The Hawthorn Archive
Stories, customs and beliefs preserved as individual records, with place and context kept attached wherever the evidence allows.
A later Lancashire witchcraft case in 1634 shows how memory of the Pendle prosecutions could shape new accusations. During re-examination, testimony in the later case was linked to stories already circulating about the Malkin…
Open archive record →Thomas Potts’s The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, published in 1613, is the principal detailed printed source for the Pendle witch trials. It preserves names, examinations, allegations and the sequence…
Open archive record →Jennet Device, a young child, gave evidence against members of her own family and other accused people during the Pendle prosecutions. Potts records her identifying people said to have attended the Malkin Tower gathering…
Open archive record →On 20 August 1612 ten people convicted at the Lancaster Assizes were hanged on the moors above Lancaster: Anne Whittle, Elizabeth Device, James Device, Alizon Device, Anne Redferne, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, Jane Bulcock,…
Open archive record →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…
Open archive record →Maid Marian is central to modern Robin Hood stories, but she is not central to the earliest surviving outlaw ballads. Her route into Robin’s company is associated with festive performance and May games, where…
Open archive record →Robin Hood’s legendary geography is not confined to Sherwood. A Gest of Robyn Hode places important action around Barnsdale, traditionally associated with South Yorkshire, giving the region a substantial claim within the early literary…
Open archive record →Sherwood Forest became one of the most durable landscapes of the Robin Hood legend. Nottingham and its Sheriff have old connections with the tradition, and later retellings increasingly concentrated Robin’s geography in Nottinghamshire. The…
Open archive record →William Langland’s Piers Plowman, composed in versions during the later fourteenth century, contains a brief reference to “rhymes of Robin Hood”. The remark is important because Robin needs no elaborate introduction: stories or songs…
Open archive record →English cunning practice could make extensive use of Christian material. Prayers, biblical passages, crosses, divine names and invocations of sacred authority appear alongside divination, astrology and protective charms. This evidence complicates the modern idea…
Open archive record →Written charms could be folded, enclosed in small bags or otherwise carried close to the body against illness, misfortune or feared supernatural harm. In this form, words became portable material objects rather than texts…
Open archive record →Finding stolen or missing property was one of the practical services associated with English cunning folk. Clients might consult a practitioner to identify a thief, locate property or obtain guidance when ordinary investigation had…
Open archive record →