that day to write to his son Henry at Oxford, he thought it was worth so much pains as by a postcript in his letter to make a slight enquiry of it. The letter (which was written out of Kent) came to his son's the very morning after the night in which the robbery was commit ted; and when the city and university were both in a perplexed inquest after the thieves, then did Sir Henry Wotton show his father's letter; and by it such light was given of this work of darkness, that the five persons were presently discovered, and apprehended, without putting the university to so much as the casting of a figure.

26. Aristotle writeth of one Eudemus, his familiar friend, who travelling to Macedonia came to the noble city of Phæcas in Thessaly, then groaning under the barbarous tyranny of Alexander, in which place falling sick, and being for saken of all the physicians, as one desperate of recovery, he thought he saw a young man in his dream, who told him, "that in a short space he should be restored to his health; that within a few days the tyrant should be removed by death; and that at the end of five years he should return home to his own country." The two first happened accordingly; but in the fifth year, when(encouraged by his dream) he had hope to return from Sicily into Cyprus, he was engaged by the way in a battle fought against the Syracusans, and there slain. It seems the soul parting from the body is said to return into its own country.

27. Actia, the mother of Augustus, the day before she was delivered of him, dreamed that her bowels were carried up as high as heaven itself, and that there they were spread out in such manner, that they covered the whole earth: a notable presignification of the mighty em. pire and grandeur which her son after. wards attained unto.

28. When Themistocles lived in exile, (far from his own country) he made his abode in a city, the name of which was Lion's Head: one night, as he lay in his bed, he dreamed that he saw the goddess

29. When Flavius Vespasianus was yet a private man, and was with Neroin Achaia, he dreamed one night that a person unknown to him told him that his good fortune should begin when Nero should have a tooth drawn. Being awaked, and risen from his bed, the first he afterwards met with was a physician, who showed him a tooth that he had newly taken out of Nero's mouth. Not long after followed the death of Nero, and that of Galba, as also the discord betwixt Otho and Vi

tellius, which was no mean furtherance to Vespasian in his attainment of the em pire.

30. When Archelaus had reigned ten years in Judea, he was accused by his subjects (at the tribunal of Cæsar) of cruelty and tyranny by him he was immediately sent for; and the cause being heard, his wealth was seized upon, and he himself sent into banishment. This event and sorrowful issue of his affairs was before declared to him in a dream: he saw ten ears of corn, strong, full, and fruitful, which were eaten up of oxen. This dream of his was diversely interpreted: but Simon an Essæan told him, that thereby was portended to him a change, and that an unhappy one for oxen are the em blem of misery, as being a creature that is burthened with work; and they signified mutation and change, because, in ploughing, the earth is turned up by them. The ten ears did signify so many years, in which space the harvest should be; and those completed, there should be an end of the principality of Archelaus.

31. His wife Glaphyry had also a notable dream: she had first been mar ried to Alexander, the brother of this Ar chelaus: he dying, she married to Juba, king of Libya, who had newly divorced

-

(26.) Fulgos. Ex. 1. 1. c. 5. p. 121. 6.—( -(28.) Fulgos. Ex. 1. 1. c. 5. p. 113. Joseph. Antiq. 1, 17. c. 15, p. 461.

his

his wife Mariamne; afterwards to Archelaus, though she had children by his brother. This princess did one night dream, that Alexander, her first husband, stood by her bed-side, and said to her, " Glaphyra, thou hast eminently confirmed the truth of that saying, that wives are unfaithful to their husbands. For, whereas thou wert married to me in thy virginity, and also hadst children with me, thou didst yet make trial of a second match; and, not content to do me that affront, thou hast gone into bed with a third hus band, and he my brother but I will free thee from this reproach, and before long challenge thee for mine only." Glaphyra was troubled with this dream, told it to the ladies of her acquaintance who were near her, and not long after she departed this world.

32. While as yet Saint Austin was a Maniche, his mother Monica dreamed that she stood upon a wooden rule; and being sad, was by a glorious young man asked the cause: when she declared, "that it was for her son, who now was in the ready way to destruction." He bade her be of good cheer, and observe that she should see her son upon the same rule with herself; and so she saw him standing. A this was confirmed by the afterconversion of her son.

33. Pope Innocent the Fourth dreamed that Robert Grosthead, bishop of Lincoln, came to him, and with his staff struck him on the side, and said, Surge, miser, ct veni ad judicium: "Rise, wretch, and come to judgment." After which dream, within a few days, the pope ended his life.

