neighbourhood, and who maintained their innocence and refused to make
any confession. They were executed, along with the first-mentioned
four and Isabel Robey, who was of Windle, in the parish of Prescot,
and had been found guilty of similar practises, the day after the
trial, viz. on the 18th of August, 1612, "at the common place of
execution near to Lancaster."

The main interest in reviewing this miserable band of victims will be
felt to centre in Alice Nutter.[38] Wealthy, well conducted, well
connected, and placed probably on an equality with most of the
neighbouring families and the magistrate before whom she was brought,
and by whom she was committed, she deserves to be distinguished from
the companions with whom she suffered, and to attract an attention
which has never yet been directed towards her.[39] That Jennet Device,
on whose evidence she was convicted, was instructed to accuse her by
her own nearest relatives, to whom "superfluous lagged the veteran on
the stage," and that the magistrate, Roger Nowell, entered actively as
a confederate into the conspiracy from a grudge entertained against
her on account of a long disputed boundary, are allegations which
tradition has preserved, but the truth or falsehood of which, at this
distance of time, it is scarcely possible satisfactorily to examine.
With such a witness, however, as Jennet Device, and such an admirable
engine as the meeting at Malking-Tower, the guests at which she could
multiply _ad libitum_, doling out the _plaat_, as Titus Oates would
call it, by such instalments, and in such fragmentary portions, as
would conduce to an easy digestion of the whole, the wonder seems not
to be, that one unfortunate victim of a higher class should have
perished in the meshes of artful and complicated villainy, but that
its ramifications were not more extensive, and still more fatal and
destructive. From one so capable of taking a hint as the little