Shipton, MOTHER, a famous prophetess of popular English tradition, whose story has at any rate the weight of a considerable antiquity. S. Baker published in 1797 her prophecies, together with those of the Cheshire prophet Nixon, and here we gather the following circumstantial details. Ursula Shipton was born near Knaresborough in Yorkshire, in July 1488, was duly baptised as Ursula Southiel by the Abbot of Beverley, at twenty-four married Tony Shipton, a builder, and departed this life with much serenity at over seventy years of age. However, a book (1684) by the notorious Richard Head is the real source of most of the fables about her. Here we are told how Agatha Shipton was carried off and married by the devil, how she bore him an ugly impish child, enjoyed power and knowledge beyond the measure of mortals, and left many prophecies behind her. Of these the earliest known record is a pamphlet of 1641, containing formal prophecies of the death of Lord Percy and of Wolsey—her prophecy that
Wolsey should never reach York was long current, is given by Baker, and was claimed as fulfilled by the fact that Wolsey was arrested at Cawood, a few days before his formal installation as Archbishop of York. In W. Lilly's Collection of Ancient and Moderne Prophesies (1645) occurs 'Shipton's prophecy,' and from it we see that all her prophecies were considered as already fulfilled. Again, an extant comedy on the subject dates from about 1660. A prophecy in doggerel verse under her name was put into circulation about 1862 by Charles Hindley, on his own confession (Notes and Queries, April 26, 1873). These wretched lines concluded with a prophecy that the world should come to an end in 1881, which caused great anxiety amongst a few very ignorant persons in corners of England. See William H. Harrison's Mother Shipton Investigated (1881), in which all the facts available are excellently set forth. Mr Harrison points out, moreover, the striking likeness between the traditional Mother Shipton represented on the chapbooks and the conventional Punch.