A DEATHBED PROPHECY OF KING EDWARD THE CONFESSOR

"Just now two monks stood before me, whom I had once known very well when I was a young man in Normandy, men of great sanctity, and for many years now relieved of earthly cares. And they addressed me with a message from God. 'Since,' they said, 'those who have climbed to the highest offices in the kingdom of England, the earls, the bishops and abbots, and all those in holy orders, are not what they seem to be, but, on the contrary, are servants of the devil, on a year and one day after the day of your death God has delivered all this kingdom, cursed by Him, into the hands of the enemy, and devils shall come through all this land with fire and sword and the havoc of war.' Then I said to them, 'I will show God's design to the people, and the forgiveness of God shall have mercy upon the penitents. For He had mercy on the people of Nineveh, when they repented on hearing the Divine indignation.' But they said, 'These will not repent, nor will the forgiveness of God come to pass for them.' 'And what,' I asked, 'shall happen? And when can a remission of this great indignation be hoped for?' 'At that time,' they answered, 'when a green tree, if cut down in the middle of its trunk, and the part cut off carried the space of three furlongs from the stock, shall be joined again to the trunk, by itself and without the hand of man or any sort of stake, and begin once more to push leaves and bear fruit from the old love of its uniting sap, then first can a remission of these great ills be hoped for."

King Edward died on January 5, 1066. One year and one day after his death, on January 6, 1067, the Roman Catholic William the Conqueror was crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey. Then began a terrible campaign of pillage and bloodshed by the Conqueror against the English people, which culminated in the pseudo-council of Winchester in 1070, when papal legates deposed the Orthodox Archbishop Stigand, who had refused to crown William, and placed the Roman Catholic Lanfranc in his place. On October 15, 1072, the last English Orthodox bishop, Ethelric of Durham, after anathematizing the Pope, died in prison at Westminster, and the grace of the priesthood left the English land, in accordance with King Edward's prophecy. The last part of this prophecy remains to be fulfilled...