William Henry Harrison

“ THE ALLEGED PROPHECIES OF MOTHER SHIPTON AND OTHERS, ABOUT THE END OF THE WORLD—THE MOTHER SHIPTON OF POPULAR BELIEF—HER PROPHECY IN RELATION TO CARDINAL WOLSEY—HER TRADITIONARY BIRTH, MARRIAGE, LIFE AND DEATH.
This critical investigation of the Mother Shipton literature is published early in 1881, the year in which, according to that celebrated Yorkshire prophetess, the world is to come to an end. The best known of the prophecies attributed to her, is the following;
"The world to an end shall come,
⁠In eighteen hundred and eighty one." ”

“ After clearing palpable fiction out of the way, we are left face to face with three of the earliest editions of Mother Shipton's prophecies, published respectively in 1641, 1645, and 1663. These agree closely with each other in their details, the variations being few and unimportant. They appear to have been written seriously and with a desire for truth, in which they differ marvellously from the Shipton literature of the last 200 years. ”

“ Even churches, usually so well maintained, shared the general neglect. Knights, citizens, and serfs, travelled eastwards in company, taking with them their wives and children, singing psalms as they went, and looking with fearful eyes upon the sky, which they expected each minute to open, and to let the Son of God descend in glory. ”

“ William Lilly, the astrologer, published "A Collection of Ancient and Moderne Prophesies. . . . . London, Printed for John Partridge and Henry Blunden, and are to be solde at the Signe of the Cock, in Ludgate Streete, and the Castle in Cornehill, 1645." This book contains what he calls "Shipton's Prophecy, after the most exact Copy," and this version having been published but four years later than the earliest record in the British Museum, it may or may not be the more trustworthy of the two, from the care professedly exercised by Lilly in the selection. ”

“ In 1662 and 1663, after the Restoration, the tracts already described were reprinted with some additional matter, and in 1667 the notorious Richard Head, author of several works of a loose description, invented her biography, and gave to the world a new version of her prophecies. This production has been accepted by the popular taste as the authentic history of the Yorkshire witch, and has been reprinted and sold in all parts of the kingdom. Drake, the historian of York, states that Cardinal Wolsey never came nearer to York than Cawood, which makes good a prophecy of Mother Shipton. ”

“ One day Mother Shipton, cradle and all, were missing; sweet harmony from an unknown source was heard; finally the babe and cradle were found three feet up the chimney. As she grew old her foul fiend of a father visited her daily in the form of a cat, dog, bat, or hog. She was sent to school where, says the chronicler, "her Mistris began to instruct her, as other children, beginning with the Cris-cross-row as they call'd it, showing and naming onely three or four Letters, at first, but to the amazement and astonishment of her Mistris ”

“ A few years before the breaking out of the Civil War, King Charles I frequently passed through Yorkshire, and perhaps the prophecies of the Yorkshire witch then prevalent in the county, captivated the imagination of some follower of the Court, who on his return to London concocted the first pamphlet. It soon became popular, and the following year two reprints appeared, with some additional prophecies. In 1643 a third edition was published, which was followed by two others a few years afterwards. ”

“ But history shows that the See of York was vacant for nearly a year after Cardinal Wolsey's death, so that while it was in the charge of underlings, at a time when Henry VIII began to seize church property in all directions, this Mr. Besley may have had the power to do what is recorded of him. Besley's name is spelt "Beasley " in Lilly's reprint of the Shipton prophecy, and I find in Drake's Eboracum that in the year 1486 a John Beasley was one of the Sheriffs of York. The admirer of Mother Shipton may have been his son ”

“ A woful day shall be seen in England, a King and Queene, the first comming of the King of Scots shall be at Holgate Towne, but he shall not come through the barre, and when King of the North shall bee at London Bridge, his Tayle shall be at Edenborough; After this shall water come over Owes bridge, and a Windmill shall be set on a Tower, and an Elme-tree shall lye at at every mans doore, at that time women shall weare great hats and great bands, and when there is a Lord Major at Yorke let him beware of a stab. ”

“ Head's book, in the black-letter edition of 1684, sets forth at considerable length, that in 1486 a woman named Agatha Shipton lived in a place called "Naseborough " near the Dropping Well in Yorkshire. Her parents died, and she came to poverty. The Devil approached her in handsome guise, made love to her, carried her off on a demon steed, displayed before her a phantom but apparently real mansion, in which they were married. ”

“ Lilly, as already stated, makes no question that Mother Shipton existed, and says that in his time the authenticity of her prophecies was undisputed. He had means, which we in modern times have not, of drawing a conclusion, and altogether it is tolerably certain that Mother Shipton had an actual existence. ”

“ The minds of the artists in former times, who drew rough pictures of celebrities for engraving, would be likely to limn them as they were commonly exhibited to the public. However this may have been, one fact is clear, namely, that in the Punch of to-day are the leading characteristics of Mother Shipton's portrait engraved in 1663 ”

