original
crone, the original hag.

There's all sorts of interesting
markers that are defining her as

an agent of chaos in this piece.

So, for example, the goat is riding
in this direction but she is facing

in this direction, and her hair is
streaming out in the wrong way.

There's loads of things which are
kind of suggesting

to us that she's acting
against nature.

She's depicted with a broomstick
and a spindle,

both of which are traditional
implements of womanhood.

But in the hands of the witch,
the broomstick becomes this

phallic rod that she's clutching and
so it really signifies this kind of

turning upside down

of traditional, like, good female
values to have -

you know, the broomstick that you
swept your yard with

becomes this kind of crazy
phallic thing that she rides on

to her witches' sabbath.

I love that, yeah.

BLEEP the cleaning,
I'm going to ride the broomstick.

Exactly, that's pretty much it.

Kramer's book led to thousands of
trials of suspected witches...

most of them women.

To understand more about
the executions

for witchcraft in Pendle,
I've come to Germany.

This was the epicentre of the
witch hunts that swept

through Europe in the
seventeenth century.

I'm here to meet Professor
Johannes Dillinger.

Could you tell me a bit about
the history of witches

in Germany, Bamburg?

I would always say that we
should see them in

the double context of the economy
and politics. Uh-huh.

For the economy, was a shambles.

We are right in the middle of the
so-called Little Ice Age that is

a period of extreme temperatures
in European history.

It was extremely cold.

Of course, you know that Europe
was an agricultural society.

Now, with a series of extremely
cool not just years but decades,

society hit rock bottom.

People, they are starving.

It took the Germans
a couple of years to learn

the concept of witchcraft.

You've already heard about
Malleus Maleficarum

and Kramer who wrote it.

Kramer was a crackpot,
and most people

did not respect him any too well.

It took the crisis of
the Little Ice Age

to drive home Kramer's method
that was essentially,

something's wrong with the world.
Yeah.

What is this secret conspiracy
at work?

Totally secret, basically invisible
because it consists mostly

of women who hide,
of course, behind men.

Witches, in a German context,
are first and foremost

weather magicians.

We send the rain, we send the
snow, the hailstones.

If disaster strikes, we become ready
to see evil in other people.

Ancl the early modern understanding
of evil is witchcraft.

We see spikes of witchcraft
accusations in the years

of really, really bad weather
and the crop failures,

so there is a causal connection
between bad weather

and spates of witch hunting.

It's about witches harming society
and wreaking havoc on society.

What we're living through now
probably would be thought

of as witchcraft.

The mediaeval town of Bamburg saw
some of Germany's most brutal trials.

So we have communities that
are devastated,

that are starving, so the
communities look to the rulers

and the rulers need
someone to blame.

Ancl very few rulers were so
enthusiastic about hunting witches

when actually just
two Prince Bishops,

here at Bamburg.

But they accepted
the witchcraft doctrine

line, hook and sinker.

The witch trial, we always have
the difficulty of evidence.

How do you actually prove magic?

So local witch hunters,
they're very often left

to their own devices
and they used torture -

I'm tempted to say -
liberally in order to overcome

the difficulties with evidence,
and they are very aggressive.

I know a number of cases,
one actually here at Bamburg,

that pregnant women
were tortured for clays.

The state told them
witches do exist,

all churches told them
witches do exist,

science, the universities, told
them yes, witches do exist.

Ancl all your neighbours were
convinced that witches do exist.

Who are you to step out of line
and say, no, they don't.

It was what they were told,
they were frightened,

they were scared
and they were starving.

Nearly 20,000 women were executed
for witchcraft in the German lands.

This was made possible by
the willingness of

the authorities to prosecute.

The same was true at home.

To find out how that developed here,
I'm meeting Claire Mitchell KC.

So, before the Witchcraft Act,
the church dealt with

what was right and wrong,
or good or bad.

When the Witchcraft Act -
both North and South of the border -

came into being,
what that meant was that

the law had got its fingers into
who was a witch.

So, for the first time,
it became the state that was

weighing up who was a witch and
deciding who should live or die.

In Scotland, Mary Queen of Scots
brought in some trials,

but it really took off when her son,
James VI and then

the First of England later,
became involved

because he was obsessed
with witchcraft, and therefore

he saw witches everywhere, that
witches were amongst us.

In a real sense he literally wrote
the book,

cos he wrote a book
called Demonology,

giving all the detail-
what they wear, what they do,

how to look out for them,
how to deal with them.

