Page:Mother Shipton investigated.djvu/51

 Lilly's edition gives the following more complete quotation from an older version:—

Not only is there this internal evidence of the pamphlets being more or less true copies of earlier records, but Lilly, in his Collection of Ancient and Modern Prophecies, published in 1645, makes this direct statement in the "introduction to the reader:"—

Did such a person as Mother Shipton ever live? Cardinal Wolsey was at Cawood in 1530, and the earliest record in existence of Mother Shipton, is dated 1641, leaving a gap of 111 years between the chief incident of her career and the oldest record thereof. But Lilly in 1645 speaks of various earlier records