much shaken, and eight great pewter dishes, and three dozen of pewter trenchers, thrown about the bed-chamber again, whereof some fell upon the beds: this night they also thought whole armfuls of the wood of the King's oak had been thrown down in their chambers, but of that, in the morning they found nothing had been moved. October 21, the keeper of their ordinary and his bitch, lay in one of the rooms with them, which night they were not disturbed at all; but October 22, though the bitch kennelled there again (to whom they ascribed their former night's rest) both they and the bitch were in a pitiful taking; the bitch opening but once, and that with a fearful whining yelp. October 23, they had all their clothes plucked off them in the withdrawing room, and the bricks fell out of the chimney into the room; and the 24th, they thought in the dining-room that all the wood of the King's oak had been brought thither, and thrown down close by their bed-side, which noise being heard by those of the withdrawing-room, one of them rose to see what was done, fearing indeed that his fellow-commissioner had been killed, but found no such matter; whereupon returning to his bed again, he found two dozen of trenchers thrown into it, and handsomely covered with the bed-clothes. October 25, the curtains of the bed in the withdrawing-room were drawn to and fro, and the bedstead shaken as before: and in the bed-chamber glass flew about so thick (and yet not a pane of the chamber-windows broken) that they thought it had rained money; whereupon they lighted candles, but to their grief they found nothing but glass, which they took up in the morning, and laid together. October 29, something walked in the withdrawing-room about an hour, and going to the window, opened and shut it; then going into the bed-chamber, it threw great stones for about half an hour's time, some whereof lighted on the high bed, and others on the truckle-bed, to the number in all of about fourscore. This night there was also a very great noise, as though forty pieces of ordnance had been shot off together: at two several knocks it astonished all the neighbouring dwellers, which it is thought might have been heard a great way off. During these noises, which were heard in both rooms together, both commissioners and servants were struck with so great horror, that they cried out to one another for help, whereof one of them recovering himself out of a strange agony he had been in, snatched

up a sword, and had like to have killed one of his brethren coming out of his bed in his shirt, whom he took for the spirit that did the mischief. However, at length they got altogether, yet the noise continued so great and terrible, and shook the wall so much, that they thought the whole manor would have fell on their heads. At its departure it took all the glass away with it. November 1, something, as they thought, walked up and down the withdrawingroom. The stones that were left before and laid up in the withdrawing-room, were all fetched away this night, and a great deal of glass (not like the former) thrown about again. November 2, came something into the withdrawing-room treading (as they conceived) much like a bear, which first only walking about a quarter of an hour, at length it made a noise about the table, and threw the warming-pan so violently. that it quite spoiled it: it threw also glass and great stones at them again, and the bones of horses, and all so violently, that the bedsteads and walls were bruised by them. This night they set candles all about the rooms, and made fires up to the mantle-trees of the chimneys, but all were put out nobody knew how, the fire and billets that made it being thrown up and down the rooms; the curtains torn with the rods from the beds, and the bed-posts pulled away, that the tester fell down upon them, and the feet of the bedstead cloven in two. And upon the servants in the truckle-bed, who lay all this time sweating for fear, there was first a little, which made them begin to stir; but before they could get out, there came a whole coule (tub), as it were, of stinking ditch-water down upon them, so green, that it made their shirts and sheets of that colour too. The same night the windows were all broke by throwing of stones, and there was most terrible noises in three several places together, to the extraordinary wonder of all that lodged near them; nay the very coney-stealers that were abroad that night, were so affrighted with the dismal thundering, that for haste they left their ferret in the coney-boroughs behind them beyond Rosamond's Well. Notwithstanding all this, one of them had the boldness to ask, in the name of God, What it was? what it would have? and what they had done that they should be disturbed in this manner? To which no answer was given, but the noise ceased for a while. At length it came again, and (as all of them said) brought seven devils worse than itself. Whereupon one

of them lighted a candle again, and set it between the two chambers, on which another of them fixing his eyes, saw the similitude of a hoof striking the candle and candlestick into the middle of the bed-chamber, and afterwards making three scrapes on the snuff to put it out. Upon this the same person was so bold as to draw his sword, but he had scarce got it out, but there was another invisible hand had hold of it too, and tug'd with him for it, and prevailing, struck him so violently with the pummel, that he was stunn'd with the blow. Then began grievous noises again, in so much that they called to one another, got together, and went into the presencechamber, where they said prayers and sang psalms; notwithstanding all which the thundering noise still continued in the other rooms. After this, November 3, they removed their lodgings over the gate; and the next day being Sunday, went to Ewelm, where, how they escaped, the authors of the relations knew not; but returning on Monday, the devil (for that was the name they gave their nightly guest) left them not unvisited; nor on the Tuesday following, which was the last day they staid. Where ends the history (for so he was styled by the people) of the just devil of Woodstock; the commissioners and all their dependants going quite away on the Wednesday; since which time, says the author, that lived on the place, there have honest persons of good quality lodged in the bed-chamber and withdrawing room, that never were disturbed in the least like the commissioners."

