An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Mother Shipton

It is not always realised that the famous prophetess, Mother Shipton, was a witch. At her birthplace, Knaresborough in Yorkshire, there is no doubt of it. She is depicted there on an inn sign, which is more than 200 years old, and painted on copper. The picture shows her as the traditional wise old woman, with a black cat by her side, and in her hand a broomstick with a curious forked top to the handle. Behind her is Knaresborough’s famous Petrifying Well, near which she was born, in the year 1488.

Her mother’s name was Agatha Sontheil, a poor girl who was left an orphan at the age of 15, and was reduced to begging in order to live. The story goes that Agatha one day met in a wood a handsome, welldressed young man. She asked him for alms, which he gave her; and he persuaded her to meet him again in the wood the next day. Their acquaintance ripened into a love affair, and Agatha found herself pregnant.

When she told her lover of her predicament, he revealed to her that he was the Devil. He told her that if she would be faithful to him, he would give her supernormal powers, including the ability to raise storms and tempests, and to foretell the future.

Agatha travelled about the countryside with her mysterious lover, sometimes being away for several days at a time. The local busy-bodies became very curious, especially when they saw that the poor beggar girl now seemed to have a sufficiency of money. So on her return, on one occasion, a number of them came to her house to question her.

Angry at their impertinence, Agatha showed her new-found powers by invoking the wind. A violent storm of wind sprang up, and blew the inquisitive neighbours back to their own homes.

Of course, the talk about this and similar incidents soon reached the ears of the authorities, and Agatha was brought before the local magistrates on a charge of witchcraft. However, she was by some means acquitted.

She may have been spared because she was pregnant, as soon afterwards her child was born. It was a girl, and the mother named it Ursula. This baby was the future Mother Shipton. It was a strange, misshapen infant, ugly and deformed, but strong and healthy.

Not long afterwards, Agatha Sontheil died—“in peace, in the shelter of a convent”, says the legend. One wonders what really happened to her, and how voluntary the “shelter” was. The baby was given to the parish nurse to bring up; but the little girl turned out to be such a handful that the old dame could not cope with her. So she was sent to a school.

Here Ursula began to display the unusual powers that might have been expected from her ancestry. When her fellow pupils teased her about her deformities, something invisible pulled their hair, beat them and knocked them to the ground. Ursula was sent away from the school, and never went to another, although she had been a bright pupil and surprised her teachers by her ability.

Not much is known of her early life; but at the age of 24 she married a man called Toby Shipton. She soon made a reputation for herself as a seer, and many people came to consult her. As Mother Shipton, she became widely known; and although she was generally regarded as a witch, she seems to have been held in so much esteem in Yorkshire that the authorities never molested her.

She foretold her own death some time before it happened; and in 1561, the year in which she had said her time would come to depart from this world, she took leave of her friends, lay down on her bed and died peacefully.

A memorial stone was erected to her memory near Clifton, about a mile from York. It bore this inscription:

Here lies she who never ly’d,

Whose skill so often has been try’d,

Her prophecies shall still survive,

And ever keep her name alive.

This has certainly proved true; because a good deal of prophecy in doggerel verse, ascribed at any rate to Mother Shipton, has long been extant. Of course, as usual in these matters, the problem is to know just how much is genuine, and how much was forged by other people after her death. If we were to accept the authenticity of all the verses that are credited to her, then Mother Shipton predicted practically the entire course of English history, from her time to the present day. However, some are admitted forgeries, and a good deal of her supposed writings sound nothing like the idiom of her time, 1488—1561.

Mother Shipton became famous in her own day by predicting the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, who died in 1530. She called him ’the Mitred Peacock’ because of his pride. This was also a play upon words because of the splendour of the peacock’s train and the ’train’ of Cardinal Wolsey, a showy retinue of some 800 followers.

This prophecy is quoted in an old book, The Life, Prophecies and Death of the Famous Mother Shipton, which is said to have been first printed in 1687 and reprinted ’verbatim’ in 1862. It reads as follows: “Now shall the Mitred Peacock first begin to plume, whose Train shall make a great show in the World for a time, but shall afterwards vanish away, and his Honour come to nothing, which shall take its end at Kingston.”

The old book continues: “The Cardinal being told of this prophecy, would never pass through the town of Kingston, though lying directly in the road from his own house to the Court; but afterwards being arrested for high treason by the Earl of Northumberland and Sir Anthony Kingstone, the Lieutenant of the Tower, sent unto him, his very name (remembering the prophecy) struck such a terror to his heart that he soon after expired.”

The story about Mother Shipton being the Devil’s daughter becomes understandable when we remember that ’the Devil’ was the title given to the male leader of a witches’ coven.