" Also at Berlin, when one shall die out of the electoral house of Brandenburgh, a woman drest in white linen appears always to several, without speaking, or doing any harm, for several weeks before". This from Jasper Belshazer Cranmer, a Saxon gentleman.
BLOWS INVISIBLE.
MR. BROGRAVE, of Hamel, near Puckridge in Hertfordshire, when he was a young man, riding in a lane in that county, had a blow given him on his cheek: (or head) he looked back and saw that nobody was near behind him; anon he had such another blow, I have forgot if a third. He turned back, and fell to the study of the law; and was afterwards a Judge. This account I had from Sir John Penruddocke of Compton- Chamberlain, (our neighbour) whose Lady was Judge Brograve's niece.
Newark (Sir G. L.'s) has knockings before death. And there is a house near Covent Garden that has warnings. The Papists are full of these observations.
The like stories are reported of others.
PROPHESIES.
CICERO de Divinatione, Lib. 1. "—gentem quidem nullam video, neque tam humanam atque doctam: neque tam immanem tam; barbaram, quae non significari futura, & a quibusdam intelligi, praedicique posse censeat".
i. e. I know of no country, either so polished and learned, or so rude, barbarous and uncivilized, but what always allowed that some particular persons are gifted with an insight into futurity, and are endued with a talent of prediction.
To pass by the prophesies of holy writ, the prophesies of Nostradamus do foretel very strangely; but not easily understood till they are fulfilled. The book is now common.
Peter Martyr, in his Decades, tells us, that there was a prophet among the Salvages in America, that did foretel the coming in of strangers in ships, which they had not known.