Ancl so he, having written
the book on it,

provided a legitimacy from
the highest form

through to the people.

So there is no question in people's
minds other than the devil was real,

that witches were amongst us,
and they were doing bad things.

Cos the King said so.
Absolutely.

What Demonology tells us about
is what forms

a witch can take,
what ills they might do,

how they might affect you.

For example, erm, if a woman has
been standing near a bush

and that bush later goes on fire,
is she a witch?

If a woman has been out late
at night, is she a witch?

If a woman has cursed you
in the market

and then later something happens
to one of your family or

your animals or your stock,
is she a witch?

I'm saying "she", in fact
Demonology doesn't gender

the person - they just talk about
acts of witchcraft

and neither do the acts themselves.

That's why it's so interesting...
How society...

...how society decides that
a witch is a woman

because the law doesn't in fact
prescribe it.

In the period of the witch trials,
often people who were accused

were outsiders in some way,
so they might be heretics,

people who were seen to misbelieve
in religion in some way.

They might be women who
refused to be quiet

and do what their husbands
told them to do.

They might be midwives or healers,
they might be simply people you'd

had a business dispute with.

The thing about a witch trial in
a lot of senses is that it's not

necessarily about rooting out magic,
but a lot of the time

it's about rooting out parts of
society that you don't like to see.

Ancl particularly at this time,
we see a real interest

in kind of decreasing the
influence that women have

in society more generally.

Of the 2,500 people executed in
Scotland under the Witchcraft Act,

around 80% are thought
to have been women.

So we've got King James, obsessed
with witches, in Scotland.

How does that come over
to England?

Because he becomes James
the First of England,

and when he moves -
he physically moves,

leaves Scotland and he goes down
to England where he

brings with him all his ideas.

So the Pendle witch trials
took place in 1612,

so this is not long after James VI
of Scotland becomes

James I of England.

So imagine you are
a judge in Lancashire.

You're probably not going to be
super excited about that

because you're living in this
really poor, rural area

and you know you want to rise
through the ranks of the judiciary,

but, hey look, here's this new
Scottish King

and he is really into
cracking down on witches.

So this idea of you being able
to find witches in

a community and hunt them out,
exterminate them,

probably if you are
an ambitious man is

a good way of gaining
the King's favour.

One man's ambition would drive the
prosecution of the Pendle witches.

News that Alison Device had
paralysed a pedlar with a curse

reached the local magistrate,
a man called Roger Nowell.

Alison was summoned before him,
and according to

Thomas Potts' account, told Nowell
everything he wanted to hear.

During Nowell's interrogation,
Alison is said to have confessed

to witchcraft acts and to selling
her soul to the devil.

I wonder if there was some
prompting on his part.

Three other women were
also implicated -

Alison's grandmother and two
members of a local family with whom

the Devices had a
long-standing dispute.

So, what should have been
an isolated incident of

a man accusing this girl
of witchcraft

and then her confessing,
becomes something much bigger

because these two families,
become embroiled.

They've had long-standing
antagonisms against each other.

So it's also this idea of
community conflict being

played out through witch
accusations.

Grasping an opportunity
to gain attention

and favour with the new King,
magistrate Roger Nowell

sent all four women to
Lancaster Gaol, to await trial.

400 years ago, the women of Pendle
accused of witchcraft became victims

of ambitious men trying to further
their careers.

Everything we understand about
the Pendle story is from

the accounts of men.

The women's voices
have not been heard.

But today there is a
generation of women reclaiming

the label "witch', and they
will not be silenced.

Hello. Oh!

Musician Natasha Khan, better known
as Bat for Lashes, is one of them.

I've been looking at some videos
of you. Can I start there? Yeah.

The screaming and the wailing
and the... Oh, my God.

ETHEREAL HOWUNG

What does one have to do to howl?

Absolutely nothing.
just do it? just do it.

Erm, so I'm not going to howl here,
I'm just going to

go over there and howl.
NATASHA LAUGHS

But you keep looking this way,
cos I feel I need to do that...

Yeah. ..like, without...

No, Jackson, don't follow me,
don't... I want to do this...

So you can do it for yourself?
Yeah. Yeah. I just want to do,

I just want to try it.

Shall I send you one
and you can respond?

Yeah...yeah.

NATASHA HOWLS LIKE A WOLF

SURANNE HOWLS BACK

Louder.

SURANNE HOWLS LOUDER

SHE HOWLS EVEN LOUDER

You really needed to do that.

