The Hungry Prophet
The Legendary Sale of Robert Nixon
The story of Robert Nixon, the 'Cheshire prophet’ starved to death by the king, was once the best known legend of the county, retold and republished dozens of times across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Precisely who the man was however, has always been something of a mystery, with many assuming he was little more than a fairy tale. Yet research suggests that not only was Robert a real-life figure, but that his bizarre and tragic end might just have been a reality too.
Born Under a Bad Sign
When her daughter was born in a cave during a thunderstorm just outside the town of Knaresborough in 1488, the fifteen-year-old Agatha Soothale could have held little hope for her survival, let alone have any aspirations as to what she may go on to achieve. The young mother had enough trials of her own, and now with a baby to cope with, the outlook was grim.
She was well known in the town but for all the wrong reasons; primarily that she had become influenced by the Devil and had seduced a local nobleman. For two years Agatha brought up her daughter in that cave, and no ordinary cave was it either. See, this cave, or rather the waters that ran along its walls and out into a pool beside its entrance, had a long history of turning objects into stone. If it were a story of fiction, not a better home for a ‘witch’ and her demonic offspring could you find.
Yet, when her daughter Ursula was two years old, kindness finally found the pair in the shape of the Abbot of Beverley, who dismissed any ideas of devilry and found Agatha a place at the Convent of St. Bridget in Nottinghamshire whilst placing the young Ursula with a local family in Knaresborough town. Briefly, things were looking brighter, but the legend of her mother soon cast a fresh shadow across Ursula’s already troubled childhood. Only a few months after being placed in her new home, Ursula would climb out of her cradle and perch atop the fireplace, cackling. When she was a little older still, she was said to have somehow transformed the ruff on the neck of a man who was mocking her into a toilet seat. On another occasion again, she managed to manifest a pair of stag horns onto a man’s forehead. Such is the bizarre and wonderful storytelling that folklore has left to us.
As she grew into womanhood, Ursula was increasingly taken by the woodlands around her and the natural potions the flora found there could create. As her interest turned into proficiency, the outcast child of Agatha Sootahle became a noted and respected herbalist, and come her early twenties she married, taking her husband Toby Shipton’s surname. In the process, the name that history would remember her by was born. Mother Shipton had arrived, and soon too would the events that brought her to national attention.
When a neighbour knocked on her door and told her that someone had been into her house and stolen her new petticoat, Ursula informed her that she had the ability to ‘see’ who the thief was. The following market day, the thief - a local farm woman - arrived in the market square seemingly driven by forces beyond her control, dressed in the neighbour's petticoat, before involuntarily dancing around the butter cross, exclaiming her guilt aloud to all in earshot. Ursula simply looked on, her neighbour amazed at the power apparently in Urula’s possession. As her abilities became well known, so too did the risks, and upon the death of her husband Toby in 1514, Ursula found herself holding the other side of the coin when it came to her reputation. Accused of his bewitching, she would move back into the woods, and the cave of her birth, to live out the rest of her days as a healer.
People would travel from Cheshire and Lancashire, even from as far away as Oxford, to meet the woman in the cave, for alongside her skill with herbs, and of course her apparent second sight, she had acquired a new power too. Ursula could see the future. So accurate was she said to have been that in 1537 King Henry VIII himself wrote a letter referring to her as the ‘witch of York’ and declared his ambition of meeting her; Ursula’s visions of Thomas Wolsey and his power plays at court, together with her apparent inside knowledge of Henry’s desire to break with the Catholic Church, doing much to prick the king’s interest.
So well remembered was Ursula as Mother Shipton that the better part of 200 years on from her birth, the great diarist Samuel Pepys wrote that when looking over the damage caused by the Great Fire of London in 1666, the Royal Family, with whom he was close, were keenly discussing Mother Shipton’s foretelling of the event.
I myself have visited her cave in Yorkshire, where indeed the water does turn items into stone, or rather calcifies them due to its mineral content (not to spoil the fun). Nonetheless, there are dozens of cuddly toys, shoes, and even a few bicycles now ‘turned to stone’ and displayed around the place, the sight of which rightly creates a sense of awe in the visitors that stand and stare.
