202 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2nd s. No 89., Sept. 12. '57. 



A similar story is told concerning the death of 

 Henry IV. of England. It rests upon the testi- 

 mony of the chronicler Fabyan, whose relation is 

 contained in the following passage : — 



" In this year [1412], and twentieth day of the month 

 of November, was a great council holden at the White 

 Friars of London, by the which it was among other 

 things concluded, that for the king's great journey that 

 he intended to take, in visiting of the Holy Sepulchre of 

 our Lord, certain gallies of war should be made, and 

 other purvej'ance concerning the same journey. 



"Whereupon all hasty and possible speed" was made; 

 but after the feast of Christmas, while he was making 

 his prayers at St. Edward's shrine, to take there his 

 leave, and so to speed him upon his journey, he became 

 so sick, that such as were about him feared that he would 

 have died right there; wherefore the}', for his comfort, 

 bare him into the abbot's place, and lodged him in a 

 chamber ; and there upon a pallet laid him before the fire, 

 where he lay in great agony a certain of time. 



" At length, when he was come to himself, not know- 

 ing where he was, freyned * of such as then were about 

 him, what place that was ; the which showed to him, 

 that it belonged unto the Abbot of Westminster; and 

 for he felt himself so sick, he commanded to ask if that 

 chamber had any special name; whereunto it was an- 

 swered that it was named Jerusalem. Then said the 

 king : * Loving be to the Father of heaven, for now I 

 know I shall die in this chamber, according to the pro- 

 phecy of me beforesaid that I should die in Jerusalem ; ' 

 and so after he made himself ready, and died shortly 

 after, upon the day of St. Cuthbert, or the twentieth day 

 of March [1413]."— Fabyan's Chronicles, p. 576., ed. 

 1811, Ito. 



This account is repeated by Holinshed, vol. iii. 

 p. 58. ed. 1808, 4to., who adds the following re- 

 mark : 



" Whether this was true that so he spake, as one that 

 gave too much credit to foolish prophecies and vain tales, 

 or whether it was feigned, as in such cases it commonly 

 happeneth, we leave it to the advised reader to judge." 



The incident is, as is well known, versified by 

 Shakspeare in his play o? Henry IV. : 



" K, H. Doth any name particular belong 



Unto the lodging where I first did swoon ? 

 War. 'Tis called Jerusalem, my noble lord. 

 K. H. Laud be to God ! even there mj' life must end. 

 It hath been prophesied to me many years, 

 I should not die but in Jerusalem, 

 Which vainly I supposed the Holy Laud. 

 But bear me to that chamber ; there I'll lie ; 

 In that Jerusalem shall Harry die." 



Second Part, Act IV. ad Jin. 



Fabyan served the office of Sheriff of London 

 in 1493, and died in 1511 or 1512. He may be 

 supposed to have been born about 1440 or 1450, 

 and to have collected the materials for his history 

 sixty or seventy years after King Henry's death. 

 His information, though not recent, was doubt- 

 less obtained from persons who lived at or near 

 the time. Holinshed, whose death took place 

 between 1578 and 1582, and who must have 

 been born nearly a century after the death of 



* That is, "asked," "inquired"; from fregnan, A.-S. 

 Compare the German franejt. 



Henry IV., is not an original witness in the case. 

 He appears indeed to have merely repeated the 

 narrative of Fabyan, and his language shows that 

 he disbelieved the story. As Henry was about to 

 make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem at the time when 

 he was attacked by his mortal disease, it is likely 

 that a prophecy may have been current that he 

 would die at Jerusalem. It may likewise have 

 been true that when his first seizure of illness oc- 

 curred, he was carried to a room called the Jeru- 

 salem chambei", and that this coincidence may 

 have been the subject of remark. Though Fa- 

 byan states that the king died " shortly after " 

 his removal to the Jerusalem chamber, yet his 

 own narrative represents the interval as nearly 

 three months ; that is to say, from " after the 

 feast of Christmas " to the 20th of March. The 

 account of Fabyan that the king, without any 

 suggestion, asked if the chamber to which he was 

 carried had any special name, and that he imme- 

 diately received the answer that it was named Je- 

 rusalem, by which the prediction respecting him 

 was fulfilled, is in the highest degree improbable. 



Another instance is afforded by a prediction 

 relating to the Empress Josephine. While Jose- 

 phine was a child, a ne^iress is reported to have 

 prophesied that she would rise to a dignity greater 

 than that of queen, but would fall from it before 

 her death. A further clause was usually added, 

 that she would die in a hospital ; and this pre- 

 diction was interpreted as referring to Malmaison, 

 the place where she actually died ; inasmuch as this 

 mansion derived its name from having been origin- 

 ally used as a hospital. Walter Scott, in h\s Life 

 of Napoleon, vol. iii. ch. 2., states that the story of 

 this prophecy, but without the additional clause, 

 was told him by a lady of rank, about the time of 

 Bonaparte's Italian expedition, who had heard it 

 from Josephine herself. 



Bourrienne, in his Memoirs, vol. i. ch. 9., says, 

 that when Josephine became empress, she fre- 

 quently affirmed that her elevation had been 

 foretold ; the prophet being an old negress. 

 Bourrienne remarks that Josephine believed in 

 fortune-tellers : he doubts the reality of the sup- 

 posed prediction. Until the death of Josephine 

 had actually taken place, the notion of the ful- 

 filment of the prediction about her dying in a 

 hospital by the ambiguity of the name Malmaison 

 could not have occurred. Query, is tbei'e any 

 evidence of the existence of this latter prediction 

 before the time of her death ? 



The probability is, that in none of these cases 

 the facts were exactly as they are related, and 

 that in each the narrative was adjusted to suit the 

 circumstances after the event had occurred. For 

 the prediction respecting the place of Josephine's 

 death there seems little or no foundation. The 

 story of Henry IV. and the Jerusalem chamber is 

 imperfectly attested ; and as to the similar cases 



