everal 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 w