Again, in the dark ages, when magic was publicly professed in the universities, we read of a sovereign who entered boldly into the cheat. Eric XIV. of Sweden, surnamed “Windy Cap,” had his enchanted cap, and pretended by the additional assistance of some magical jargon to be able to command spirits to trouble the air, and to turn the winds themselves; so that, when a great storm arose, his ignorant subjects believed that the King had got his conjuring cap on; and from this fact, it is said, originated the custom of mountebanks and conjurers playing their tricks in a conjuring cap. But it would seem that this strange and eccentric monarch, who looked upon every man with suspicion, and “interpreted the most natural and insignificant of gestures as some dreadful telegraphing of hideous treason,” rarely appeared in public, and never without a superstitious dread of impending calamity. The Emperor Basil, who was originally a Macedonian groom, and whose fortune had been assured by the prophecy of crafty and acute monks, anticipated one of the foolish superstitions of later times by applying to the spirit of a deceased son to know how it went with him after death. Indeed, under a variety of forms, the history of most countries affords many a curious instance of monarchs seeking, or deriving, information by supernatural agency. Thus Louis, eldest son of King Philip III. of France by his first wife, Isabel of Aragon, having died somewhat suddenly, his death was attributed to poison. Peter de la Brosse, whom the King had made a confidant, advancing him to high dignities, did not shrink from insinuating that the Queen--Maria of Brabant--was guilty of this act, and that she was capable of inflicting the same fate upon all the King’s children by Isabel. Accordingly, the King resolved to consult a soothsayer, and of the two or three persons who were mentioned to him as possessing the gift of what nowadays is popularly designated clairvoyance, a kind of beguine, or begging nun, from Flanders was selected as having most reputation. Philip sent the Abbot of St. Denis to question her, but her answers he considered too serious to repeat, excusing himself that what he had heard was under the secret of the confessional. The King, in a fit of anger, sent further messengers, who informed the beguine that they came from the King of France, and they received from her the best possible character of the Queen. The King was satisfied, and lost much of his trust and friendship for Peter de la Brosse. Some time was allowed to elapse, when the grandees, who were bent on his ruin, discovered, or pretended to discover, a treasonable correspondence of his which caused him to be hanged.[177]