Guillim[8] in his "Heraldry" says that "the Cockatrice is called in Latin Regulus, for that he seemeth to be a little King among Serpents: not in regard of his Quantity, but in respect of the Infection of his pestiferous and poisonous Aspect wherewith he poisoneth the Air. Not unlike those devillish Witches that do work the Destruction of silly Infants, as also of the Cattel of such their Neighbours whose prosperous Estate is to them a most grievous Eye-sore. Of such Virgil in his Bucolicks makes mention, saying, I know not what wicked Eye hath bewitched my tender Lambs." The belief in the evil eye has been almost universal, and may be found in tribes the most remote from each other either in distance or in time. If it were not that Guillim is so ostentatiously loyal, and, like all heralds, a zealous upholder of rank and state, one might suspect him almost of a touch of bitter sarcasm in ascribing royal rank to the cockatrice, not from his magnanimity, not from his noble bearing, not from his beauty, but from the power of inflicting injuries that he so especially displays. When we consider what sort of a sovereign politically, socially, and every way the second Charles was, Guillim's dedication of his book to him errs somewhat, perhaps, on the side of fulsome and sickening adulation:--"To the most August Charles the Second, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, &c. Dread Sovereign, Here is a Firmament of Stars that shine not without your Benign Beam; you are the Sun of our Hemisphere that sets a splendour on the Nobility: For as they are Jewels and Ornaments to your Crown, so they derive their lustre and value from thence. From your Breast, as from a Fountain, the young Plants of honour are cherisht and nurst up. Your vertuous Atcheivements are their Warrant and Example, and your Bounty the Guerdon of their Merit. And as all the Roman Emperors after Julius Cæsar, were desirous to be called Imperatores and Cæsares after him, so shall all succeeding Princes in this our Albion (in emulation of your Vertues) be ambitious to bear your Name to Posterity."
[8] The reader must notice the near approach to similarity of name in the Frenchman Guillaume, author of "Le Bestiare Divin," and in the Englishman Guillim, the writer on heraldry, and at the same time make due discrimination. They are men of widely different periods, and approach our subject from wholly different directions.