delivered hundreds of years previously. They had a most pernicious
effect upon the mind of the vulgar, as they induced a belief in
fatalism. By taking away the hope of recovery--that greatest balm in
every malady--they increased threefold the ravages of the disease. One
singular prediction almost drove the unhappy people mad. An ancient
couplet, preserved for ages by tradition, foretold, that in the year
1630 the devil would poison all Milan. Early one morning in April,
and before the pestilence had reached its height, the passengers were
surprised to see that all the doors in the principal streets of the city
were marked with a curious daub, or spot, as if a sponge, filled with
the purulent matter of the plague-sores, had been pressed against them.
The whole population were speedily in movement to remark the strange
appearance, and the greatest alarm spread rapidly. Every means was taken
to discover the perpetrators, but in vain. At last the ancient prophecy
was remembered, and prayers were offered up in all the churches that
the machinations of the Evil One might be defeated. Many persons were
of opinion that the emissaries of foreign powers were employed to spread
infectious poison over the city; but by far the greater number were
convinced that the powers of hell had conspired against them, and that
the infection was spread by supernatural agencies. In the mean time the
plague increased fearfully. Distrust and alarm took possession of every
mind. Everything was believed to have been poisoned by the devil; the
waters of the wells, the standing corn in the fields, and the fruit upon
the trees. It was believed that all objects of touch were poisoned; the
walls of the houses, the pavement of the streets, and the very handles
of the doors. The populace were raised to a pitch of ungovernable fury.
A strict watch was kept for the devil's emissaries, and any man who
wanted to be rid of an enemy, had only to say that he had seen him
besmearing a door with ointment; his fate was certain death at the
hands of the mob. An old man, upwards of eighty years of age, a daily
frequenter of the church of St. Antonio, was seen, on rising from his
knees, to wipe with the skirt of his cloak the stool on which he was
about to sit down. A cry was raised immediately that he was besmearing
the seat with poison. A mob of women, by whom the church was crowded,
seized hold of the feeble old man, and dragged him out by the hair of
his head, with horrid oaths and imprecations. He was trailed in this
manner through the mire to the house of the municipal judge, that he
might be put to the rack, and forced to discover his accomplices; but
he expired on the way. Many other victims were sacrificed to the popular
fury. One Mora, who appears to have been half a chemist and half a
barber, was accused of being in league with the devil to poison Milan.
His house was surrounded, and a number of chemical preparations were
found. The poor man asserted, that they were intended as preservatives
against infection; but some physicians, to whom they were submitted,
declared they were poison. Mora was put to the rack, where he for a long
time asserted his innocence. He confessed at last, when his courage was
worn down by torture, that he was in league with the devil and foreign
powers to poison the whole city; that he had anointed the doors,
and infected the fountains of water. He named several persons as his
accomplices, who were apprehended and put to a similar torture. They
were all found guilty, and executed. Mora's house was rased to the
ground, and a column erected on the spot, with an inscription to
commemorate his guilt.
While the public mind was filled with these marvellous occurrences, the
plague continued to increase. The crowds that were brought together to
witness the executions, spread the infection among one another. But the
fury of their passions, and the extent of their credulity, kept pace
with the violence of the plague; every wonderful and preposterous story
was believed. One, in particular, occupied them to the exclusion, for a
long time, of every other. The Devil himself had been seen. He had
taken a house in Milan, in which he prepared his poisonous unguents, and
furnished them to his emissaries for distribution. One man had brooded
over such tales till he became firmly convinced that the wild flights of
his own fancy were realities. He stationed himself in the market-place
of Milan, and related the following story to the crowds that gathered
round him. He was standing, he said, at the door of the cathedral, late
in the evening, and when there was nobody nigh, he saw a dark-coloured
chariot, drawn by six milk-white horses, stop close beside him. The
chariot was followed by a numerous train of domestics in dark liveries,
mounted on dark-coloured steeds. In the chariot there sat a tall
stranger of a majestic aspect; his long black hair floated in the
wind--fire flashed from his large black eyes, and a curl of ineffable
scorn dwelt upon his lips. The look of the stranger was so sublime
that he was awed, and trembled with fear when he gazed upon him. His
complexion was much darker than that of any man he had ever seen,
and the atmosphere around him was hot and suffocating. He perceived
immediately that he was a being of another world. The stranger, seeing
his trepidation, asked him blandly, yet majestically, to mount beside
him. He had no power to refuse, and before he was well aware that he
had moved, he found himself in the chariot. Onwards they went, with the
rapidity of the wind, the stranger speaking no word, until they stopped
before a door in the high-street of Milan. There was a crowd of people
in the street, but, to his great surprise, no one seemed to notice the
extraordinary equipage and its numerous train. From this he concluded
that they were invisible. The house at which they stopped appeared to
be a shop, but the interior was like a vast half-ruined palace. He went
with his mysterious guide through several large and dimly-lighted rooms.
