The third woman to be examined by the bishop was a widow of sixty, who had not been numbered among the original seventeen witches. She acknowledged that she was a witch, but was, wrote the bishop, "more often faulting in the particulars of her actions as one having a strong imagination of the former, but of too weak a memory to retain or relate the latter." The woman told a commonplace story of a man in black attire who had come to her six years before and made the usual contract. But very curiously she could name only one other witch, and professed to know none of those already in gaol. Such were the results of the examinations sent in by the bishop. In the letter which he sent along, he expressed doubt about the whole matter. "Conceit and malice," he wrote, "are so powerful with many in those parts that they will easily afford an oath to work revenge upon their neighbour." He would, he intimated, have gone further in examining the counter charges brought by the accused, had it not been that he hesitated to proceed against the king, that is, the prosecution. This report doubtless confirmed the fears of the government. The writs to the sheriff of Lancaster were redirected, and four of the women were brought up to London and carried to the "Ship Tavern" at Greenwich, close to one of the royal residences.[19] Two of His Majesty's surgeons, Alexander Baker and Sir William Knowles, the latter of whom was accustomed to examine candidates for the king's touch, together with five other surgeons and ten certificated midwives, were now ordered to make a bodily examination of the women, under the direction of the eminent Harvey,[20] the king's physician, who was later to discover the circulation of the blood. In the course of this chapter we shall see that Harvey had long cherished misgivings about witchcraft. Probably by this time he had come to disbelieve it. One can but wonder if Charles, already probably aware of Harvey's views, had not intended from his first step in the Lancashire case to give his physician a chance to assert his opinion. In any case his report and that of his subordinates was entirely in favor of the women, except that in the case of Margaret Johnson (who had confessed) they had found a mark, but one to which they attached little significance.[21] The women seem to have been carried before the king himself.[22] We do not know, however, that he expressed any opinion on the matter.