A few summers ago, my wife Betty and I were in England, staying with a family whose home is just north of “George Fox Country.” On the first full day of our visit, our host volunteered to drive us to some of the more well-known Quaker sites in the area, including Firbank Fell, Brigflatts Meetinghouse, and Pendle Hill, which we intended to climb in the footsteps of George Fox.
Near Pendle Hill, we parked the car by the roadside, then walked along a path skirting the stone fences that separated a series of small farms from the road. As we neared the foot of Pendle Hill, we seemed to see an organized group of two or three dozen people, dressed in hiking clothes, just starting up the path toward the hill. I assumed they must all be Quakers, for I naively thought that Pendle Hill belonged to the Society of Friends in some way, and that its attraction lay entirely within the realm of Quakerdom.
When I struck up a conversation with one of those hikers . . . What a surprise! What ongoing revelation! The group was climbing Pendle Hill due to an interest in the witches of Pendle Hill.
Here we were, three Quakers drawn to Pendle Hill by the memory of George Fox and ten times as many drawn for a reason I had never heard of! As I learned from the hikers, in 1612, ten women and two men were executed for practicing witchcraft in the vicinity of Pendle Hill, hanged in nearby Lancaster and York jails. An English historical society exists to propagate the history of these witches and the facts surrounding their trial. I was handed the society’s brochure, which listed various events and activities they sponsor, including organized visits to Pendle Hill like this one.
As we climbed the hill together, I wondered about this new discovery. The witches were killed forty years before Fox made his climb, so they clearly did not meet each other. But I imagined some sense of mystery would have lingered still over Pendle Hill in Fox’s time and might have been part of what drew him there.
In less than two hours, the witch devotees and the Quakers approached the stone cairn that marks the top of the hill – 1827 feet above sea level. There we found a small flock of sheep, which had arrived before us, perhaps even having spent the previous night there. No fences exist on Pendle Hill proper, so the sheep could have come up from any of the small land holdings in the surrounding Lancashire countryside. For all I knew, they could be wild. They seemed quite capable of taking care of themselves. No shepherd was in sight.
We three Quakers sat down for a while, to rest before heading back down, but also to absorb the significance of this hallowed site, a place we would likely never visit again. After some minutes, the sheep gathered about us, unafraid. I mused over the possibility that ancestors of these sheep might have similarly gathered about George Fox, hundreds of years ago.
As the Quakers and the witch fanciers began their way down, the sheep remained in their place, grazing. I thought that if the sheep could write their own ovine history of Pendle Hill, it would begin long before the relevant dates in the histories of witches and Friends. The sheep, perhaps the original inhabitants of this site, were the first to experience a gathered meeting on Pendle Hill.
John deValcourt was a member of Santa Cruz Meeting, and with his wife Betty, a co-director of Ben Lomond Quaker Center (1982-87). He is a now a member of Multnomah Monthly Meeting in Portland, OR (NPYM).