The admirer of Mother Shipton may have been his son; at all events people of that name were living in York before the incident with Cardinal Wolsey is said to have occurred.
In 1539, Richard Layton, Dean of York, pawned some of the jewels of the Cathedral, which is a corroborative illustration of the treatment of church property at that period.
Not so very long after the event, then, a clear record of the interview of Mother Shipton with the three lords found its way into print, and the writer lengthened the narrative by tacking some of Master Besley's doggerel verses to the end of it. If there were no truth in the story, it was one which would have given much offence to the immediate descendants of the noblemen whose names had been so freely used in public.
Lilly, as already stated, makes no question that Mother Shipton existed, and says that in his time the authenticity of her prophecies was undisputed. He had means, which we in modern times have not, of drawing a conclusion, and altogether it is tolerably certain that Mother Shipton had an actual existence.
