he
Rev. Thomas Fisher and Mr. Charles Prideaux Brune". Mr. Brune gave it
to Mr. Walpole. With only verbal differences this variant corresponds
to another signed by Mr. Williams and given by him to his grandson,
who gave it to Mr. Perceval's great-niece, by whom it was lent to the
Society for Psychical Research.

These accounts differ toto coelo from that in The Times of 1828. The
dream is _not_ of May 11, but "about" May 2 or 3. Mr. Williams is
_not_ a stranger to the House of Commons; it is "a place well known to
me". He is _not_ ignorant of the name of the victim, but "understood
that it was Mr. Perceval". He thinks of going to town to give
warning. We hear nothing of Mr. Tucker. Mr. Williams does _not_
verify his dream in the House, but from a drawing. A Mr. C. R. Fox,
son of one to whom the dream was told _before_ the event, was then a
boy of fourteen, and sixty-one years later was sure that he himself
heard of Mr. Williams's dream _before_ the news of the murder arrived.
After sixty years, however, the memory cannot be relied upon.

One very curious circumstance in connection with the assassination of
Mr. Perceval has never been noticed. A rumour or report of the deed
reached Bude Kirk, a village near Annan, on the night of Sunday, May
10, a day before the crime was committed! This was stated in the
Dumfries and Galloway Courier, and copied in The Times of May 25. On
May 28, the Perth Courier quotes the Dumfries paper, and adds that
"the Rev. Mr. Yorstoun, minister of Hoddam (ob. 1833), has visited
Bude Kirk and has obtained the most satisfactory proof of the rumour
having existed" on May 10, but the rumour cannot be traced to its
source. Mr. Yorstoun authorises the mention of his name. The Times
of June 2 says that "the report is without foundation". If Williams
talked everywhere of his dream, on May 3, some garbled shape of it may
conceivably have floated to Bude Kirk by May 10, and originated the
rumour. Whoever started it would keep quiet when the real news
arrived for fear of being implicated in a conspiracy as accessory
before the fact. No trace of Mr. Williams's dream occurs in the
contemporary London papers.

The best version of the dream to follow is probably that signed by Mr.
Williams himself in 1832. {39a}

It may, of course, be argued by people who accept Mr. Williams's dream
as a revelation of the future that it reached his mind from the
_purpose_ conceived in Bellingham's mind,