Mother Shipton Investigated: Chapter First

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;

This, and other prophecies, said to have been copied from records of unimpeachable antiquity in the British Museum Library, which prophecies in some cases have been reproduced in alleged fac-simile, have raised

The present popular ideas about Mother Shipton herself are twofold, as set forth in cheap publications, mostly almanacs with her name on the cover. Some of these profess to give her authentic history with the marvellous elements sifted out; others include the miraculous incidents.

The following account of her life, as adapted to the more sober-minded readers of the present century, is summarised by me from a book entitled Mother Shipton and 

When Cardinal Wolsey intended to remove his residence to York. she announced that he would never reach that city. The Cardinal sent three lords of his retinue in disguise, to inquire whether she had made such a prediction, and to threaten her if she persisted in it. She was then living in a village called Dring Houses, a mile to the west of the city. The retainers, led by a guide named Beasly, knocked at the door.

"Come in, Mr. Beasly, and three noble lords with you," said Mother Shipton.

She then treated them civilly, by setting out cakes and ale before them.

"You gave out," said they, "the Cardinal should never see York."

"No," she replied, "I said he might see it, but never come to it."

They responded, "When he does come, he'll surely burn thee."

"If this burn," said the Reverend Mother, "so shall I."

She then cast her linen handkerchief into the fire, allowed it to remain in the flames a quarter of an hour, and took it out unsinged.

One of her awe-stricken visitors then asked what she thought of him.

Cardinal Wolsey, on his arrival at Cawood, ascended the Castle Tower, and while viewing York, eight miles off, vowed he would burn the witch when he reached there. But ere he descended the stairs, a message from the King demanded his presence forthwith, and while on his journey to London, he was taken ill and died at Leicester.

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; privately preserved in a noble family for many years, and lately discovered among other curious and valuable manuscripts." He states that she foretold the time of her death, and that after taking solemn leave of her friends she departed, with much serenity, A.D. 1651, when upwards of seventy years of age. A stone monument was erected to her memory on the high North Road, between the villages of Clifton and Skipton, about a mile from York. The monument represents a woman upon her knees, with her hands closed before her, in a praying posture, and "stands to be seen there to this day," (1797). The following is said to have been her epitaph:--

Footnotes