At the time of the rebellion in 1745, Osborne went to a farmer by the name of Butterfield, who kept a dairy at Gubblecut, near Tring, in Hertfordshire, and begged for some buttermilk. Butterfield, by a brutal refusal, angered the old woman, who went away muttering that the Pretender would pay him out. In the course of the next year or so a number of the farmer's calves became distempered, and he himself contracted epileptic fits. In the meantime he gave up dairy-farming and took a public-house, The wiseacres who met there attributed his misfortunes to witchcraft, and advised Butterfield to apply to a cunning woman or white witch for a cure. An old woman was fetched from Northamptonshire, and confirmed the suspicion already entertained against Ruth Osborne and her husband John, both harmless old people over seventy years of age.