In Stuart times all ranks of society believed in her, and referring to her supposed foretelling of the Great Fire, Pepys relates that when Prince Rupert heard, while sailing up the Thames on the 10th of October 1666, of the outbreak of the fire "all he said was, ` now Shipton's prophecy was out.'" One of her prophecies was supposed to have menaced Yeovil, Somerset, with an earthquake and flood in 1879, and so convinced were the peasantry of the truth of her prognostications that hundreds moved from their cottages on the eve of the expected disaster, while spectators swarmed in from all quarters of the county to see the town's destruction.
A vein of sadness runs through his poems, sometimes breakirg out into querulous exclamation, but more frequently ventirg itself in gloomy reflections and prognostications.
There are no big dinners with bro-hugs and fine wine and grand prognostications about how together we are going to conquer the world.