The Investigation Begins
If John Law had recovered from his stroke, it is probable that the Pendle Witch trials would never have occurred. However, he did not. Abraham Law, believing that his father was still stricken by magic and no doubt furious at being duped by Alison Device and her promise of a cure, now turned to the law. On March 30, 1612, he paid a visit to Pendle’s local magistrate, Roger Nowell, at his home Read Hall on the edge of Pendle Forest.
Abraham Law repeated his father’s account of the events of March 18 – with a slight amendment. Instead of explaining that John Law refused Alison Device the pins, he claimed his father gave them to her. This lie was a statement of how angry Abraham Law was with Alison Device for withholding a cure. For although Alison had admitted to witchcraft, the refusal of the pins gave some justification to her case. However, if John Law had given her what she desired, she had no motive. It was witchcraft with needless malice.
Roger Nowell had Alison Device brought in for questioning that very day. She repeated her story: she had met John Law on the Colne Road, she had asked him for some pins, and he had refused. So she cursed him. However, Alison also told Nowell just how she enacted the curse. She said her familiar, a black dog had appeared to her after Law rebuffed her. “What wouldst thou have me do at that man?”. “What canst thou do at him?” Alison asked. “I can lame him,” the dog replied. Alison agreed and ” before the peddler was gone forty rods further, he fell down lame.”
However, Alison’s confession of her wrongdoing provoked further admissions. When Nowell asked her exactly what this black dog was, she explained it was the spirit to whom she had sold her soul, two-years previously for the “power to do anything she would”. Furthermore, Alison had not just chanced upon this spirit. A member of her own family had guided her to it.