in the 1970s, the occultist e.w. "bill" liddell began publicising claims that secretive hereditary witch families had informed him that pickingill was not simply a rural cunning man but that he was a major figure in the nineteenth-century esoteric community. according to liddell's account—which has failed to receive any scholarly support—pickingill was a member of a hereditary witch-cult, leading a canewdon coven and forming nine other covens across southern england. liddell claimed that pickingill reformed the established english witch-cult by introducing new concepts from french and danish witchcraft and from classical sources, and that in doing so, pickingill created the structure from which gardnerian wicca emerged in the 1950s. prominent wiccans doreen valiente and lois bourne have expressed criticism of his claims, which have also been rejected as spurious by such historians and scholars of religion as maple, hutton, owen davies, and aidan a. kelly.