lingered in
Suffolk, he offered to show the Devil's roll of all the witches in
England and so was detected.[97] Butler, in his _Hudibras_, said of him:

"Who after proved himself a witch,
And made a rod for his own breech."

Butler's lines appeared only fifteen years after Hopkin's death, and his
statement is evidence enough that such a tradition was already current.
The tradition is significant. It probably means, not that Hopkins really
paid such a penalty for his career--Stearne's word is good enough proof
to the contrary--but that within his own generation his name had become
an object of detestation.

John Stearne did not return to Manningtree--he may have been afraid
to--but settled down near Bury, the scene of his greatest successes.

If the epitaphs of these two men were to be written, their deeds could
be compressed into homely statistics. And this leads us to inquire what
was the sum of their achievement. It has been variously estimated. It is
not an uncommon statement that thirty thousand witches were hanged in
England during the rule of Parliament, and this wild guess has been
copied by reputable authors. In other works the number has been
estimated at three thousand, but this too is careless guesswork. Stearne
himself boasted that he knew of two hundred executions, and Stearne
ought to have known. It is indeed possible that his estimate was too
high. He had a careless habit of confusing condemnations with executions
that makes us suspect that in this estimate he may have been thinking
rather of the number of convictions than of the hangings. Yet his
figures are those of a man who was on the ground, and cannot be lightly
discounted. Moreover, James Howell, writing in 1648, says that "within
the compass of two years, near upon three hundred Witches were arraign'd
and the major part executed in Essex and Suffolk only."[98] If these
estimates be correct--or even if they approach correctness--a remarkable
fact appears. Hopkins and Stearne, in fourteen months' time, sent to the
gallows more witches than all the other witch-hunters of England can be
proved--so far as our present records go--to have hung in the hundred
and sixty years during which the persecution nourished in England. It
must occur to the reader that this crusade was extraordinary. Certainly
it calls for explanation.

So far as the writer is aware, but one explanation has been offered. It
has been repeated until it has become a common