A Prophecy.

Sexte verere Deos; vitae tibi terminus instat,
Cum tuus in media ardebit Carbunculus igne.

0 thou sixth King to God due honours pay, Remember Prince soon after thou’lt expire, When thou behold’st thy carbuncle display, Blaze against blaze amidst the red’ning fire.

These verses were made by George Buchanan; but (perhaps) the prediction was made by some second-sighted person.  King James, of Scotland, the sixth, was taken with an ague, at Trinity-College in Cambridge; he removed to Theobald’s; (where he died)sitting by the fire, the carbuncle fell out of his ring into the fire, according to the prediction.  This distich is printed in the life of King James.

Before the civil wars, there was much talk of the Lady Anne Davys’s prophesies; for which she was kept prisoner in the tower of London.  She was sister to the Earl of Castle-heaven, and wife to Sir John Davys, Lord Chief Justice in Ireland; I have heard his kinsman (Counsellor Davys of Shaftesbury) say, that she being in London, (I think in the tower) did tell the very time of her husband’s death in Ireland.

MIRANDA.

Our English chronicles do record, that in the reign of King Henry III.  A child was born in Kent, that at two years old cured all diseases.  Several persons have been cured of the King’s-evil by the touching, or handling of a seventh son.  It must be a seventh son, and no daughter between, and in pure wedlock.

Samuel Scot, seventh son of Mr. William Scot of Hedington in Wiltshire, did when a child wonderful cures by touching only, viz. as to the King’s-evil, wens, &c. but as he grew to be a man, the virtue did decrease, and had he lived longer, perhaps might have been spent.  A servant boy of his father’s was also a seventh son, but he could do no cures at all.  I am very well satisfied of the truth of this relation, for I knew him very well, and his mother was my kinswoman.

’Tis certain, the touch of a dead hand, hath wrought wonderful effects, e. g. — One(a painter) of Stowel in Somersetshire, near Bridgewater, had a wen in the inside of his cheek, as big as a pullet’s egg, which by the advice of one was cured by once or twice touching or rubbing with a dead woman’s hand, (e contra, to cure a woman, a dead man’s hand) he was directed first to say the Lord’s prayer, and to beg a blessing.  He was perfectly cured in a few weeks.  I was at the man’s house who attested it to me, as also to the reverend Mr. Andrew Paschal, who went with me.

Mr. Davys Mell, (the famous violinist and clock-maker) had a child crook-backed, that was cured after the manner aforesaid, which Dr. Ridgley, M.D. of the college of physicians, averred in my hearing.

The curing of the King’s-evil by the touch of the King, does much puzzle our philosophers:  for whether our Kings were of the house of York, or Lancaster, it did the cure (i. e.) for the most part.  ’Tis true indeed at the touching there are prayers read, but perhaps, neither the King attends them nor his chaplains.