At Thornton, in the parish of Caswold, Yorkshire, was born, on the 3rd of February, 1610, one of the ablest and most successful of the adversaries of the witch-maniacs, John Webster. It is supposed that he was educated at Cambridge; but the first event in his career of which we have any certain knowledge is his admission to holy orders in the Church of England by Dr. Morton, Bishop of Durham. In 1634 we find him officiating as curate at Kildwick in Craven, and nine years later as Master of the Free Grammar School at Clitheroe. He seems afterwards to have held for a time a military chaplaincy, then to have withdrawn from the Church of England, and taken refuge in some form of Dissent. In 1653 his new religious views found expression in his ‘Saints’ Guide,’ and in 1654, in ‘The Judgment Set and the Books Opened,’ a series of sermons which he had originally preached at All Hallows’ Church in Lombard Street. It was in this church the incident occurred which Wood has recorded: ‘On the 12th of October, 1653, William Erbury, with John Webster, sometime a Cambridge scholar, endeavoured to knock down learning and the ministry both together in a disputation that they then had against two ministers in a church in Lombard Street, London. Erbury then declared that the wisest ministers and the purest churches were at that time befooled, confounded, and defiled by reason of learning. Another while he said that the ministry were monsters, beasts, asses, greedy dogs, false prophets, and that they are the Beast with seven heads and ten horns. The same person also spoke out and said that Babylon is the Church in her ministers, and that the Great Whore is the Church in her worship, etc., so that with him there was an end of ministers and churches and ordinations altogether. While these things were babbled to and fro, the multitude, being of various opinions, began to mutter, and many to cry out, and immediately it came to a meeting or tumult (call it which you please), wherein the women bore away the bell, but lost some of them their kerchiefs; and the dispute being hot, there was more danger of pulling down the church than the ministry.’
In 1654, our iconoclastic enthusiast strongly—but not without good reason—assailed the educational system then in vogue at Oxford and Cambridge in his treatise, ‘Academiarum Examen,’ which created quite a sensation in ‘polite circles,’ fluttering the dove-cots of the rulers of the two Universities. Very curious, however, are its sympathetic references to the old Hermetic mysteries, Rosicrucianism, and astrology, to the fanciful abstractions and dreamy speculations of Paracelsus, Van Helmont, Fludd, and Dr. Dee. One cannot but wonder that so acute and vigorous an intellect should have allowed itself to be entangled in the delusions of the occult sciences. But his study of the works of the old philosophers was, no doubt, the original motive of the laborious research which resulted in his ‘Metallographia; or, A History of Metals’ (1671). In this learned and comprehensive treatise are declared ‘the signs of Ores and Minerals, both before and after Digging, the causes and manner of their generations, their kinds, sorts, and differences; with the description of sundry new Metals, or Semi-Metals, and many other things pertaining to Mineral Knowledge. As also the handling and showing of their Vegetability, and the discussion of the most difficult Questions belonging to Mystical Chymistry, as of the Philosopher’s Gold, their Mercury, the Liquor Alkahest, Aurum potabile, and such like. Gathered forth of the most approved Authors that have written in Greek, Latin, or High Dutch, with some Observations and Discoveries of the Author Himself. By John Webster, Practitioner in Physick and Chirurgery. “Qui principia naturalia in seipso ignoraverit, hic jam multum remotus est ab arte nostra, quoniam non habet radiam veram super quam intentionem suam fundit.” Geber, Sum. Perfect., lib. i., p. 21.’
In 1677, Webster, who had abandoned the cure of souls for that of bodies, produced the work which entitles him to honourable mention in these pages. According to the fashion of the day, its title was almost as long as a table of contents. I transcribe it here in extenso:
‘The Displaying of supposed Witchcraft, Wherein is affirmed that there are many sorts of Deceivers and Impostors. And Divers persons under a passive Delusion of Melancholy and Fancy. But that there is a Corporeal League made betwixt the Devil and the Witch, Or that he sucks on the Witches Body, has Carnal Copulation, or that Witches are turned into Cats or Dogs, raise Tempests or the like, is utterly denied and disproved. Wherein also is handled the Existence of Angels and Spirits, the Truth of Apparitions, the Nature of Astral and Sidereal Spirits, the Force of Charms and Philters; with other Abstruse Matters. By John Webster, Practitioner in Physic. “Falsæ etenim opiniones Hominum præoccupantes, non solum surdos sed ut cæcos faciunt, ita ut videre nequeant, quæ aliis perspicua apparent.” Galen, lib. viii., de Comp. Med. London. Printed by I. M., and are to be sold by the Booksellers in London, 1677.’
Webster, who was evidently a man of restless and inquiring intellect, and independent judgment, died on June 18, 1682, and was buried in St. Margaret’s, Clitheroe, where his monument may still be seen. Its singular inscription must have been devised by some astrological sympathizer:
Qui hanc figuram intelligunt
Me etiam intellexisse, intelligent.
Here follows a mysterious figure of the sun, with several circles and much astrological lettering, which it is unnecessary to reproduce. The inscription continues:
Hic jacet ignotus mundo mersus que tumultus
Invidiæ, semper mens tamen æqua fecit,
Multa tulit veterum ut sciret secreta sophorum
Ac tandem vires noverit ignis aquæ.
Johannes Hyphantes sive Webster.
In villa Spinosa supermontana, in
Parochia silvæ cuculatæ, in agro
Eboracensi, natus 1610, Feb. 3.
Ergastulum animæ deposuit 1682, Junii 18.
Annoq. ætatis suæ 72 currente.
Sicq. peroravit moriens mundo huic valedicens,
Aurea pax vivis, requies æterna sepultis.
In 1728, Andrew Millar, at the sign of The Buchanan’s Head, against St. Clement’s Church in the Strand, published ‘A System of Magick: or, A History of the Black Art,’ by Daniel Defoe; a book which, though it by no means justifies its title, is one of more than passing interest, partly from the renown of its author, and partly from the light it throws on the popularity of magic among the English middle classes in the earlier years of the eighteenth century. As it has not been reprinted for the last fifty years, and is not very generally known, some glimpses of the stuff it is made of may be acceptable to the curious reader.[53]