“ Then shall be in the North, that one woman shall say unto another, Mother I have seen a man to day, and for one man there shall be a thousand women, there shall be a man sitting upon St. James's Church hill weeping his fill ”

“ The artist seems to have had no deliberate intention to make her specially ugly; she has no hooked nose, hump, or abnormal dress. The portrait would equally well have done for Queen Elizabeth or any other respectable woman of about Mother Shipton's time. ”

“ There shall be a childe born in Pomfret with three thumbes, and those three Knights will give him three Horses to hold, while they win England, and all the Noble bloud shall be gone but one, and they shall carry him to Sheriffe Nutton's Castle, six miles from Yorke, and he shall dye there, and they shall choose there an Earle in the field, and hanging their Horses on a thorne, And rue the time that ever they were borne, to see so much bloudshed ”

“ The time will come when England shall tremble and quake for feare of a dead man that shall bee heard to speake, then will the Dragon give the Bull a great snap, and when the one is downe they will go to London Towne ”

“ Punch of Fleet Street; they may be seen face to face in the frontispiece to this work. The points of resemblance are— (1) The hooked nose and chin. (2) The peaked cap. (3) The hump. (4) The dress with prominent lines. (5) The uplifted hand. (6) The grasping of a weapon with the other hand. (7) Each of them faces an important individual in a peculiar cap, perched upon an elevated structure—Cardinal Wolsey in the one instance; Toby in the other.
The first volume of Punch was issued in 1841, and in the first article admits its ruling personality to be derived from the Punch of the puppet-shows. ”

“ Charles Mac Farlane, in his Recollections of the South of Italy (London: 1846) , suggests that, as puppet plays and a kind of Punch are found all over the world, Punch had probably several distinct origins, at different times, in different countries. This is very likely, because a caricaturist who wished to distort the human form, would naturally seize upon that prominent feature, the nose, and pull it, then draw out the chin, and by a very little exercise of original genius, add a bump.
But the resemblance of Mother Shipton to Mr. ”

“ He married, and soon afterwards became a ruined man, in consequence, says Erskine Baker, "of two pernicious passions, viz., poetry and gaming, the one of which is for the most part unprofitable, and the other almost always destructive." ”

“ Her Leggs very crooked and mishapen: The Toes of her feet looking towards her left side; so that it was very hard for any person (could she have stood up) to guess which road she intended to stear her course; because she never could look that way she resolved to go."
This lovely creature was put out to nurse at the charge of the parish. Miraculous and unpleasant incidents occurred around her cradle; her attendants were sometimes goaded to exertion by imps in the form of apes. ”

“ And worst for them that have the most.
Not only is there this internal evidence of the pamphlets being more or less true copies of earlier records, but Lilly, in his Collection of Ancient and Modern Prophecies, published in 1645, makes this direct statement in the "introduction to the reader:"—
"Mother Shipton's" [prophecy] "was never yet questioned either for the verity or antiquity; the North of England hath many more of hers."
Did such a person as Mother Shipton ever live? ”

“ He procured a horse, made his way to Windsor, where "without any respect" he announced to various officers and military authorities that evil days were in store for the army, and "that God was purposed to destroy the wicked, and draw the Saints to Himself." ”

“ Shee said, you have made a great Gun, shoot it off, for it will doe you no good, you are going to warre, you will paine many a man, but you will kill none, so they went away.
"Not long after the Cardinall came to Cawood, and going to the top of the Tower, hee asked where Yorke was, and how farre it was thither, and said that one had said hee should never see Yorke; Nay, said one, shee said you might see Yorke, but never come at it. He vowed to burne her when he came to Yorke. ”

“ She accurately foretold the destruction by tempest of the Ouse Bridge and Trinity Church, York, in the following mystical language: "Before Ouze Bridge and Trinity Church meet, what is built in the day shall fall in the night, till the highest stone of the church be the lowest stone of the bridge."
Baker's booklet passed through two editions in 1797. He alleges that some of her prophecies therein were copied from an "original scroll delivered by her to the Abbot of Beverley ”

“ Coles, and are to be sold at his shop at the signe of the Lambe in the Old-Baily, neare the Sessions House, 1663." It is entitled Mother Shipton's Prophesies: with Three and XX more, all most terrible and wonderfull, Predicting strange alterations to befall this Climate of England." ”

“ XV. Many Welsh and Irish were killed in the war.
XVI. The prophecy about quaking for fear of dead man, not fulfilled.
XVII. War between England and Scotland not fulfilled. "Brammish is a river in Northumberland."
XVIII. A child had been "credibly reported" to have been born at Pomfret with three thumbs.
XIX. The prophecy of the siege of York and its accompanying incidents not fulfilled.
XX. The prophecy about London not fulfilled. ”