these tales concerns the murder of one Fletcher by Ralph Raynard, an innkeeper, and Mark Dunn, a hired assassin. One day "the spirit of Fletcher in his usual shape and habit did appear unto [Raynard], and said, Oh Raph, repent, repent, for my revenge is at hand." The result was a full confession. "I have recited this story punctually, writes Webster, "as a thing that hath been very much fixed in my memory, being then but young, and as a certain truth, I being (with many more) an earwitness of their confessions and an eye-witness of their Executions, and likewise saw Fletcher when he was taken up, where they had buried him in his cloaths, which were a green fustian doublet pinkt upon white, gray breeches, and his walking boots and brass spurrs without rowels." The spectre, Webster is convinced, was an "extrinsick apparition to Raynard," and not the mere effect of a guilty conscience "which represented the shape of Fletcher in his fancy." The thing could not, he thinks, "be brought to pass either by the Devil, or Fletchers Soul," and therefore he "concludes that either it was wrought by the Divine Power,...or that it was the Astral or Sydereal Spirit of Fletcher, seeking revenge for the murther. "65

Webster also believes fully in the "bleeding or cruentation of the bodies of those that have been murthered," particularly at the touch of the murderer or in his presence, and he gives a very curious collection of examples, in some of which "the murtherers had not been certainly known but by the bleeding of the body murthered."66 The most probable explanation of such phenomena he finds in the existence of the astral spirit, "that, being a middle substance, betwixt the Soul and the Body doth, when separated from the Body, wander or hover near about it, bearing with it the irascible and concupiscible faculties, wherewith being stirred up to hatred and revenge, it causeth that ebullition and motion in the blood, that exudation of blood upon the weapon, and those other wonderful motions of the Body, Hands, Nostrils and Lips, thereby to discover the

murtherer, and bring him to condign. punishment."67 In some cases, however, Webster holds that the soul has not actually departed, "and God may in his just judgment suffer the Soul to stay longer in the murthered Body, that the cry of blood may make known the murtherer, or may not so soon, for the same reason, call it totally away.

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These specimens of Webster's temper of mind might perhaps suffice to show with what slight justification he has been regarded as a scientific rationalist. We must not dismiss him, however, until we have scrutinized his views on the subject of witchcraft itself. He passes for a strong denier of the whole business of sorcery. We shall find that this is a great mistake. So far from denying the existence of witches, Webster is indignant at the imputation that his theories and those of other like-minded scholars should be interpreted in any such sense. "If I deny that a Witch cannot flye in the air, nor be transformed or transubstantiated into a Cat, a Dog, or an Hare, or that the Witch maketh any visible Covenant with the Devil, or that he sucketh on their bodies, or that the Devil hath carnal Copulation with them; I do not thereby deny either the Being of Witches, nor other properties that they may have, for which they may be so called: no more than if I deny that a dog hath rugibility (which is only proper to a Lion) doth it follow that I deny the being of a Dog, or that he hath latrability?"69 This sentence contains, in effect, the sum and substance of Webster's negative propositions on the subject.70 Let us see what he holds as affirmatives.

Though rejecting the theory of an external covenant between the devil and a witch, Webster acknowledges "an internal, mental, and spiritual League or Covenant betwixt the Devil and all wicked persons. Further, "this spiritual League in some respects and in some persons

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may be, and is an explicit League, that is, the persons that enter into it, are or may be conscious of it, and know it to be so." Now there are certain persons, commonly called witches, who are full of "hatred, malice, revenge and envy," of which the devil is the "author and causer, and these, by Satan's instigation, "do secretly and by tradition learn strange poysons, philters and receipts whereby they do much hurt and mischief. Which most strange wayes of poysoning, tormenting, and breeding of unwonted things in the stomach and bellies of people, have not been unknown unto many learned men and Philosophers."73 Among these effects of "an art more than Diabolical," which has "been often practiced by most horrible, malevolent, and wicked persons," is the production of the plague. There is no doubt of the fact. There are "undeniable examples." An unguent may be prepared which is of such power that when it is smeared upon the handles of doors, "those that do but lightly touch them are forthwith infected." In 1536 there was a conspiracy of some forty persons in Italy, who caused the death of many in this way. To such arts Webster ascribes the dreadful outbreak of jail-fever at the Oxford assizes in 1579. This was not, and could not be, the ordinary "prison infection." It was brought about by the contrivances of one Roland Jenks, "a Popish recusant," who was condemned for seditious words against the queen. Jenks, it seems, had procured strange poisons of a local apothecary, and had made a kind of candle out of them. As soon as he was condemned, he lighted his candle, from which there arose such a "damp," or steam, that the pestilence broke out as we have seen.75 It is manifest, Webster holds, "that these kind of people that are commonly called Witches, are indeed (as both the Greek and Latin names doe signifie) Poysoners, and in respect of their Hellish designs are Diabolical, but the effects they procure flow from natural

