Dialogues between a scholar, a divine, and a less well-educated layman on the subject of witches in particular, aimed at the interested and godly public, were part of the official armory to counter what the church in particular and the state only slightly less so regarded as a combination of general ignorant superstition and a rather more sinister willingness to flirt with the powers of darkness in pursuit of good or better health, revenge, increased wealth, or personal status within a local community. The 1620s were a period of increasing tension in England as the country saw the Thirty Years’ War getting under way in Europe and the prospect of a civil war in England itself gradually becoming first possible, then likely. Even so, however—and in spite of the fact that the 1620s and 1630s in England saw significant outbreaks of plague in a number of places, these tensions being attended by frequent reports of monstrous births and other unnatural physical or celestial phenomena (indications of the sinful state of society and God's increasing anger thereat); and while interest in magical practitioners of one kind or another remained high—actual prosecutions of such individuals in the courts and unofficial persecution of them in local communities do not seem to have increased. A partial reason for this—a small part, to be sure—is, as Poeton suggests in his dialogue, that people in general and the writers of “occultist” polemic distinguished among magical practitioners: recognizing, on one hand, the wickedness of witches who deliberately allied themselves with the devil, and, on the other, the cunning of men and women who did not necessarily do so but relied “superstitiously,” as the authorities kept emphasizing, on the occult power they perceived in herbs, or spoken or written charms, and soothsayers who claimed the ability to see meaning in bird flight, or images in water or crystals, and hence to interpret the future or identify a thief, and so forth.

Edward Poeton's dialogue between a clergyman, a physician, and a country bumpkin is somewhat unusual in that it focuses on cunning folk rather than the more diabolic sort of practitioner, and its dating to the 1630s puts it more or less in the middle of the period, when social and religious tensions in England were starting to be felt more particularly. Poeton himself seems to have practiced medicine in London and then West Sussex. He wrote a medical treatise on midwifery, a compendium of medical recipes and remedies, and The Winnowing of White Witchcraft, and he edited his former master's medical papers, only this last appearing in print during his lifetime. Edited by Simon Davies, Winnowing therefore makes its published appearance here for the first time. The main proposition it seeks to counter is that “white” witches (that is, cunning men and women), are not the same as “black” witches, that they are regarded differently by the common folk, and that their arts have been practiced even by kings, popes, and other important people (11–12, 15–17, 22–24). Interestingly enough, while the clergyman obviously plays his part in these counterarguments, he does so more or less conventionally, it is the physician who is more interesting and less clichéd in his opposition and who offers illustrative anecdotes in answer to the bumpkin's claims (for example, 24–25, 47–54, 55–59). The anecdotes from these latter two are offered as stemming from personal experience, such as the details offered by the bumpkin of carving a cross deep into every tree round a hedged field to protect it against fairies (“pucks,” as he calls them, 23) and the physician's account of his close shave in becoming a student of two doctors who were dallying with magic to improve their medical practice (44–49).

An initially disconcerting (and unusual) feature of the dialogue is Poeton's use of dialect, reportage-fashion, for the bumpkin's contributions (for example, “Too tell ee true zur: Ize dee meane too consider ote a littell better, avores go too um agen, cha holde a groate ont,” 28), but one quickly becomes used to interpreting it, and it adds color to the narrative. Davies has done an excellent job of editing the manuscript: he has included illustrations of the title page and one of the other pages (xvii), which show what a remarkably clear hand Poeton had, and he has added a large number of informative notes and a short but useful bibliography. This book will not by any means revolutionize our view or understanding of English magical practice in the early seventeenth century, but it is a valuable supplement to our knowledge and appreciation, and Davies is to be complimented on bringing the short treatise to light and making a fine fist of his task in making it generally available.