Clearly the coffee-house “scoffers” were widely resented, not just for their unorthodox views but for the caustic wit with which they expressed them. One fascinating line Hunter pursues is the role of manuscript sources, like notebooks and letters, and coffee-house oral culture in spreading ideas for which it was not always easy to find a print publisher, since sceptics on such matters tended to be accused of being atheists. It’s interesting to consider that attitudes may change because something is not discussed as much as because it is. In 1698 a meeting of the Society had discussed second sight by the 1740s, a Fellow interested in the phenomenon makes it clear in correspondence that this is a private concern “which could not be brought before us as a Society not coming within the design of our Institution”. Though they never said so, the implication is that the Society considered such matters beneath them and no part of their scientific remit, and this sidelining in itself “helped to relegate such investigations to the realm of pseudo-science”. Hunter examines the role of the Royal Society in the matter and shows that while some individual members of the Society took stances on both sides of the question, the Society as a corporate body stayed well out of it, hardly ever debating anything with a “magic” tinge, like astrology or “miraculous” cures, even when individual members occasionally suggested they be investigated.

As John Wagstaffe (who was out of step with his time) tartly observed in The Question of Witchcraft Debated (1669), 'It is far more easy, and more rational, to believe that witnesses are liars and perjured persons, than it is to believe that an old woman can turn herself or any body else into a cat'. This has often been attributed mainly to the rise in science, and clearly the scientific habits of demanding evidence, extrapolating from known facts and evaluating sources had a lot to do with it.

This book examines how belief in supernatural phenomena like witches, fairies, second sight, prophecy and ghosts became discredited among intellectuals, if not always, or even at all, in popular culture. Neither man was particularly out of step with his time, and in just over 60 years this was a very considerable turnaround in educated opinion. In 1749, another divine, Conyers Middleton, declared that “the belief in witches is now utterly extinct and quietly buried without involving history in its ruin”. In 1685, John Edwards, a divine, asserted that “the denial of Daemons and Witches” was “an open defiance to unquestionable History”.

The decline of magic