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 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.”[71] 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,”[72] 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.[74] 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 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