Hopkins published a short pamphlet in 1647 defending his methods against objections, and it is a primary source of real value, provided it is read beside the surviving assize and gaol records rather than instead of them. Set against those records it does not hold up. The pamphlet presents a careful investigator answering reasonable queries. The records show chains of accusation running out from one confession to the next, whole villages implicated, and defendants held in gaol conditions that killed some of them before they reached a court.
How many died is disputed and should not be quoted as settled. Scholarly estimates run from about a hundred upward, while much higher totals circulate in popular accounts with little behind them. Some assize files are lost, gaol deaths are recorded unevenly, and the surviving papers are incomplete. What is not disputed is the concentration: whatever the true figure, it happened in three years in a few counties.
Resistance grew. Some clergy and magistrates challenged the methods in print and in court, and the campaign wound down under that pressure as much as anything else. Hopkins died in 1647, most probably of consumption, and was buried at Mistley. The popular story that he was himself accused, swum and hanged as a witch is a later legend with no contemporary support.
He also called himself Witchfinder General. No authority ever gave him that title, and no such office existed. It was a piece of self-description that has outlived every correction.