34. Alcibiades (a little before his death by Tismenias and Bagoas) dreamed, that he was covered with his mistress's mantle; his murdered body being cast out into the streets of the city naked, his lover covered it with her mantle, to preserve him from the derision and scorn of his barbarous enemies.

CHAP. IX.

Of Presages of good or evil Fortune. SELDOM were there any remarkable

revolutions in the fortunes of any consi derable places or persons, whether for the better or for the worse, but that historians have taken notice of certain presages and presignifications thereof. Some of these may seem to be casual, and afterwards adapted to the occasion by the ingenuity of others: but there want no familiar instances of such as may seem to be sent on purpose from above, with no obscure intimations of what Providence was about to bring to pass in the places where they happened.

1. Josephus sets down this as a prodigy presaging the destruction of the Jews. "There was," saith he, "one Jesus son of Ananias, a countryman of mean birth, four years before the war against the Jews, at a time when all was in deep peace and tranquillity, who coming up to the feast of tabernacles, according to the custom, began on a sudden to cry out and say, "A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the temple, a voice against bridegrooms and brides, a voice against all the people!" Thus he went about all the narrow lanes, crying night and day: and being apprehended and scourged, he still continued the same language under the blows, without any other word. And they upon this, supposing (as it was) that it was some divine motion, brought him to the Roman prefect: and by his appointment being wounded by whips, and his flesh torn to the bones, he neither intreated, nor shed a tear; but to every blow, in a most lamentable mournful note, cried out, "Woe, woe to Jerusalem!" This he continued to do till the time of the siege, seven years together: and at last, to his extraordinary note of woe to the city, the people, the temple, adding, "Woe also to me!" a stone from the battlements fell down upon him, and kilied him."

2. Henrietta Maria, queen of Great Britain, at the death of her father Henry the Fourth, was a cradle infant; and Barberino, at that time nuncio in France, (and afterwards created pope by the name of Urban VIII.) coming to con

gratulate

gratulate her birth, and finding that the queen-mother had been better pleased if she had borne a male, he told her, "Madam, I hope to see this, though your youngest daughter, a great queen before I die." The queen answered, "And I hope to see you pope." Both which prophetic compliments proved true, and within a short time one of another.

3. I have spent some inquiry (saith sir Henry Wotton) whether the duke of Buckingham had any ominous presagement before his end; wherein though antient and modern stories have been in fected with much vanity, yet oftentimes things fall out of that kind which may bear a sober construction, whereof I will glean two or three in the duke's case. Being to take his leave of his grace of Canterbury (then bishop of London), after courtesies of course had passed between them; "My lord," says the duke, "I know your lordship hath very worthily good successes unto the king our Sovereign: let me pray you to put his majesty in mind to be good (as I no ways distrust) unto my poor wife and children." At which words, or at his countenance in the delivery, or at both, my lord bishop, being somewhat troubled, took the freedom to ask him, "If he had never any secret abodement in his mind? "No," replied the duke; "but I think some adventure may kill me, as well as another man." The very day before he was slain, feeling some indisposition of body, the king was pleased to give him the honour of a visit; and found him in his bed: where (and after much serious and private conference) the duke, at his majesty's departing, embraced him, in a very unusual and passionate manner, and in like sort his friend the earl of Holland, as if his soul had divined he should see them no more. Which infusions towards fatal ends have been observed by some authors of no light authority. On the very day of his death, the countess of Denbigh received a letter from him; whereunto, all the while she was writing her answer, she bedewed the paper with her tears; and after a bitter passion (whereof she could yield no reason, but

that her dearest brother was to be gone) she fell down in a swoon. Her said letter ended thus: "I will pray for your happy return, which I look at with a great cloud over my head, too heavy for my poor heart to bear without torment; but I hope the great God of Heaven will bless you." The day following, the bishop of Ely (her devoted friend) who was thought the fittest preparer of her mind to receive such a doleful account, came to visit her; but hearing she was at rest, he attended till she should awake of herself; which she did with the affrightment of a dream: her brother seeming to pass through a field with her in her coach, where hearing a sudden shout of the people, and asking the reason, it was answered to have been for joy that the duke of Buckingham was sick which natural impression she scarce had related to her gentlewoman, before the bishop was entered into her bedchamber, for a chosen messenger of the duke's death.