In one of them, surrounded by huge pillars of marble, a senate of ghosts
was assembled, debating on the progress of the plague. Other parts
of the building were enveloped in the thickest darkness, illumined at
intervals by flashes of lightning, which allowed him to distinguish a
number of gibing and chattering skeletons, running about and pursuing
each other, or playing at leap-frog over one another's backs. At the
rear of the mansion was a wild, uncultivated plot of ground, in the
midst of which arose a black rock. Down its sides rushed with fearful
noise a torrent of poisonous water, which, insinuating itself through
the soil, penetrated to all the springs of the city, and rendered them
unfit for use. After he had been shown all this, the stranger led him
into another large chamber, filled with gold and precious stones, all of
which he offered him if he would kneel down and worship him, and consent
to smear the doors and houses of Milan with a pestiferous salve which he
held out to him. He now knew him to be the Devil, and in that moment of
temptation, prayed to God to give him strength to resist. His prayer was
heard--he refused the bribe. The stranger scowled horribly upon him--a
loud clap of thunder burst over his head--the vivid lightning flashed
in his eyes, and the next moment he found himself standing alone at the
porch of the cathedral. He repeated this strange tale day after day,
without any variation, and all the populace were firm believers in its
truth. Repeated search was made to discover the mysterious house, but
all in vain. The man pointed out several as resembling it, which were
searched by the police; but the Demon of the Pestilence was not to be
found, nor the hall of ghosts, nor the poisonous fountain. But the minds
of the people were so impressed with the idea that scores of witnesses,
half crazed by disease, came forward to swear that they also had
seen the diabolical stranger, and had heard his chariot, drawn by the
milk-white steeds, rumbling over the streets at midnight with a sound
louder than thunder.
The number of persons who confessed that they were employed by the
Devil to distribute poison is almost incredible. An epidemic frenzy was
abroad, which seemed to be as contagious as the plague. Imagination was
as disordered as the body, and day after day persons came voluntarily
forward to accuse themselves. They generally had the marks of disease
upon them, and some died in the act of confession.
During the great plague of London, in 1665, the people listened with
similar avidity to the predictions of quacks and fanatics. Defoe says,
that at that time the people were more addicted to prophecies and
astronomical conjurations, dreams, and old wives' tales than ever they
were before or since. Almanacs, and their predictions, frightened them
terribly. Even the year before the plague broke out, they were greatly
alarmed by the comet which then appeared, and anticipated that famine,
pestilence, or fire would follow. Enthusiasts, while yet the disease had
made but little progress, ran about the streets, predicting that in a
few days London would be destroyed.
A still more singular instance of the faith in predictions occurred
in London in the year 1524. The city swarmed at that time with
fortune-tellers and astrologers, who were consulted daily by people of
every class in society on the secrets of futurity. As early as the month
of June 1523, several of them concurred in predicting that, on the 1st
day of February, 1524, the waters of the Thames would swell to such
a height as to overflow the whole city of London, and wash away ten
thousand houses. The prophecy met implicit belief. It was reiterated
with the utmost confidence month after month, until so much alarm was
excited that many families packed up their goods, and removed into
Kent and Essex. As the time drew nigh, the number of these emigrants
increased. In January, droves of workmen might be seen, followed by
their wives and children, trudging on foot to the villages within
fifteen or twenty miles, to await the catastrophe. People of a higher
class were also to be seen, in waggons and other vehicles, bound on
a similar errand. By the middle of January, at least twenty thousand
persons had quitted the doomed city, leaving nothing but the bare walls
of their homes to be swept away by the impending floods. Many of the
richer sort took up their abode on the heights of Highgate, Hampstead,
and Blackheath; and some erected tents as far away as Waltham Abbey, on
the north, and Croydon, on the south of the Thames. Bolton, the prior
of St. Bartholomew's, was so alarmed that he erected, at very great
expense, a sort of fortress at Harrow-on-the-Hill, which he stocked with
provisions for two months. On the 24th of January, a week before
the awful day which was to see the destruction of London, he removed
thither, with the brethren and officers of the priory and all his
household. A number of boats were conveyed in waggons to his fortress,
furnished abundantly with expert rowers, in case the flood, reaching
so high as Harrow, should force them to go further for a resting-place.
