“Du regne Anglois le digne dechassé[60] Le conseiller par ire[61] mis à feu, Ses adherents iront si bas tracer,[62] Que le bastard sera demy receu.” “He who had a right to the kingdom of England is displaced, is _mis à feu_, sacrificed to the heat of popular fury. His adherents descend to such a depth of baseness that the bastard (or usurper) will be half received by the kingdom.” That is to say, Charles I. will be deprived of power after having yielded up Strafford to the popular fury, in the hope of escaping himself. The Scotch (old adherents) will be so base as to sell him for two millions to the Cromwellites, who put him to death, and Cromwell becoming Protector, and not quite king, therefore will obtain an almost royal bastard, _i.e._, a half reception (à demy receu). CENTURY IX. QUATRAIN 49. “Gand et Bruceles marcheront contre[63] Anvers, Senat de Londres mettront à mort leur Roy: Le sel et vin luy seront à l’envers, Pour eux avoir le regne en desarroy.” “When Ghent and Brussels march over against Antwerp,[64] the Senate of London, or the Long Parliament, will put their king to death. Force and wisdom (vin et sel[65]) will be wanting to Charles’s councils (lui seront à l’envers), and they (the Independents) will in the general disorder become masters of the kingdom.” CENTURY VIII. QUATRAIN 76. “Plus Macelin[66] que Roi en Angleterre, Lieu obscur nay par force aura l’Empire, Lasche, sans foy, sans loy, saignera terre; Son tems s’approche si près qui je souspire.” “More butcher than king in England, a man of obscure birth [_né_ en lieu obscur] by force shall obtain the Empire. Unprincipled, restrained by neither faith nor law, he will drench the earth with blood. His time approaches so near as to make me heave a sigh.” This is an announcement of such unparalleled and terrific import that Nostradamus exhibits more feeling over it than he does usually over his prognostications. The butcher-like face of Cromwell, with its fleshy conch and hideous warts, seems to have been visually present to him, and to have struck him with such a sense of terror and vividness that he imagines the time must be very near at hand. Though a full century had to elapse, he sighs with a present shudder, and the blood creeps. One of the remarkable features throughout the work of Nostradamus is the general absence of any sense of time apart from the mere enumeration of years as an algebraic or arithmetical sign; on this momentous occasion he departs from his usual practice, and stands horror-stricken as in a fearful vision. CENTURY X. QUATRAIN 100. “Le grand Empire sera par Angleterre Le Pempotan des ans plus de trois cens: Grandes copies passer par mer et terre, Les Lusitains n’en serons par contens.”