foundation.
9. This year several cardinals and prelates shall be publicly
censured for heretical principles, and shall narrowly escape from
being torn to pieces by the common people, who still look upon them
as the grand disturbers of public tranquillity, perfect
incendiaries, and the chief promoters of their former, present, and
future calamities.
10. In 1724-5 there will be many treaties and negociations, and
Great Britain, particularly, will be crowded with foreign ministers
and ambassadors from remote princes and states. Trade and commerce
will begin to flourish and revive, and everything will have a
comfortable prospect, until some desperadoes, assisted by a monster
with many heads, shall start new difficulties, and put the world
again into a flame; but these shall be but of short duration.
11. Before the expiration of 1725, an eagle from the north shall
fly directly to the south, and perch upon the palace of a prince,
and first unravel the bloody projects and designs of a wicked set
of people, and then publicly discover the murder of a great king,
and the intended assassination of another greater than he.
12. In 1726, three princes will be born that will grow up to be
men, and inherit the crowns of three of the greatest monarchies in
Europe.
13. About this time the pope will die, and after a great many
intrigues and struggles, a Spanish cardinal shall be elected, who
shall decline the dignity, and declare his marriage with a great
lady, heiress of one of the chief principalities in Italy, which
may occasion new troubles in Europe, if not timely prevented.
14. In 1727, new troubles shall break out in the north, occasioned
by the sudden death of a certain prince, and the avarice and
ambition of another. Poor Poland seems to be pointed at; but the
princes of the south shall enter into a confederacy to preserve
her, and shall at length restore her peace, and prevent the
perpetual ruin of her constitution.
15. Great endeavours will be used about this time for a
comprehension in religion, supported by crafty and designing men,
and a party of mistaken zealots, which they shall artfully draw in
to join with them; but as the project is ill-concerted, and will be
worse managed, it will come to nothing; and soon afterwards an
effectual mode will be taken to prevent the like attempt for the
future.
16. 1728 will be a year of inquiry and retrospection. Many
exorbitant grants will be reassumed, and several persons who
thought themselves secure will be called before the senate, and
compelled to disgorge what they have unjustly pillaged either from
the crown or the public.
17. About this time a new scaffold will be erected upon the
confines of a certain great city, where an old count of a new
extraction, that has been of all parties and true to none, will be
doomed by his peers to make his first appearance. After this an
old lady who has often been exposed to danger and disgrace, and
sometimes brought to the very brink of destruction, will be brought
to bed of three daughters at once, which they shall call Plenty,
Peace, and Union; and these three shall live and grow up together,
be the glory of their mother, and the comfort of posterity for many
generations.
This is the substance of what he either writ or extracted from his
papers in the interval between the loss of his speech and the
return of his fit, which happened exactly at the time he had
computed.
Upon the approach of his fit, he made signs to be put to bed, which
was no sooner done but he was seized with extreme agonies, which he
bore up under with the greatest steadfastness, and after a severe
conflict, that lasted near eight hours, he expired.
Thus lived and thus died this extraordinary person; a person,
though of mean extraction and obscure life, yet when his character
comes to be fully and truly known, it will be read with pleasure,
profit, and admiration.
His perfections at large would be the work of a volume, and
inconsistent with the intention of these papers. I will,
therefore, only add, for a conclusion, that he was a man of