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 It is far from improbable that some of the correspondence now deposited in the family archives in the county hitherto unpublished may ultimately furnish these particulars.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._