The story of Mother Shipton is probably the best-known such tale in Britain, concerning an outcast with apparently supernatural gifts and its the perfect backdrop from which to look at our own folk hero, and a story that in its way is just as wonderful and beguiling; the tale of Cheshire’s ‘Hungry Prophet’ Robert Nixon.
One of the great charms of local history is the fantastical nature of the real-life characters and stories that it brings to the surface of the historical field, should we wish to look close enough. This is where those tales that would otherwise be deemed too incredible to be real, prove themselves. And in turn, they further prove just how remarkable our history can be. The story of Robert Nixon is, as such matters go, relatively well attested; that is to say, enough was written about him in the centuries following death, especially during the early 1700s, that we should reasonably assume the man actually existed. Or rather, at least some figure that latterly became known by his name.
That said, the very timeline of Robert’s life, let alone the specifics of the events pinned across it, are still awaiting clarity. Opinion varies as to the time he lived, with the most popular views placing him either as being born around 1467 in Darnhall, the son of a farmer named John Nixon who leased his farm from Vale Royal Abbey, or alternatively around the year 1605, placing him as a servant of Thomas Cholmondeley, owner of that same abbey building during the mid-1600s.
It is quite the gap. Clearly, both cannot be correct, but if his ‘real’ life story is obfuscated, his legend is not, the key facet of which relates how Robert foresaw his own death, by starvation, when locked away in the court of the king. Which king this was though, is again contested. Richard III and Henry VII are variously mentioned in connection with the event, both of whom lived considerably earlier than the 1600s version of the tale; the version that sits best with Nixon's popularity during the eighteenth century pamphlet boom responsible for his legend’s preservation. This piece will endeavour to sift through the trough of opinion, tit-bit, and speculation that comes with Robert, and look to build a clearer picture of the man in his true life setting.
How to Market a Legend
Following the invention of the printing press, or rather the industry around it that had developed in England during the Civil Wars, when arguments from each side would be printed as pamphlets, come the 1700s it had become fashionable to produce all manner of curious and titivating publications. As time moved forward, old stories would be rehashed and embellished, creating wondrous characters and tales to regale the people so interested. Much of Nixon’s legend passed through this process, spurred on again into the 1800s as a result, where various books of his prophecies would be produced to intrigue and fascinate those who could afford them.
Here, we will peel through the pages written about Nixon at face value, as we look to understand the image of the man outlaid for us from the start of his legend. It is in the early stages of the pamphlet boom that we find our first recorded account of Nixon in An Account of Nixon and his Cheshire Prophecies from 1738, written by the historian John Oldmixon (born 1673). I have abridged the below only where not to do so would serve to obscure the story. It is the starting point of our journey;
Nixon was a short fellow, had a great head and goggle eyes, and used to slobber and drivel when he spoke, which was but seldom. He was very surly and would run after and beat the children that made sport at him. He would do nothing without beating. He had a large stomach and would eat up a great shoulder of Mutton at a meal. The manner of how Nixon was discovered to be a prophet, was this: His master being one day at plow, and Nixon following him, the boy stopped of a sudden, and dropped his bottle as if in a trance. They beat him but to no purpose, for he stood still for above an hour. At last, he told them, in a very rational manner, of things that were done some time before, and of others that would come to pass. Nixon, our prophet, was an idiot, and was employed by several farmers in Cheshire as their plowman. The noise of Nixon, at last, reached the ears of King James VI, who sent for him. But he refused to go, alleging that he would be starved. The king, being informed of Nixon's foolish refusal, said he would take care that he should not be starved and ordered him to be brought up to town. Now, that Nixon might be better provided for, he was ordered to be kept in the kitchen, but he grew so troublesome, licking and picking the meat, that the cooks locked him up in a hole; and the king, going suddenly from Hampton Court to London, meant they forgot the fool in the hurry so that he was starved to death at the king's court, as he had before foretold.
