A manuscript prophecy. Single bifolium, written across two pages of watermarked Genoese paper in pale brown ink (40.5 x 29.5cm).
 
Written by the Minister of Warmwell, Dorest, Cuthbert Bownd on 31st July 1695, describing events at Warmwell House, the home of John Sadler (1615-1674).
 
John Sadler is described a “a very learned and pious man”, although suffering at the time under “a distemper of mind”. Sadler tells Bownd and Sadler’s servant that he can see a man who has important things to tell him. He asks the servant to bring pen, ink and paper and he records what he is told by an apparition.
This includes prophesying:
The Great Plague: “there would die in the citty of London so many thousand men”.
The Great Fire Of London: “that great part of the cutty would be burnt down and that he saw Poles church tumbled down”
Battles In The Anglo Dutch Wars: “That wee should have three sea fights with the Dutch”
The Monmouth Rebellion: “ther would come three small shipps to land in the West of Weymouth that would put all England in an uproar butt it would come to nothing”.
The Glorious Revolution: “That in the year 1688 there would come to pass such a thing in this kingdom that all the world would take notice of it”.
 
With: a 19th century transcript of the document.
 
An extraordinary document, recording the prophecies made by John Sadler in 1661, seemingly predicting the Plague, the Great Fire Of London and other major events in Restoration England.
 
This is the earliest surviving record of Sadler’s prophecies. They were also recorded in letters by Daniel Sadler (August 30th 1697), and in another account by Cuthbert Bownd (October 1697). They were also recorded in print in 1699 in Cotton Mather’s Decennium Lucsotum. An History Of Remarkable Occurences (Boston, Printed by B. Green and J. Allen, 1699).