to exchange beds. The mother lay expecting the son, intending to give him a very severe chiding; but, while she thus went about to deceive the young man, she herself was, by the delusion of satan, deceived also; for taking flame she silently admitted her son, and, unknown by him, was at that time got with child: at the usual time she was delivered of a daughter, which was brought up by her as one that was fatherless and motherless. When this girl was grown up, the young man, her son, fell in love with her; and, notwithstanding the mother laboured with anxiety against it, would needs have her to his wife ; so that, though unwittingly, the young man lay at once with his sister and daughter, as well as his wife. The mother, through grief, being ready to lay violent hands upon herself, confessed the whole to the priest; and divines being acquainted with the case, agreed, that seeing the whole was unknown to both, they should not be divorced, lest their consciences should be burdened.

7. C. Caligula familiarly polluted all his sisters; and at any great feast he evermore placed one or other of them by turns beneath himself, while his wife sat above. He is believed to have defloured his sister Drusilla, while a virgin, and he himself but a boy; and was one time surprised with her by his grand-mother Antonia, in whose house they were brought up together. Afterwards, when she was married to L. Cassius Longinus, a consular person, he took her from him, and kept her openly as if she had been his lawful wife. When he lay sick, he ordained her his heir, and his successor in the empire; for the same sister deceased, he proclaimed a general cessation of law in all courts, and a time of solemn mourn ing; during which, it was a capital crime to have laughed, bathed, or supped together with parents, wife, or children. And being impatient of this sorrow, he fled suddenly out of the city; and having passed through all Campania, he went to Syracuse, and from thence returned with his hair and beard overgrown:

neither at any time after, in his speeches to the people or the soldiery, about the most weighty affairs, would he swear otherwise than by the name or deity of Drusilla.

8. Strabo reporteth of the Arabians, that they admitted incest with sister and mother. Adultery with them is death, but that only is adultery which is out of the same kindred; otherwise for all of the same blood to use the same woman is their incestuous honesty. When fifteen brothers (king's sons) had, by their continual company, tired their one and only sister, she devised a means to rid herself, or at least to ease her somewhat of that trouble. And whereas the custom was, that he which went in left his staff at the door to prohibit others entrance, she got like staves, and always having one at the door, was disburdened of their importunity; every one that came, thinking some other had been there before them: but they being once all together, one of them stole from his fellows, and finding this staff at the door, accused his sister to his father of adultery, whereof, by discovery of the truth, she was cleared.

9. Artaxerxes Mnemon, king of Persia, fell in love with his own daughter, a beautiful virgin, called Atossa: which his own mother Parysatis perceiving, persuaded him to marry her, and so to take her for his wife: and though the Persian laws forbad such incestuous marriages; yet by the counsel of his wicked mother, and his own lust, he had her for his wife, after which time he never pros pered in any thing he took in hand.

10. Lucretia, the daughter of Pope Alexander the Sixth, not only lay with the pope her father, but also with her brother, the duke of Candy: which duke was also slain by Cæsar Borgia, for being his rival in his sister's bed. Of this Lucretia is this epitaph extant:

Hie jacet in tumulo, Lucretia nomine, sed re Thais, Alexandri filia, sponse, nurus. Here Lucrece lies, a Thais in her life, Pope Sixtus' daughter, daughter-in-law, and

wife.

11. "When

of the same image, Christ with his feet spurned him down to the ground; and that, as he lay on the earth, there came out of his mouth a fame of fire, with abundance of sinoak: this being related to the king by Robert Fitz Hammon, be made a jest of it, saying: "This monk would fain have something for his dream, go give him an hundred shillings, but bid him look that he dream more auspicious dreams hereafter." Also the same night the king himself dreamed, that the veins of his arms were broken, and that the blood issued out in great abundance, and many other like passages there were: by which it seems he had friends somewhere, (as well as Julius Cæsar) that did all they could to give him warning: but that as Caesar's, so his evil genius would not suffer him to take it: for king William, notwithstanding he was forewarned by many signs, would go out a hunting in the New Forest yet something moved with the many presages, he staid within all the forenoon: but about dinner-time an artificer came, and brought him six cross-bow arrows, very strong and sharp, whereof four he kept himself, and the other two he delivered to Sir Walter Tyrrel, a knight of Normandy, his bow-bearer: saying: Here Tyrrel, take you two, for you know how to shoot them to good purpose:" and so having,at dinner, drank more liberally than his custom, as it were in contempt of presages, out he rides to the New Forest, where Sir Walter Tyrrel. shooting at a deer, at a place called Charingham, the arrow glanced against a tree, or as some say, grazed upon the back of the deer, and flying forward hit the king upon the breast, with which he instantly fell down dead. Thus died William Rufus in the the forty-third year of his age, and the thirteenth of his reign: his body was drawn in a collier's cart, with one horse, to the city of Winchester, where the day following he was buried in the cathedral church of St. Swithin.

