The Bones of Avalon

It is hardly credible what a harvest, or rather what a wilderness of superstition had sprung up in the darkness of the Marian times. We found in all places votive relics of saints, nails with which the infatuated people dreamed that Christ had been pierced… small fragments of the sacred cross. The number of witches and sorceresses had everywhere become enormous.

John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, after a journey through the west of England, 1559.