A prophecy of the discovery of America. The daughter of Polycrates[389] dreamed that Jupiter bathed her father, and Apollo anointed him; and it came to pass that he was crucified in an open place, where the sun made his body run with sweat, and the rain washed it. Philip of Macedon dreamed he sealed up his wife’s belly, whereby he did expound it, that his wife should be barren; but Aristander the soothsayer told him his wife was with child, because men do not use to seal vessels that are empty.[390] A phantasm that appeared to M. Brutus in his tent, said to him, “Philippis iterum me videbis.”[391] Tiberius said to Galba, “Tu quoque, Galba, degustabis imperium.”[392] In Vespasian’s time, there went a prophecy in the East, that those that should come forth of Judea, should reign over the world; which, though it may be was meant of our Saviour, yet Tacitus expounds it of Vespasian.[393] Domitian dreamed, the night before he was slain, that a golden head was growing out of the nape of his neck;[394] and, indeed, the succession that followed him, for many years, made golden times. Henry the Sixth of England said of Henry the Seventh, when he was a lad, and gave him water, “This is the lad that shall enjoy the crown for which we strive.” When I was in France, I heard from one Dr. Pena, that the queen mother,[395] who was given to curious arts, caused the king her husband’s nativity to be calculated under a false name; and the astrologer gave a judgment, that he should be killed in a duel; at which the queen laughed, thinking her husband to be above challenges and duels; but he was slain upon a course at tilt, the splinters of the staff of Montgomery going in at his beaver. The trivial prophecy which I heard when I was a child, and Queen Elizabeth was in the flower of her years, was, “When hempe is spunne, England’s done;” whereby it was generally conceived, that after the princes had reigned which had the principal letters of that word hempe (which were Henry, Edward, Mary, Philip, and Elizabeth), England should come to utter confusion; which, thanks be to God, is verified only in the change of the name; for that the king’s style is now no more of England, but of Britain.[396] There was also another prophecy before the year of eighty-eight, which I do not well understand. “There shall be seen upon a day, Between the Baugh and the May, The black fleet of Norway. When that that is come and gone, England build houses of lime and stone, For after wars you shall have none.” It was generally conceived to be meant of the Spanish fleet that came in eighty-eight; for that the king of Spain’s surname, as they say, is Norway. The prediction of Regiomontanus, “Octogesimus octavus mirabilis annus,”[397]