This information I had from Fabian Philips, Esq. of the Inner-temple, who had good authority for the truth of it:  I have forgot who it was.

The Lord Roscomon, being a boy of ten years of age at Caen in Normandy, one day was (as it were) madly extravagant in playing, leaping, getting over the table-boards, &c.

He was wont to be sober enough:  they said, God grant this bodes no ill luck to him; in the heat of this extravagant fit, he cries out, my father is dead.  A fortnight after news came from Ireland, that his father was dead.  This account I had from Mr. Knolles, who was his governor, and then with him; since Secretary to the Earl of Stafford, and I have heard his Lordship’s relations confirm the same.

A very good friend of mine and old acquaintance, hath had frequent impulses; when he was a commoner at Trinity College, Oxford, he had several.  When he rode towards the West one time in the stage coach, he told the company, " We shall certainly be robbed,” and they were so.  When a brother of his, a merchant, died, he left him with other effects, a share of a ship, which was returning from Spain, and of which news was brought to the Exchange at London of her good condition; he had such an impulse upon his spirit, that he must needs sell his share, though to loss; and he did sell it.  The ship came safe to Cornwall, (or Devon) and somewhere afterwards fell upon the rocks and sunk:  not a man perished; but all the goods were lost except some parrots, which were brought for Queen Katherine.

The good genius of Socrates is much remembered, which gave him warning.  The Ethnick Genij are painted like our Angels; strong impulses are to be referred to them.

The learned Dr. John Pell, hath told me, that he did verily believe, that some of his solutions of difficult problems were not done “Sine Domino auxilio”.

Mr. J. N. a very understanding gentleman, and not superstitious, protested to me, that when he hath been over-persuaded by friends to act contrary to a strong impulse, that he never succeeded.

KNOCKINGS.

R. Baxter’s Certainty of the World of Spirits.  “A gentleman, formerly seemingly pious, of late years hath fallen into the sin of drunkenness; and when he has been drunk, and slept himself sober, something knocks at his beds-head, as if one knocked on a wainscot; when they remove the bed, it follows him, besides loud noises on other parts where he is, that all the house heareth”.

" It poseth me to think what kind of spirit this is, that hath such a care of this man’s soul, (which makes me hope he will recover).  Do good spirits dwell so near us ? or, are they sent on such messages ? or, is it his guardian Angel ? or, is it the soul of some dead friend, that suffereth and yet retaining love to him, as Dives did to his brethren, would have him saved ?  God keepeth yet such things from us in the dark.”