lesiastical
Memorials, vol. iii, part i, p. 472; also see his Annals of the
reformation, vol. ii, part ii, p. 151; and his Life of Sir Thomas Smith,
pp. 161, 162. For Spottiswoode, see History of the Church of Scotland
(Edinburgh reprint, 1851), vol. i, pp. 185, 186. For Bramhall, see his
Works, Oxford, 1844, vol. iv, pp. 60, 307, etc. For Jeremy Taylor, see
his Sermons on the Life of Christ. For John Howe, see his Works, London,
1862, vol. iv, pp. 140, 141.

The Reformed Church of Scotland supported the superstition just as
strongly. John Knox saw in comets tokens of the wrath of Heaven; other
authorities considered them "a warning to the king to extirpate the
Papists"; and as late as 1680, after Halley had won his victory, comets
were announced on high authority in the Scottish Church to be "prodigies
of great judgment on these lands for our sins, for never was the Lord
more provoked by a people."

While such was the view of the clergy during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, the laity generally accepted it as a matter of
course, Among the great leaders in literature there was at least general
acquiescence in it. Both Shakespeare and Milton recognise it, whether
they fully accept it or not. Shakespeare makes the Duke of Bedford,
lamenting at the bier of Henry V, say:

"Comets, importing change of time and states, Brandish your crystal
tresses in the sky; And with them scourge the bad revolting stars, That
have consented unto Henry's death."

Milton, speaking of Satan preparing for combat, says:

"On the other side, Incensed with indignation, Satan stood. Unterrified,
and like a comet burned, That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge In the
arctic sky, and from its horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war."

We do indeed find that in some minds the discoveries of Tycho Brahe
and Kepler begin to take effect, for, in 1621, Burton in his Anatomy of
Melancholy alludes to them as changing public opinion somewhat regarding
comets; and, just before the middle of the century, Sir Thomas Browne
expresses a doubt whether comets produce such terrible effects, "since
it is found that many of them are above the moon."(100) Yet even as late
as the last years of the seventeenth century we have English authors
of much power battling for this supposed scriptural view and among the
natural and typical results we find, in 1682, Ralph Thoresby, a Fellow
of the Royal Society, terrified at the comet of that year, and writi