Both Shakespeare and Milton recognise it, whether they fully accept it or not.

Shakespeare makes the Duke of Bedford, lamenting at the bier of Henry V, say: "Comets, importing change of time and states, Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky; And with them scourge the bad revolting stars, That have consented unto Henry's death." Milton, speaking of Satan preparing for combat, says: "On the other side, Incensed with indignation, Satan stood.

Unterrified, and like a comet burned, That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge In the arctic sky, and from its horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war." We do indeed find that in some minds the discoveries of Tycho Brahe and Kepler begin to take effect, for, in 1621, Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy alludes to them as changing public opinion somewhat regarding comets; and, just before the middle of the century, Sir Thomas Browne expresses a doubt whether comets produce such terrible effects, "since it is found that many of them are above the moon."(100) Yet even as late as the last years of the seventeenth century we have English authors of much power battling for this supposed scriptural view and among the natural and typical results we find, in 1682, Ralph Thoresby, a Fellow of the Royal Society, terrified at the comet of that year, and writing in his diary the following passage: "Lord, fit us for whatever changes it may portend; for, though I am not ignorant that such meteors proceed from natural causes, yet are they frequently also the presages of imminent calamities." Interesting is it to note here that this was Halley's comet, and that Halley was at this very moment making those scientific studies upon it which were to free the civilized world forever from such terrors as distressed Thoresby.
(100) For John Knox, see his Histoire of the Reformation of Religion within the Realm of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1732), lib.

iv; also Chambers, Domestic Annals of Scotland, vol.ii, pp 410-412.

For Burton, see his Anatomy of Melancholy, part ii, sect 2.