Charles Hindley. The editor of Notes and Queries says, in the issue of that journal dated April 26th, 1873:-
"Mr. Charles Hindley, of Brighton, in a letter to us, has made a clean breast of having fabricated the Prophecy quoted at page 450 of our last volume, with some ten others included in his reprint of a chap-book version, published in 1862."
Most of the precise details in Chapter I, about the birth, life and death of Mother Shipton, are fabrications which have been reproduced time after time in chap-books. There is no absolute evidence that any one of the details is true, but there may be some foundation for the incident narrated about Cardinal Wolsey.
The whole of the details in Chapter II, which have interested the public for 200 years, are fabrications. "Richard Head, gentleman," drew the contents of every page of his book from his own inner consciousness. His preface to the oldest edition of his work extant (1684), is amusing, and among other items sets forth as follows, how he obtained and dealt with the alleged Shipton manuscript:—
