Miscellanies upon Various Subjects | Page 5

was significative; it turned well to him, according to that of Rev. 14, 13. Blessed are the dead, &e. and that of Ovid Metam. lib. 3.
"---Dicique beatus", "Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet.-----"
--None happy call Before their death, and final funeral.
The sixth of January was five times auspicious to Charles, Duke of Anjou. Ibid. in the life of the Earl of Sunderland.
The twenty-fourth of February was happy to Charles V. four times. (Ibid.) Heylin, speaking of the Temple of Jerusalem, hints three of these four; his birth, taking of Francis, King of France, prisoner; his receiving the Imperial crown at Bononia. And so doth also the Journal History before mentioned.
Of the family of the Trevors, six successive principal branches have been born the sixth of July. Same memoirs.
Sir Humphrey Davenport was born the 7th of July; and on that day anniversary, his father and mother died, within a quarter of an hour one of another. Same memoirs.
I have seen an old Romish MSS. prayer-book, (and shewed the same to that general scholar, and great astrologer, Elias Ashmole, Esq.;) at the beginning whereof was a Calendar wherein were inserted the unlucky days of each month, set out in verse. I will recite them just as they are, sometimes infringing the rule of grammar, sometimes of Prosodia; a matter of which the old monkish rhymers were no way scrupulous. It was as ancient as Henry the sixth, or Edward the fourth's time.
January "Prima dies mensis, & septima truncat ut ensis". February "Quarta subit mortem, prostemit tertia fortem." March. "Primus mandentem, disrumpit quarto, bibentem". April "Denus & undenus est mortis vulnere plenus". May "Tertius occidit, & Septimus ora relidit".* June "Denus pallescit, quindenus feeders nescit". July. "Ter-decimus mactat, Julij denus labefactat." August. "Prima necat fortem, prostemit secunda cohortem". September "Tertia Septembris & denus fert mala membris". October. "Tertius & denus est, sicut, mors alienus". November. "Scorpius est quintus, & tertius e nece cinctus". December. "Septimus exanguis, virosus denus & anguis". * Ex re & ledo.
The tenth verse is intolerable, and might be mended thus.
"Tertia cum dena sit sicut mors aliena".
If any object and say, "Deni" is only the plural; I excuse my self by that admirable chronogram upon King Charles the martyr.
"Ter deno, Jani, Lunae, Rex (Sole cadente)" "Carolus euxtus Solio, Sceptroque, secure".
Neither will I have recourse for refuge to that old tetrastich,
"Intrat Avaloniam duodena Caterva virorum "Flos Arimathioe Joseph, &c."
because I have even now blamed the liberty of the ancient rhymers. He means by "Mors aliena", some strange kind of death; though "aliena", signifies in quite another sense than there used.
I shall take particular notice here of the third of November, both because 'tis my own birth day, and also for that I have observed some remarkable accidents to have happened thereupon.
Constantius, the Emperor, son of Constantine the Great, little inferior to his father, a worthy warrior, and good man, died the third of November: "Ex veteri Calendario penes me".
Thomas Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, that great man, and famous commander under Henry IV. V. and VI. Died this day, by a wound of a cannon-shot he received at Orleans, E MSS. quodam, & Glovero.
So, also Cardinal Borromeo, famous for his sanctity of life, and therefore canonized, (Heylin in his "Prcognita", says, he made Milan memorable, by his residence there) died 1584, this day, as Possevinus in his life.
Sir John Perrot, (Stow corruptly calls him Parrat) a man very remarkable in his time, Lord Deputy of Ireland, son to Henry VIII. And extremely like him, died in the tower, the third of November, 1592 (as Stow says). Grief, and the fatality of. this day, killed him. See Naunton's "Fragmenta Regalia", concerning this man.
Stow, in his Annals, says, Anno 1099, November 3, as well in Scotland as England, the sea broke in, over the banks of many rivers, drowning divers towns, and much people; with an innumerable number of oxen and sheep, at which time the lands in Kent, sometimes belonging to Earl Godwin, were covered with sands, and drowned, and to this day are called Godwin's Sands.
I had an estate left me in Kent, of which between thirty and forty acres was marsh-land, very conveniently flanking its up-land; and in those days this marsh-land was usually let for four nobles an acre. My father died, 1643. Within a year and half after his decease, such charges and water-schots came upon this marsh-land, by the influence of the sea, that it was never worth one farthing to me, but very often eat into the rents of the up-land: so that I often think, this day being my birth-day, hath the same influence upon me, that it had 580 years since upon Earl Godwin, and others concerned in low-lands.
The Parliament, so fatal to Rome's concerns here, in Henry VIII's. time, began the third of November