Terrifying, isn’t it? This comes (as pictured above) from A description of a strange (and miraculous) Fish, cast upon the sands in the meads, in the Hundred of Worwell, in the County Palatine of Chester, (or Chesshiere. The certainty whereof is here related concerning the said most monstrous Fish (1635). A few stanzas of poetry accompany the great image above, some of which I’ll include here:

It is a fish, a monstrous fish,
    a fish that many dreads,
But now it is as we would wish,
    cast up o’th sands i’th meads,
In Chesshire; and tis certaine true,
Describ’d by those who did it view.
    O rare
    beyond compare,
in England nere the like.

The poet records the beast’s overall measurements (21 yards and 1 foot long, 5 yards high), and describes the jaw-bone in particular detail (“five yards long,” with “teeth in’t thirty foure, Whereof some of them are in weight two pounds, or rather more”). Similar attention is paid in both the poetry and the woodcut to the, well, Pistle (“in length foure yards, big as a man i’th wast”) and Cods (“like two hogsheads great”). Right. But such wonder aside, the great carcass provided more than “sixteene tuns of Oyle.” I’ll leave you with the closing stanza:

The Mariners of Chester say
    a Herring-hag tis nam’d:
What ere it be, for certaine they
    that are for knowledge fam’d,
Affirme, the like in ages past
Vpon our Coast was neuer cast.
    O rare
    beyond compare,
in England nere the like.

Here is Bede’s account of an interesting sighting at Bercingum (modern-day Barking) outside the convent built for Ethelburga (ca. 675 AD). From Book IV, Chapter 9, of Ecclesiastical History of the English People (ca. 731):

For one night when they had finished singing the morning psalms of praise to God, these servants of Christ left the oratory to visit the graves of the brothers who had departed this life before them. And as they were singing their customary praises to our lord, a light from heaven like a great sheet suddenly appeared and shone over them all, so alarming them that they even broke off their singing in consternation. After a short while, this brilliant light, compared to which the noonday sun would appear dark, rose and traveled to the south side of the convent westward of the oratory and, having remained over that area for a time, withdrew heavenwards in the sight of them all.

(Penguin edition, p. 217).

Naturally the monks (Ethelburga’s convent had a section for men) attributed the phenomenon to divine causes, taking “this brilliant light” as a guide for souls recently departed to heaven. Sounds like a UFO to me, though.

This is just one of the many wonderful stories in the History. Other highlights include Bede’s account of the Chief Priest Coifi riding forth — armed with both sword and spear, and upon King Edwin’s own stallion — to smash the churches’ idols (II.13), and the sympathetic account of the same king (“a wise and prudent man, [who] often sat alone in silent converse with himself for long periods”) being eventually converted to Christianity (II.9-10).