For 'tis thy presence that exhales this blood
From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells;
Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural,
Provokes this deluge most unnatural:"[372:A]
and Drayton seems to have been a firm believer in the same preternatural effect; for he informs us in his forty sixth Idea, that,
"In making trial of a murther wrought,
If the vile actors of the heinous deed,
Near the dead body happily be brought,
Oft't hath been prov'd the breathless corps will bleed."[373:A]
Of the prose authorities, besides Lupton, and Sir Kenelm Digby mentioned in the notes of the Variorum Edition of our author, Lavaterus, Reginald Scot, and King James may be quoted, as reposing an implicit faith in the miracle. The first of these writers tells us, in his English dress, of 1572, that "some men beeing slayne by theeves, when the theeves come to the dead body, by and by there gusheth out freshe blood, or else there is declaration by other tokens, that the theefe is there present;" and he then adds, "touching these and other such marvellous things there might be many histories and testimonies alleaged. But whosoever readeth this booke, may call to their remembraunce, that they have scene these and suche like things themselves, or that they have heard them of their freends and acquaintaunce and of such as deserve sufficient credit."[373:B] The second, in 1584, justifying what he terms common experience, says, "I have heard by credible report, and I have read many grave authors constantlie affirme, that the wound of a man murthered reneweth bleeding; at the presence of a deere freend, or of a mortall enimie[373:C];" and the third, in 1603, asserts, that "in a secret murther, if the dead carkasse bee at any time thereafter handled by the murtherer, it will gush out of bloud, as if the bloud were crying to the heaven for revenge of the murtherer, God having appointed that secret supernaturall signe, for triall of that secret unnaturall crime."[373:D]