Download Category: English History

This rare collection of Mother Shipton’s prophecies was sent to us by a NEXUS reader who told us that, thirty years ago, she painstakingly transcribed them and managed to smuggle them out of the Mitchell Library, Sydney (now the State Library of New South Wales).

The originals were kept in a locked room, along with many other volumes of prophetic writings deemed unsuitable for viewing by the general public.

To our knowledge, this particular translation has never been made available to the public before appearing in NEXUS Magazine. While NEXUS published these transcriptions in an earlier issue (Vol.2, #3), we thought them worthy of repeating for the benefit of our newer readers, particularly in light of recent world events.

Mother Shipton reputedly was born Ursula Sontheil in 1488 in Norfolk, England, and died in 1561.

She exhibited prophetic and psychic abilities from an early age. At 24, married to Toby Shipton, she eventually became known as Mother Shipton. Many of her visions came true within her own lifetime and in subsequent centuries.

These rare verses from Mother Shipton seem to have prophetic indications for our times, but of course are open to interpretation.

And now a word, in uncouth rhyme
Of what shall be in future time
Then upside down the world shall be
And gold found at the root of tree
All England’s sons that plough the land
Shall oft be seen with Book in hand

The following quote is taken from the Brut Tysillo, the most ancient surviving written history of the British Isles and clearly refers to a comet of “enormous size” striking Britain and Ireland.

“And then a Star of enormous size appeared to Ythyr, having a single shaft, and at the head of the shaft a ball of fire in shape of a dragon, and from the dragon’s jaws, two beams went upward, the one beam reaching towards the farthest parts of Ffraink and the other beam towards Iwerddon, which split into seven smaller beams. And Ythr and all who saw this spectacle feared, and they asked the wise men what it might mean. And then Merddin wept and said, “O nation of the Bryttaniait! now are ye bereft of Emrys Wledic, a loss that cannot be replaced.” Brut Tysillo, aka the “Ystorya Brenhined y Brytanyeit” Jesus MS. LXI.

Incredible though it may seem to many historians, archaeological evidence of the vitrification of several ancient hill forts and stone structures of these islands gives compelling authority to the contention that Britain and Ireland were devastated by this comet in the year 562 AD.

At the time it entered the Earth’s atmosphere and wiped out the majority of a British population that was purportedly in excess of ten million, many of the estimated two million who survived were forced to seek refuge in Brittany and other parts of what was known as the Cambrian or Khumeric Empire.

So devastated was their homeland by the fireball, that must have scorched the Earth at temperatures in excess of 10,000 centigrade, before causing the boiling sea to cover the land.

This was followed by a fatally toxic fall-out in the air, that rendered the previously bountiful western islands uninhabitable for between 7 and 11 years.

STRANGE AS IT MAY SEEM, it was the enemies of ancient Britain who wrote at length with candour the most faithful description of the early Britons, showing that they possessed an admirable culture, a patriarchal religion, and an epochal history that extended far beyond that of Rome. Modern writers also confirm their testimony.

E. O. Gordon, in Prehistoric London, states that the city of London (Llandn) was founded two hundred and seventy years before Rome, in 1020 B.C.

The famed British archaeologist, Sir Flinders Petrie, discovered at Old Gaza gold ornaments and enamelware of Celtic origin, dated 1500 B.C., and in reverse found Egyptian beads at Stonehenge.

BRYTTAEN, THE BEST OF THE ISLANDS, WHICH USED TO BE CALLED THE WHITE ISLAND, situated as it is. in the western ocean between Ffraink and Iwerddon, (extends) eight hundred miles in its length and two hundred in its width, and whatsoever men must needs use it supplies them in unfailing plenty. And with this it is full of numerous wide-spreading plains and noble hills, and havens to which from overseas come foreign products in great variety. And there are also in it forests and thickets full of various kinds of animals and wild beasts, and many swarms of bees gathering honey among the flowers. There are with this fair pastures at the foot of wind-swept mountains, and bright, clear springs, and further, there are lakes and rivers full of various varieties of fish. Moreover, there are in it three noble rivers, namely, the Temys, and the Hymyr, and the Hafrenn. These, like three arms, divide the island; and along them come various kinds of articles of barter from countries Overseas.

