Despite what Protestant minister Benjamin Camfield suggests in this passage, angels, those spiritual beings that were one step down from God, one step up from men in the universal hierarchy, were not considered Old-Wives tales in early modern England. Rather, faith in the reality of their existence was commonplace. Belief about angels was a mainstay of the Christian church, and numerous responsibilities and theological assumptions were associated with these evocative and often mysterious supernatural beings.

In recent decades historians of the early modern period have become increasingly interested in many aspects of the supernatural, and subjects such as prodigies, portents, miracles and ghost stories have all attracted greater notice, supplementing the already extensive scholarship on witchcraft and demonology.