and then ebbed again, just as if twenty
astrologers had not pledged their words to the contrary. Blank were their
faces as evening approached, and as blank grew the faces of the citizens
to think that they had made such fools of themselves. At last night set
in, and the obstinate river would not lift its waters to sweep away even
one house out of the ten thousand. Still, however, the people were afraid
to go to sleep. Many hundreds remained up till dawn of the next day, lest
the deluge should come upon them like a thief in the night.

On the morrow, it was seriously discussed whether it would not be
advisable to duck the false prophets in the river. Luckily for them, they
thought of an expedient which allayed the popular fury. They asserted
that, by an error (a very slight one,) of a little figure, they had fixed
the date of this awful inundation a whole century too early. The stars
were right after all, and they, erring mortals, were wrong. The present
generation of cockneys was safe, and London would be washed away, not in
1524, but in 1624. At this announcement, Bolton the prior dismantled his
fortress, and the weary emigrants came back.

An eye-witness of the great fire of London, in an account preserved among
the Harleian Mss. in the British Museum, and published in the transactions
of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, relates another instance of the
credulity of the Londoners. The writer, who accompanied the Duke of York
day by day through the district included between the Fleet-bridge and the
Thames, states that, in their efforts to check the progress of the flames,
they were much impeded by the superstition of the people. Mother Shipton,
in one of her prophecies, had said that London would be reduced to ashes,
and they refused to make any efforts to prevent it.[53] A son of the
noted Sir Kenelm Digby, who was also a pretender to the gifts of prophecy,
persuaded them that no power on earth could prevent the fulfilment of the
prediction; for it was written in the great book of fate that London was
to be destroyed. Hundreds of persons, who might have rendered valuable
assistance, and saved whole parishes from devastation, folded their arms
and looked on. As many more gave themselves up, with the less compunction,
to plunder a city which they could not save.[54]

[53] This prophecy seems to have been that set forth at length in
the popular _Life of Mother Shipton_:

"When fate to England s