dish or absurd than the
evidence against her--as, for instance, that she joyned in killing
Henry Mitton because he refused a penny to Old Demdike--it would not
be easy, even from the records of witch trials, to produce. As regards
Alice Nutter, Potts is singularly meagre, and it is to be lamented
that the deficiency of information cannot at present be supplied.
Almost the only fact he furnishes us with is, that she died
maintaining her innocence. It would have been most interesting to have
had the means of ascertaining how she conducted herself at her trial
and after her condemnation; and how she met the iniquitous injustice
of her fate, sharpened, as it must have been, by the additional
bitterness of the insults and execrations of the blind and infuriated
populace at her execution. It is far from improbable that some of the
correspondence now deposited in the family archives in the county
hitherto unpublished may ultimately furnish these particulars.

Alice Nutter was doubtless the original of the story of which Heywood
availed himself in _The Late Lancashire Witches_, 1634, 4to, which is
frequently noticed by the writers of the 17th century--that the wife
of a Lancashire country gentleman had been detected in practising
witchcraft and unlawful arts, and condemned and executed. In that play
there can be little hesitation in ascribing to Heywood the scenes in
which Mr. Generous and his wife are the interlocutors, and to Broome,
Heywood's coadjutor, the subordinate and farcical portions. It is a
very unequal performance, but not destitute of those fine touches,
which Heywood is never without, in the characters of English country
gentlemen and the pathos of domestic tragedy. The following scene,
which I am tempted to extract, though very inferior to the noble ones
in his _Woman Killed by Kindness_, between Mr. and Mrs. Frankford,
which it somewhat resembles in character, is not unworthy of this
great and truly national dramatic writer:--

MR. GENEROUS. WIFE. ROBIN, _a groom._

_Gen._ My blood is turn'd to ice, and all my vitals
Have ceas'd their working. Dull stupidity
Surpriseth me at once, and hath arrested
That vigorous agitation, which till now
Exprest a life within me. I, methinks,
Am a meer marble statue, and no man.
Unweave my age, O time, to my first thread;
Let me lose fifty years, in ignorance spent;
That, being made an infant once again,
I may begin to know. What, or where am I,
To be thus lost in wonder