might be; it was like slimy powder tempered with water; he smelling thereto, it was so odious even beyond expression, and in a far higher degree of loathsomness, than the scent which was in the church or tower when they first smelt it, it being of the same kind ; they supposing that strong smell came from that, which did overcome the sexton's and this searcher's stomach almost.

Yet all this while he found himself reasonable well, though much offended with smells; and, going home with Master Lyde to supper, he lodged at Master Rouse's, and went well to bed, and, an hour after, he felt something come upon him, as he thought, on the outside of his waist and belly, as if it were a cord twisted about him, two men pulling it with great strength, which griped him in that unspeakable manner three or four times, that he thought himself cut in sunder therewith, not having any breath, nor none knowing what to do to him; he could take nothing down, at present to ease him, but by and by, ridding his stomach by vomiting, being in a great and terrible sweat all this while, insomuch that the sheets, wherein he lay, might have been wringed; at last came up such a loathsome vomit, that smelt of the same nature that that did which he brought out of the steeple, and after this, taking some rest, he was very well, in the morning.

All which most sad and lamentable spectacles were done, as it were, in a moment of time.

This is the sum of those dismal accidents and terrible examples happening in the place aforesaid. And the main drift, in the publication of this great judgment, is for thy humiliation and edification, not only to acquaint thee with the great and mighty works of God's power and justice, who in a moment can do mighty things to us, and arm the creatures against us at his own pleasure, but also to move pity and compassion in us towards our brethren who were patients therein, not judging them greater sinners than ourselves; but believing, That except we also repent and sin no more, we shall likewise perish,' or worse things befall us. Which relation you can difficultly read without sighs, nor understand without tears. I know it is the fashion of too many to question and talk, and make things of this nature but a nine days wonder: But let us not deceive ourselves any longer, but consider, we have been lookers on a great while, and others have been made our examples, and felt the smart at home and abroad, whilst we have gone free; but we know not how soon our turns and changes may come; these accidents might as well have happened to us, as them; the Lord therefore in much mercy fit us both for the worst of times and the best of ends. I end all with that prayer in our Litany, commending thee, and this, to the blessing of the Almighty.

From lightning and tempest, from plague, pestilence, and famine, from battle and murder, and from sudden death,

Good Lord deliver us.

THE

MARQUIS OF HUNTLEY'S REPLY

ΤΟ

CERTAIN NOBLEMEN, GENTLEMEN, AND MINISTERS,

COVENANTERS OF SCOTLAND:

Sent from their Associates, to signify unto him, that it behoved him either to assist their designs, or to be carried to Prison in the Castle of Edinburgh, the 20th of April, 1639.

Now published, because of a false Copy thereof lately printed without authority, or his own consent, Quarto, containing four pages.

To be your prisoner is by much the less displeasing to me, that my accusation is for nothing else but loyalty; and that I have been been brought into this estate by such unfair means, as can never be made to appear honourable in those who used them.

Whereas you offer liberty, upon condition of my entering into your covenant, I am not so bad a merchant, as to buy it with the loss of my conscience, fidelity, and honour; which, in so doing, I should make account to be wholly perished.

I have already given my faith to my prince, upon whose head this crown, by all law of nature and nations is justly fallen, and will not falsify that faith by joining with any in a pretence of religion, which my own judgment cannot excuse from rebellion; for it is well known, that, in the primitive church, no arms were held lawful, being lifted by subjects against their lawful prince, though the whole frame of Christianity was then in question,

Whereas you would encourage me to be a partaker with you by your hopes of supply from France and other foreign nations, together with your so good intelligence in England, as that no danger will come from thence, let me tell you, that, in my opinion, the reasons are but vain, the French being now more strictly tied, than before, to uphold the authority of our sacred sovereign, by a new-cemented league of marriage, whereby their interest in his Majesty's progeny will over-balance you, though your cause were better. Other foreigners are merely unable by their own distractions, and the English have been ever strong enough for us, when only their own king, and not our's did lead them, For my own part, I am in your power, and resolved not to leave that foul title of Traitor as an inheritance upon my posterity; you may take my head from my shoulders, but not my heart from my sovereign.

