gatherings
which have been shown to be the outcome of physical or mental pressure
and of leading questions. It seems unnecessary to accept even a
substratum of fact.[3] Probably one of the accused women invented the
story of the witch feast after the model of others of which she had
heard, or developed it under the stimulus of suggestive questions from a
justice. Such a narrative, once started, would spread like wildfire and
the witnesses and the accused who were persuaded to confess might tell
approximately the same story. A careful re-reading of all this evidence
suggests that the various testimonies may indeed have been echoes of the
first narrative. They seem to lack those characteristic differences
which would stamp them as independent accounts. Moreover, when the story
was once started, it is not improbable that the justices and the judges
would assist the witnesses by framing questions based upon the narrative
already given. It cannot be said that the evidence exists upon which to
establish this hypothesis. There is little to show that the witnesses
were adroitly led into their narratives. But we know from other trials
that the method was so often adopted that it is not a far cry to suspect
that it was used at Lancaster.

It is not worth while to trace out the wearisome details that were
elicited by confession. Those already in prison made confessions that
implicated others, until the busy justices of the peace had shut up
sixteen women and four men to be tried at the assizes. Sir Edward
Bromley and Sir James Altham, who were then on the northern circuit,
reached Lancaster on the sixteenth of August. In the meantime, "Old
Demdike," after a confession of most awful crimes, had died in prison.
All the others were put on trial. Thomas Potts compiled a very careful
abstract of all the testimony taken, perhaps the most detailed account
of a witch trial written in the English language, with the possible
exception of the St. Oses affair. The evidence was in truth of a
somewhat similar type. Secret interviews with the Evil One, promises of
worldly riches, a contract sealed with blood, little shapes of dogs,
cats, and hares, clay pictures that had been dried and had crumpled,
threats and consequent "languishing" and death, these were the trappings
of the stories. The tales were old. Only the Malking Tower incident was
new. But its very novelty gave a plausibility to the stories that were
woven around it. There was not a