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MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER
The flowers of history, especially such as relate to the affairs of Britain. Vol. I. B.C. 4004 to A.D. 1066.
page 237
quietude and subjection, and then he shall flourish for three hundred years. Then shall rise up against him the north, and shall strip him of the flowers to which the west wind has given birth. There shall be gilding μι the temples and the edge of the sword shall not slacken. The German dragon shall scarcely maintain his caverns, because the vengeance for his treachery is at hand. At last he shall flourish for a while, but the decimation of Neustria shall injure him. For a people on wooden horses and clothed in iron cloaks shall come upon him, which shall exact revenge for his wickedness, and shall restore their abodes to the former inhabitants, and the ruin of the foreigners shall be made manifest. The seed of the white dragon shall be destroyed from out of our gardens, and the remains of his generation shall be decimated. They shall bear the yoke of perpetual slavery, and shall wound thenmother with spades and ploughs. Then shall succeed two dragons, one of which shall be clothed with the dart of envy, but the other shall retire under the shadow of his name. Next shall come the lion of justice, at whose roaring the towers of the Gauls and the dragons of the isles shall quake. In his days gold shall be extracted from the city and from the nettle, and silver shall flow from the hoofs of oxen. Men with curled hair shall wear embroidered woollen garments, and their external dress shall be a token of their inward disposition. The feet of them that bark shall be cut short, the wild beasts shall have peace, and humanity shall put an end to punishment. The form of the land shall be divided, and the half shall be round. The rapacity of the hawks shall be done away with, and the teeth of the wolves shall be made blunt ; the lion's whelps shall be transformed into the fishes o f the sea, and the eagle shall build his nest on mount Aranius. Venedotia shall be red with the blood of matrons, and the house of Corinseus shall slay six brethren. The isle shall be wet with nightly tears, and all men shall be stirred up to all sorts of actions. Woe to thee Neustria, for on you shall the brain of the lion be poured forth, and he shall be driven with torn limbs from his native soil. His posterity shall strive to fly beyond the decrees of the highest, but the power of the new-comers shall be exalted. Piety shall injure him who gains possession by impious means, until he clothes himself with his father. Therefore, girding himself with the teeth of a boar, he shall
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