F**k me.

I saw it, I saw it. Yes!

Oh, it feels so good, doesn't it?
NATASHA LAUGHS

Oh, my God.

I mean that's better than
a headache tablet. Yeah.

Women got told that our voices have
to hit just maybe one or two notes

throughout the clay.
Yeah. We're like this.

Ancl as a singer, for me,
I had to really push myself

to move outside of this

SOFTLY: "I speak like this
and I don't really move,

you know, outside of that,"
to, like,

LOUDLY: "Hey!" you know, on stage.
Yeah.

It's, like, so liberating
and I come off, like, buzzing.

I feel like it moves stuff.

It feels good so I don't really
care, you know?

But taking it back to
the witch thing, isn't that

so interesting that we do that
ancl then we're instantly afraid...

Mm! ..of someone going
"Oh, God, those two..."

Ancl that's the narrative in our
heads that's like,

women getting together
and making too much noise...

Yes, but, that's so true.

It's about using your voice,
speaking out

and life's too short as well
to do anything other than that.

I think we're all witches.

I think a witch is just
a woman who is in tune

with mystical forces and the sort of
unconscious power

of the cycles of life.
Mm.

Natasha is giving me
a card reading using

a deck she designed called
the Motherwitch.

So...

...do you want to just turn
over that top card?

Oh, my gosh. OK.

The Tyrant.
This is so interesting.

Is that me? No.
Oh, right, OK.

Erm, so if you look at the card,
it's this masculine figure

that's got his hands squashed
down... Gosh. Yeah.

...onto the woman.

So the way I would
interpret this is that

it's the force of, like...
The patriarchal force of, like,

"you must create, you must be
generating work",

you've got to keep going beyond
your means, which means you have

to work longer hours, like...
You know, it's that thing,

it's stamping the woman down.

It's stamping your feminine
intuition and your own power

and your own instincts and ability
to know what your limits are.

He's sort of squashing you.

I feel like this woman.

Squashed? I feel squashed.
Crushed. Yeah.

There's a force at work in our
society that says you can't stop

and you have to keep producing,
you have to do more,

you've got to be bigger,
better, work longer.

You just end up feeling mad.
Crazy and overwhelmed.

When you first described it, I felt
like... I thought I was gonna cry,

cos I've just felt like that's
exactly where I am right now.

Aww. Yeah. Erm...

It's no wonder I wanted to howl.
Yeah.

I really felt like I needed it.
Yeah.

For women, using their voice
to speak out,

I've had so many occasions coming
up through my career

where you have an opinion
and the moment you do,

you can feel the atmosphere change
because then you are either

too mouthy or too loud, or too brash
and "that's not your job",

"you need to be quiet",
"you need to just be here,

"look pretty, smile"...
All of that stuff has happened.

Women like Natasha are defying
the expectations of what

might be considered appropriate
behaviour for women today.

But in 17th Century Pendle, not
conforming could get you killed.

While Alison Device, her grandmother
Demdike and two others

were being held in Lancaster Gaol,
there was a gathering which would

place even more people
under suspicion.

This field is thought to be
the site of the Device family home.

April 10th, Good Friday.

While all obedient Christians
are in church,

allegedly a party was held here by
Alison's mother, Elizabeth.

They roasted a stolen sheep
and they celebrated by

feasting and dancing.

The party sparked rumours of
a huge conspiracy of witches,

plotting to overthrow
law and order.

So everything might have
just stayed there -

four people are accused
of witchcraft, that's good enough.

Except there's a big family
meet-up on Good Friday

where basically
everyone who is accused,

called their neighbours who were
a little bit sympathetic

and James, one of the brothers,
steals a sheep in order

to feed everyone
and have a bit of a barbecue.

I just think it was a very bad idea
for people who were

suspected of witchcraft to then have
a gathering of people,

which then involves sheep.

It just seems like
the rulebook of what not

to do when accused
of witchcraft would be that.

It's probably just a family feast,
but it comes across to

the magistrate as being some sort
of satanic church gathering.

And, of course, that plays into
his fears that Satan worship

is happening in his locality.

Magistrate Roger Nowell rounded up
everyone involved for questioning.

By the end of his interrogations,
more than a dozen people were

imprisoned here on
witchcraft charges.

Hi. Good morning. How are you?
I'm very well, thank you.

Suranne. I'm Martin.
Lovely to meet you. And you.

Are these for me?
They are indeed.

