single person to interpose a doubt. The
cross-examinations were nothing more than feeble attempts to bring out
further charges.

Though there is in the record little suggestion of the use of pressure
to obtain the confessions, the fact that three were retracted leads to
a suspicion that they had not been given quite freely. There was
doubtless something contagious about the impulse to confess. It is,
nevertheless, a curious circumstance that five members of the two rival
Pendle families made confession, while all the others whom their
confessions had involved stuck to it that they were innocent.[4] Among
those who persisted in denying their guilt Alice Nutter merits special
note. We have already mentioned her in the last chapter as an example of
a well-to-do and well connected woman who fell a victim to the
Lancashire excitement.[5] The evidence against the woman was perhaps the
flimsiest ever offered to a court. Elizabeth Device, daughter of "Old
Demdike," and her two children were the chief accusers. Elizabeth had
seen her present at the Malking Tower meeting. Moreover, she stated that
Alice had helped her mother ("Old Demdike") bewitch a man to death. Her
son had heard his grandmother Demdike narrate the incident. This
testimony and his sister's definite statement that Alice Nutter attended
the Malking Tower meeting established Mistress Nutter's guilt.[6] The
judge, indeed, was "very suspitious of the accusation of this yong
wench, Jennet Device," and, as we have already seen, caused her to be
sent out of the court room till the accused lady could be placed among
other prisoners, when the girl was recalled and required before the
great audience present to pick out the witch, as, of course, she easily
did, and as easily escaped another transparent trap.[7]

The two children figured prominently from this on. The nine-year-old
girl gave evidence as to events of three years before, while the young
man, who could hardly have been out of his teens,[8] recounted what had
happened twelve years earlier. It was their testimony against their
mother that roused most interest. Although of a circumstantial
character, it fitted in most remarkable fashion into the evidence
already presented.[9] The mother, says the nonchalant pamphleteer,
indignantly "cryed out against the child," cursing her so outrageously
that she was removed from the room while the child kept the stand. It is
useless to waste sympathy upon a mother who was gett