Many wealthy citizens prayed to share his retreat, but the Prior, with
a prudent forethought, admitted only his personal friends, and those who
brought stores of eatables for the blockade.
At last the morn, big with the fate of London, appeared in the east. The
wondering crowds were astir at an early hour to watch the rising of the
waters. The inundation, it was predicted, would be gradual, not sudden;
so that they expected to have plenty of time to escape, as soon as
they saw the bosom of old Thames heave beyond the usual mark. But the
majority were too much alarmed to trust to this, and thought themselves
safer ten or twenty miles off. The Thames, unmindful of the foolish
crowds upon its banks, flowed on quietly as of yore. The tide ebbed at
its usual hour, flowed to its usual height, and then ebbed again, just
as if twenty astrologers had not pledged their words to the contrary.
Blank were their faces as evening approached, and as blank grew
the faces of the citizens to think that they had made such fools of
themselves. At last night set in, and the obstinate river would not lift
its waters to sweep away even one house out of the ten thousand. Still,
however, the people were afraid to go to sleep. Many hundreds remained
up till dawn of the next day, lest the deluge should come upon them like
a thief in the night.
On the morrow, it was seriously discussed whether it would not be
advisable to duck the false prophets in the river. Luckily for them,
they thought of an expedient which allayed the popular fury. They
asserted that, by an error (a very slight one) of a little figure, they
had fixed the date of this awful inundation a whole century too early.
The stars were right after all, and they, erring mortals, were wrong.
The present generation of cockneys was safe, and London 'would be washed
away, not in 1524, but in 1624. At this announcement, Bolton, the prior,
dismantled his fortress, and the weary emigrants came back.
An eye-witness of the great fire of London, in an account preserved
among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, and recently published
in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, relates another
instance of the credulity of the Londoners. The writer, who accompanied
the Duke of York day by day through the district included between the
Fleet-bridge and the Thames, states that, in their efforts to check the
progress of the flames, they were much impeded by the superstition of
the people. Mother Shipton, in one of her prophecies, had said that
London would be reduced to ashes, and they refused to make any efforts
to prevent it. [This prophecy seems to have been that set forth at
length in the popular Life of Mother Shipton:--
"When fate to England shall restore
A king to reign as heretofore,
Great death in London shall be though,
And many houses be laid low."]
A son of the noted Sir Kenelm Digby, who was also a pretender to the
gifts of prophecy, persuaded them that no power on earth could prevent
the fulfilment of the prediction; for it was written in the great book
of fate that London was to be destroyed. Hundreds of persons, who
might have rendered valuable assistance, and saved whole parishes
from devastation, folded their arms and looked on. As many more gave
themselves up, with the less compunction, to plunder a city which they
could not save.
The prophecies of Mother Shipton are still believed in many of the rural
districts of England. In cottages and servants' halls her reputation is
great; and she rules, the most popular of British prophets, among all
the uneducated, or half-educated, portions of the community. She is
generally supposed to have been born at Knaresborough, in the reign
of Henry VII, and to have sold her soul to the Devil for the power of
foretelling future events. Though during her lifetime she was looked
upon as a witch, she yet escaped the witch's fate, and died peaceably
in her bed at an extreme old age, near Clifton in Yorkshire. A stone
is said to have been erected to her memory in the church-yard of that
place, with the following epitaph:--
"Here lies she who never lied; Whose skill often has been tried: Her
prophecies shall still survive, And ever keep her name alive."
