In the 1920s and 30s, the Egyptologist Dr. Margaret Murray published several books detailing her theories that those persecuted as witches during the early modern period in Europewere not, as the persecutors had claimed, followers of Satanism, but adherents of a surviving pre-Christian pagan religion – the Witch-Cult. These hypotheses, which were argued over by academics for decades, have since been widely rejected. It was during the 1930s that the first evidence appears for the practice of a pagan Witchcraft religion (what would be recognisable now as Wicca) in England. It seems that several groups around the country, in such places as Norfolk, Cheshire and the New Forest had set themselves up as continuing in the tradition of Murray's Witch-Cult, albeit with influences coming from disparate sources such as ceremonial magic, folk magic, Freemasonry, Theosophy, Romanticism, Druidry, classical mythology and Asian religions.