[14] Rumours that Agatha was a witch and Ursula the spawn of Satan were perpetuated, due to the cave's well-known skull-shaped pool, which turned things to stone.

The abbot removed them from the cave and secured Agatha a place in the Convent of the order of St. Bridget[4] in Nottinghamshire,[14] and Ursula a foster family in Knaresborough.

She found acceptance with her foster family and a few friends, but Ursula was ultimately ostracised from the larger portion of people in town.

She found sanctuary in the woods like her mother had and spent most of her childhood learning of plants and herbs and their medicinal properties.

After a frantic search throughout the house, her mother looked up to see Ursula naked and cackling, perched on top of the iron bar where the pot hooks were fastened above the fireplace.

Ursula walked past the group running an errand for her mother, and the men stopped to mock her, calling out "hag face" and "The Devil's bastard".

The source reports that the strange occurrences reverted to normal shortly afterwards, and that the townspeople took them as a sign not to publicly mock Ursula.

The respect she earned from her work gave her the opportunity to expand her social circle and it was then she met the local carpenter[4] Toby Shipton.

The grief of losing her husband and the harsh words of the town prompted Ursula Shipton to move into the woods, and the same cave she had been born in, for peace.

In 1537 King Henry VIII wrote a letter to the Duke of Norfolk where he mentions a "witch of York",[18] believed by some to be a reference to Shipton.

During the storm the steeple on the top of Trinity Church fell and a portion of the Ouse Bridge was destroyed and swept away by the river.

The booklet The Life and Prophecies of Ursula Sontheil better known as Mother Shipton (1920s, and repeatedly reprinted)[23] predicted the world would end in 1991.

)[citation needed] Among other well-known lines from Charles Hindley's fictional version (often quoted as if they were original) are: Carriages without horses shall go; And accidents fill the world with woe... Iron in the water shall float, As easy as a wooden boat.

[21] These lines hint at inventions not known in Shipton's time—but a reality in Hindley's—such as trains and iron ships, as well as at events such as wars and conflicts.

[citation needed] Based on contemporary references to her and countless resources detailing the events of her life, historians believe Mother Shipton was a real woman,[13][18][20] born in 1488 to an orphan fifteen-year-old girl named Agatha Soothtale in a cave in North Yorkshire outside of the town Knaresborough.

[18] It is believed that this letter is the earliest reference to the real Mother Shipton who would have been prophesying about Henry VIII at this time.

In 1666 Samuel Pepys recorded in his diaries that, whilst surveying the damage to London caused by the 1666 Great Fire in the company of the Royal family, he heard them discuss Mother Shipton's prophecy of the event.

Her name became associated with many tragic events and strange goings-on recorded in the UK, North America and Australia throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

Her appearance in pantomime was mentioned in a song from Yorkshire that was transcribed in the 18th century, and which reads (in part): "Of all the pretty pantomimes/ That have been seen or sung in rhimes,/Since famous Johnny Rich's times,/There's none like Mother Shipton.

[29] Mother Shipton is referred to in Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), referring to the year 1665, when the bubonic plague erupted in London: "These terrors and apprehensions of the people led them into a thousand weak, foolish, and wicked things, which they wanted not a sort of people really wicked to encourage them to: and this was running about to fortune-tellers, cunning-men, and astrologers to know their fortune, or, as it is vulgarly expressed, to have their fortunes told them, their nativities calculated, and the like... And this trade grew so open and so generally practised that it became common to have signs and inscriptions set up at doors: 'Here lives a fortune-teller', 'Here lives an astrologer', 'Here you may have your nativity calculated', and the like; and Friar Bacon's brazen-head, which was the usual sign of these people's dwellings, was to be seen almost in every street, or else the sign of Mother Shipton...."[30]