August 29.
St. John Baptist beheaded.
The anniversary of the baptist’s decollation is in the church of England calendar. His death is known to have been occasioned by his remonstrance to Herod against his notorious cruelties. “In consequence of this,” says Mr. Audley, “Herod imprisoned him in the castle of Machærus, and would have put him to death, but was afraid of the people.” Herodias also would have killed John, had it been in her power. At length, on Herod’s birthday, Salome, the daughter of Herodias, by her former husband, Philip, danced before him, his captains, and chief estates, or the principal persons of Galilee. This so pleased Herod, that he “promised her, with an oath, whatsoever she should ask, even to the half of his kingdom.” Hearing this, she ran to her mother and said, “what shall I ask?” The mother, without hesitation, replied, “the head of John the Baptist.” Herod was exceedingly sorry when he heard such a request; but out of regard to his oaths and his guests, he immediately sent an executioner to behead John in prison. This was instantly done, and the head being brought in a charger, was given to Salome; and she, forgetting the tenderness of her sex, and the dignity of her station, carried it to her mother.
Jerome says, that “Herodias treated the baptist’s head in a very disdainful manner, pulling out the tongue which she imagined had injured her, and piercing it with a needle.” Providence, however, as Dr. Whitby observes, interested itself very remarkably in the revenge of this murder on all concerned. Herod’s army was defeated in a war occasioned by his marrying Herodias, which many Jews thought a judgment on him for the death of John. Both he, and Herodias, whose ambition occasioned his ruin, were afterwards driven from their kingdom, and died in banishment, at Lyons, in Gaul. And if any credit may be given to Nicephorus, Salome, the young lady who made the cruel request, fell into the ice as she was walking over it, which, closing suddenly, cut off her head.
It is added by Mr. Audley, that the abbot Villeloin says in his memoirs, “the head of St. John the Baptist was saluted by him at Amiens, and it was the fifth or sixth he had had the honour to kiss.”
Archbishop Chicheley.
Lord Orford, in a letter dated the 29th of August, says, “I have just been reading a new public history of the colleges of Oxford, by Anthony Wood, and there found a feature in a character that always offended me, that of archbishop Chicheley, who prompted Henry V. to the invasion of France, to divert him from squeezing the overgrown clergy. When that priest meditated founding All Souls college, and ‘consulted his friends, who seem to have been honest men, what great matters of piety he had best perform to God in his old age, he was advised by them to build an hospital for the wounded and sick soldiers, that daily returned from the wars then had in France.’ I doubt his grace’s friends thought as I do of his artifice.—‘But,’ continues the historian, ‘disliking these motions, and valuing the welfare of the deceased more than the wounded and diseased, he resolved with himself to promote his design—which was to have masses said for the king, queen, and himself, &c., while living, and for their souls when dead;’ and that mummery, the old foolish rogue, thought more efficacious than ointments and medicines for the wretches he had made! and of the chaplains and clerks he instituted in that dormitory, one was to teach grammar, and another prick song. How history makes one shudder and laugh by turns!”