Above this motley peasant crew were a few of various higher ranks. A schoolmaster who had experimented with sorcery against the king,[41] a minister who had been "busy with conjuration in his youth,"[42] a lady charged with sorcery but held for other sin,[43] a conjurer who had rendered professional services to a passionate countess,[44] these make up a strange group of witches, and for that matter an unimportant one. None of their cases were illustrations of the working of witch law; they were rather stray examples of the connection between superstition, on the one hand, and politics and court intrigue on the other. Not so, however, the prosecution of Alice Nutter in the Lancashire trials of 1612. Alice Nutter was a member of a well known county family. "She was," says Potts, "a rich woman, had a great estate and children of good hope."[45] She was moreover "of good temper, free from envy and malice." In spite of all this she was accused of the most desperate crimes and went to the gallows. Why family connections and influences could not have saved her is a mystery. In another connection we spoke of two witches pardoned by local authorities at the instance of the government. This brings us to the question of jurisdiction. The town of Rye had but recently, it would seem, been granted a charter and certain judicial rights. But when the town authorities sentenced one woman to death and indicted another for witchcraft, the Lord Warden interfered with a question as to their power.[46] The town, after some correspondence, gave way and both women were pardoned. This was, however, the only instance of disputed jurisdiction. The local powers in King's Lynn hanged a witch without interference,[47] and the vicar-general of the Bishop of Durham proceeded against a "common charmer"[48] with impunity, as of course he had every right to do. There is, in fact, a shred of evidence to show that the memory of ecclesiastical jurisdiction had not been lost. In the North Riding of Yorkshire the quarter sessions sentenced Ralph Milner for "sorcerie, witchcraft, inchantment and telling of fortunes" to confess his fault at divine service, "that he hath heighlie offended God and deluded men, and is heartily sorie."[49] There is nothing, of course, in the statute to authorize this form of punishment, and it is only accounted for as a reversion to the original ecclesiastical penalty for a crime that seemed to belong in church courts.