These sort of predictions, often accompanied by symbolical illustrations, continued to gain popularity, and were made use of at various periods to serve the purposes of the people. Sir Walter Scott’s “Essays on the Prophecies of Thomas the Rhymer,” shew the application made of them in the time of the Stuarts. In the reign of Henry VIII., they excited so much alarm, as to cause an act to be passed, which declared, “that if any person should print, write, speak, sing, or declare to any other person, of the king or any other person, any such false prophecies upon occasion of any arms, fields, beasts, fowls, or such like things, they shall be deemed guilty of felony, without benefit of the clergy.”
The confession of Richard Byshop, of Bungay, when
arraigned before the Privy Council a few years prior to the date of the above act, shews upon what grounds the fear it expresses was founded.
The confession of Richard Byshop, of Bungay.
“Memorandum: that the said Richard Byshop saith, that he met with one Robert Seyman, at Tyndale Wood, the 11th day of May, about nine of the clock, in the twenty-ninth year of the reign of our sovereign lord King Henry the Eighth, and after such salutation as they had then, the said Richard Byshop said to the said Robert, ‘What tythings hear you? Have you any musters about you?’ And the said Robert said ‘No.’ Then the said Richard said, ‘This is a hard world for poor men.’ And the said Robert said, ‘Truly it is so.’ Then the said Richard said, ‘Ye seem to be an honest man, and such a one as a man may open his mind unto.’ And the said Robert said, ‘I am a plain man; ye may say to me what ye woll.’ And then the said Richard said, ‘We are so used now-a-days at Bungay as was never seen afore this; for if two or three good fellows be walking together, the constables come to them, and woll know what communication they have had, or else they shall be stocked. And as I have heard lately at Walsingham, the people had risen if one person had not been. And as I hear say, some of them now be in Norwich Castle, and others be sent to London.’ And further, the said Richard said, ‘If two men were gathered together, one might say to another what he would as long as the third man was not there; and if three men were together, if two of them were absent, the third might say what he would in surety enough.’ And he said he knew there was a certain prophecy, which if the said Robert would come to Bungay, he should hear it read; and that one man had taken pains to watch in the night to write the copy of the same. And if so be, as the prophecy saith, there shall be a rising of the people this year or never. And that the prophecy saith the king’s grace was signified by a mowle, and that the mowle should be subduyt and put down. And that the said Richard did hear that the Earl of Derby was up with many; and that he should be proclaimed traitor in those parts where he dwelleth. And also he heard, as he saith, that a great company was fled out of the land. And that the Duke of Norfolk’s grace was in the north parts, and was so to be set about, as he heard say, that he might not come away when he would. I pray God that it be not so. Also he said that the prophecy saith that three kings shall meet on Mousehold Heath, and the proudest prince in Christendom be their subject. And that the White Lion should stay all that business at length, and should obtain. And said, ‘Farewell, my friend, and know me another day if ye can, and God send us a quiet world.’”
The same prophecies here alluded to were revived and repeated, together with many doggrel rhymes, at the time of the famous Kett’s rebellion. The historian of the event says that they were rung in the ears of the people every hour, such as
“The county Gnoffes, Hob, Dick, and Hick,
With clubbs and clowted shoon,
Shall fill the vale
Of Duffin’s dale
With slaughtered bodies soon.”
And also
“The headless men within the dale,
Shall there be slain both great and small.”
So positively were these sort of prophecies applied to the circumstances of the time, that the rebels who had possession of a favourable position on the heights of the common, forsook it in expectation of realizing the prediction by coming into the valley, “believing themselves,” as the historian has it, “to be the upholsterers that were to make Duffin’s Dale a large soft pillow for death to rest on, whereas they proved only the stuffing to fill the same.”
The common phrase, “A cock and bull story,” took its origin from these symbolical prophecies, in which the figures of animals were so often introduced.