Famous Witches Throughout History: Mother Shipton

Mother Shipton

(c.1488 – 1561)

Mother Shipton was a 16th Century English soothsayer, prophetess and supposed witch who is said to have made dozens of unusually accurate predictions, including the Great Plague of London, the Spanish Armada and the Great Fire of London. Many of the more colourful details of her life (such as her birth in a cave in Knaresborough and her hideous appearance) were later admitted to have been fabricated by Richard Head, the editor of a book of her prophecies published forty years after her death.

 

Mother Shipton was born Ursula Southeil (or possibly Sontheil) the daughter of the 16-year old suspected witch Agatha Southeil (or Sontheil) in 1488 (or possibly 1486). She was reputedly born grotesquely deformed and hideously ugly, but was nevertheless taken in by a kindly townswoman. Her head was too large, her “goggling” eyes glowed like embers, her cheeks were sunken, her limbs were twisted and ill-formed, and she was born with a full set of teeth which protruded like the tusks of a boar. According to local accounts was referred to as “Hag-Face” and “Devils Bastard” as she grew up, and it was believed by many that the father of such an ugly child must be the Devil himself. Some of the accounts of “strange and terrible noises” or a great crack of thunder and a pungent smell of brimstone at the moment of Ursula’s birth are probably later fabrications to fit in with the fanciful notion that the Devil had been the child’s father.

 

Fanciful tales grew up around her of strange events which were said to have plagued the cottage as she grew up. The furniture would mysteriously rearrange itself, plates be flung about, and food vanish before the eyes of astonished mealtime guests. It is said that when pushed beyond the limits of her notoriously limited patience, she would send goblins (or even dragons) to put some of her tormentors to flight. On one occasion, warned that her activities might lead to her being burnt as a witch, she supposedly put her wooden staff in the fire and, when the flames had no effect on it, said: “If this had been burned, I might have too’.

 

However, neither her growing reputation as a witch nor her appearance (which apparently worsened as she grew up) deterred a York carpenter and builder Toby Shipton from marrying her in 1512 (the inevitable tale developed that she had used a love-potion to bewitch her hapless suitor). Although they remained childless, their relationship was described as “very comfortable”.

 

Mother Shipton was credited with powers of clairvoyance and through the centuries her predictions, originally passed down by word of mouth, were held in the same high regard as those of her near contemporary, Nostradamus. Her early forecasts were to do with local people and events, and people travelled to Knaresborough from some distance around to consult her. She was particularly successful in solving the sort of commonplace interpersonal disputes, and it was recorded that thieves would publicly return stolen goods (apologizing to the astonished owners for their sin), wandering husbands would beg forgiveness and mend their ways, and corrupt officials would make spontaneous acts of restitution.

 

But, as time passed, her prophecies became more ambitious and began to relate to the country as a whole, including prominent figures at the court of Henry VIII. For example, she predicted that Cardinal Wolsey (the “Mitred Peacock”) would see York, but never reach it, and in 1530, after falling out of favour with the King, Wolsey set out to find refuge in the north and was within sight of York when Lord Percy arrived with a Royal Summons demanding he return to London to face a charge of high treason.

 

Her reputation has been kept alive by her foretelling of events in the more distant future: the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, the accession of Lady Jane Grey, Drake’s defeat of the Spanish Armada, the Great Plague of 1665 and, perhaps most famously, the Great Fire of London of 1666. It is claimed that some of her prophetical verses foretold iron ships, motor transport, submarines, aircraft and perhaps even the Internet (‘around the world thoughts shall fly in the twinkling of an eye’). One of the most famous examples of Mother Shipton’s prophecies, which apparently foretells many aspects common to modern civilization and predicts the end of the world in 1881, is now known to be a 19th Century forgery, which did not appear in print until 1862.

 

Many people now accept that the figure of Mother Shipton is largely a myth, and that the majority of her prophecies were composed by others in retrospect, after her death. The most notable book of her prophecies, edited by Richard Head, was first published in 1684, and Head later admitted to having invented almost all of Shipton’s biographical details.

 

Mother Shipton died in 1561 (or 1567), and is said to have been buried in unconsecrated ground somewhere on the outskirts of York, possibly at Clifton. Despite the disproofs of many of her prophesies, she was both feared and revered in her own time, and has been remembered by many over the centuries as England’s greatest prophetess.

 

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Mother Shipton Prophecy

 

Are these the End Times?
A Woman’s Uncanny Prophecy (500 Years Old)

A witch? A satanist? Possessed? Gifted? Used of God? Whatever you say, the evidence certainly suggests Mother Shipton was the closest thing to a prophetess that England had for unnumbered generations. Of her lfe we know some, not much. Mother Shipton, sometimes called “the Yorkshire Sybil” was reputedly born Ursula Sontheil (or Southill) in 1488 in Norfolk, England (supposedly in the cave of Knaresborough), and died in 1561, burnt, we are told, at the stake. Her mother Agatha was well known for her exceptional powers. Ursula, too, exhibited prophetic and psychic abilities from an early age. At 24, married to one Toby Shipton, she eventually became known as Mother Shipton. Many of her visions came true within her own lifetime and in subsequent centuries. I first learned of her through an old time holy roller preacher, Bishop Whitlock, in Lewiston, California. But with all the Y2K hoopla, her fame seems enigmatically to be spreading. These rare verses from Mother Shipton seem to have prophetic indications for our times, and while open to interpretation, they show this woman to have been uncannily prescient.