There are diverse passages of our prophet's life and sayings transmitted from father to son in this county, to which, that when he lived as a farmer he gorged an Ox so unmercifully that one of the Plowmen threatened to beat him for abusing the beast. Nixon said that the beast should not be his master's in three days. Three days hence the lord of the manner came to claim the Ox. As whimsical as the account may seem to some, it was told to the Lady Cowper in the year 1670, by Dr. Patrick, late Bishop of Ely.
It would appear that just seven years later, Oldmixon produced another updated work on Nixon, Nixon's Cheshire Prophecy at Large, in which his original account had been built on further, the author having come across new information regarding Nixon’s life. Here, his prophecies too were laid out, together with the following information;
This remarkable prophecy has been carefully reviewed, corrected, and improved from accounts given by our author. Robert Nixon, who was but a kind of idiot, and employed in following the plow. He lived in some farmer's families and was their drudge and serf. At last, Thomas Cholmondeley of Vale Royal took him into his house and there he lived where he composed this prophecy, which he delivered with as much gravity as an oracle, and it was observed that though the fool was a dribbler, and could not speak common sense, he spoke plain and sensibly. As credit to this prophecy, I dare say it is as well attested as any of Nostradamus or Merlin. Some ungodly people say there has been no witch since the Witch of Endor, nor no prophet since Malachi, but it is plain enough that great men have in all ages had recourse to prophecy as well the vulgar fortune- telling….by the way, this is not a prophecy of today. ’Tis as old as the powder plot. I shall add a short account of his life…I could meet with but one man who remembered the prophet, and that was Old Woodman of Copnal. He says that Nixon was a short squab fellow, had a great head and goggle eyes; he was at first a plow for Farmer Crowton of Swonlow, and so stubborn that they could make him do nothing without any beating…the people it seems had a strange reverence for his stupidity and took his silence as portentous. The first time he was found to be a prophet was on this occasion. Farmer Crowton being one day at plough in the field, near the River Weaver in Swanlow parish, and his boy Nixon following him, the boy stopped all of sudden and dropped his bottle, and stood motionless with his eyes fixed towards heaven. Neither words nor blows could get him out of his trance for an hour. When he recovered, he took up the things he dropped and followed the plow. His master stood a while thinking him in a fit, but he did not fall. He seemed quite defensible of an alteration that had happened to him. For about a quarter of an hour, he talked very rationally about things that had been done and about things that were to be done; which made his master conclude Nixon’s state had something sacred in it, and that his words were oracles.
Oldmixon was an English historian from Somerset, writing during the early eighteenth century, whose key works include Critical History of England (1724) and History of England During the Reigns of the Royal House of Stuart (1730). He was something of a dynamite figure to be taking an interest in such a character from Cheshire, and one for whom connections to higher circles of society were easy and plain. His writing is a great starting point in our search for understanding. Here, we find a very deliberately painted picture of Nixon as a ‘village idiot’ - to borrow a rather unsavoury phrase.
Odd looking and of a rather destructive and cruel nature, entranced during his work in the fields one day he began uttering visions of the past, present and future; an event that would ultimately lead to his summoning by the king and his death at the hands of the forgetful cooks.
Much like with Mother Shipton, at least in her youth, the picture is painted of a strange individual with a fearsome temperament. There is no mention of him being born in the 1400s though. That idea, despite being often mentioned in connection with Nixon today, actually comes from a much later publication that retrofits a prophecy of Nixon ‘seeing’ the Battle of Bosworth, the high tide of the Wars of the Roses, in 1485. It is nowhere to be found here, where he is very much a figure of near-history to the writers of the mid-1700s, from whom we also learn the names of several places and people into which we can delve later on.
The Prophecies
Whilst discussing the mystery of prophets we perhaps ought to take a look at their actual prophecies, and in Nixon’s case, Oldmixon’s earliest publications serve as the closest source we have as to what may have actually been said by the man. It is here that we find the charm of Nixon, and perhaps the reason for Oldmixon’s interest. Far from fear, famine, and the kind of apocalyptic scenarios we may naturally attach to such utterances, and refreshingly free of any notions regarding the return of Christ - a classic feature of other figures in the tradition - Nixon's statements are fundamentally and fantastically colloquial. Here are the highlights which best help our understanding;
When a raven shall build in a stone lion’s mouth on top of a church in Cheshire, then a King of England shall be driven from his kingdom, and never return more.
