[M 2 b]. "But old Chattox had Fancie.">[ A great truth, though Master Potts might not be aware of the extent of it.
[M 4 a]. "M. Leigh, a very religious Preacher.">[ Parson of Standish, a man memorable in his day. He published several pieces, amongst others the two following: 1. "The Drumme of Devotion," by W. Leigh, of Standish, 1613.—2. "News of a Prodigious Monster in Aldington, in the Parish of Standish, in Lancashire," 1613, 4to, which show him to have been an adept in the science of title-making. He was one of the tutors of Prince Henry, and was great-grandfather of Dr. Leigh, author of the History of Lancashire.
[N 3 b]. "The Arraignment and Triall of Anne Redferne.">[ This poor woman seems to have been regularly hunted to death by her prosecutors, who pursued her with all the dogged pertinacity of blood-hounds. Neither the imploring appeal for mercy, in her case, from her wretched mother, who did not ask for any in her own, nor the want of even the shadow of a ground for the charge, had the slightest effect upon the besotted prejudices of the judge and jury. Acquitted on one indictment, she is now put on her trial on another; the imputed crime being her having caused the death of a person, who did not even accuse her of being accessory to it, nearly eighteen years before, by witchcraft; the only evidence, true or false, being, that she had been seen, about the same period, making figures of clay or marl. Her real offence, it may well be conjectured, was her having rejected the improper advances of the ill-conditioned young man whose death she was first indicted for procuring, and to which circumstance the rancour of his relations, the prosecutors, may evidently be traced. It is gratifying to know that she had firmness of mind to persist in the declaration of her innocence to the last.
[O 3 a]. "Alice Nutter.">[ We now come to a person of a different description from any of those who have preceded as parties accused, and on whose fate some extraordinary mystery seems to hang. Alice Nutter was not, like the others, a miserable mendicant, but was a lady of large possessions, of a respectable family, and with children whose position appears to have been such as, it might have been expected, would have afforded her the means of escaping the fate which overtook her humbler companions.
"I knew her a good woman and well bred,
Of an unquestion'd carriage, well reputed
Amongst her neighbours, reckoned with the best."
Heywood's Lancashire Witches.
She is described as the wife of Richard Nutter of the Rough Lee, and mother of Miles Nutter, who were in all likelihood nearly related to the other Nutters whose descent has been given. The tradition is, that she was closely connected by relationship or marriage with Eleanor Nutter, the daughter of Ellis Nutter of Pendle Forest, the grandmother of Archbishop Tillotson. That she was the victim of a foul and atrocious conspiracy, in which the movers were some of her own family, there seems no reason to doubt. The anxiety of her children to induce her to confess may possibly have originated in no impure or sinister motive, but it is difficult altogether to dismiss from the mind the suspicion that her wealth was her great misfortune; and that to secure it within their grasp her own household were passive, if not active, agents in her destruction. Any thing more childish 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?
Wife. Sir.
Gen. Amazement still pursues me, how am I chang'd,
Or brought ere I can understand myself
Into this new world!
Rob. You will believe no witches?
Gen. This makes me believe all, aye, anything;
And that myself am nothing. Prithee, Robin,
Lay me to myself open; what art thou,
Or this new transform'd creature?
Rob. I am Robin;
And this your wife, my mistress.
Gen. Tell me, the earth
Shall leave its seat, and mount to kiss the moon;
Or that the moon, enamour'd of the earth,
Shall leave her sphere, to stoop to us thus low.
What, what's this in my hand, that at an instant
Can from a four-legg'd creature make a thing
So like a wife!
Rob. A bridle; a jugling bridle, Sir.
Gen. A bridle! Hence, enchantment.
A viper were more safe within my hand,
Than this charm'd engine.—
A witch! my wife a witch!
The more I strive to unwind
Myself from this meander, I the more
Therein am intricated. Prithee, woman,
Art thou a witch?
Wife. It cannot be denied,
I am such a curst creature.
Gen. Keep aloof:
And do not come too near me. O my trust;
Have I, since first I understood myself,
Been of my soul so chary, still to study
What best was for its health, to renounce all
The works of that black fiend with my best force;
And hath that serpent twined me so about,
That I must lie so often and so long
With a devil in my bosom?
Wife. Pardon, Sir. [She looks down.]
Gen. Pardon! can such a thing as that be hoped?
Lift up thine eyes, lost woman, to yon hills;
It must be thence expected: look not down
Unto that horrid dwelling, which thou hast sought
At such dear rate to purchase. Prithee, tell me,
(For now I can believe) art thou a witch?
Wife. I am.
Gen. With that word I am thunderstruck,
And know not what to answer; yet resolve me.
Hast thou made any contract with that fiend,
The enemy of mankind?
Wife. O I have.
Gen. What? and how far?
Wife. I have promis'd him my soul.
Gen. Ten thousand times better thy body had
Been promis'd to the stake; aye, and mine too,
To have suffer'd with thee in a hedge of flames,
Than such a compact ever had been made. Oh—
Resolve me, how far doth that contract stretch?
Wife. What interest in this Soul myself could claim,
I freely gave him; but his part that made it
I still reserve, not being mine to give.
Gen. O cunning devil: foolish woman, know,
Where he can claim but the least little part,
He will usurp the whole. Thou'rt a lost woman.
Wife. I hope, not so.
Gen. Why, hast thou any hope?
Wife. Yes, sir, I have.
Gen. Make it appear to me.
Wife. I hope I never bargain'd for that fire,
Further than penitent tears have power to quench.
Gen. I would see some of them.
Wife. You behold them now
(If you look on me with charitable eyes)
Tinctur'd in blood, blood issuing from the heart.
Sir, I am sorry; when I look towards heaven,
I beg a gracious pardon; when on you,
Methinks your native goodness should not be
Less pitiful than they; 'gainst both I have err'd;
From both I beg atonement.
Gen. May I presume 't?
Wife. I kneel to both your mercies.
Gen. Knowest thou what
A witch is?
Wife. Alas, none better;
Or after mature recollection can be
More sad to think on 't.
Gen. Tell me, are those tears
As full of true hearted penitence,
As mine of sorrow to behold what state,
What desperate state, thou'rt fain in?
Wife. Sir, they are.
Gen. Rise; and, as I do you, so heaven pardon me;
We all offend, but from such falling off
Defend us! Well, I do remember, wife,
When I first took thee, 'twas for good and bad:
O change thy bad to good, that I may keep thee
(As then we past our faiths) 'till Death us sever.
O woman, thou hast need to weep thyself
Into a fountain, such a penitent spring
As may have power to quench invisible flames;
In which my eyes shall aid: too little, all.
Late Lancashire Witches, Act 4.
[P 2 a 1]. "Being examined by my Lord.">[ She had evidently learned her lesson well; but this was, with all submission to his Lordship, if adopted as a test, a mighty poor one. Jennet Device must have known well the persons of the parties she accused, and who were now upon their trial, as they were all her near neighbours.
[P 2 a 2]. "Whether she knew Iohan a Style?">[ His Lordship's introduction of this apocryphal legal personage on such an occasion is very amusing. Had he studied Littleton and Perkins a little less, and given some attention to the Lancashire dialect, and some also to the study of that great book, in which even a judge may find valuable matter, the book of human nature, he might have been more successfull in his examination. Jack's o' Dick's o' Harry's would have been more likely to have been recognised as a veritable person of this world by Jennet Device, than such a name as Johan a Style; which, though very familiar at Westminster, would scarcely have its prototype at Pendle. But Jennet Device, young as she was, in natural shrewdness was far more than a match for his lordship.