existence, and its authenticity has never been questioned; it concludes with the following remarkable words:—­“If,” says the king, “all that I have just declared is not the exact truth, I renounce my hopes of a happier existence which I may have merited by some good actions, and by my zeal for the welfare of my people and for the maintenance of the religion of my fathers.”  If the reader will call to mind the death of Gustavus III., and the trial of his assassin, Ankarstroem, he will observe the intimate connection between these events and the circumstances of the extraordinary prediction which we have just detailed.  The apparition of the young man beheaded in the presence of the assembled States prognosticated the execution of Ankarstroem.  The crowned corse represented Gustavus III., the child, his son and successor, Gustavus Adolphus IV.; and lastly, by the old man was designated the uncle of Gustavus IV., the Duke of Sudermania, regent of the kingdom and afterwards king, upon the deposition of his nephew.

XLIII

BEN JONSON’S PREVISION

DRUMMOND’S “Conversations”

Ben Jonson told Drummond of Hawthornden that “when the king came to England, about the time that plague was in London, he being in the country, at Sir Robert Cotton’s house with old Cambden, he saw in a vision his eldest son, then a young child and at London, appear unto him with the mark of a bloody cross on his forehead, as if it had been cut with a sword, at which amazed he prayed unto God, and in the morning he came unto Mr Cambden’s chamber to tell him, who persuaded him it was but an apprehension, at which he should not be dejected.  In the meantime there came letters from his wife of the death of that boy in the plague.  He appeared to him, he said, of a manly shape, and of that growth he thinks he shall be at the resurrection.”

XLIV

QUEEN ULRICA AND THE COUNTESS STEENBOCK

“Court Records”

When Queen Ulrica was dead, her corpse was placed in the usual way in an open coffin, in a room hung with black and lighted with numerous wax candles; a company of the king’s guards did duty in the ante-room.  One afternoon, the carriage of the Countess Steenbock, first lady of the palace, and a particular favourite of the queen’s, drove up from Stockholm.  The officers commanding the guard of honour went to meet the countess, and conducted her from the carriage to the door of the room where the dead queen lay, which she closed after her.