The proportion of
widows to unmarried women was about the same, so that the proportion of
unmarried women among the whole number accused would seem to have been
small. These results must be accepted guardedly, yet more complete
statistics would probably show that the proportion of married women was
even greater.[40]

The position in life of these people was not unlike that of the same
class in the earlier period. In the account of the Lancashire trials we
shall see that the two families whose quarrels started the trouble were
the lowest of low hill-country people, beggars and charmers, lax in
their morals and cunning in their dealings. The Flower women, mother and
daughter, had been charged with evil living; it was said that Agnes
Brown and her daughter of Northampton had very doubtful reputations;
Mother Sutton of Bedford was alleged to have three illegitimate
children. The rest of the witches of the time were not, however, quite
so low in the scale. They were household servants, poor tenants, "hog
hearders," wives of yeomen, broomsellers, and what not.

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