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Books > Health, Home & Family > Mind, body & spirit > The Occult > Witchcraft & Wicca
In the febrile religious and political climate of late
sixteenth-century England, when the grip of the Reformation was as
yet fragile and insecure, and underground papism still perceived to
be rife, Lancashire was felt by the Protestant authorities to be a
sinister corner of superstition, lawlessness and popery. And it was
around Pendle Hill, a sombre ridge that looms over the intersecting
pastures, meadows and moorland of the Ribble Valley, that their
suspicions took infamous shape. The arraignment of the Lancashire
witches in the assizes of Lancaster during 1612 is England's most
notorious witch-trial. The women who lived in the vicinity of
Pendle, who were accused alongside the so-called Samlesbury
Witches, then convicted and hanged, were more than just wicked
sorcerers whose malign incantations caused others harm. They were
reputed to be part of a dense network of devilry and mischief that
revealed itself as much in hidden celebration of the Mass as in
malevolent magic. They had to be eliminated to set an example to
others. In this remarkable and authoritative treatment, published
to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the case of the
Lancashire witches, Philip C Almond evokes all the fear, drama and
paranoia of those volatile times: the bleak story of the storm over
Pendle
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