Explanatory notes.
Seven and Ten. This line describes the year when these events
shall happen. Seven and ten makes seventeen, which I explain
seventeen hundred, and this number added to nine, makes the year
we are now in; for it must be understood of the natural year,
which begins the first of January.
Tamys Rivere twys, etc. The River Thames, frozen twice in one
year, so as men to walk on it, is a very signal accident, which
perhaps hath not fallen out for several hundred years before, and
is the reason why some astrologers have thought that this
prophecy could never be fulfilled, because they imagine such a
thing would never happen in our climate.
From Town of Stoffe, etc. This is a plain designation of the Duke
of Marlborough: One kind of stuff used to fatten land is called
marle, and every body knows that borough is a name for a town;
and this way of expression is after the usual dark manner of old
astrological predictions.
Then shall the Fyshe, etc. By the fish, is understood the Dauphin
of France, as their kings eldest sons are called: 'Tis here said,
he shall lament the loss of the Duke of Burgundy, called the
Bosse, which is an old English word for hump-shoulder, or
crook-back, as that Duke is known to be; and the prophecy seems
to mean, that he should be overcome or slain. By the green
berrys, in the next line, is meant the young Duke of Berry, the
Dauphin's third son, who shall not have valour or fortune enough
to supply the loss of his eldest brother.
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