The Pendle Trials at Lancaster Assizes
A record in The Hawthorn Archive, preserving folklore with its place, type and source context attached.
The proceedings commonly called the Pendle witch trials were heard at Lancaster in 1612. The surviving narrative of the prosecutions is closely associated with Thomas Potts’s printed account, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, published in 1613.
The record is valuable precisely because it is a historical source with a point of view. Potts wrote about criminal proceedings in a society where accusations of harmful witchcraft could have devastating consequences. His account should not be treated as a neutral transcript, nor should the allegations be repeated as established facts about the accused.
Place: Lancaster, Lancashire. Period: 1612–1613. Evidence status: documented prosecution, interpreted through a contemporary printed narrative. Primary source: Thomas Potts, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster (1613). Research context: historical studies of early modern English witch trials.