The Malkin Tower Gathering of Good Friday 1612
A record in The Hawthorn Archive, preserving folklore with its place, type and source context attached.
On Good Friday 1612 a gathering took place at Malkin Tower, the Device family home in the Pendle area. Thomas Potts’s later account presented the meeting as an assembly of witches and made it central to the expanding Lancashire investigation.
The surviving testimony mentions food, family members and neighbours and alleges discussion concerning Lancaster Castle and imprisoned suspects. Calling the gathering a proven “witches’ sabbath” goes further than the evidence allows. What can be securely recorded is that the meeting became a decisive element in the prosecution narrative.
Source trail: Thomas Potts, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster (1613); Lancaster Castle historical material.
Related Journal record: The Pendle Witch Trials.