I've also heard that Henry VIII also exploded in his coffin, although I can't put my hands on an authority to back it up at the moment - but as he seemed to have a similar medical history the William (ie, vigorous, physical youth, degrading into being fat old men), perhaps it's not surprising.

Also, anyone heard that Matilda, William's wife, was practically a dwarf? Apparently, her coffin was open and her bones measured - she'd have been lucky to have made 4ft 8in.

Lady Grace

 

 

Cardinal Crumbles in Clash with Mystic

But Mother Shipton had not finished with Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Soon after the Abbot's first visit to her she found someone else at her door. This time it was someone called Mr Beasley. She seems to have known him, but not his three companions and they did not give their real names. But she knew exactly who they were.

Cardinal Wolsey had evidently heard about Mother Shipton's prophecies of his downfall. The latest was that he would never see the city of York - despite being its Archbishop. They were troubling times for Wolsey, in any case: he had not managed to pacify Henry over the matter of his marriage to Anne Boleyn, which the Pope refused to sanction. He was having a few sleepless nights. He despatched three lords to see Mother Shipton - and, with luck, to silence her. So the Duke of Suffolk, Charles Brandon, together with Lord D'Arcy from Yorkshire and the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Percy, approached the mysterious Mr Beasley in York and asked him to take them to Mother Shipton's house.

She was very welcoming, inviting her callers to come and sit down by the great log fire. But Ursula Shipton was not only well aware who these gentlemen were, but why they had come.

"Mother Shipton," said Charles, Duke of Suffolk, "you would hardly make us so welcome if you knew what we had come about."

Ursula smiled and poured him another mug of ale. "There's no reason why the messenger should be hanged," she said lightly.

"Look - you know why we're here. You said the Cardinal should never see York. He doesn't like it."

"I didn't say he should never see York," she answered amiably. "I said he might see York - but never reach it."

"Well," the Duke said, uneasily, "he's saying that when he does come to York, you'll be burned at the stake."

"We shall see," said Ursula, and taking her married woman's kerchief from her head, she threw it into the fire. The flames licked around it. But it did not burn. Then she took the staff that she carried and threw that too on the fire. But it did not burn. She reached forward and took it out of the flames. "If this had burned," she said, "I might have too."

And she glanced at the Duke of Suffolk. In his eyes was the fear of witchcraft which lived inside every man. "My love," she called him. "The time will come when you will be as low as I am and that's a low one indeed."

And when Lord D'Arcy and the Earl of Northumberland asked if she knew of their future they came away sombre, for she spoke of them being dead upon York pavements.

Some time after this meeting Cardinal Wolsey left London for York. It was a long, often dangerous journey. His penultimate destination was Cawood, a village ten miles to the south of the city.

Wolsey had come to find a kind of refuge in Cawood Castle, which, in the early years of his power, he had long neglected. He was already ill. But he could not resist climbing to the top of the tower to see if he could see York in the distance.

"Someone has said," he remarked, "that I should never see York."

"No," one of his companions corrected him, "she said you might see York, but never reach it."

Wolsey did not move. But he knew the voice that spoke at his elbow. "I vow," he said in a low voice, "that I'll have her burned when I get there. And I soon will be."

But then he turned and saw the man whose voice he knew. It was Lord Percy, Earl of Northumberland. "You have come for me," he said.

"Yes, my lord," said Lord Percy. "You are to travel south and face a charge of high treason."

The next day they began the journey back to London. At Leicester, Wolsey's illness became worse. The monks nursed him, but he never regained consciousness and there, a broken man, he died.

Such foreknowledge sealed Mother Shipton's reputation. During the years that followed her name became synonymous with dark warnings of the future. And the immediate future was more turbulent than ever, especially in Yorkshire.

But the King and Parliament crushed any rebellion. Among those who died were the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Percy, and his friend Lord D'Arcy; and they died on the pavements of York.

This is so ripe for a Painter Poem...please excuse the pun.  A ghoulish tale for a scary season...thumbs up!

I also thought that William I had eaten too many eels... 

Yes, William I died after his horse trod on some burning embers from the wreckage of the town of Mantes.