James Crossley 1800-1883: A Manchester Man of Letters

 

         The Lancashire Witches (1848) - Ainsworth

One of Ainsworth's best-known novels, set in the North of England, is based on Potts's Discovery of Witches in the County of Lancaster (1613), which was loaned to the author by Crossley, and it's one of the fundamental texts which began the still-thriving 'witch industry' in the Pendle area. The novelist transformed Potts’s factual and rather dry account into a gothic tale of huge proportions, with chilling accounts of  midnight meetings in desolate ruins of Whalley Abbey and Hoghton Tower There are curses, spells, charms and diabolical incantations to be found, and Potts himself puts in an appearance as a scheming and self-serving lawyer of  a type which might have been familiar to both Crossley and Ainsworth.  The historical background is outlined at the beginning of the book, recalling the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536-7 when there arose ‘a formidable rebellion in the Northern counties of England’ in protest against the dissolution of the monasteries, and subsequent land enclosures. The Lancashire Witches is the only one of Ainsworth’s novels still in print, and copies can be obtained at various points on the ‘witch trail’, which tourists can take across Pendle to Lancaster.