"Never a day passed," says her traditionary biography, "wherein she
did not relate something remarkable, and that required the most serious
consideration. People flocked to her from far and near, her fame was so
great. They went to her of all sorts, both old and young, rich and poor,
especially young maidens, to be resolved of their doubts relating
to things to come; and all returned wonderfully satisfied in the
explanations she gave to their questions." Among the rest, went
the Abbot of Beverley, to whom she foretold the suppression of the
monasteries by Henry VIII; his marriage with Anne Boleyn; the fires for
heretics in Smithfield, and the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. She
also foretold the accession of James I, adding that, with him,
"From the cold North,
Every evil should come forth."
On a subsequent visit she uttered another prophecy, which, in the
opinion of her believers, still remains unfulfilled, but may be expected
to be realised during the present century:--
"The time shall come when seas of blood
Shall mingle with a greater flood.
Great noise there shall be heard--great shouts and cries,
And seas shall thunder louder than the skies;
Then shall three lions fight with three, and bring
Joy to a people, honour to a king.
That fiery year as soon as o'er,
Peace shall then be as before;
Plenty shall everywhere be found,
And men with swords shall plough the ground."
But the most famous of all her prophecies is one relating to London.
Thousands of persons still shudder to think of the woes that are to
burst over this unhappy realm, when London and Highgate are joined by
one continuous line of houses. This junction, which, if the rage for
building lasts much longer, in the same proportion as heretofore, bids
fair to be soon accomplished, was predicted by her shortly before her
death. Revolutions--the fall of mighty monarchs, and the shedding of
much blood are to signalise that event. The very angels, afflicted by
our woes, are to turn aside their heads, and weep for hapless Britain.
But great as is the fame of Mother Shipton, she ranks but second in the
list of British prophets. Merlin, the mighty Merlin, stands alone in his
high pre-eminence--the first and greatest. As old Drayton sings, in his
Poly-olbion:--
"Of Merlin and his skill what region doth not hear?
The world shall still be full of Merlin every year.
A thousand lingering years his prophecies have run,
And scarcely shall have end till time itself be done."
Spenser, in his divine poem, has given us a powerful description of this
renowned seer--
".......who had in magic more insight
Than ever him before, or after, living wight.
"For he by words could call out of the sky
Both sun and moon, and make them him obey;
The land to sea, and sea to mainland dry,
And darksome night he eke could turn to day--
Huge hosts of men he could, alone, dismay.
And hosts of men and meanest things could frame,
Whenso him list his enemies to fray,
That to this day, for terror of his name,
The fiends do quake, when any him to them does name.
"And soothe men say that he was not the sonne,
Of mortal sire or other living wighte,
But wondrously begotten and begoune
By false illusion of a guileful sprite,
On a faire ladye nun."
In these verses the poet has preserved the popular belief with regard
to Merlin, who is generally supposed to have been a contemporary of
Vortigern. Opinion is divided as to whether he were a real personage, or
a mere impersonation, formed by the poetic fancy of a credulous people.
It seems most probable that such a man did exist, and that, possessing
knowledge as much above the comprehension of his age, as that possessed
by Friar Bacon was beyond the reach of his, he was endowed by the
wondering crowd with the supernatural attributes that Spenser has
enumerated.
Geoffrey of Monmouth translated Merlin's poetical odes, or prophecies,
into Latin prose, and he was much reverenced, not only by Geoffrey, but
by most of the old annalists. In a "Life of Merlin, with his Prophecies
and Predictions, interpreted and made good by our English Annals," by
Thomas Heywood, published in the reign of Charles I, we find several of
these pretended prophecies. They seem, however, to have been all written
by Heywood himself. They are in terms too plain and positive to allow
any one to doubt for a moment of their having been composed ex post
facto. Speaking of Richard I, he says:--
"The Lion's heart will 'gainst the Saracen rise,
And purchase from him many a glorious prize;
The rose and lily shall at first unite,
But, parting of the prey prove opposite.
* * * *
But while abroad these great acts shall be done;
All things at home shall to disorder run.
Cooped up and caged then shall the Lion be,
But, after sufferance, ransomed and set free."
The sapient Thomas Heywood gravely goes on to inform us, that all these
things actually came to pass. Upon Richard III he is equally luminous.
