Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects eBook

John Aubrey
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 161 pages of information about Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects.

Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects eBook

John Aubrey
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 161 pages of information about Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects.

J. H. Esq.* being at West-Lavington with the Earl of Abbingdon, dreamed, December the 9th, his mother rose up in mourning:  and anon the Queen appeared in mourning.  He told his dream the next morning to my Lord, and his Lordship imparted it to me (then there) Tuesday, December 11.  In the evening came a messenger, post from London, to acquaint Mr. H. that his mother was dangerously ill:  he went to London the next day; his mother lived but about eight days longer.  On Saturday, December 15, the Queen was taken ill, which turned to the small pox, of which she died, December 28, about two o’clock in the morning.

J. H. Against these initials there is a note in the copy of the first edition already referred to, in these words,-” James Herbert:  He saies he was never there.”

Sir Thomas White, Alderman of London, was a very rich man, charitable and public spirited.  He dreamt that he had founded a college at a place where three elms grow out of one root.  He went to Oxford, probably with that intention, and discovering some such tree near Gloucester Hall, he began to repair it, with a design to endow it.  But walking afterwards by the Convent where the Bcrnardines formerly lived, he plainly saw an elm with three large bodies rising out of the same root:  he forthwith purchased the ground, and endowed his college there, as it is at this day, except the additions which Arch-bishop Laud made, near the outside of which building in the garden belonging to the president, the tree is still to be seen.  He made this discovery about the year 1557.

There are millions of such dreams too little taken notice of, but they have the truest dreams whose IXth house is well dignified, which mine is not:  but must have some monitory dreams.  The Germans are great observers of them.  It is said in the life of Vavasor Powell, that he was a great observer of dreams, (p. 17 and 114, of his life) that he had many warnings from them, that God had spoken to himself and others by them; for warning, instruction, or reproof.  And it is also there averred, that Angels had appeared to him.  See p. 8, of his life.

In Mr. Walton’s life of Sir Hen.  Wotton, there is a remarkable story of the discovery of stolen plate in Oxford, by a dream which his father had at Bocton-Malherbe, in Kent.  See in Ath. & Fasti.  Oxon. vol. 1, p. 351,

William Penn, proprietor of Pensylvania, told me, that he went with his mother on a visit to Admiral Dean’s wife, who lived then in Petty-France; the Admiral was then at sea.  She told them, that, the night before, she had a perfect dream of her husband, whom she saw walking on the deck, and giving directions, and that a cannon bullet struck his arm into his side.  This dream did much discompose her, and within forty-eight hours she received news of the fight at sea, and that her husband was killed in the very manner aforesaid.

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Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.