If you could pop those on
before we go down.

Ancl this, I take it by the padlock,
erm, isn't somewhere

where the general public get to go?

No, this isn't open to the public.

How amazing. Thank you.

This is the dungeon where
the witches were imprisoned.

Wow.

Oh, my gosh...

I mean, it's just so grim.

It's cold down here. It's small.

They would have been chained up.

Not all prisoners were chained,
but they chained them

because they thought they
were witches,

they thought they had some
super powers

and that if they didn't chain them
down they would fly out of here.

Or get out through the
walls or God knows what.

The 80-year-old Demdike
didn't make it to the trials.

She died down here.

Ancl I'm sat thinking,
who were these women?

They were...old, poor.

They were on the outskirts,
they were "other", "different".

But a witch?

I'm still trying to get
to idea of what a witch is.

A witch is someone who has made
a pact with the devil, and...

..|'m sat here feeling like
these were just...

. ANOTHER.

They were held here for months.

And by the end of the trials,
most would be condemned to death.

I returned to Lancashire
to uncover the real story

of the Pendle witches.

What I'm realising is,
it's not about witchcraft,

but about women.

18th of August, 1612, the trial
of the Pendle witches began.

Professor Ronald Hutton is
a leading expert on these trials.

So when someone is accused of
being a witch, what evidence

has to come forward to
allow the prosecution

to sentence them to death?

In any European witch trial there
are always two things going on.

One is a pact with the devil-
and the churchmen

and the magistrates are mostly
interested in that.

The other is the harm they've done
to fellow humans as

a result of that pact
with the devil.

The hardest questions
for historians

to answer is why it seems quite
a few people made voluntary

confessions of being
harmful witches.

On the continent there's not much
of a problem

because they were tortured until
they couldn't bear it any longer.

But torture of that kind
is illegal in England,

so we're left to guess.

I need to stress so much that
everything we know about

the Pendle witches is third-hand.

It's from the testimony
of Roger Nowell who gets

what are supposed
to be their confessions,

and then it's embellished by
the clerk of the court

who publishes the evidence
as we have it.

So it's filtered -
we can only speculate.

One of the obvious conclusions
to draw is that Roger Nowell misled

the accused when he was first
taking the evidence,

by making them suppose that
if they told him what he wanted,

they'd be spared.

Now, that does happen for sure in
some other English witch trials

with some unscrupulous magistrates,
and there's a very strong suspicion

in this case.

Although some are said
to have confessed to witchcraft,

many continued to protest
their innocence

including Alison Device's
mother, Elizabeth.

But a new prosecution witness was
about to surprise everyone.

The star witness is nine years old
and she is jennet.

she is tragically the daughter
of Elizabeth there in the pen

and therefore the younger sister
ofjames and Alison,

Elizabeth's other children who are
also on trial.

And Roger has got hold of this girl
and persuaded her

to provide this mass of
evidence against her own family.

Everybody is amazed when this
child enters the court,

mounts her podium
and begins to give evidence.

jennet is really ready to give this
very detailed testimony

where she says she's seen
Alison's familiar -

it is the black dog that
John lost, Has cursed him -

she's seen Alison consort
with the devil.

According to the account
of the trial,

jennet also gave evidence that
a coven of around 20 witches

had gathered at her home
on Good Friday,

and that her own mother,
Elizabeth, was a witch.

We don't really know if she is
aware of what she's doing,

but she provides exactly what
the prosecution wants.

She accuses them of dealing
with spirits in detail

and of murdering people
by witchcraft.

There were legal limits of
who could testify in court.

You were essentially not meant
to allow witness statements

from children.

In his determination
to prosecute witches,

the new King had
lowered the bar for evidence.

One of the things that James
says in Demonology is that

it's a good idea to question the
children of suspected witches

and that their evidence
is admissible

and should be listened to.

This is really significant
in the Pendle trials.

jennet has been
underneath the care of

the judges themselves.

So she, this whole time,
has probably been being fed lines

about what it is that her
family has clone wrong.

Ancl jennet gives really
detailed testimony.

jennet's evidence sealed the fate of
her family and many others.

Two days later, ten people were
hanged on Gallows Hill,

eight of them were women.

Among them were Alison Device,
her mother Elizabeth

and her brotherjames.

It was the first mass execution
for witchcraft in England.

The Pendle victims were a small
group of impoverished people

living in the North of England.

Yes, they were different,
unusual, maybe a little wild,

maybe even slightly odd,
but what did they really do wrong?

