[74] It should be stated that prior to the publication of the work in a book form the greater part of the eclipse observations had been published in the Mémoires de l’Institut National des Sciences et Arts: Sciences Mathématiques et Physiques, tome ii.
[75] Letter in the Times, July 19, 1872.
[76] J. F. J. Schmidt, Ast. Nach., vol. lxxvii. p. 127, Feb. 1, 1871.
[77] Memoirs, R.A.S., vol. xxvi. p. 131, 1858.
[78] J. L. E. Dreyer, Nature, vol. xvi. p. 549, Oct. 25, 1877.
CHAPTER XII.
ECLIPSES OF THE SUN MENTIONED IN HISTORY.—MEDIÆVAL AND MODERN.
One of the most celebrated eclipses of mediæval times was that of August 2, 1133, visible as a total eclipse in Scotland. It was considered a presage of misfortune to Henry I. and was thus referred to by William of Malmesbury[80]:—
“The elements manifested their sorrow at this great man’s last departure from England. For the Sun on that day at the 6th hour shrouded his glorious face, as the poets say, in hideous darkness agitating the hearts of men by an eclipse; and on the 6th day of the week early in the morning there was so great an earthquake that the ground appeared absolutely to sink down; an horrid noise being first heard beneath the surface.”
This eclipse is also alluded to in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle though the year is wrongly given as 1135 instead of 1133 as it certainly was. The Chronicle says:—“In this year King Henry went over sea at Lammas, and the second day as he lay and slept on the ship the day darkened over all lands; and the Sun became as it were a three-night-old Moon, and the stars about it at mid-day. Men were greatly wonder-stricken and affrighted, and said that a great thing should come hereafter. So it did, for the same year the king died on the following day after St. Andrew’s Mass day, Dec. 2, in Normandy.” The king did die in 1135, but there was no eclipse of the August new Moon, and without doubt the writer has muddled up the year of the eclipse and of the king’s departure from England (to which he never returned) and the year of his death. Calvisius states that this eclipse was observed in Flanders and that the stars appeared.