A raven is said to have been built in a stone lion’s mouth in the steeple at the village of Over in the forest of Delamere prior to James II being deposed in 1688.
When an Eagle shall sit on top of the house then an heir shall live to see England invaded by foreigners, who shall proceed so far as a town in Cheshire, but a Miller named Peter shall be born with two heels on one foot, and at that time living in a mill of Mr. Cholmondeley, he shall be instrumental in delivering the nation. As a token of truth of this, a wall of Mr. Cholmondeley’s will fall, and if it falls downward the church shall be oppressed, but if upwards next to the hill at the side of it, then it shall flourish. Under this wall shall be found the bones of a British king.
Not long before the deposition of King James II, the wall on the Cholmondeley estate did indeed fall down, and upwards, which has been construed to hold relevance for the flourishing of the protestant faith under the incoming William of Orange. Elsewhere, in removing the rubble from the fallen wall, were found the bones of ‘a large man’ according to Oldmixon’s own account. Additionally, an eagle was spotted at Mr. Choldmonley’s house prior to William’s taking of the crown. Regarding the miller named Peter, local lore shares that a boy was indeed reputedly born with two heels on one foot, in the parish of Great Budworth during the late 1600s.
A pond shall run with blood 3 days and the stone pillar in the forest sink so low in the ground that a crow from the top of it shall drink of the best blood in England.
Local folklore attests to a pond in Delamere which was said to have run red soon after (likely as a result of mineral content) and the old cross in the forest didi indeed sink within a foot of the ground; likely due to natural subsidence.
Whatever the truth of the prophecies and their coming to pass, they certainly make for interesting reading. There is a hint of a common pitfall in them too however and as we delve deeper we should be mindful of two important points when we come to discussing and integrating the lives and prophecies of country prophets. More than anything, across history, such figures have been used primarily as political tools and religious totems, their prophecies - whatever we come to make of the notion itself - being recast, amended and, well, invented, in aid of the popular causes connected to those behind their publications. The apparent ‘proof’ of Nixon’s prophecies being primly centred on the events of the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, when the catholic James II was deposed by the incoming, invited protestant house of Hanover and William of Orange, should be, if not already, acknowledged with a healthy dose of scepticism.
Harking back to a simpler, purer time of life is nothing new either, and much in the way that such nostalgia can often find itself bewilderingly attached to political motivations, so too such sentiment was used in the past. That there were figures in the past of an era that seemed to have had the ability to foretell events in the future is a particularly useful tool with which to seek to influence the opinion of the reader; for if those prophets of the past forswore the ills of the day, they may too be able to tell folks precisely whom to blame for them
With this in mind, the quest of unraveling the predictions and prophecies attributed to any given figure is something of a fool’s errand. There is just no way to know, and all the more likely, there is every chance that we are reading pure fiction. This is why I feel that particular section from the 1738 account is so useful. There’s nothing extreme or political about it. It reads like folklore, and folklore can lead us to real places and people in such a way that so much ‘official’ written history cannot.
A central text to the legend that propelled Nixon to fame during the early nineteenth century and then on again into the age of the antiquarians, and one that we will glean much from on our own quest, is The Original Predictions of Robert Nixon, Commonly Called the Cheshire Prophet published by W. Minsull of London in 1800. Its core is taken from that 1745 account complied by John Oldmixon and its various republications, each of which enjoyed its own set of embellishments. One of these books contains a claim that its words were taken directly from ‘Lady Cowper’s correct copy’; Lady Cowper being named in the 1738 account as having direct conversational knowledge of Nixon’s life.
