Mrs. Shipton also foretold that we should know the summer from the winter only by the green leaves, it should be so cold. “That the Roman Catholics shall have this country again, and make England a nice place once more. But as for these folks, they scarce know how to build a church, nor yet a steeple.
“That England shall be won and lost three times in one day; and that, principally, through an embargo to be laid upon vessels.
“That there is to come a man who shall have three thumbs on one hand, who is to hold the king’s horse in battle; he is to be born in London, and be a miller by business. The battle is to be fought at Rackheath-stone
Hill, on the Norwich road. Ravens shall carry the blood away, it will be so clotted.
“That the men are to be killed, so that one man shall be left to seven women; and the daughters shall come home, and say to their mothers, “Lawk, mother, I have seen a man!” The women shall have to finish the harvest.
“That the town of Yarmouth shall become a nettle-bush; that the bridges shall be pulled up, and small vessels sail to Irstead and Barton Broads.
“That blessed are they that live near Potter Heigham, and double-blessed them that live in it.” (That parish seems destined to be the scene of some great and glorious events.) May the blessing prove true!
We here close our extracts from Mrs. Lubbock’s Norfolk sayings, and now go back to superstitions of earlier date, that are so connected with Kett’s rebellion as to make them peculiarly interesting as matters of history. During the wars of the Roses, predictions of wars and rebellions, not unfrequently proclaiming hostility towards the privileged classes, were very common. Both persons and places were often designated by strange hieroglyphical symbols, frequently taken from heraldic badges and bearings, or analogies extremely puzzling to explain. They are alluded to in Shakespeare’s “Henry the Fourth,” among the incitements that urged Hotspur to anger, and Owen Glendower to rebellion, and recorded by
Hall, who says in his Chrouicle, “that a certain writer writeth that the Earl of March, the Lord Percy, and Owen Glendower, were made believe, by a Welsh prophecier, that King Henry was the moldewarpe (mole) cursed of God’s own mouth, and that they three were the dragon, the lion, and the wolf which should divide the realm between them.” This prophecy was doubtless identical with that published in 1652, under the title of “Strange Prophecies of Merlin,” where it is said, “Then shall the proudest prince in all Christendom go through Shropham Dale to Lopham Ward, where the White Lion shall meet with him, and fight in a field under Ives Minster, at South Lopham, where the prince aforesaid shall be slain under the minster wall, to the great grief of the priests all; then there shall come out of Denmark a Duke, and he shall bring with him the King of Denmark and sixteen great lords in his company, by whose consent he shall be crowned king in a town of Northumberland, and he shall reign three months and odd days. They shall land at Waborne Stone; they shall be met by the Red Deere, the Heath Cock, the Hound, and the Harrow: between Waborne and Branksbrim, a forest and a church gate, there shall be fought so mortal a battle, that from Branksbrim to Cromer Bridge it shall run blood; then shall the King of Denmark be slain, and all the perilous fishes in his company. Then shall the duke come forth manfully to Clare
Hall, where the bare and the headlesse men shall meet him and slay all his lords, and take him prisoner, and send him to Blanchflower, and chase his men to the sea, where twenty thousand of them shall be drowned without dint of the sword. Then shall come in the French king, and he shall land at Waborne Hope, eighteen miles from Norwich: there he shall be let in by a false mayor, and that shall he keep for his lodging for awhile; then at his return shall he be met at a place called Redbanke, thirty miles from Westchester, where at the first affray shall be slain nine thousand Welchmen and the double number of enemies.”