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 commonplace in the history of witchcraft that the Hopkins crusade was one of the expressions of the intolerant zeal of the Presbyterian party during its control of Parliament. This notion is largely due to Francis Hutchinson, who wrote the first history of English witchcraft. Hutchinson was an Anglican clergyman, but we need not charge him with partisanship in accusing the Presbyterians. There was no inconsiderable body of evidence to support his point of view. The idea was developed by Sir Walter Scott in his _Letters on Demonology_, but it was left to Lecky, in his classic essay on witchcraft, to put the case against the Presbyterian Parliament in its most telling form.[99] His interpretation of the facts has found general acceptance since.