By the 1820s Nixon had become a literal cartoon of whoever he really was in life, and this book contains a suitably outlandish image of him at its beginning, standing beneath a tree, looking rather stupid, with a skull at his feet; the implication being that Nixon’s words included foretelling of both life and death. The work begins with a claim that ‘what follows was taken from a descendent of this famous idiot, who at this time lives not far from Vale-Royal’. This line really brings home a connection with Nixon for me, as at the time of writing, I myself live in Vale Royal, and some may also think me quite the idiot!
I digress. Oldmixon then states that he had obtained an old copy of the prophecies that ‘seemed to bear the appearance of antiquity’. It is here we get the first mention of Nixon belonging to the 1400s, with aeration that Robert was born at a place called Bridge House in the parish of Over, to a leasing farmer of Vale Royal, at Whitsuntide (7th Sunday after Easter) in the year 1467. It states here too that Robert was a challenging individual from an early age, and again the story of the Ox is relayed, before a series of prophecies are recounted attributed to this earlier, fifteenth century Robert. These include a foreseeing of the abbey at Norton and that at Vale Royal ‘meeting’ on Acton Bridge. Dismissed at the time, stones from both had actually been used in repairing the bridge in the years following the dissolution of the 1540s. Overall, the reformation of the church seems to be a central theme, with Nixon recorded as saying;
A time shall come when priests and monks, shall have no churches nor houses, and places where images stood, lined letters shall be good, English books through churches are spread.
He is now a poet too it seems. It is in this work of the early nineteenth century that we get our direct reference to the Battle of Bosworth, when whilst out in the fields one day, Nixon is sad to have stopped working, taken out his whip, and begun lashing from one side to another exclaiming;
Now Richard! Now Harry! Get over that ditch and you gain the day!
It is given that this outburst was then somehow relaid to King Henry VII himself by a circuit messenger. Nixon, apparently describing the situation at the end of the battle and something not commonly known outside of royal circles, was then summoned to court; at which Nixon said he would be ‘clammed’ - or starved - to death. For me, this story of Bosworth jars with the earlier prophecies recounted, which are deemed remarkable only by noting just how prosaic they are. This nineteenth century publication for the most part is designed to entertain, and whilst this could be said also of Oldmixon’s 1745 publication too, albeit to a lesser extent, they are otherwise far removed. Oldmixon was long dead before these later publications ever came onto the market, his original work being re-cast into a free-for-all of myth-making and exaggeration.
Just how strange the uses of Nixon’s name could be in relation to political lobbying of the day is something illustrated wonderfully well by the following account relating to a phantom battle being seen in Delamere Forest by locals during the early 1800s; an endeavour seemingly designed to tether an age-old Nixon prophecy concerning a battle in the forest to contemporary events in an attempt to stoke the fires of fear regarding a rumoured French invasion during the Napoleonic wars. I have included it here, as frankly, I think it is quite extraordinary.
As two ancient persons were walking over the said forest, to their great surprise, they saw at a distance before them an army rise out of the ground drawn up with their proper officers and their commanders in front of them, and whilst they were looking at and ruminating upon so strange a sight, to their most wonderful surprise and amazement there arose also another army out of the ground, at a small distance from the first, and farther in the forest, which was headed or commanded by a man in royal apparel, who, after having drawn up his army, marched to meet and engage the first; upon which a most bloody battle ensued with firearms, and many appeared to be killed on both sides.
A fifteenth century psychic, royal informant, or local ‘seer’ helping with his master’s family matters and uttering curious predictions about children born with additional appendages? Real, fictitious, or somehow both, just how strange is the story of Robert Nixon when we place him alongside similar figures of the late medieval period, or perhaps crucially, the 1600s? Let us contextualise and consider, this seemingly strangest of tales.
Myths and Mystics
‘Seers’, meaning those individuals who claim the gift of seeing into the future, have been a common part of communities the world over for thousands of years. From ancient Egypt to Norse warrior culture and on through into the present day, such individuals have always been lauded and derided in equal measure. Most of us will be relatively familiar with Nostradamus, who recounted more than 900 prophecies during the first half of the sixteenth century. His level of fame is a rarity, but his profile, as an astrologer studying the heavens, is one with which we find parity among various others of the age.