A

QUESTION OF THE COCK,

AND

WHETHER HIS CROWING AFFRIGHTS THE LION?

Being one of those Questions handled in the weekly conferences of Monsieur Renaudot's Bureau d'Adresses, at Paris.

[Translated into English, Anno 1640, in six Quarto Pages.]

THE

son to

HE first man said thus: the Germans, going to the wars, had reatake a Cock with them to serve them for a spur and an example of watchfulness; whence came a custom to this day used by the mule-drivers; some of which tie a Cock upon the foremost carriage; and others, that will not trouble themselves with him, provide only a plume of his feathers. Upon the same ground Phidias made a statue of Minerva, bearing a Cock upon her helmet; unless you will rather think his reason to be, because this goddess is as well president of war as of study; both which have need of much vigilancy. Though this bird, for other causes, may be well enough said to pertain to her; as, for his being so warlike and courageous, as that he will not part with his desire of vanquishing, though it cost him his life; and this desire he prosecutes with such fury, that Cælius Aurelian reports, that a man fell mad, having only been pecked by a Cock in the heat of his fighting. For the passion of choler, being a short madness, is able exceedingly to raise the degree of heat in a temper already so extremely cholerick, that in time the body of a Cock becomes nitrous; and in this consideration it is prescribed to sick persons to make them laxative, and it is the better, if he were first well beaten, and plucked alive, and then boiled.

And this courage of the Cock moved Artaxerxes, King of Persia, when a soldier of Caria had slain Prince Cyrus, to grant him leave to bear a little Cock of gold upon his javelin, as a singular badge of his great valour. In imitation whereof, all the soldiers of the same province fell to wear the like upon the crests of their helmets; and were thence called Alectryons, that is in Latin, Galli, a name afterwards given to our nation*, and it may be for the like reason.

The Cock is also the hieroglyphick of victory, because he crows when he hath beaten his adversary; which gave occasion to the Lacedemonians to sacrifice a Cock, when they had overcome their enemies. He was also dedicated to Mars; and the poets feign that he was a young soldier, and placed for a centinel by this God of war when he went to

The Author was a Frencxmau.

lie with Venus, but feared the return of her husband; but, this watehman sleeping till after sun-rising, Mars and she were taken napping by Vulcan. Mars, being very angry, transformed this sleeper into a Cock for his negligence; whence, say they, it comes to pass, that, well remembering the cause of his transformation, he now gives warning when the sun draws near to our horizon. Which fable is as tolerable as that of the Alcoran, which attributes the crowing of our cocks to one that, as he saith, stands upon the first heaven, and is of so immense a hugeness, that his head toucheth the second; which Cock crows so loud, that he awakens all the Cocks upon the earth, that immediately they fall to provoking one another to do the like; as if there were one and the same instant of cock-crowing all over the face of the whole earth. The Cock was also dedicated to the sun, to the moon, and to the goddesses Latona, Ceres, and Proserpina; which was the cause that the novices, or those that were initiated in their mysteries, must not eat of a Cock. He was also dedicated to Mercury, because vigilancy and early rising is necessary for merchants; and therefore they painted him in the form of a man sitting, having a crest upon his head, with eagles feet, and holding a Cock upon his fist. But particularly he was consecrated to Esculapius, which made Socrates, at the point of death, to will his friends to sacrifice a cock to him, because his hemlock had wrought well. And Pyrrhus, curing men of the spleen, caused them to offer a white Cock, whereas Pythagoras forbade his followers to meddle with the life or nourishing of any of that calour.