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4. The lord Hastings, by Richard the Third, the then protector, was arrested of high treason; who wished him to make haste and be confessed, for he swore by St. Paul, his usual oath, that he

would not touch bread nor drink till his head was off: so he was led forth unto the green before the chapel within the Tower, where his head was laid down upon a log of timber, and there stricken off. In this man's death we may see how inevitable the blows of destiny are: for the very night before his death the lord Stanley sent a secret messenger to him at midnight, in all haste, to acquaint him of a dream he had, in which he thought that a boar with his tusks so gored them both in the heads,that the blood ran about their shoulders; and forasmuch as the protector gave the boar for his cognizance, the dream made so fearful an impression upon his heart, that he was thoroughly resolved to stay no longer, and had made his horse ready, requiring the lord Hastings to go with him, and that presently, to be out of danger before it should be day. But the lord Hastings answered the messenger: Good Lord! leaneth your master so much to such trifes, to put such faith in dreams, which either his own fears create, or else they rise in the night, by reason of the day's thoughts? Go back therefore to thy master and commend me to him, and pray him to be merry, and have no fear, for I assure him I am as sure of the man he speaks of, as of mine own hand:" the man he meant was one Catesby, who deceived him, and was himself the first mover to rid him out of the way. Another warning he had the same morning in which he was beheaded: his horse twice or thrice stumbled with him almost to falling, which, though, it often happen to such to whom no mischance is toward, yet hath it of old been observed as a token foregoing some great misfortune.

5. The night before Henry the Second, king of France, was slain, queen Margaret his wife dreamed that she saw her husband's eye put out: there were justs and tournaments at that time, into which the queen besought her husband not to enter because of her dream: but he was resolved, and there did things worthy of himself: when almost all was now done, he would needs run the tilt with a knight who refused him, his name was Montogomery: the king was bent

upon

upon it, they shivered their lances in the course, and a splinter of one of them took the king so full in the eye, that he thereby received his death-wound.

6. Crasus, king of Lydia, had two sons, the one dumb and of little use, the other a person of excellent accomplishments above all the rest of his companions; his name was Atys: concerning this son Croesus dreamed that he was transfixed with a javelin, headed with iron being awake, and having considered of it, he takes a wife for his son, and whereas he was before general of all the Lydian forces, he would not suffer him henceforth to head them: all spears, javelins, lances, and such like, he removed from the walls into inward chambers, lest any should fall upon his son and kill him. About this time, near the mount Olympus in Mysia, there was a wild boar of extraordinary bigness, destroying the labours of the Mycians: and though they had divers times assaulted him, yet were they destroyed, and he no way hurt. They therefore sent ambassadors to Croesus to beseech him to send them his son, with a party of select young men, together with some dogs, that the boar might be slain. Croesus, remembering his dream, refused to send his son, but granted all the rest. His son, hearing their embassy and his refusal, expostulated with him the cause why he would not suffer him to go with the rest? He thereupon tells him his dream: the young man replied, “That seeing it was upon the point of a weapon that he should die, he need not fear to send him to the Mysians, for his dream was not that he should die by teeth, tusks or the like." Cresus hereupon changed his de termination : and having resolved his son should go this expedition, he called for Adrastus, a valiant person, who had fled out of Phrygia to him, and told him, that to his care he would entrust his son, in case they should be suddenly set upon by robbers in the way. To Mysia they went, found out the boar, and having enclosed him round, cast darts and javelins at him: here Adrastus threw a javelin at the boar, but, missing his aim, he un

--

fortunately therewith so wounded the prince that he presently died: and Adrastus, unable to bear the grief of his error, slew himself.

7. Alexander the Great was admonished by the Chaldeans, that he should not enter Babylon, as being a place fatal to him, and not only so, but he had in his sleep the image of Cassander, his murderer, presented to him: he thought he was killed by him, and that he was advised to be a more careful preserver of his own life. Afterwards, when Cassander came first into his sight (for he had never before seen him) he enquired whose son he was: when he was told it was the son of Antipater, though he knew it was that face whose image had appeared to him in the night, he repeated a Greek verse, which would have no credit given to dreams: and so clearing his mind of that suspicion he had conceived, gave opportunity to Cassander to administer that poison which was already prepared for him.

8. The night before the death of Julius Caesar, he was told by Calphurnia, his wife, that she had then newly dreamed that she saw him lay dead in her bosom, and being in great perplexity and fright with her vision, she endeavoured, by the most importunate entreaties, to deter him from going the next morning to the senate-house: he had also notice by Sparina to beware of the ides of March, in which he was slain: nay, in the morning, as he passed to the senate, one trust into his hand a note of all the conspirators, which he also shuffled amongst the rest of his papers and never looked upon it.

9. Aterius Ruffus, a knight of Rome (when a great sword-play was to be peformed by the gladiators of Syra cuse) dreamed the night before, that one of those kind of fencers, which are called Retiarii, (which use nets in the theatre to entangle their adversaries with, that they should neither offend nor defend) gave him a mortal wound: which dream he told to such of his friends that sat It happened presently after

near him.

VOL. 11.

that