Lancaster Castle has been the theatre would make a most bulky but interesting volume.

In 1584 Queen Elizabeth ordered that certain papists of Lancashire should be tried at Lancaster Assizes for recusancy. James Bell, a native of Warrington, and John Finch, a native of Eccleston, were accordingly tried, condemned, and executed, at Lancaster, for affirming that the Pope had power or jurisdiction in the kingdom of England, and that he was the lawful head of the Catholic Church. Their heads were brought to Manchester, and placed on the steeple of the Collegiate Church. One Laybourne was also executed for declaring that the Queen was not his lawful sovereign, and that she was unlawfully begotten, and lawfully deposed by Pope Pius V.

The arraignments for witchcraft would form not the least extraordinary of the Causes Celebres tried at Lancaster Castle. At a very early period the county seems to have been fertile in sorcery and witchcraft. At the Assizes held in Lancaster Castle, August 6th, 1612, before Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley, nineteen notorious witches were tried, found guilty, and left for execution, for exercising their presumed sorcery in Pendle Forest. The prisoners were fortunately reprieved, and four of them were conveyed to London, examined by the King's physicians, and afterwards by Charles I. in person. It at length appeared that the boy on whose evidence the charge of witchcraft was mainly founded, had been suborned to give false evidence against these witches. So signal and providential, however, was the detection of

these miserable old women considered even by grave and learned judges, that "The wonderful discoverie with the arrainment and trial of nineteen notorious witches formed the title of a work "pubished by command of her Majesty's Justices of Assize in the northern parte, by Thomas Potts, esquire," 1613, 4to. Another work published about the same time is entitled "A particular declaration of the most barbarous and damnable practices, murtherous, wicked, and devilish conspiracies practised and exercised by the most dangerous and malicious witch Elizabeth Sowthernes, alias Demdike, of the forest of Pendle, in the county of Lancaster, widow, who died in Lancaster Castle before her trial," 1612, 4to. A singular feature in these trials is, that one of the nineteen witches, Margaret Johnson, actually confessed her guilt, stating in the most minute manner, how, when, where, and for what purpose she became a witch. Several witches and wizards at other periods suffered death at Lancaster. There is no doubt that many of the old women charged with sorcery and witchcraft believed they possessed the supernatural powers attributed to them by their superstitious neighbours, and harboured malignant feelings against them. The sup

posed revelations and disclosures made so much noise, that a play was acted and published in the year 1634, entitled the "Witches of Lancashire." "The term (says Dr. Whitaker) "has since been transferred to a gentler species of fascination, which my countrywomen still continue to exert in full force, without any apprehension of the county magistrate, or even the King in council." The beauty of

the Lancashire witches was sung by Drayton, who avers

that

"The goodliest of this isle

This county hath brought forth."

A very different and much more harmless class of prisoners in the Castle of Lancaster, than the "old original" witches of Lancashire, were the members of the Society of Friends, who, in the reign of Charles II., underwent long and painful imprisonment for their religious. opinions. In the year 1664 George Fox, the leader of the Quakers, was imprisoned in Lancaster Castle for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to Charles II. He was brought up at the March Assizes in that year and traversed to the indictment, remaining in prison until the August Assizes. Being then brought up again he shewed that the indictment was bad. Judge Turner declared that he was acquitted, but immediately tendered him the oath again. George Fox pleaded the divine command "Swear not at all," and

"After some further discourse G. Fox was committed to prison again, and Colonel Kirby (a justice of the peace) ordered the jailor to keep him close, and to suffer nobody to come to him, as one that was not fit to be discoursed with. The jailor did not scruple to follow this order, for he locked him up in a smoky tower, (in Lancaster Castle) where the smoke of the other prisoners came up so thick, that sometimes one could hardly see a burning candle; so that there seemed to be an intent to choke him; for the turnkey could hardly be persuaded to unlock one of the upper doors a little to let out the smoke. Besides this hardship in wet weather it rained in upon his bed to that degree that his shirt grew wet. In this pitiful condition he lay during a long and cold winter, which so afflicted him that his body swelled, and his limbs were much benumbed."” Sewel's History of the Quakers, Vol. II., Book 8.

At the March Assizes, 1665, this heroic and persecuted Quaker was again brought up, and again remanded on his refusal to take the oath. He was shortly afterwards "fetched out of the Castle, where he was so weak by lying in that cold, wet, and smoky prison that he could hardly go or stand.' In this state George Fox was conveyed on horseback to York and thence to Scarborough Castle, where he underwent even greater sufferings, until his discharge by Charles II. in 1666. Margaret Fell, widow of Judge Fell of Swarthmore, Furness, who, eleven years after the death of her husband, was married to George Fox, was also imprisoned in Lancaster Castle in 1664, for refusing to swear. Other followers of George Fox were also imprisoned in the Castle, and a room on the debtors' side is still called "The Quakers'," from having been the scene of the imprisonment of the members of this peaceable and unresisting sect.

The sufferings of the rebels of 1745 in their hard captivity in Lancaster Castle have been already adverted to. In April 1747, Fowden the constable of Manchester, and one Ogden the younger, who were suspected of having secretly favoured the Pretender during his occupation of Manchester, were tried at Lancaster Castle for high treason. They were fortunately acquitted; and a triumphal return home testified the joy of their Jacobite friends, among whom might be reckoned the greater part of the ladies of the county.

In 1753 one Grindret, of Salford, was tried at Lancaster for poisoning his wife and family, and hanged there.

D

He was afterwards gibbeted at Pendleton, near the spot where the murder was committed. In the same year a civil cause of much interest to the rapidly increasing manufacturing population was tried at Lancaster, in which the Wardens and Fellows of the Collegiate church, Manchester, and the weavers of that town were the litigants. The clergy claimed a composition of four-pence on every loom as tithe. The claim was resisted, and the judges declared it illegal.

The autumn assize of 1785 was a maiden one, a memorable event in the history of so populous a county.

Several prisoners-found guilty at Lancaster and sentenced to be hanged for burglary, croft breaking, and other offences-suffered death on Bolton Moor, Kersal Moor, and Newton Heath, thus expiating their crimes as near as possible to the places where they were committed.

In 1794 Mr. Walker of Manchester, father of Mr. C. J. S. Walker, now a borough and county magistrate in that town, had his house attacked by the populace for his adhesion to the Parliamentary reformers of his day, and he himself was tried at Lancaster, on a charge of having conspired to overthrow the constitution and assist the French in their threatened attack upon the island. Mr. Walker was acquitted, and made a triumphant return to Manchester. The principal witness against him, a man named Dunn, was tried at the next assizes for perjury, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment and exposure in the pillory. The prosecution against Mr. Walker was conducted by Mr. Law, afterwards Lord Ellenborough, and he was de