the explanation wrought over it. For there appeared "a blasing
starre, which was seene not onelie here in England, but also in other
parts of the world, and continued the space of seven daies. This
blasing starre might be a prediction of mischeefe imminent and hanging
over Harold's head; for they never appeare but as prognosticats of
afterclaps."

Popular belief has generally invested these ill-omened bodies with
peculiar terrors. "These blasing starres--dreadful to be seene, with
bloudie haires, and all over rough and shagged at the top." They vary,
however, in their appearance. Sometimes they are pale, and glitter
like a sword, without any rays or beams. Such was the one which is
said to have hung over Jerusalem for near a year before its
destruction, filling the minds of all who beheld it with awe and
superstitious dread. A comet resembling a horn appeared when the
"whole manhood of Greece fought the battaile of Salamis." Comets
foretold the war between Caesar and Pompey, the murder of Claudius, and
the tyranny of Nero. Though _usually_, they were not _invariably_,
considered as portents of evil omen: for the birth and accession of
Alexander, of Mithridates, the birth of Charles Martel, and the
accession of Charlemagne, and the commencement of the Tatar empire,
were all notified by blazing stars. A very brilliant one which
appeared for seven consecutive nights soon after the death of Julius
Caesar was supposed to be conveying the soul of the murdered dictator
to Olympus. An author who wrote on one which appeared in the reign of
Elizabeth was most anxious, as in duty bound, to apply the phenomenon
to the queen. But here was the puzzle. "To have foretold calamities
might have been misprision of treason; and the only precedent for
saying anything good of a comet was to be drawn from that which
occurred after the death of Julius Caesar;" but it so happened that at
this time Elizabeth was by no means either ripe or willing for her
apotheosis.[38]

Comets, one author writes, "were made to the end the etherial regions
might not be more void of monsters than the ocean is of whales and
other great thieving fishes, and that a gross fatness being gathered
together as excrements into an imposthume, the celestial air might
thereby be purged, lest the sun should be obscured." Another says,
they "signifie corruption of the ayre. They are signes of earthquake,
of warres, chaunging of kyngdomes, great dearth of corne, yea, a
commo