Aubrey’s unlucky birthday

John Aubrey believed that 3 November, his own birthday, was an unlucky day for him. On that day in 1099, according to Stow, the sea broke in and drowned Earl Godwin’s lands in Kent, which became the Goodwin Sands. Aubrey’s own marshland in Kent was ruined by sea charges after his father’s death, and he wrote that his birthday seemed to have the same evil influence on him that it had on Godwin. The old calendar verse called the day a killing day, and Aubrey noted that the Parliament which broke with Rome under Henry VIII and the Long Parliament of 1640 both met on 3 November.