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Causes. "76 This last proposition is, indeed, perhaps the chief point of Webster's book. Witches exist, and they do horrible things, but they accomplish their ends, not by the actual intervention of the devil and his imps, but by virtue of an acquaintance with little-known laws of nature. Another example, which cannot be quoted in detail, will make Webster's position perfectly clear. A man was afflicted with a dreadful disease. The cause was discovered to be the presence of an oaken pin in the corner of a courtyard. The pin was destroyed and the man drank birchen ale. He made a complete recovery. It is plain, according to Webster, that the pulling up and burning of the oaken pin "was with the help of the Birchen Ale the cure; but it can no wayes be judged necessary that the Devil should fix the Oak pin there, but that the Witch might do it himself. Neither can it be thought to be any power given by the Devil to the Oaken pin, that it had not by nature, for in all probability it will constantly by a natural power produce the same effect; only thus far the Devil had a hand in the action, to draw some wicked person to fix the pin there...., thereby to hurt and torture him. One is tempted to still further quotations from Webster's utterances on this topic, especially because his book has been much oftener mentioned than read. But we must rest content with one passage which sums up the whole matter:-"The opinions that we reject as foolish and impious are those we have often named before, to wit, that those that are vulgarly accounted Witches, make a visible and corporeal contract with the Devil, that he sucks upon their bodies, that he hath carnal copulation with them, that they are transubstantiated into Cats, Dogs, Squirrels, and the like, or that they raise tempests, and fly in the air. Other powers we grant unto them, to operate and effect whatsoever the force of natural imagination joyned with envy, malice and vehement desire of revenge, can perform or perpetrate, or whatsoever hurt may be done by secret poysons and such like wayes that work by meer natural means. ”’78

76 Page 247.

77 Page 260.

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It is true that Webster opposed some of the current witch dogmas of his time. There are passages enough in his elaborate treatise which insist on the prevalence of fraud and melancholia. In his Epistle Dedicatory, which is addressed to five Yorkshire justices of the peace, he lays particular stress on the necessity of distinguishing between impostors and those unfortunate persons who are "under a mere passive delusion" that they are witches, and warns the magistrates not to believe impossible confessions. For all this he deserves honor. 79 Nor do I intend for a moment to suggest that the queer things (as we regard them now-a-days) which I have cited are in any manner discreditable to Webster. He was not exceptionally credulous, and he belonged to that advanced school of English physicians who, in the second half of the seventeenth century, upheld the general theories of Paracelsus and van Helmont in opposition to the outworn follies of the Galenists or regulars. He was a man of great erudition, of vast and varied experience, of uncommon mental gifts, and of passionate devotion to the truth. I admire him, but I must be pardoned if I am unable to see how he can be regarded as a tower of skeptical strength in the great witchcraft controversy. Even his admissions on the subject of the fallen angels are enough to destroy the efficiency of his denial of current notions about witchcraft. Once grant,

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Note, however, that the upholders of the current beliefs on witchcraft are also many times emphatic enough in similar cautionary remarks. A first-rate example is the following characteristic passage from Dr. Casaubon, whom Webster calls a "witchmonger":

"And indeed, that the denying of Witches, to them that content themselves in the search of truth with a superficial view, is a very plausible cause; it cannot be denied. For if any thing in the world, (as we know all things in the world are) be liable to fraud, and imposture, and innocent mistake, through weakness and simplicity; this subject of Witches and Spirits is. How ordinary is it to mistake natural melancholy (not to speak of other diseases) for a Devil? And how much, too frequently, is both the disease increased, or made incurable; and the mistake confirmed, by many ignorant Ministers, who take every wild motion, or phansie, for a suggestion of the Devil? Whereas, in such a case, it should be the care of wise friends, to apply themselves to the Physician of the body, and not to entertain the other, (I speak it of natural melancholy) who probably may do more hurt, than good; but as the learned Naturalist doth allow, and advise? Excellent is the advice and counsel in this kind, of the Author of the book de morbo Sacro attributed to Hippocrates, which I could wish all men were bound to read, before they take upon them to visit sick folks, that are troubled with melancholy diseases" (A Treatise proving Spirits, etc., 1672, pp. 29-30: cf. p. 14, note 31, above).