A boy shall be born with three thumbs, and shall hold three king's horses, while England shall be three times won and lost in one day.

The original may be seen in several families in Cheshire, and in particular in the hands of Mr. Egerton, of Oulton, with many other remarkables; as, that Pecferton windmill should be removed to Ludditon hill; that horses saddled should run about till their girts rotted away. But this is sufficient to prove Nixon as great a prophet as Partridge; and we shall give other proofs of it before we have done.

I know your prophets are generally for rawhead and bloody-bones, and therefore do not mind it much; or I might add, that Oulton Mill shall be driven with blood instead of water. But these soothsayers are great butchers, and every hall is with them a slaughter-house.

Now, as for authorities to prove this Prophecy to be genuine, and how it has been hitherto accomplished, I might refer myself to the whole county of Chester, where it is in every one's mouth, and has been for these forty years. As much as I have of the manuscript was sent me by a person of sense and veracity, and as little disposed to believe visions as any body. For my own part, I build nothing on this or any other prophecy; only there is something so very odd in the story, and so pat in the wording of it, that I cannot help giving it as I found it. The family

of the Cholmondeleys is very ancient, in this county, and takes its name from a place so called near Nantwich. There are also Cholmton and Cholmondeston; but the seat of that branch of the family which kept our prophet Nixon, is at Vale Royal, on the river Weaver, in Delamere forest. It was formerly an abbey, founded by Edward I. and came to the Cholmondeleys from the famous family of the Holcrofts. When Nixon prophesied, this family was near being extinct, the heir having married Sir Walter St. John's daughter, a lady not esteemed very young, who, notwithstanding, being with child, fell in labour, and continued so for some days. (During which time an eagle sat upon the house-top, and flew away when she was delivered, which proved to be a son.)

A raven is also known to have built in a stone lion's mouth, in the steeple of the church of Over, in the forest of Delamere, not long before the abdication of King James: the wall spoken of fell down, and fell upwards, and in removing the rubbish, were found the bones of a man of more than ordinary size. A pond, at the same time, ran with water that had a reddish tincture, and was never known to have done so before or since.

Headless Cross, in the Forest, which, in the memory of man, was several feet high, is now sunk within half a foot of the ground.

G3

1

In the parish of Budworth, a boy was born with three thumbs; he had also two heels on one foot.-Lady Egerton, wishing well to another restoration, often instigated her husband to turn Peter, the miller of Neginshire mills, out of the mill; but he looked upon it as a whimsy, and so permitted Peter still to continue there, in hopes of becoming as good a knight as Sir Philip, his landlord, was.

Of this Peter I have been told, that the Lady Narcliff, of Chelsea, and the Lady St. John, of Battersea, have often been heard to talk, and that they both asserted the truth of our prophecy, and its accomplishment, with particulars that are more extraordinary than any I have yet mentioned. The noise of Nixon's predictions reaching the ears of King James the First, he would needs see this fool, who cried and made ado that he might not go to court; and the reason that he gave was, that he should be starved.

A very whimsical fancy of his: courts are not places where people use to starve in, when they once come there, whatever they did before. The King being informed of Nixon's refusing to come, said he would take particular care that he should not be starved, and ordered him to be brought up. Nixon cried out. He was sent for again, and soon after the messenger arrived, who brought him up from Cheshire.

How, or whether he prophesied to his Majesty, nobody can tell; but he is not the first fool that has made a good court prophet.

That Nixon might be well provided for, it was ordered that he should be kept in the kitchen, where he grew so troublesome in licking and picking the meat, that the cooks locked him up in a hole, and the King going on a sudden from Hampton Court to London, they forgot the fool in the hurry, and he was really starved to death.

There are a great many passages of this fool prophet's life and sayings, transmitted by tradition from father to son in this county palatine; as, that when he lived with a farmer, before he was taken into Mr. Cholmondeley's family, he gored an ox so cruelly, that one of the ploughmen threatened to beat him for abusing his master's beast. Nixon said, My master's beast will not be his three days. A life in an estate dropping in that time, the lord of the manor took the same ox for an heriot. This account, as whimsical and romantic as it is, was told to the Lady Cowper, in the year 1670, by Dr. Patrick, late bishop of Ely, then chaplain to Sir Walter St. John; and that lady had the following farther particulars relating to this prophecy, and the fulfilling of many parts of it, from Mrs. Chute, sister of Mrs. Cholmondeley, of Vale Royal; who affirmed, that a multitude of people gathering together to see the eagle before-men

tioned, the bird was frightened from her young; that she herself was one of them, and the cry among the people was, Nixon's Prophecy is fulfilled, and we shall have a foreign king. She declared, that she read over the prophecy many times, when her sister was with child of the heir who now enjoys the estate. She particularly remembered that King James II. was plainly pointed at, and that it was foretold he should endeavour to subvert the laws and religion of this kingdom, for which reason they would rise and turn him out; that the eagle, of which Nixon prophesied, perched in one of the windows all the time her sister was in labour. She said it was the biggest bird she ever saw; that it was in a deep snow, and that it perched on the edge of a great bow window, which had a large border on the outside, and that she and many others opened the window to try to scare it away, but it would not stir till Mrs. Cholmondeley was delivered; after which it took flight to a great trèe over against the room her sister lay in, where having staid about three days, it flew away in the night. She affirmed farther to the Lady Cowper, that the falling of the garden wall was a thing not to be questioned, it being in so many people's memory: that it was foretold that the heir of Vale-Royal should live to see England invaded by foreigners, and that he should fight bravely for his king and his country: that the