The Meeting at Malkin Tower
Later that month, it came to Nowell’s attention that on April 10, Good Friday, a “diabolical” meeting had taken place at the home of the Device’s- Malkin Tower. The meeting was in all probability entirely innocent: a gathering of friends and neighbors comforting the distraught Elizabeth Device about the imprisonment of her mother and eldest daughter. However, the date gave the whole affair a sinister cast. It was good Friday, the day of Christ’s crucifixion, a day when all good Christians were supposed to be in church. Instead, a group of people had gathered and feasted in the home of a known witch.
On April 27, Nowell interviewed James Device, Elizabeth’s teenage son about the meeting. James admitted it had taken place and that he had supplied a stolen sheep to feed the guests. However, the Device’s visitors were not a crowd of sympathetic neighbors, but as Thomas Potts, clerk of the court at the later trial of the witches put it, ‘a grand convocation of 17 witches and three wizards
James Device explained the purpose of the meeting. Firstly, the witches had gathered to name Alison Devices’ familiar spirit for her since she was in prison. Secondly, they were answering a call for vengeance from a witch from Gisburn, a nearby town just over the border in Yorkshire. That witch, Jennet Preston had recently been acquitted of a charge of witchcraft at York Castle. However, she wished her accuser, Thomas Lister to suffer and called upon the ‘convocation’ to aid her. However third and most damning of all was the witches’ intention to blow up Lancaster Castle to rescue the incarcerated witches.
James supplied the names of the witches in attendance at Malkin Tower that Good Friday. Besides himself and his mother, they were: “the wife of Hugh Hargrieves of Barley; the wife of Christopher Bulcock of the Moss end, and John her son; the Mother of Miles Nutter, Elizabeth, the wife of Christopher Hargrieves of Thorniholme; Christopher Howgate and Elizabeth his wife; Alice Gray of Colne and one Mould-heel’s wife.”
His little sister Jennet confirmed the involvement of her mother and brother in witchcraft and many of the events of that Good Friday describe by James. Jennet, however, could only identify by name six of the ‘witches’ present at Malkin Tower. None of her names matched her brother’s list. Jennet’s list included: “the wife of Hugh Hargreaves of Pendle, Christopher Howgate of Pendle, Uncle to her, and Elizabeth his wife and Dick Miles his wife of Roughlee; Christopher Jacks of Thorniholme and his wife.”