The Rowley Witch

Elizabeth Jackson was just a baby when her parents left East Yorkshire and headed to America to start a new life in 1637. She grew up to be strong and independent, farming the land successfully with her blind husband; something of a maverick who didn’t conform to female stereotypes of the time. Sadly, this invited accusations of witchcraft, and she was eventually sentenced to death at the Salem Witch Trials, in 1692.

Hear the tale of Lizzy Jackson from the Parish of Rowley
Hear the story of her journey and the fate that waits for she
How a father takes her to a brave new world to call her own
Free to lead a life more true and tend all where the seeds are blown
Swaddled in her mother’s coat and just a babe of one year old
All for Hull to sail a boat and cross the ocean wide and cold
Taken from the Shire of York all in the name of liberty
Never did she get to walk across the fields of High Hunsley

Just a blind boy was James Howe but he in love took Lizzy’s hand
Strong the bond it was and now the finest farmers on the land
Standing tall without protection such a lass should never be
Men cast eyes in her direction born of fear and jealousy
When a girl called Hannah Trumble into temper often fell
Such a madness in a child could only be a witch’s spell
Village men with pointing fingers guilty of the witchcraft she
When the ruling came to linger on Lizzy’s shoulders it would be

“A lie” the cries they would not hear them ten long years she bore that stain
When the fires did burn in Salem Lizzy’s name was heard again
Then the preacher Cotton Mathers evil workings he would do
Hanged was she with 14 others June of 1692
Swaddled in her mother’s coat and just a babe of one year old
All for Hull to sail a boat and cross the ocean wide and cold
Taken from the Shire of York all in the name of liberty
Never did she get to walk across the fields of High Hunsley