ROBERT NIXON the CHESHIRE SEER
by MARK DOBSON
Few people, even in his home county of Cheshire, have ever heard of Robert Nixon. Yet until a few years ago he was as well-known locally as the more famous Mother Shipton or Nostradamus, and for much the same reasons. He was said to have had the power of prophecy, and even predicted how he was going to die. Many of his predictions were written down, though not until long after his death
The most famous tale about him runs like this. He was born the son of John Nixon in 1467 in the parish of Over, north Cheshire, and may have lived in a house called Bark House, or another known as Bridge House – there is a discrepancy here, though this may be explained later. He was a quiet boy of little intelligence and even less education – put bluntly, he was a simpleton. With some difficulty he was taught how to work with his father’s oxen. One August day in 1485 he was out ploughing when suddenly he stopped working and, pointing his whip this way and that, he shouted out, ‘Now Richard! Now Henry!’ over and over, and finished off with, ‘Oh badly done Richard, Henry’s the winner!’ Or according to another account, ‘Now Henry, get over that ditch and you gain the day!’ Whatever he said, you get the picture: he was ‘seeing’ the Battle of Bosworth. And his peculiar behaviour did not go unnoticed; news reached Henry and he sent for the young man to come down to see him in London. (Henry does seem to have had a bit of a reputation for consulting mediums, a condition not entirely unknown in people like him who sit precariously on the throne.) Robert’s friends told him that he could look forward to a privileged life in the court, to which he replied ‘Oh no, it won’t be like that, the king will starve me to death.’
So it was with a heavy heart that Robert took the long road to London. Henry was most amused with his new protégé and gave him tricky tasks to complete, such as finding a valuable jewel that he had hidden. ‘I like you,’ he told Robert, ‘and I want you to stay here at court with me, living in comfort for the rest of your life. Does that sound like fun to you?’
‘You’ll starve me to death,’ the lad replied miserably.
‘Ha, that’s one prophecy that won’t come true!’ the king replied, and ordered his Marshal to take Robert to the kitchen, where he was allowed to have everything and anything he ever needed to eat. (This is another feature of Henry’s character – he liked putting lads to work in the kitchen. Remember Lambert Simnel’s fate?)
Some months later Henry had business away from the palace and left his Marshal in charge. And then the Marshal himself was called away, and mindful of Robert’s position in the kitchen where he couldn’t entirely trust the other servants not to be spiteful or nasty to this privileged simpleton, he had him locked in a room in a tower – just for a short time, he told him, I won’t be long, honest.
But the Marshal had problems once he had left the city. Problems that took rather more time to solve that he had anticipated. And he forgot about the imprisoned boy. And he had the only key to the tower. So when he eventually returned to the palace Robert was dead. Starved to death… just as he had prophesied.
Well, that’s a story with some interest to Ricardians. But Robert made many other predictions too. They have come down to us as pieces of doggerel verse, usually so vague that almost any interpretation could be put to them. One of them runs thus:
‘Between a rick and two trees
A famous battle fought shall be.’
This has been interpreted as being a prophecy about the battle of St Albans, which took place between the towns of Elstree, Edwinstree and Rickmansworth. However, it’s a bit unlikely as a prediction as the battle took place in 1461, a full six years before Robert was born!
Many of the prophecies relate to the abbey of Vale Royal, a large Cistercian monastery which was the major landowner of north Cheshire before the reformation and was subsequently owned by the Holcroft family and then the Cholmondleys. This at least would have been an area of which Robert would have had some knowledge, though of course the events relating to the reformation and afterwards would have taken place some years after his removal to Henry’s court and death. But then maybe not: another account of Robert Nixon, and curiously the earliest mention of him in print, begins with these words:
‘In the reign of James I there lived a fool whose name was Nixon’,
and even that was published as late as 1714. In fact, the earliest trace of a prophecy which might be associated with Robert is not found until 1636, in a book written by Richard James, which includes the following lines:
‘… When all England is aloft,
Then happy they whose dwellings in God’s crofte.
And where thinke you this crofte of Christe should be
But midst Ribchester’s Ribble and Dee.’
Which is similar to (but not the same as) this, from a later ‘Life of Robert Nixon’:
‘One asked Nixon, “Where he might be safe in those days?” – he answered, “In God’s croft, betwixt the rivers Mersey and Dee.”
(And compare that with another saying, this time from Yorkshire:
‘When all the world shall be aloft
Then Hallamshire shall be God’s croft.’)
Here’s another prophecy from Nixon’s compendium:
‘Then rise up Richard, son of Richard,
And bless the happy reign;
Thrice happy he who sees this time to come
When England shall know rest and peace again.’
Well, no Richard followed our (or any other) Richard, so the names were quietly changed to George!
So who was this shadowy character Robert Nixon? There may even have been two characters of this name, or at least the first name, and this might bea reason for his having two known residences. I doubt if we shall ever know for sure, but on the basis that there’s no smoke without fire I am prepared to accept that there may have been such a person (or persons), of the sort that we would now call the village idiot, prone to make vocal outbursts that seem like nonsense but could be interpreted later as prophecies. It would be unlikely that he would have written them down: although England was a more literate society then than we used to think it was, it would still be very unlikely that a simple village boy could read or write. He only needed to be ‘right’ a few times and people would take notice of him, and even try and remember what he said before. And if he left the area for some reason there would only be his reputation left behind. And then there is his surname. Nixon, a fairly common name throughout the United Kingdom, is not a name associated with north Cheshire – and during the times in question here was more likely to be found further north, in Scotland, and in Ireland. And whilst there are few if any records of the common people in the 15th century, there are no references in local parish registers for the later incarnation of Robert. Nevertheless I am intrigued by the notion that a somewhat deranged person like Robert, with his alarming outbursts and apparent gift of foresight, must have seemed to his colleagues as a manifestation of the devil – a son of old Nick – Nixon.
Let me finish with one last story relating to Robert. Lord Delamere ordered the tree under which Robert used to make his prophecies to be cut down, and had a carpenter make some of it up into a table. In the surface of the table top, the grain of the wood displayed a likeness of Robert’s facial features. Lord Delamere bought the table which is now at Vale Royal. Except that this tale is false in every particular and the event never did occur.
