The beautiful Lady Diana Rich, daughter to the Earl of Holland, as
she was walking in her father's garden at Kensington, to take the
fresh air before dinner, about eleven o'clock, being then very well,
met with her own apparition, habit, and every thing, as in a looking-
glass. About a month after, she died of the small-pox. And it
is said that her sister, the Lady Isabella Thynne, saw the like of
herself also, before she died. This account I had from a person of
honour.
Mrs. E. W. daughter of Sir W. W. affirms that Mrs. J. (her father's
sister) saw herself, i. e. her phantom, half a year before she died,
for a quarter of an hour together. She said further, that her aunt
was sickly fourteen years before she died, and that she walked
living, i. e. her apparition, and that she was seen by several at the
same time. The like is reported of others.
Mr. Trahern, B.D. (chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgman, Lord Keeper) a
learned and sober person, was son of a shoe-maker in Hereford: one
night as he lay in bed, the moon shining very bright, he saw the
phantom of one of the apprentices, sitting in a chair in his red
waistcoat, and head-band about his head, and strap upon his knee;
which apprentice was really in bed and asleep with another fellow-
apprentice, in the same chamber, and saw him. The fellow was living,
1671. Another time, as he was in bed, he saw a basket come sailing in
the air, along by the valence of his bed; I think he said there was
fruit in the basket: it was a phantom. From himself.
When Sir Kichard Nepier, M.D. of London, was upon the road coming
from Bedfordshire, the chamberlain of the inn, shewed him his
chamber, the doctor saw a dead man lying upon the bed; he looked more
wistly and saw it was himself: he was then well enough in health. He
went forward on his journey to Mr. Steward's in Berkshire, and there
died. This account I have in a letter from Elias Ashmole, Esq. They
were intimate friends.
"In the Desarts of Africk, you shall meet oftentimes with fairies
appearing in the shape of men and women, but they vanish quite away
like phantastical delusions."*
* Pliny's Natural Hist. lib. 7, chap. 2.
I Captain Henry Bell, do hereby declare both to the present age and
to posterity, that being employed beyond the seas, in state affairs,
divers years together, both by King James, and also by the late King
Charles in Germany. I did hear and understand in all places great
bewailing and lamentation made, by reason of destroying and burning
of above fourscore thousand of Martin Luther's books, entituled, His
last Divine Discourses.**
** This narrative is in the Preface of the translation of Mr. Luther's
Table-Talk.
Upon which divine work or discourses, the reformation, begun before
in Germany, was wonderfully promoted and spread in other countries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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