And further, of old there were adorning it three and thirty noble chief cities, some of which are today wasted, their walls uprooted; while others are still inhabited, with holy temples in them for the praise of God. And so it is peopled by five nations, the Bryttaniait, the Normaniaid, the Ssaesson, the Ffichtiait, and the Yssgottiaid. And of all these the Bryttaniaid were the first to settle it, from mor rrydd* [the Channel] as far as the sea of Iwerddon, until the vengeance of God came upon them for their sins, which we shall presently show. And here endeth the prologue of Eneas yssgwyddwynn.

After the town was taken, Eneas fled, and Essgannys his son with him, and they came in ships to the land of Eidial, which is called the land of Ryfain. And at that time Lattinys was king in the Eidial, and he received Eneas with honour. Then after Eneas had fought with Tyrrv, king of Yttyl, and he was killed by Eneas, Essgannys got to wife Lauinia, daughter to Lattinys. And after Eneas, Yssgannys became a great man, and when Essgannys was elevated to kingly state, he built a city on the shores of the river Taiberys (Tiber).

And there a son was born to him named Ssylliys, who gave himself to secret fornication and seduced a niece, and got her with child. And when Essgannys his father learned this, he ordered the diviners to tell him by whom* the girl had conceived. And after they had divined and had gained a certitude on this point, they said that the maid was with child of a son, who would kill his mother and his father, and after it happened to him to wander through many lands, would rise to great honour. Nor did the diviners deceive them. And so when the maid’s time to give birth was come, she died in childbed. And thus he slew his mother. And the boy was named Bryttys and was put out to fosterage.

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Part IV The Collapse of the Anti-Jewish Party, 1847–1858

THE AGITATION FOR JEWISH “EMANCIPATION” WOULD NOT BEGIN AGAIN IN EARNEST UNTIL THE WHIG MINISTRY OF LORD RUSSELL. There was no law against Jews taking up seats in Parliament; rather, they were effectively barred from taking office because of a technicality. In 1847, Lionel de Rothschild, Nathan’s son, was elected to the Commons. Unable to swear the Oath of Abjuration because of the words “upon the true faith of a Christian,” he could not take his seat. A Jewish Disabilities Removal Bill was again sent through the Commons in 1848.

This provoked significant opposition among High Tories because it placed Jews on an equal footing with Roman Catholics. It was passed in the Commons, but rejected in the Lords. Following the Whig failure to get the bill passed through the Lords, Rothschild vacated his seat. He was re-elected in 1850. In consequence, the Whigs introduced into the House of Commons an Oath of Abjuration Bill, which would allow Rothschild to swear a modified oath and take his seat. Although it was passed in the Commons, it was ultimately rejected by the Lords in 1851.

The Jewish Campaign Against Parliamentary Anti-Judaism, 1829–1836

The movement for Jewish “emancipation” in nineteenth-century England was spearheaded by Jews and their Whig or Liberal allies, while the opposition was led by the High Tories:

The High Tory majority in the House of Lords had acted as a barrier to the advancement of Jewish ‘emancipation’ —-and some of the arguments

put forward against the Jews, both in and out of Parliament, reflected the traditional Tory view that Church and State were part of an inseparable entity, in the promotion of which Jews ought to play no part. (Alderman, 2015)

In practice, Anglo-Jewry had more freedoms than their compatriots in central Europe, but in late-Georgian England, the laws on the books indicated that they were less free. Cecil Roth writes:

The entire body of medieval legislation which reduced the Jew to the position of a yellow-badged pariah, without rights and without security other than by the goodwill of the sovereign, remained on the statute book, though remembered only by antiquarians. As late as 1818 it was possible to maintain in the courts Lord Coke’s doctrine that the Jews were in law perpetual enemies, ‘for between them, as with the devils, whose subjects they are, and the Christian there can be no peace.’

Despite his freedoms vis-à-vis Ashkenazim of Central Europe, in the English society of the nineteenth century, politically and professionally, the Jew was still excluded from the mainstream:

Public life was, in law, entirely barred. Jews were excluded from any office under the Crown, any part in civic government, or any employment however modest in connexion with the administration of justice or even education, by the Test and Corporation Acts. —These made it obligatory on all persons seeking such appointment to take the Sacrament in accordance with the rites of the Church of England. —Naturally these disqualifications included the right to membership of Parliament, for which the statutory oaths in the statutory form were a necessary preliminary. For the same reason the universities were closed, and, as a consequence of this, various professions.

