“Yet let him vexed bee with arms and warres of people wilde,
And hunted out from place to place, an outlaw still exylde:
Let him go beg for helpe, and from his childe dissevered bee,
And death and slaughter vile of all his kindred let him see.”
The narrative goes on to say that the king’s majesty was “much discomposed” by this uncanny incident, and that Lord Falkland, in order to turn the king’s thoughts away from brooding over it, proposed making the trial himself.
We continue to draw irrefragable testimony to the truth of our position from the highest personages in the realm. Again, according to Wallington, Archbishop Laud, arch persecutor of the Puritans, has this passage in his diary: “That on such or such a day of the month he was made archbishop of Canterbury, and on that day, which was a great day of honor to him, his coach and horses sunk as they came over the ferry at Lambeth, in the ferry-boat, and he prayed that this might be no ill omen.”
Our pious ancestors put a good deal of faith in so-called “judgments,” or direct manifestations of the divine wrath toward evildoers, as all readers of Mather’s “Remarkable Providences” well know. But they were by no means alone in such beliefs. It is related of the poet Milton, after he became blind, that the Duke of York (later James II.) asked him if he did not consider the loss of his eyesight as a judgment inflicted upon him for what he had written of the late king. In reply Milton asked the duke, if such afflictions were to be regarded as judgments from heaven, in what manner he would account for the fate of the late king; ... he, the speaker, had only lost his eye, while the king had lost his head.”
John Josselyn, Gent., an Englishman, but no Puritan, who spent some time in New England, chiefly at Scarborough in Maine, published, in 1672, in England, a little book under the title of “New England’s Rarities Discovered.” Some things which Josselyn “discovered” would be rarities indeed to this generation. For instance, he describes the appearance of several prodigious apparitions—all of which has a value in enabling us properly to gauge the tone and temper of popular feeling where the book was written, and where it was published. One of his “rarities” is worth repeating here, if only for the pretty sentiment it embodies. He says of the twittering chimney-swallows, “that when about to migrate they commonly throw down (the chimney) one of their young into the room below, by way of gratitude,” presumably in return for the hospitalities of the house. He then goes on to say, “I have more than once observed that, against the ruin of a family, these birds will forsake the house and come no more.” This comes from a more or less close observer, who himself occupied the relation we desire to establish, namely that of a transplanted Englishman, so thoroughly grounded in old superstition that all the marvels he relates are told with an air of truth quite refreshing.
An amusing instance of how far prevalent superstition can lead astray minds usually enlightened is soberly set forth in Governor Winthrop’s celebrated history. It is a fit corollary to the organ superstition, just narrated.
“Mr. Winthrop the younger, one of the magistrates, having many books in a chamber, where there was corn of divers sorts, had among them one wherein the Greek Testament, the Psalter and the Common Prayer were bound together. He found the Common Prayer eaten with mice, every leaf of it, and not any of the two other touched, nor any other of his books, though there were above a thousand.”
All these superstitious beliefs were solemnly bequeathed by the fathers to their children under the sanction of a severe penal code, together with all the accumulated traditions of their own immediate ancestors. And in some form or other, whether masquerading under some thin disguise or foolish notion, superstition has continued from that day to this. As Polonius says:
“... ’Tis true, ’tis pity;
And pity ’tis ’tis true.”