“This was given to Laurent under the Tree in Athens, Georgia by Tim Mills in October, 1944. From an article in the Banner-Herald, Athens, GA Monday, May 23, 1938:

We are in receipt of an alleged prophecy written five hundred years ago by Mother Shipton and vouched for by J.H. Phillips, of Ashdown, Arkansas.
Many of the prophecies have come true and on the suggestion of the owner of the copy of the prophecy, we are giving space to its publication.”

A Prophecy from half a millenium ago –

 

So timely it’s almost spooky.
Some people seem to believe the prophetic age passed with the Age of the Apostles (only to return with the Age of Aquarius?) Here is a prophecy written 500 years ago by a woman. Read and see if you can suggest how she could have improved it if she had written it this month. Before reading it, please undertake to transport yourself back across five centuries and live when there were no steamships, no steam railways, no sewing machines, no cook stoves, no radios, no automobiles, no flying machines, no submarines, and none of the many other inventions so common today.
Now, you back there, sitting alone in your quaint old fashioned dwelling, READ this poem AND SEE if you do not think she had a real vision of the future happenings of the world. – J.H. Phillips, Ashdown AR.

 

[Bob Shepherd notes] Mother Shipton was born in [not Norfolk, but north Yorkshire) England and died in Clifton, Yorkshire, apparently in 1561. If true, her death was by execution — burnt (as a `Witch`) — at the stake.

 

Phillip Coppens attempts to revise (or update a revision or an earlier revision) of the canonical “received” view of the Shipton (witch) story. To separate history from legend is still a daunting task, or even to decipher the whys and hows of so many unexplained (and uncannily accurate) predictions. Were her powers from the devil? Alas, she paid a price, first in ostracism and official threats and persecutions. Those days were still the era of the infamous Malleus Maleficarum, the hammer of witches. (more) Inquisitions, both official and otherwise, or sometimes just local zealots … did not hesitate to burn non-conformists (or even just trouble-maker women) at the stake — as Mother Shipton apparently learned first-hand. Is there a moral to the story? For one thing, Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History.

Mother Shipton Prophecy

(Versified ::: exactly as originally)
[Archaic spelling has been modernized]
A carriage without horse shall go;
Disasters fill the world with woe.
In London, Primrose Hill shall be,
Its centre hold a Bishop’s See.
Around the world men’s thoughts shall fly
Quick as the twinkling of an eye
And waters shall great wonders do,
How strange, and yet it shall come true.

 

Then upside down the world shall be,
And gold found at the root of tree;
Through towering hill proud men shall ride,
No horse nor ass move at his side.
Beneath the waters men shall walk;
Shall ride, shall sleep and even talk.
And in the air men shall be seen,
In white and black and even green.
A great man then shall come and go,
For prophecy declares it so.

 

In water iron then shall float
As easy as a wooden boat,
Gold shall be found in stream or stone,
In land that is as yet unknown.
Water and fire shall wonders do,
And England shall admit a Jew.

 

The Jew that once was held in scorn,
Shall of a Christian then be born. [borne?]
A house of glass shall come to pass
In ENGLAND – but alas!
A war will follow with the work,
Where dwells the pagan and the Turk.
The states will lock in fiercest strife
And seek to take each other’s life.
When North shall thus divide South
The eagle build in lion’s mouth.
Then tax and blood and cruel war
Shall come to every humble door.

 

Three times shall lovely sunny France
Be lead to play a lovely dance,
Before the people shall be free.
The tyrant rulers shall she see.
Three rulers in succession be,
Each sprang from different dynasty.

 

Then, when fiercest fight is done
England and France shall be as one.
The British olive next shall twine
In marriage with the German vine.
Men walk beneath and over streams
Fulfilled shall be our strangest dreams.

 

All England’s sons that plough the land –
Shall oft be seen with Book in hand.
The poor shall then True Wisdom know
And waters, wind, where corn did grow.
Great houses stand in farflung vale,
All covered o’er with snow and hail.

 

And now a word in uncouth rhyme
Of what shall be in future time,
For in the wondrous far off days,
The women shall adopt a craze
To dress like men and trousers wear
And cut off their lovely locks of hair.
They’ll ride astride with brazen brow
As witches on a broomstick now
Then love shall die and marriage cease,
And nations wane as births decrease.
The wives shall fondle cats and dogs
And men live much the same as hogs.

 

In nineteen-hundred twentysix
Build houses light of straw and sticks,

 

And roaring monsters with man atop
Do seem to eat the verdant crop.
And men shall fly as birds do now,
And give away the horse and plough.
When pictures live with movements free,
When boats like fishes swim the sea,
When men like birds shall scour the sky
Then half the world, blood drenched shall die.

 

For then shall mighty war be planned
And fire and sword sweep the land.
But those who live the century through
In fear and trembling this will do;
Flee to the mountains and the dens
To bog and forest and wild fens
For storms shall rage and oceans roar,
When Gabriel stands on sea and shore
And when he blows his horn
Old worlds shall die and new be born.

 

Thirteen fulfilled prophecies:

~Great Fire of London [1666]
~Readmission of Jews to England
~Radio, telephone, the internet?
~Submarine vehicles and [cities?]
~Trains, Cars and Motorised vehicles
~Iron ships and ocean-going vessels
~Mechanized [“crop-eating”] agriculture
~Aeroplanes, and [perhaps] space travel
~Tunnels right through the “towering hills”
~Widespread diffusion of literacy, learning
~An inversion of time-honoured sexual rôles
~An apparent untethering of mores and morals
~A degradation of relations within the family.