He says:--
"A hunch-backed monster, who with teeth is born,
The mockery of art and nature's scorn;
Who from the womb preposterously is hurled,
And, with feet forward, thrust into the world,
Shall, from the lower earth on which he stood,
Wade, every step he mounts, knee-deep in blood.
He shall to th' height of all his hopes aspire,
And, clothed in state, his ugly shape admire;
But, when he thinks himself most safe to stand,
From foreign parts a native whelp shall land."
Another of these prophecies after the event tells us that Henry VIII
should take the power from Rome, "and bring it home unto his British
bower;" that he should "root out from the land all the razored skulls;"
and that he should neither spare "man in his rage nor woman in his
lust;" and that, in the time of his next successor but one, "there
should come in the fagot and the stake." Master Heywood closes Merlin's
prophecies at his own day, and does not give even a glimpse of what
was to befall England after his decease. Many other prophecies, besides
those quoted by him, were, he says, dispersed abroad, in his day, under
the name of Merlin; but he gives his readers a taste of one only, and
that is the following:--
"When hempe is ripe and ready to pull,
Then Englishman beware thy skull."
This prophecy, which, one would think, ought to have put him in mind of
the gallows, the not unusual fate of false prophets, and perchance his
own, he explains thus:--"In this word HEMPE be five letters. Now, by
reckoning the five successive princes from Henry VIII, this prophecy is
easily explained: H signifieth King Henry before named; E, Edward, his
son, the sixth of that name; M, Mary, who succeeded him; P, Philip of
Spain, who, by marrying Queen Mary, participated with her in the English
diadem; and, lastly, E signifieth Queen Elizabeth, after whose death
there was a great feare that some troubles might have arisen about the
crown." As this did not happen, Heywood, who was a sly rogue in a small
way, gets out of the scrape by saying, "Yet proved this augury true,
though not according to the former expectation; for, after the peaceful
inauguration of King James, there was great mortality, not in London
only, but through the whole kingdom, and from which the nation was not
quite clean in seven years after."
This is not unlike the subterfuge of Peter of Pontefract, who had
prophesied the death and deposition of King John, and who was hanged by
that monarch for his pains. A very graphic and amusing account of this
pretended prophet is given by Grafton, in his Chronicles of England.
There is so much homely vigour about the style of the old annalist,
that it would be a pity to give the story in other words than his own.
[Chronicles of England, by Richard Grafton; London, 1568, p. 106.] "In
the meanwhile," says he, "the priestes within England had provided them
a false and counterfeated prophet, called Peter Wakefielde, a Yorkshire
man, who was an hermite, an idle gadder about, and a pratlyng marchant.
Now to bring this Peter in credite, and the kyng out of all credite with
his people, diverse vaine persons bruted dayly among the commons of
the realme, that Christe had twice appered unto him in the shape of a
childe, betwene the prieste's handes, once at Yorke, another tyme at
Pomfret; and that he had breathed upon him thrice, saying, 'Peace,
peace, peace,' and teachyng many things, which he anon declared to the
bishops, and bid the people amend their naughtie living. Being rapt also
in spirite, they sayde he behelde the joyes of heaven and sorowes of
hell, for scant were there three in the realme, sayde he, that lived
Christainly.
"This counterfeated soothsayer prophecied of King John, that he should
reigne no longer than the Ascension-day next followyng, which was in the
yere of our Lord 1211, and was the thirteenth yere from his coronation;
and this, he said, he had by revelation. Then it was of him demanded,
whether he should be slaine or be deposed, or should voluntarily give
over the crowne? He aunswered, that he could not tell; but of this he
was sure (he sayd), that neither he nor any of his stock or lineage
should reigne after that day.
"The king hering of this, laughed much at it, and made but a scoff
thereat. 'Tush!' saith he, 'it is but an ideot knave, and such an one as
lacketh his right wittes.' But when this foolish prophet had so escaped
the daunger of the Kinge's displeasure, and that he made no more of it,
he gate him abroad, and prated thereof at large, as he was a very idle
vagabond, and used to trattle and talke more than ynough, so that
they which loved the King caused him anon after to be apprehended as
a malefactor, and to be throwen in prison, the King not yet knowing
thereof.