Cotton Mather’s entrance into the world’s annals of witchcraft, in the character in which some of our historians have portrayed him, did not come about primarily through his two major works on that subject, nor through the relative importance of his witchcraft writings as compared with his other works. It came about through that inconsiderable manuscript of his concerning that comparatively insignificant witchcraft case of Margaret Rule, and by his contact over it with Robert Calef.