It is not hard to understand how this explanation grew up. At a time when Hutchinson was making his study, Richard Baxter, the most eminent Puritan of his time, was still a great name among the defenders of witchcraft.[100] In his pages Hutchinson read how Puritan divines accompanied the witch-magistrates on their rounds and how a "reading parson" was one of their victims. Gaule, who opposed them, he seems to have counted an Anglican. He clearly put some faith in the lines of _Hudibras_. Probably, however, none of these points weighed so much with him as the general fact of coincidence in time between the great witch persecution and Presbyterian rule. It was hard to escape the conclusion that these two unusual situations must in some way have been connected. Neither Hutchinson nor those who followed have called attention to a point in support of their case which is quite as good proof of their contention as anything adduced. It was in the eastern counties, where the Eastern Association had flourished and where Parliament, as well as the army, found its strongest backing--the counties that stood consistently against the king--in those counties it was that Hopkins and Stearne carried on their work.[101] It may seem needless in the light of these facts to suggest any other explanation of the witch crusade. Yet the whole truth has not by any means been told. It has already been noticed that Hutchinson made some mistakes. Parson Lowes, who was hanged as a witch at the instance of his dissatisfied parishioners, was not hanged because he was an Anglican.[102] And the Presbyterian Parliament had not sent down into Suffolk a commission to hang witches, but to check the indiscriminate proceedings that were going on there against witches. Moreover, while it is true that East Anglia and the counties adjacent, the stronghold of the Puritans, were the scene of Hopkins's operations, it is quite as true that in those counties arose that powerful opposition which forced the witchfinders into retirement. We have noticed in another connection that the "malignants" were inclined to mock at the number of witches in the counties friendly to Parliament, but there is nothing to show that the mockers disbelieved the reality of the witchcrafts.[103]