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Edward VI. died on July 6, 1553, about six months after Cardan had returned to Milan; and, before the publication of the Geniturarum Exempla in 1554, the author added to the King's horoscope a supplementary note, explaining his conduct thereanent and shedding some light upon the tortuous and sinister intrigues which at that time engaged the ingenuity of the leaders about the English Court.
In the Geniturarum Exempla he says that, seeing he is writing of a woman, he will confine his remarks to saying that she was ingenious, of good parts, generous, upright, and loving towards her children.
Five monarchs have been dethroned in this war, and the amazing facility with which the strongest Monarchy in the world was overthrown may help to make us feel anxious and call to our memory the saying: exempla trahunt.
It is as follows: Disce, puer, virtutem ex me, verumque laborem; Fortunam ex aliis; nunc te mea dextera bello Defensum dabit, et magna inter praemia ducet. Tu facito, mox cum matura adoleverit aetas, Sis memor: et te animo repetentem exempla tuorum, Et pater Aeneas, et avunculus excitet Hector. Aeneid, xii.
Others accept him as a witness entirely trustworthy, and adopt as a true description of Cardan the paragraphs made up of uncomplimentary adjectives applied by Cardan to himself which Naudé has transferred from the De Vita Propria and the Geniturarum Exempla to his Judicium de Cardano.
These must be regarded as specimens only of a large class of stories that are found among the folk and can be traced in the popular mediæval collections like Alfonsi's Disciplina-Clericalis or Jacques de Vitry's Exempla, not to speak of the Fables of Bidpai or The Seven Wise Masters of Rome.
In the Geniturarum Exempla the horoscopes of Edward VI., Archbishop Hamilton, and Cardan himself have been already noticed; that of Sir John Cheke comes next in interest to these, and, it must be admitted, is no more trustworthy.
He cast the Archbishop's horoscope, and published it in the Geniturarum Exempla. It was not a successful feat. In his forty-eighth year, i.e. in 1560, the astrologer declared that Hamilton would be in danger of poison and of suffering from an affection of the heart. But the time of the greatest peril seemed to lie between July 30 and September 21, 1554.
De Vita Propria, ch. iv. p. 16: "cum Scotorum Regina cujus levirum curaveram." Cardan had probably prescribed for a brother of the Duc de Longueville, the first husband of Mary of Guise, during his sojourn in Paris. Geniturarum Exempla, p. 459. De Vita Propria, ch. xl. p. 137. He wrote these notes while going down the Loire in company with Cassanate on his way from Lyons to Paris in 1552.
I have been most fortunate as the discoverer of many and important contributions to knowledge, as well as in the practice of my art and in the results attained; so much so that if my fame in the first instance has raised up envy against me, it has prevailed finally, and extinguished all ill-feeling." These words were written before the publication of the Geniturarum Exempla in 1554.
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