o
resided in Cirencester. The wizard took the opportunity of telling Sir
William's fortune: his wife was to die, and he himself was to marry an
heiress, and be made a baron; with other prospective splendours. The wizard
concluded, however, with recommending him to pay a visit to another dealer
in the dark art more learned than himself, whose name was Jones, at Oxford.

"So after that," said Sir William [Midsummer, 1532], "I went to Oxford,
intending that my brother George and I should kill a buck with Sir Simon
Harcourt, which he had promised me; and there at Oxford, in the said
Jones's chamber, I did see certain stillatories, alembics, and other
instruments of glass, and also a sceptre and other things, which he said
did appertain to the conjuration of the four kings; and also an image of
white metal; and in a box, a serpent's skin, as he said, and divers books
and things, whereof one was a book which he said was my Lord Cardinal's,
having pictures in it like angels. He told me he could make rings of gold,
to obtain favour of great men; and said that my Lord Cardinal had such; and
promised my said brother and me, either of us, one of them; and also he
showed me a round thing like a ball of crystal.

"He said that if the King's Grace went over to France [the Calais visit of
October, 1532], his Grace should marry my Lady Marchioness of Pembroke
before that his Highness returned again; and that it would be dangerous to
his Grace, and to the most part of the noblemen that should go with him;
saying also that he had written to one of the king's council to advise his
Highness not to go over, for if he did, it should not be for his Grace's
profit."

The wizard next pretended that he had seen a vision of a certain room in a
tower, in which a spirit had appeared with a coat of arms in his hand, and
had "delivered the same to Sir William Neville." The arms being described
as those of the Warwick family, Sir William, his brother, and Jones rode
down from Oxford to Warwick, where they went over the castle. The wizard
professed to recognise in a turret chamber the room in which he had seen
the spirit, and he prophesied that Sir William should recover the earldom,
the long-coveted prize of all the Neville family.

On their return to Oxford, Jones, continues Sir William, said further,
"That there should be a field in the north about a se'n-night before
Christmas, in which my Lord my brother [Lord Latimer] should be slain; the
real