William Lilly, an English astrologer of the seventeenth century, who was reprimanded for political predictions based on his work during the English Civil War, is reported to have predicted the Great Fire of London 15 years before it happened. Other names that we might class as ‘seers’ tend to be showered in religious rhetoric and ultimately feel more like mystics than ‘genuine’ prophets. Margery Kempe, a religious devotee from Norfolk, rose to prominence during the early 1400s courtesy of her ‘conversations with God’ as did Julian of Norwich, who spent most of her life alone in prayer as an anchorite locked in a cell on a bridge. Country ‘seers’ like Nixon would not have been all that rare, but it is rare that they are committed to record and remembered.
Both Nixon and Mother Shipton had interactions, we are told, with the kings of their day. That both are remembered with these events attached is likely the very reason their names have lived on at all. It is too perhaps the reason we should give thought to stories of their existence being genuine. Claiming to see into the future is a contentious business at the best of times, but there are a couple of serious considerations that come to bear on the idea at notably volatile junctures in English history. Diving the future is only ever one dodgy utterance away from being classed as witchcraft and such crossfire can be easily found in the record of English witch trials from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
Mother Shipton appears to have been specifically known as the ‘Witch of York’ during her lifetime. Whilst such a moniker was never applied to Nixon, it is interesting to note that the nineteenth century writers on his life didn’t seek to cast such a label upon him regardless. As a country mystic, which I feel is a better way to describe his character of history, we should perhaps think of him as more closely bound to the image of the fortune teller than that as a font of future knowledge. By all accounts, he didn’t seem to have any particular control over the things he is reported to have said.
Nixon’s story, and the way it has been constructed, speaks to me of a genuine historical figure; the colloquial nature of his predictions, together with the sheer weirdness of his death, combining to add a weight of perverse plausibility. Steering through the stories and commentaries then, it appears we have two possibilities for the ‘real’ Robert Nixon; a farmhand employed on the estate of Thomas Cholmondeley in the early 1600s during the time of King James I, or as the son of a farmer who leased a farm from Vale Royal Abbey in 1467, during the reign of Henry VII. Which then, is the more likely?
Sifting History
As we gather our thoughts in consideration of Robert Nixon’s life, it is with a hope of discerning when that might actually have been in a literal sense. The best opportunities for answers are in the appraisal of his story’s timeline(s) and the flowing current of his legend in the making. To this end, the facts bear out a surpassingly straightforward path.
Coming out of the 1600s, it seems that tales about a strange man from Cheshire with an ability to predict the future are doing the rounds amongst society circles, something no doubt aided by the assertions and ‘proof’ of his prophecies having being born out from the royal and religious events of 1688. By the 1740s, these tales have been brought together by the historian John Oldmixon and published, along with what is taken to be an account of Nixon’s life, collected directly from locals in Cheshire.
At this juncture, Nixon is firmly placed as having lived during the early part of the preceding century, during the reign of King James I of England, which firmly dates Nixon’s life to having ended at some point between 1603 and 1625, the period in which James I was on the throne.
Over the course of the eighteenth century, Nixon’s story changes, growing in popularity far beyond his native Cheshire, which then results in numerous compendiums of his prophecies and life story being published. Drawing on Oldmixon’s original work, but arriving in the 1800s in a much more elaborate fashion, he is now placed, for reasons we do not know, back in the 1400s. Key details are changed; he is now firmly connected to the Battle of Bosworth and King Henry VII and whilst I would struggle to call any
eighteenth century account of Nixon’s life a source in the traditional sense, in truth they are the best we have and they say nothing about Bosworth field. I think we can dismiss the idea of Nixon belonging to the fifteenth century entirely.
Focusing on the Nixon of the early 1600s, we have a number of other characters and places to consider for substance. As mentioned briefly before, we know the span of King James’ reign and it gives us a window of 22 years in which he could have invited Nixon to court before inadvertently starving him to death in the kitchens. It is as we look further toward this, and consider the time and place of Robert’s reputed master Thomas Cholmondeley, that things get very interesting indeed.
