hutton's assessment was shared by historian owen davies; in his study of english cunning-folk, he described liddell's stories as "seductive but entirely unsubstantiated". instead, he maintained that pickingill was "a simple rural cunning-man whose small world of village affairs never crossed with that of middle-class occultists. he received a christian burial and the idea that he was a pagan priest would probably make him turn in his grave." while agreeing with maple's assessment that pickingill was "one of the last practising cunning-folk in the country", maple noted that—unlike murrell, james tuckett, john wrightson, and william brewer—pickingill was not a "major regional figure" in the profession.