4. Before and at the birth of William the Conqueror, there wanted not fore running tokens which presaged his future greatness. His mother Arlotte, great with him, dreamed her bowels were extended over all Normandy and England. Also, as soon as he was born, being laid on the chamber floor, with both his hands he took up rushes, and shutting his little fists, held them very fast; which gave occasion to the gossipping wives to congratulate Arlotte on the birth of such a boy; and the midwife cried out, "The boy will prove a king."

5. Not long before C. Julius Cæsar was slain in the senate-house, by the Julian law there was a colony sent to be planted in Capua, and some monuments were demolished, for the laying of the foundations of some of new houses. In the tomb of Capys, who is said to beca the founder of Capua, there was found a brazen table, in which was engra ven, in Greek letters, that, "whensoever the bones of Capua should be removed, one of the Julian family should be slain by the hands of his own party, and that his blood should be revenged to the great damage of all Italy." At the same

time

time also those horses which Cæsar had consecrated after his passage over the Rubicon, did abstain from all kind of food, and were observed with drops falling from their eyes, after such manner as if they had shed tears. Also the bird called Regulus, having a little branch of laurel in her mouth, flew with it into Pompey's court, where she was torn in pieces by sundry other birds that had her in pursuit; where also Cæsar himself was soon after slain with twenty-three wounds, by Brutus, Cassius, and others.

6. As these were the presages of the personal end of the great Cæsar, so there wanted not those of the end of his whole family, whether natural or adopted, which was concluded in Nero; and it was thus: Livia was newly married to Augustus, when, as she went to her villa of Veientum, an eagle gently let fall a white hen, with a branch of laurel in her mouth, into her lap: she received this as a fortunate presage ; and causing the hen to be carefully looked after, there came of her abundance of white pullets. The branch of laurel too was planted, of which sprang up a number of the like trees: from which afterwards, he that was to triumph gathered that branch of laurel, which during his triumph, he carried in his hand. The triumph finished, he used to plant that branch also: when it did wither, it was observed to presage the death of that triumpher that had planted it. But in the last year of Nero both all the stock of white hens and pullets died, and the little wood of laurel was withered to the very root; the heads also of the statues of the Cæsars were struck off by lightning, and by the same way the sceptre was thrown out of the hands of the statue of Augustus.

7. Before the death of Augustus, in Rome, where his statue was set up, there was a flash of lightning, that froin his name Cæsar, took away the first letter C, and left the rest standing. The aruspices and soothsayers consulted upon this, and concluded, that within an hundred days Augustus should change this life; for ESAR, which, in the Hetru

rian tongue, signifies a god, and the letter C. amongst the Romans stands for an hundred; and therefore the hundredth day following Cæsar should die, and be made a god, as they used to deify their dead emperors.

8. While the grandfather of Sergius Galba was sacrificing, an eagle snatched the bowels of the sacrifice out of his hand, and left them upon the branches of an oak that grew near to the place; upon which the augurs pronounced, that "the empire (though late) was certainly portended thereby to his family." He, to express the great improbability he conceived of such a thing, replied, that "it would then come to pass when a mule should bring forth." Nor did any thing. more confirm Galba in the hope of the empire (upon his revolt from Nero) than the news brought him of a mule that had bought forth, as being mindful of the speech of his grandfather.

9. In the villa of Sabinus, not far from the city of Come, there was an huge oak which, as Vespasia his wife successively brought forth three children, so did this oak put forth at the root of it three young ones; the last of which did flourish and prosper exceedingly: upon which Sabinus told his mother, that "his wife had brought her a grandchild, who in time would be emperor." She smiling replied, "That she wondered the grandfather should have his perfect senses, and that yet her son should be in his dotage." But the virtue of Vespasian, the younger son of Sabinus, served to confirm the truth of this presage; for he succeeded Vitellius in the empire.

10. L. Septimius Severus, when he was but a child, would play at no other sport with the boys his equals but that fasces and axe carried before him, would of judges: then, with his counterfeit he ascend the tribunal, with a multitude of children about him, and thence he gave law to them. Not long after the sport was turned into earnest, and he performed amongst men what he had begun amongst children; for he was advanced to the empire of Rome.

tom. 2.

VOL. II.

2 a

(9.) Ibid p. 83,

11. Marcianus