Henry Pelham (1694–1754), Whig Prime Minister who introduced the Jew Bill in Parliament in 1753

Part I: The English Common Law Basis of Tory Anti-Judaism

A legal case involving Robert Calvin, although seemingly unrelated, would play a key role in shaping attitudes and beliefs about Jews and Jewishness until the mid-nineteenth century. The plaintiff was born in Edinburgh, two years after the Union of the Crowns in 1603.  Some land was purchased on his behalf, to test whether his Scottish parentage was an impediment to ownership of English real property. However, it was promptly confiscated because, it was claimed, his birth had occurred outside the “ligeance” or dominion of the English Crown. This meant that Calvin, from an international perspective, was an alien. In 1608, the Lord Chancellor and justices of the Exchequer Chamber ruled in favour of the plaintiff, reasoning that since Scotland and England were ruled by the same monarchy, Calvin’s birth had actually occurred within the ligeance of King James I, making him a full subject with the same rights as an Englishman. The court concluded that he had been wrongfully dispossessed of the land.

The Elizabethan jurist Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634) used Calvin’s case to define the proper legal relationship between infidels and Christians:

All infidels are in law perpetui inimici, perpetual enemies (for the law presumes not that they will be converted, that being remota potentia, a remote possibility) for between them, as with the devils, whose subjects they be, and the Christian, there is perpetual hostility, and can be no peace.

Since Jews were infidels, they were “perpetual enemies” subject to a plethora of civil and legal disabilities. In the First Part of the Institutes of the Lawes of England (1628), Coke wrote: “If the witness be an infidel, or infamous, or of non-sane memory, or not of discretion, or a party interested, or the like, he can be no good witness.” This meant that Jews, because they were infidels, were not allowed to bear witness or testify in a court of law, even in cases of assault, robbery and murder. As far as English jurisprudence was concerned, the Jew was a legal non-entity.

Because Jews were perpetual enemies, certain interactions between Christians and Jews were punishable by death.  In the Institutes, Coke “found that by the ancient laws of England, that if any Christian man did marry with a woman that was a Jew, or a Christian woman that married with a Jew, it was a felony, and the party so offending should be burnt alive.”

THIS is the second volume of that work dealing I with new phases of military science as they affect national existence which has occupied my time for several years past. The first volume was The Valour of Ignorance; the third is not yet completed.

I have many persons to thank for the interest they have shown in the progress of this volume, and I wish particularly to thank Sir John George Tollemache Sinclair, Bart, of Thurso Castle, who has been most kind in securing various data, etc., for me.

This book has been written under numerous difficulties. Begun in America, parts were written upon every continent and every sea, being finally completed in Asia. Begun in profound peace, the concluding chapters were finished upon a recent field of battle.

THE CITY OF LONDON is known for its invisible earnings, as a hub of financial services such as insurance, commodities trading and investment. What is less well known is that the City of London Corporation is the oldest continuous democratic commune in the world. Two thousand years of self-government is quite an achievement. For no one to really notice is perhaps the greatest achievement of all. Invisible earnings, invisible power.

The law and practice of the Romans, the City’s founders, became the basis of London’s institutions and political language. The status of “citizen” has been retained ever since. The City also adopted through its democratic ward system and court hustings many aspects of Saxon civic practice. The “folk-moot”, for example, was a regular meeting of all citizens at St Paul’s Cross, called by the ringing of the bells, where matters of concern would be discussed and voted upon. This formed the basis of the Corporation of London and founded its position in the Ancient Constitution.

While laying waste to the rest of the country, William the Conqueror “came friendly” to London, recognised the liberties of its citizens, pledged to defend their freedoms and fortified the City against barbarian attack. London’s special status within the constitution was upheld by a stream of charters and privileges that protected the City of London from external interference.

In Magna Carta, the 1215 charter of rights between King John and the barons, not only are the rights of the “whole body” of citizens respected but the mayor of London was designated as one of two guarantors charged with ensuring that the Crown kept its side of the bargain.