page_title: Samlesbury witches
section_title: The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster
hierarchical_section_title: Samlesbury witches / The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster
caption_attribution_description: Title page of original edition of The Wonderfvll Discoverie of Witches in the Covntie of Lancaster by Thomas Potts (1613)
context_page_description: The Samlesbury witches were three women who were said to be witches, murderers and cannibals. The three women, Jane Southworth, Jennet Bierley, and Ellen Bierley, were accused of practising witchcraft by a 14-year-old girl, Grace Sowerbutts. They were tried in the village of Samlesbury in Lancashire. Their trial on 19 August 1612 was one of a series of witch trials held over two days. It is among the most famous in English history. The trials were unusual for England at that time for two reasons. First, Thomas Potts, the clerk to the court, wrote about it in his The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster. Secondly, the number of people found guilty and hanged were high: ten at Lancaster and another at York. Some of those accused were burnt alive and hung.
  However, the three Samlesbury women were found not guilty of witchcraft.
  The women were accused of murdering children, and of cannibalism, amongst other things. In contrast, other people tried at the same time were accused of maleficium, that is causing harm by witchcraft. This included the Pendle witches.
context_section_description: Almost everything that is known about the trials comes from a report of the proceedings written by Thomas Potts, the clerk to the Lancaster Assizes. Potts was told to write his account by the trial judges, and had completed the work by 16 November 1612. Bromley revised and corrected the manuscript before its publication in 1613, and said it was "truly reported" and "fit and worthy to be published". Although written as an apparently verbatim account, the book is not a report of what was actually said at the trial, but instead a reflection on what happened. Nevertheless, Potts "seems to give a generally trustworthy, although not comprehensive, account of an Assize witchcraft trial, provided that the reader is constantly aware of his use of written material instead of verbatim reports".
  In his introduction to the trial, Potts writes; "Thus have we for a time left the Graund Witches of the Forest of Pendle, to the good consideration of a very sufficient jury." Bromley had by then heard the cases against the three Pendle witches who had confessed to their guilt, but he had yet to deal with the others, who maintained their innocence. He knew that the only testimony against them would come from a nine-year-old girl, and that King James had cautioned judges to examine carefully the evidence presented against accused witches, warning against credulity. In his conclusion to the account of the trial, Potts says that it was interposed in the expected sequence "by special order and commandment", presumably of the trial judges. After having convicted and sentenced to death three witches, Bromley may have been keen to avoid any suspicion of credulity by presenting his "masterful exposure" of the evidence presented by Grace Sowerbutts, before turning his attention back to the remainder of the Pendle witches.
caption: Title page of the original edition published in 1613
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