Who the justice of the peace was that penned this letter, we are unable even to guess, nor do we know upon whose authority it was published. We cannot, therefore, rest upon it with absolute certainty, but we can say that it possesses several characteristics of a bona fide letter.[33] If it is such, it gives a new clue to Harvey's conduct in 1634. We of course cannot be sure that the toad incident happened before that time; quite possibly it was after the interest aroused by that affair that the physician made his investigation. At all events, here was a man who had a scientific way of looking into superstition.
The advent of such a man was most significant in the history of witchcraft, perhaps the most significant fact of its kind in the reign of Charles I. That reign, in spite of the Lancashire affair, was characterized by the continuance and growth of the witch skepticism,[34] so prevalent in the last years of the previous reign. Disbelief was not yet aggressive, it did not block prosecutions, but it hindered their effectiveness. The gallows was not yet done away with, but its use had been greatly restrained by the central government. Superstition was still a bird of prey, but its wings were being clipped.[35]
[1] The writer of the Collection of Modern Relations (London, 1693) speaks of an execution at Oxford, but there is nothing to substantiate it in the voluminous publications about Oxford; a Middlesex case rests also on doubtful evidence (see appendix C, 1641).
[2] Cal. St. P., Dom., 1634-1635, 152.
[3] Ibid., 141.
[4] This is of course theory; cf. Daudet's story of his childhood in "Le Pape est mort."
[5] There seem to be five different sources for the original deposition of young Robinson. Thomas D. Whitaker, History ... of Whalley (3d ed., 1818), 213, has an imperfect transcript of the deposition as given in the Bodleian, Dodsworth MSS., 61, ff. 45-46. James Crossley in his introduction to Potts, Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the countie of Lancaster (Chetham Soc.), lix-lxxii, has copied the deposition given by Whitaker. Thomas Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, II, 112-114, has given the story from a copy of this and of other depositions in Lord Londesborough's MSS. Webster prints a third copy, Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, 347-349. A fourth is in Edward Baines, History of the ... county ... of Lancaster, ed. of 1836, I, 604, and is taken from Brit. Mus., Harleian MSS., cod. 6854, f. 26 b. A fifth is in the Bodleian, Rawlinson MSS., D, 399, f. 211. Wright's source we have not in detail, but the other four, while differing slightly as to punctuation, spelling, and names, agree remarkably well as to the details of the story.
[6] Cal. St. P., Dom., 1634-1635, 152.
[7] John Stearne, A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft ... together with the Confessions of many of those executed since May 1645 (London, 1648), 11, says that in Lancashire "nineteene assembled." Robinson's deposition as printed by Webster, Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, gives nineteen names.