.jmdiiîs council broke off all thefe meafux*** Whafr ever misfortunes fâte bas -decreed cannot be pre-vented ; they muft have their courfe * fend thoffe that befei king Richard are wonderful indeed to think on. He might indeed have avoided them, but what muft be will be. I, John Froiflart, author of thefe chronicles, will literally fay what, in my younger days, I heard at a manfion called Berk~hempftead, diftant from London thirty miles, and which, at die rime I am fpeaking of, in the year of our Lord 1361, belonged to the prince of Wales, father to king Richard. As the prince and princefs were about to leave England for Aquitaine, to hold their ftate, the king of England, queen Phi-lippa my miftrefs, the dukes ' of Clarence, Lan-cafter, the lord Edmund, who was afterward earl of Cambridge and duke of York, with their chil-dren, came to this manfion to vifit the prince and take leave of him. I was at that time twenty-fouryearslold, and one of the clerks of the chamber to my lady the queen. During this vifit, as I was feated on a bench, I heard the following con-vention from a knight to fbme of the ladies of the queen. He faid,—* There was in that country a book called Bruft, which many fay cpntains the prophecies of Merlin. According to its contents, neither the prince of Wales nor duke of Clarence, though fons to king Edward, will wear the crown of England, but it will fall to the houfe of Lan-cafter.* When the knight faid this, the earl of Derby was not borçi 2 his birth was feven years after. 05