Chapter D: D. translates the quatrain, oddly enough, as follows

In regione aëris sublunari,
Mercurius shall govern,
When a light shall be born in Scotland,
Which will put England into great disorder.

We have here the stars in their courses fighting against King Charles, and, as soon as we had disposed of the historical remarks appended to the quatrain by D. D., our intention was to have thrown together some of the fatalistic signs of the time and the ill omens that attended this unhappy monarch almost throughout life, but unfortunately this intention must be laid aside for the present.

In 1609 James I. tried to induce the Scotch to conform to some sort of uniformity in Church ceremony, but he stopped short of endeavouring to thrust it down their throats. Archbishop Laud was less moderate. With the zealous persistency of a shard-borne beetle flying against a stone wall, he, in 1637 advised Charles to introduce the English Liturgy into the churches of Scotland, _auctoritate regis_. It was flying in the face of Fate. _Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat._

Next to the folly of establishing it, was the folly of its public withdrawal in less than twelve months’ time. It was established by royal mandate, July 23, 1637, and by royal proclamation, June 20, 1638, withdrawn; a further undertaking being given that no English ceremonies should be thrust upon the Church of Scotland. Any tyro in statesmanship would have known that this course was doomed to fail utterly. Having taken the first inconsiderate step, it should have received no other impulse from England; private instructions should have been communicated to the chief clergy that no proceedings would be taken to enforce the law, and it would have died down of itself. As it was, the concession came too late, and gave the Scotch time to enter into a covenant never to permit the establishment of the English ritual; or, as they called it, the English _Service Book_. The fault was committed that, over and over again, the English commit as to Irish affairs; the yielding to outside pressure. Contentious opposition should be crushed by force first, and then conceded to as of grace. You will never get thanks from any party for having yielded to their threats. This only cemented disaffection; and, in 1643, England, puritanically urged, went further still, and established the _Solemn League_ to like effect. This was a pure piece of political claptrap intended to secure general disaffection.

In 1641 the discontent had spread into Ireland, and, as usual in such cases, English reasoning and Scotch logic developed into bloodshed on the other side of St. George’s Channel. The English often content themselves with ink and oratory, but an Irish Celt prefers to record his dissent in a rubric of blood. During the first four months of antagonism, the rebellion under Phelim O’Neil caused the massacre of 40,000 English Protestants in Ulster: D. D. says 150,000, massacred by Papists, and they could be reckoned up by name. But where he got his list I do not know. His comment on this is: _Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum_. His quotation is not correct; I hope the same may be said of his statistics.

As we all know, Laud expiated his mistake with his head on Tower Hill, and the King himself was to follow on five years later at Whitehall, after being surrendered for money by the Scotch to the English. As Nostradamus puts it [II. 53], _Du juste sang par pris damné sans crime_.

King Charles was only twenty-five when he ascended the throne, labouring in that respect under almost the same disadvantage as Louis XVI. Both of these kings could derive but little wisdom from the Council-table. Charles’s early acts consequently were rash, and those of the French King speculative rather than practical. Clarendon, in his History (i. 23, ed. 1731), devotes a paragraph or two of great interest to the impeachment of the Earl of Middlesex (Lionel Cranfield). Clarendon admits him to have been “a man of great wit and understanding,” and to have held every place with great ability. He had been raised by Buckingham from a city trader to a statesman, and in his success seems to have quite forgotten the patron to whom he owed it. The rash Buckingham, on his return from the Spanish Quixotism, influenced the House of Commons to impeach him; altogether overlooking the consequences of employing such a machinery to revenge a private pique, and he must needs drag in the young Prince Charles to help him. The King foresaw the evil. “The wise King,” says Clarendon, “knew well enough the ill consequence,”[200] and he sent for these two,—his son and Buckingham—to lecture them if possible into wisdom. He pointed out that it wounded the Crown and shook his authority, as Ministers would thus have to look to the House, and not to the King alone, as heretofore. At last he burst out in choler: “By God, Steenie, you are a fool, and will shortly repent this folly, and will find that, in this fit of popularity, you are making a rod with which you will be scourged yourself!” He then turned to the prince, and told him: “You will live to have your bellyfull of Parliament impeachments; and, when I shall be dead, you will have too much cause to remember how much you have contributed to the weakening of the Crown by the two precedents you are now so fond of,” _i.e._ engaging the Parliament in the war, and the prosecution of Cranfield. It was, indeed, to teach the many-headed (which is equal to no head) beast to taste blood. Here, indeed, a King turns prophet; foreseeing, from existing facts misdirected, what future evils will arise. This, of course, is quite different from Nostradamus. “Flambe exigue sortant de solitude” [I. 1], and all that can be got out of visions of the night by secret estude or otherwise.

CHARLES II.—CAPITULATION OF EDINBURGH (DECEMBER 12, 1650).

_Century VIII.—Quatrain 40._

Le sang du Juste par[201] Taurer la daurade,
Pour se venger contre les Saturnins
Au nouveau lac plongeront la maynade,
Puis marcheront contre les Albanins.

The above is the reading in the texte-type, 1558. D. D.’s version runs as below:

Le sang du juste, par Tore et les Torads,
Pour se venger contre les Saturnins:
Au nouveau lac plongeront la Menade,
Puis marcheront contre les Albanins.

He translates thus—

The blood of the righteous, for Torah and Torees’ sakes, cries
for vengeance against the Saturnine rebels, who will plunge
the priestess of Bacchus, _la menade_, into the sea of their
novelties, and march afterwards against the Scotch.