This story may be true in all its details, except the name of the lady, who was a daughter of Sir W. Long; she married Somerset Fox, Esq.  See Sandford’s Geneal.  Hist, of the Kings of England, p. 344.

See Sir Walter Raleigh’s history, book 4, chap. 2, sec. 7.  The dogs of the French army, the night before the battle of Novara, ran all to the Swisses army:  the next day, the Swisses obtained a glorious victory of the French.  Sir Walter Raleigh affirms it to be certainly true.

The last battle fought in the north of Ireland, between the Protestants and the Papists, was in Glinsuly near Letterkenny in the county of Donegall.  Veneras, the Bishop of Clogher, was General of the Irish army; and that of the Parliament army, Sir Charles Coot.  They pitched their tents on each side the river Suly, and the Papists constantly persist in it to this very day, that the night before the action,* a woman of uncommon stature, all in white, appearing to the said Bishop, admonished him not to cross the river first, to assault the enemy, but suffer them to do it, whereby he should obtain the victory.  That if the Irish took the water first to move towards the English, they should be put to a total rout, which came to pass.  Ocahan, and Sir Henry O’Neal, who were both killed there, saw severally the same apparition, and dissuaded the Bishop from giving the first onset, but could not prevail upon him.  In the mean time, I find nothing in this revelation, that any common soldier might not conclude without extraordinary means.

So an apparition of a woman greater than ordinary, beckoned to Julius Caesar to pass over the Rubicon, L. Flor. lib. 4.  Satyres appeared to Alexander when he besieged Tyrus; Alexander asked the divines, what was the signification of it; they told him the meaning is plain, {Greek Text:  Sa Turos} (i.e.) Tyre is thine.  Alexander took the town.  Q. Curtius.

Near the same place, a party of the Protestants had been surprized sleeping by the Popish Irish, were it not for several wrens that just wakened them by dancing and pecking on the drums as the enemy were approaching.  For this reason the wild Irish mortally hate these birds, to this day, calling them the Devil’s servants, and killing them wherever they catch them; they teach their Children to thrust them full of thorns:  you will see sometimes on holidays, a whole parish running like mad men from hedge to hedge a wren-hunting.

Anno 1679.  After the discovery of the Popish plot, the penal laws were put in execution against the Roman Catholics; so that, if they did not receive the sacrament according to the church of England, in their parish church, they were to be severely proceeded against according to law:  Mr. Ployden, to avoid the penalty, went to his parish church at Lasham, near Alton, in Hampshire:  when Mr. Laurence (the minister) had put the chalice into Mr. Ployden’s hand, the cup of it (wherein the wine was) fell off.  ’Tis true, it was out of order before; and he had a tremor in his hand.  The communion was stopt by this accident.  This was attested to me by two neighbouring ministers, as also by several gentlemen of the neighbourhood.