The Question of Witchcraft Debated;: Or a discourse against their Opinion that affirm Witches.

London: [Edward Millington,], 1669. A "sweepingly sceptical performance" First edition, first issue, with no publisher listed in the imprint. This is the author's most famous work, in which he "offered a robust critique of the belief in witchcraft, appealing to reason and invoking sarcasm to make his case that the power of witches was illusory" (ODNB). The work is significant as one of few such open and plainly-stated attacks on the belief in witchcraft at this date. John Wagstaffe (c.1633-1677) was a noted Oxford wit, known in London in the free-thought circles around the inns of court, and a "pioneering critic of commonplace witchcraft beliefs" (Hunter, p. 47). In this work, described by historian Keith Thomas as a "sweepingly sceptical performance" (p. 580), he takes "the view that witch beliefs had been consciously embroidered by the clergy as a means of self-aggrandizement" (ODNB). He lays out his argument in three parts, the first arguing that witchcraft is not found in scripture, the second that it is in the political interests of those that propagate the belief to continue to do so, and the third that the stories are so impossible that they prove themselves false. When referring to the supposedly empirical evidence given in the works of defenders of the existence of witchcraft, such as Joseph Glanvill, Wagstaffe draws on two key threads; that confessions were only achieved through means of torture, and that "some poor, silly, melancholick old wretches, have really really believed themselves to be witches" (p. 65-6). Wagstaffe's work was controversial and immediately attacked, prompting the release of his extended second edition in 1671, with his name added to the title page. A reissue of this first edition in 1669 adds the printer "Edward Millington" to the imprint, its omission from the first printing likely due to the contentious content. The work's continued importance is illustrated in the reprints of this edition in the early 18th century as both books and pamphlets. The work was printed in 1712 as part of the controversy over the conviction as a witch and subsequent pardoning of Jane Wenham, an event which "occasioned the last full-scale debate on witchcraft to appear in England" (Hunter, p. 46). It was printed again in 1736 in connection with the repeal of the parliamentary act against witchcraft of that year, and "in each case it provided the sole exposition of a strongly sceptical viewpoint" (ODNB). Small octavo (145 x 88 mm). Nineteenth-century sprinkled calf, spine tooled in gilt in compartments, titles in gilt on black calf label, edges red. Blind stamp of a Belfast stock broker on title page. Lacking initial blank. Spine darkened, edges rubbed, occasionally closely trimmed, small puncture to gutter of title page, ink mark to p. 1; a very good copy. Wing 198A. Michael Hunter, The Decline of Magic, 2020; Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 1971.