V. 167. At Sarum take a cavalier, &c.] This is an allusion to a story related by Withers, in doggerel, of a soldier of the king's army, who being a prisoner at Salisbury, and drinking a health to the devil upon his knees, was carried away by him through a single pane of glass.

V. 169-70. As Withers in immortal rhyme

Has register'd to after-time.] Withers was a puritanical officer in the parliament army, and a great pretender to poetry, but so bad a poet, (as A. Wood says,) that when he was taken prisoner by the cavaliers, Sir John Denham, the poet, (some of whose lands, at Egham, in Surry, Withers had got into his clutches) desired his Majesty not to hang him, because so long as Withers lived, Denham would not be accounted the worst poet in England. IV. 171-2. Do not our great reformers use

This Sidrophel to forebode news?] Lilly was frequently

employed by the parliament to foretel success to their cause, for the encouragement of their soldiery; and Echard says, he was one of the close committee to consult about the execution of the king. It is most probable that he was in the pay of both parties, as their occasions served.

V. 173. To write of victories next year.] Lilly was frequently out in his prognostications, and therefore they are compared to taking castles in the air. Young, in his Sidrophel Vapulans, a tract written expressly to ridicule him and his prognostications, makes the following remarks upon him: “I have (says he) read all Lilly's almanacks, from forty to sixty, in the holy time of that great rebellion to which he was accessary, and find him always the whole breadth of heaven wide from the truth; scarce one of his predictions verified, but a thousand contrary wise: it is hard that a man shooting at rovers so many years together, should never hit the right mark."

V. 179-80. And has not he point-blank foretold

Whats'e'er the close committee would?] The parliament took a sure way to secure all prophecies, prodigies, and almanack news, in favour of their own side, by appointing a licenser thereof, and strictly forbidding and punishing all such as were not licensed.

V. 181 & 187. Made Mars and Saturn for the cause,

Made all the royal stars recant.] Warburton says, the hidden satire of this is extremely fine: by the several planets and signs here recapitulated, are meant the several leaders of the parliament army who took the covenant, as Essex and Fairfax by Mars and Saturn. But the last, "made all the royal stars recant," &c. evidently alludes to Charles, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, and King Charles II. who both took the covenant.

V. 196. gymnosophist.] Gymnosophists were a certain sect of philosophers in India, who, according to some, placed their summum bonum in pleasure, and their summum malum in pain. They lived naked, as their name implies, and for 37 years they exposed themselves in the open air, to the heat of the sun, the inclemency of the seasons, and the coldness of the night. They were often seen in the fields fixing their eyes full upon the disk of the sun, from the time of its rising till the hour of its setting. Sometimes they stood whole days upon one foot in burning sand, without moving, or showing any concern for what surrounded them.

Alexander was astonished at the sight of a sect of men who seemed to despise bodily pain, and who inured themselves to suffer the greatest tortures without uttering a groan, or expressing any marks of fear. The conqueror condescended to visit them, and his astonishment was increased when he saw one of them ascend a burning pile with firmness and unconcern, to avoid the infirmities of old age, and stand upright on one leg, and unmoved, while the flames surrounded him on every side.

V. 200.

eftsoons.] Soon after; in a short time. Spencer says, "Eftsoons the nymphs, which now had flowers their fill,

Run all in haste to see that silver brood."

V. 205. He had been long t'wards mathematics.] Butler, in his Remains, draws the character of a mathematician in the following words: "A mathematician (says he) shows as many tricks on the outside of body as philosophers do on the inside of it, and for the most part to as little purpose: the only difference is, that the one begins in nonsense and ends in sense, and the other, quite contrary, begins in sense and ends in nonsense: for the mathematician begins with body abstract, which was never found in nature, and yet afterwards traces it to that which is real and practical; and the philosopher begins with body as it is really in nature, and afterwards wears it away with much handling into thin subtilties that are merely notional. The philosopher will not endure to hear of body without quantity, and yet afterwards gives it over, and has no consideration of it any further: and the mathematician will allow of being without quantity, and yet afterwards considers nothing else but quantity. All the figures he draws are no better, for the most part, than those in rhetoric, that serve only to call certain routines and manners of speech by insignificant names, but teach nothing. His art is only instrumental, and like others of the same kind, when it outgrows its use, becomes merely a curiosity; and the more it is so, the more impertinent it proves; for curiosities are impertinent to all men but the curious, and they to all the rest of the world. His forefathers passed among the ancients for conjurers, and carried the credit of all inventions, because they had the luck to stand by when they were found out, and cried half's ours. For though the mechanics have found out more excellent things than they have wit enough to give names to, (though the greatest part of their wit lies that way,) yet they will boldly assume the re