The inhabitants of Calecut sacrifice a Cock to their deity, whom they conceive in the shape of a he-goat; and Acosta, out of Lucian, assures us, that anciently they worshipped a Cock for a God; which, Christianity not suffering, hath put them upon churches, the spires of steeples, and high buildings, calling them weather-cocks, because, as fans, they shew the coast whence the wind comes, unless you rather think they are set up in remembrance of St. Peter's repentance at the second crowing of a Cock.

The cause of his crowing is commonly attributed to his heat, which makes him rejoice at the approach of the sun, as being of his own temper; of which approach he is sooner sensible than others, because he more easily than any other creature receives the impression of the air, as appears by that harsh voice which he sometimes useth in crowing when he hath been newly moistened by the vapours; and, therefore, the countrymen count it an ordinary sign of rain. And forasmuch as the whole species of birds is more hot, dry, and light than the species of four-footed beasts; therefore the Lion, though he be a solar creature, as well as the Cock, yet is so in a lesser degree than he. Whence it comes to pass, that the Cock hath a pre-eminence over the Lion, which he understands not, till the crowing raise in his imagination some species which in him produce terror. Unless you will say, that the spirits of the Cock are communicated to the Lion, by means of his voice; for that is a thing more material, and so more capable to act than the spirits which come out of sore eyes, which nevertheless do infect those that are sound, if they look on them; nay, to speak with the poet, they do bewitch the very lambs,

The Second said, we must reckon this error (of a Cock scaring a Lion by crowing) among divers other vulgar ones, of which oftentimes the chairs and pulpits ring, as if they were certain truths, when, in the tryal, they prove stark false. It may be some tame lion, grown cowardly by the manner of his breeding, hath been seen affrighted by the shrill sound of some Cock crowing suddenly, and near to his ears; which will seem not unlikely to them that, in the beginning of March last past, were present at the intended combate in the tennis-court at Rochelle, between such a lion and a bull; at the sight of whom the lion was so afraid, that he bolted through the nets, throwing down the spectators which were there placed in great numbers, as thinking it a place of greater security; and, running thence, he hid himself, and could by no means be made re-enter the lists. Or it may be the novelty of this crowing surprised some lion that never heard it before, as having always lived far from any village or country-house where poultry are bred; and thereupon the lion at this first motion startled.

It is also possible, and most likely too, that the startle of choler, whereinto the lion falls as soon as any thing displeases him, was mistaken by somebody for a sign of fear, whereas it was a token of his indignation. For I see no shew of reason to imagine in this generous beast a true and universal fear of so small a matter as the voice of a Cock, seeing that this likeness of nature, which is attributed to them, should rather produce some sympathy than any aversion; and yet this enmity, if any were, and that as great as between wolves and sheep, ought no more to scare the lion than the bleating of a sheep affrights a wolf. But the wolf devours the sheep, and assimilates it to his own substance, rather for the good-will that he bears himself, than for any ill-will or hatred that he bears towards the sheep. Besides, we ordinarily see cocks and hens in the court-yards of the houses where lions are kept, which never make any shew of astonishment at their crowing. Nay, I remember, I have seen a young lion eat a cock; it is true, he did not crow any more than those of Nibas, a village near to Thessalonica, in Macedonia, where the cocks never crow. But the lion would have been content with tearing the Cock in pieces, and not have eaten him, if there had been such an antipathy between them as some imagine. But this error finds entertainment for the moral's sake, which they infer upon it, to shew us that the most hardy are not exempt from fear, which often-times arises whence it is least looked for. So that to ask, Why the Crowing of a Cock scares Lions, is to seek the causes of a thing that is not,

The Third said, we must not make so little account of the authority of our predecessors, as absolutely to deny what they have averred, the proof of which seems sufficiently tried by the continued experience of so many ages; for to deny a truth, because we know not the reason of it, is to imitate Alexander, who cut the Gordian knot, because he could not unty it. It is better, in the nature of the Cock and his voice, to seek a cause of the fright of the Lion, who being a creature always in a fever, by his excessive cholerick distemper, of which his hair and his violence are tokens; great noise is to him as intolerable as