NIXON’S CHESHIRE PROPHECY AT LARGE, FROM LADY COWPER’S COPY; WITH HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL REMARKS, AND MANY INSTANCES WHEREIN IT HAS BEEN FULFILLED. INTRODUCTION. This remarkable Prophecy has been carefully revised, corrected, and improved; also some account given of our author, Robert Nixon, who was but a kind of idiot, and used to be employed in following the plough. He had lived in some farmers’ families, and was their drudge and their jest. At last, Thomas Cholmondeley, of Vale-Royal, Esq., took him into his house, where he lived when he composed this prophecy, which he delivered with as much gravity and solemnity as if he had been an oracle; and it was observed that though the fool was a driveller, and could not speak common sense when uninspired, yet in delivering his prophecies, he spoke plainly and sensibly; how truly will be seen in the following pages. As to the credit of this prophecy I dare say it is as well attested as any of Nostradamus’s or Merlin’s, and will come to pass as well as the best of Squire Bickerstaff’s; it is plain enough that great men in all ages had recourse to prophecy as well as the vulgar. I would not have all grave persons despise the inspiration of Nixon. The late French King gave audience to an inspired farrier, and rewarded him with an hundred pistoles for his prophetical intelligence; though by what I can learn he did not come near our Nixon for gifts. The simplicity, the circumstances, and the history of the Cheshire Prophecy are so remarkable that I hope the public will be as much delighted as I was myself. By the way, this is not a prophecy of to-day; ’tis as old as the powder-plot, and the story will make it appear that there is as little imposture in it as the Jacobites pretend there is in the person it seems to have an eye to; but whether they are both impostures alike or not I leave the reader to determine. J. OLDMIXON. THE PROPHECY. IN the reign of King James the First there lived a man generally reputed a fool, whose name was Nixon. One day, when he returned home from ploughing, he laid the things down which he had in his hands, and continued for some time in a seemingly deep and thoughtful meditation, at length he pronounced in a loud hoarse voice, ‘Now I will prophecy;’ and spoke as follows; “When a raven shall build in a stone lion’s mouth on the top of a church in Cheshire, then a King of England shall be driven out of his kingdom, and never return more. “When an eagle shall sit on the top of the house, then an heir shall be born to the Cholmondeley family, and this heir shall live to see England invaded by foreigners, who shall proceed as far as a town in Cheshire; but a miller, named Peter, shall be born with two heels on one foot, and at that time living in a mill of Mr. Cholmondeley’s he shall be instrumental in delivering the nation.