“Great duke rejoice in this your day of birth,
And may such omens still increase your mirth.”
Afterwards he relates, from Matthew Paris, that when “Lewis king of France had set footing here, and took some eminent places, he besieged Calais from 22 of July, to the Fourteenth of October following, about which time the siege was raised, and England thereby relieved.” Likewise “a memorable peace, (foretold by Nostradamus) much conducing to the saving of christian blood, was made upon the Fourteenth of October, 1557, between pope Paul the IV., Henry the II. of France, and Philip the II. of Spain.” Whereon, exclaims our exultant author, “A lucky day this, not only to the princes of England, but auspicious to the welfare of Europe.” He concludes by declaring “that it may be so to his royal highness, as well as it was to the most great queen his mother, are the hearty prayers of Blew-Mantle.”
From the conclusion of the last sentence, and the previous reference to his “Blasoniam,” we find this writer to have been John Gibbon, the author of “An Easie Introduction to Latine Blason, being both Latine and English”—an octavo volume, now only remembered by the few collectors of every thing written on “coat-armour.”
Gibbon speaks of one of his pamphlets “whose title should have been Dux Bonis Omnibus Appellens, or The Swans’ Welcome;” or rather, as he afterwards set it out at large, “Some Remarks upon the Note-worthy Passage, mentioned in the True Domestick Intelligence dated October the Fourteenth 1679, concerning a company of Swans more than ordinary gathered together at his royal highness’s landing.” Instead, however, of its having such a title, he tells us “there was a strange mistake, not only in that, but in other material circumstances; so that many suppose, the printer could never have done it himself, but borrowed the assistance of the evil spirit to render it ridiculous, and not only so, but the very Duke himself and the Loyal Artillery!”, wherefore “the printer smothered the far greatest number of them,” yet, as he adds it to the tract on the Fourteenth of October, we have the advantage to be told “what authors say of the candid Swan,” that all esteem him for a “bird royal,” that “oftentimes in coats and crests we meet him either crown’d or coronally collar’d,” that “he is a bird of great beauty and strength also,” that “shipmen take it for good luck if in peril of shipwreck they meet swans,” that “he uses not his strength to prey or tyrannize over any other fowl, but only to be revenged of such as offer him wrong,” and so forth. Ergo—according to “Blew-mantle,” we should believe that, “the most serene king James II.” was greeted by these honourable birds, “in allegory assembled,” to signify his kindred virtues. If Gibbon lived from 1687, where he published his “Remarques, on the Fourteenth of October” as the auspicious birth-day of James II. until the landing of William III. in the following year—did he follow the swan-like monarch to the court of France, or remain “Blew-mantle” in the Herald’s college, to do honour to the court of “the deliverer?”
Gibbon, in his “Remarques,” on the “auspicious” Fourteenth of October, prints the following epistle, to himself, which may be regarded as a curiosity on account of the superstition of its writer.
A letter from Sir Winston Churchil, Knight; Father to the Right Honourable, John Lord Churchil.
I Thank you for your kind Present, the Observation of the Fatality of Days. I have made great Experience of the Truth of it; and have set down Fryday, as my own Lucky Day; the Day on which I was Born, Christen’d, Married, and, I believe, will be the Day of my Death: The Day whereon I have had sundry Deliverances, (too long to relate) from Perils by Sea and Land, Perils by False Brethren, Perils of Law Suits, &c. I was Knighted (by chance, unexpected by my self) on the same Day; and have several good Accidents happened to me, on that Day: And am so superstitious in the Belief of its good Omen, That I chuse to begin any Considerable Action (that concerns me) on the same Day. I hope HE, whom it most concerns, will live to own your Respect, and Good Wishes, expressed in That Essay of yours: Which discovering a more than common Affection to the DUKE, and being as valuable for the Singularity of the Subject, as the Ingenuity of your Fancy, I sent into Flanders, as soon as I had it; That They on the Other Side the Water may see, ’Tis not all sowre Wine, that runs from our English Press.
“The Right Honourable, John Lord Churchil,” mentioned at the head of this ominous letter, became celebrated as “the great duke of Marlborough.” Sir Winston Churchill was the author of “Divi Britannici, a history of the lives of the English kings” in folio; but his name is chiefly remembered in connection with his son’s, and from his having also been father to Arabella Churchill, who became mistress to the most serene king of Blew-Mantle Gibbon, and from that connection was mother of the duke of Berwick, who turned his arms against the country of her birth.