SHIPTON, MOTHER, a reputed witch and prophetess who is supposed to have lived in early Tudor times. There is no really trustworthy evidence of her existence, but tradition has it that her maiden-name was Ursula Southill, Sowthiel or Southiel, and her parents were peasants, living near the Dropping Well, Knares borough, Yorkshire, and that she was born about 1486-1488. Her mother, Agatha Southill, was a reputed witch, and Ursula, who was phenomenally ugly, was regarded by the neighbours as "the Devil's child." When about twenty-four she married a builder of York, Tobias Shipton. Her most sensational prophecies had to do with Cardinal Wolsey, the duke of Suffolk, Lord Percy and other men prominent at the 'court of Henry VIII. She is said to have died at Clifton, Yorkshire, in 1561, and was buried there or at Shipton. Her whole history rests on the flimsiest authority, but her alleged prophecies had an extraordinary hold on the popu lar imagination. The suggestion that Mother Shipton had foretold
the end of the world in 1881 caused most poignant alarm in rural England in that year, the people deserting their houses, and spending the night in, prayer in the fields, churches and chapels. This latter alleged prophecy was one of a series of forgeries to which Charles Hindley, who reprinted in 1862 a garbled version of Richard Head's Life, confessed in 1873.
See Richard Head, Life and Death of Mother Shipton (London, 1684) ; Life, Death and the whole of the Wonderful Prophecies of Mother Shipton, the Northern Prophetess (Leeds, 1869) ; W. H. Har rison, Mother Shipton investigated 0880 ; Journ. of Brit. Archaeo. Assoc. xix. 308. Mother Shipton's and Nixon's Prophecies, with an introduction by S. Baker (1797).