The Lancashire Witches is a fictitious account of the activities of the notorious witches Demdike, Chattox and Alice Nutter, who together with others terrorized the district of Lancashire around Pendle Hill and the Forest of Bowland during the early seventeenth century. The witches named in the book were real enough, if not as witches then as people. The author brings in the dissolution of Whalley Abbey and the historic families of Assheton, Braddyll and Nowell and depicts the final trial and execution at Lancaster Castle in 1612.