The Jews in the Prophecies of Mother Shipton
Mother Shipton – sometimes called the English Nostradamus – is a largely forgotten medieval prophetess. According to legend she was born Ursula Sontheil in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire in July 1488. (1) Her teenage mother Agatha was claimed by her first biographer Richard Head in 1677 to have been witch who was impregnated by the devil himself (2) and who herself became a witch as a result gained prophetic foresight. (3)
Our first recorded mention of Mother Shipton is in the Elizabethan and early Stuart historian William Camden who mentions her in the 1610 edition of his ‘Britannia’ and the first known edition of the ‘Prophecies of Mother Shipton’ dates from 1641. (4) Daniel Defoe also mentions her in passing in his famous ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’ published in 1722. (5)
You might say: well, this is all very interesting but what has this to do with jews?
This I can answer quickly by pointing to the fact that in several editions of ‘The Prophecies of Mother Shipton’ we find mentions of jews.
For example, in S. Baker’s 1797 ‘Prophecies of Robert Nixon, Mother Shipton, and Martha, the Gypsy’ we read in Prophecy 7 that:
‘In the water shall iron float,
The same as now a wooden boat.
More wonders still shall water do,
And England yet admit a Jew.’ (6)
This changes in J. Wainwright’s slightly later edition of the prophecies entitled ‘The Prophecies and Death of the Famous Mother Shipton’ when Wainwright has the jews mentioned in Prophecy 8 and modifies the text to:
‘Iron in the water shall float,
As easy as a wooden boat.
Gold shall be found, and found,
In a land that's not now known.
Fire and water shall more wonders do.
England shall at last admit a Jew.
The Jew that was held in scorn,
Shall of a Christian be born.’ (7)
The reason for this is likely – as can also be seen that jews simply do not appear in M. Randall’s circa 1820 edition of Mother Shipton’s prophecies which instead focuses on anti-Catholic predictions validating an ardently Protestant view of the world – (8) that at least some of Mother Shipton’s prophecies were invented well after she lived and have since been adapted by different writers at different times to suit their purposes as Ed Simon has observed. (9)
William Harrison writing in 1881 found evidence of one such instance when one Charles Lindley of Brighton confessed to having interpolated such a prediction into the chapbook edition of Mother Shipton’s prophecies that he issued in 1862 in England in order to increase sales. (10)
This is further supported by the fact that Harrison never mentions a reference to jews in his 1881 book on Mother Shipton as well as pointing out that nearly all information on Mother Shipton and her prophecies is derived from Richard Head’s 1677 book ‘The Life and Death of Mother Shipton’ (11) – which also contains no references to jews - despite being claimed to come from manuscripts in the library of the British Museum. (12)
So, while Baker and Wainwright’s references to jews are not authentic Mother Shipton prophecies to what do they refer?
Very likely they refer to the issue of so-called jewish emancipation which had been the subject of increasingly intense debate with the rise of the great jewish banking families in Britain – of which the famous Rothschild family are merely the best known – which is suggested by the turn of phrase ‘admit the jew’ – which was ultimately successful in 1829 - that could also in turn be interpreted by the credulous as a reference to the re-admission of the jews to England by Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell in 1656.
However, that leaves the following strange reference in Wainwright’s edition of the prophecies:
‘The Jew that was held in scorn,
Shall of a Christian be born.’
This is explicable if we but point to one of the lesser-known events of 18th century England which is the conversion to Judaism of Lord George Gordon in 1787 in the city of Birmingham only seven years after leading – as the head of the ‘Protestant Association’ - 50,000 English Protestants in a series of anti-Catholic riots in June 1780 which became known to history as the ‘Gordon Riots’ and led to circa 450 dead and wounded Englishmen.
Such a conversion was so rare historically – since while there had long been a steady but tiny steam of (usually Protestant) Christian converts to Judaism persons of power and influence rarely did so (another contemporary example would be Count Valentine Potocki [aka Abraham ben Abraham] in Poland in the 1740s who was subsequently burned to death for heresy in 1749) – as well as so well known at the time (since it was a national scandal) that it would have made an ideal ‘prediction’ for Mother Shipton to have made and would thus give credence and authenticity to her prophecies (as well as increase sales).
Therefore, while we can see that while Mother Shipton’s prophecies didn’t actually reference jews at all. The later interpolators certainly did and referenced key events in English political and religious history to either try to influence the future or give authenticity to their edition of Mother Shipton’s prophecies and thus also increase their sales.
References
(1) https://web.archive.org/web/20090212184058/http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/occult/mother-shipton.html ; https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Shipton,_Mother
(2) Richard Head, 1677, ‘The Life and Death of Mother Shipton’, pp. 1-8
(3) Ibid., p. 13
(4) https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Shipton,_Mother
(5) Daniel Defoe, 1722, ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’, pp. 32-33
(6) S. Baker, 1797, ‘Prophecies of Robert Nixon, Mother Shipton, and Martha, the Gypsy’, 1st Edition, Self-Published: London, p. 183
(7) J. Wainwright, n.d., ‘The Prophecies and Death of the Famous Mother Shipton’, 1st Edition, J. Wainwright: London, p. 28
(8) M. Randall, n.d. (1820?), ‘The Strange and Wonderful History and Prophecies of Mother Shipton’, 1st Edition, M. Randall: Stirling, pp. 18-23
(9) https://brewminate.com/divining-the-witch-of-york-propaganda-and-prophecy-mother-shipton-in-medieval-england/
(10) William Harrison, 1881, ‘Mother Shipton Investigated’, 1st Edition, William Harrison: London, p. 43
(11) Ibid., p. 18
(12) Ibid., pp. 9-10