Following the dissolution of 1540, Vale Royal was effectively up for auction, and come 1544 it passed into private hands and a member of the Cheshire gentry by the name of Thomas Holcroft. Holcroft secured the former abbey and the bulk of its estate for £450 and then went to work on completely renovating the site, retaining only the central features of the old abbey - the cloister ranges and the monks' former dining hall - as he set about creating a new country mansion. Holcroft’s line then continued to live at Vale Royal until 1615, when it came into the possession of the future Lords of Delamere, the Cholmondeley family, and in 1625 the estate would pass to Thomas, Nixon’s aforementioned master.
It is events that took place 8 years prior however that really bare through onto our journey, for if we know that the characters connected to Nixon’s story really did exist in the times and places needed to bed-in any plausibility to the wider story, it is in 1617 that we find an event that could tie everything - unbelievably - neatly together.
At this point, we can easily imagine a figure such as Nixon having been brought into the employ of Thomas Cholmondeley on the estate of Vale Royal, but we are still left with the issue of how such a figure could possibly come anywhere near to the king. In 1617 however. Mary Cholmondeley, the mother of Thomas, hosted none other than King James I as part of a hunting party visiting her Vale Royal estate. Whilst there, James was so enamoured with his treatment that he personally knighted two members of the family. Furthermore, in an offer to boost the state careers of Mary’s sons, he then invited them to court.
Vale Royal had long had a tradition of hosting royal hunts. That is to say, even prior to the establishment of the abbey in the late thirteenth century, there had been a hunting lodge in Darnhall that had hosted earls and kings on numerous occasions. As such, there is nothing coincidental about the encounter between King James and Vale Royal at all, and for a short while in the summer of 1617, both the king and Nixon would have been, quite literally, sleeping under the same roof.
From the first mention of Nixon in publication, the figure depicted for us was always a uniquely local one and the predictions said to have been made by him were concerning his local environment. That we then find the key characters in his story in play, factually, at exactly the place in history they were said to have been, should give us serious reason to think of Nixon the man as a real Cheshire resident of the early 1600s. The only leap then required to believe his story in a historical sense is to swallow the thought that he actually went to the court of King James I; something now seen to be entirely plausible in the context of accompanying Mary Cholmondeley’s sons. Given what we know, it would be far weirder, and virtually implausible, for all of this to have taken place as it did alongside a second, wholly fictitious yet perfectly matched, storyboard of events.
Perhaps James was regaled with tales of the local oddity in his midst. Maybe even in jest, he was brought forth to speak with the king. Let us not forget that James considered himself a real authority on matters of the occult. Perhaps Nixon fell into favour due to the more humorous side of his thinking on such matters. Either way, that some kind of meeting and acknowledgement took place is far from outlandish; that the king would then invite him to court is a possibility that has a myriad of avenues through which to have found itself born.
The story of Robert Nixon, one of the most curious and unusual figures in all Cheshire history is, at a glance, akin to something like a fairytale. The slightest of inquiries however pitches him firmly into the realm of folklore, with a healthy dose of suspicion as to his real existence to boot.
Pulling apart the strands of myth-making and hype that have served to smother his name courtesy of the early nineteenth century and its propensity for revisionist fantasy though, finds us firmly on a historical path. It is a path full of oddity, misunderstanding, and country mysticism that would deter most from looking closer still, yet when we do, we leave the story of Robert Nixon with the impression that in all likelihood, in early 1600s Cheshire, a remarkable if difficult young man had risen to local fame because of the wondrous and portentous things he said.
As a result of his unique nature, and likely too in no small part as a result of pity for his station, that same young man was then brought into the household of a wealthy family that, for a few days in 1617, entertained a royal hunting party on its estate at Vale Royal.
Just maybe that young man really did go on to starve to death in some lonely hole of Hampton Court palace too; his only crime, being notable enough to draw the attentions of a curious and inquisitive King James I.
Eli Lewis-Lycett 2023