I think they were
incredibly unlucky.

They were in the wrong place
at the wrong time,

they were in the middle of this
perfect storm where powerful men

used them to further their
career and curry favour

with a deeply paranoid King.

The account of the trials by
Thomas Potts, clerk of the court,

was published the following year,
spreading the myth that dangerous

witches had been
discovered in Pendle.

This idea of kind of big numbers of
the same family all being accused

for witchcraft was
a news sensation.

You have all sorts of media
that crops up around it.

So there are all of these people
who are making money

off of the accusations as well.

The Pendle trials were followed by
many more women being

persecuted as witches.

The problem with witch trials is
that people started

to confess and once
people confessed,

it made more people believe in
the power of witches.

You had 200 years where women were
terrified of being called a witch.

You had to show how Godly you were,
you had to show how quiet you were.

Ancl we wonder in the modern age
why it is that women

still aren't equal, still don't
speak up, still are afraid to say,

"Here's a terrible thing that's
happened to me."

Why don't women do that when,
at least in theory,

at least in law we have
this equality.

And you do wonder - is it because
of hundreds of years of

having to stay quiet?

Is it because the gender norms of
the time that were thrust upon women

have an effect on women today?

If anyone thinks they're not
connected to the witch trials,

one of the biggest things that has
struck me is that women

were silenced, women didn't have a
voice, they were repressed.

Ancl that is something that has
stuck through society

and it has been repeated
and repeated and repeated

and it's still a big issue now
in modern clay.

We all know these trials
as the witch trials.

I'm feeling very much like
I want to rename them

and I'm sure there are many,
many women out there

who are with me on this.

These are trials of women -
the misrepresentation of women,

the persecution, the abuse of
women of all ages.

Kramer's Malleus Maleficarum
created the idea of

an evil woman in league
with the devil,

responsible for all
the world's ills.

In Germany, women were tortured
before confessing to witchcraft

and condemning themselves to death.

The Pendle witch trials started
with a girl in the woods

muttering a curse under her breath.

They ended with the execution
of ten innocent people.

I felt like I was...
That I needed to do this,

because it feels like it's part
of my female story.

I thought I was just
interested in witches,

but the more I looked into it,
the more I have found

so much in it that I...
I feel like I've cracked open

a bit of myself as a woman.

This group of women have come
together on Pendle Hill

to perform a ceremony honouring
those executed as witches.

We're all here to heal together
and this is the last full moon

and that is why this has
been so important to us tonight.

Cos we've all followed
the Pendle witches.

I'm from Blackburn which is
just down the road.

So who's a practising witch then?
Is that OK to ask? Yes. Yeah.

Not everybody is a practising witch,
but we are a sisterhood regardless.

Right, I'm just going to cast
a circle now, ladies.

We're going to set our energy more
and more into this moment,

here and now.

"I am the maiden.

"I see the world with
a childlike wonder.

"A joyful song plays in my heart.

"I am the mother.

"My womb is ripe and
ready to bring forth new life.

"I am the crone.

"The silver strands in my hair
speak of the wisdom I possess.

"The lines on my face tell of
the strength and endurance

"of a lifetime of journeys.

"I am the witch, I am maiden,
mother, crone and goddess.

I stand in my sovereignty...
ALL: I stand in my sovereignty!

...and I send healing to my
ancestors!

ALL: Ancl I send healing
to my ancestors!

I thank you for the
strong woman I am today...

ALL: I thank you for the
strong woman I am today...

...and we will make you proud.
ALL: ..and we will make you proud.

Thank you, ladies.

For nearly 200 years, the poison
of the witch trials infected Europe,

and they spread even further.

3,000 miles away and 80 years
after jennet Device

accused her family of witchcraft,
her name would appear

in a book on a magistrate's desk.

That magistrate's desk
was in Salem, Massachusetts,

where the world's most
infamous witch trials

were about to be unleashed.

Next time, I'll cross the Atlantic to
investigate the Salem Witch Trials.

She tells an extraordinary, lurid
tale of having met with the devil.

She says there are actually
nine witches at large,

not just the suspected three.

I'll explore some modern-day
witch hunts...

Google any female politician
and the word "witch"

and I promise you,
you will see images of them

with green skin and a pointy hat.

...and discover why witch trials
are still with us today.

We're in a period which
feels probably

the most unstable it has felt since
Heinrich Kramer wrote that book.

No wonder everyone is grasping
for these conspiracy theories.