Historical dream account · English · published source text
A robbery at the university treasury
Izaak Walton
The Literature and Curiosities of Dreams (1869) · Original 1869 edition, printed pp. 362
Dreamer identified by the source: Thomas Wotton
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And this dream was the more remarkable because that God, who in days of old did use to speak to his people in visions, did seem to speak to many of this family in dreams; of which I will also give the reader one short particular of this Thomas Wotton, whose dreams did usually prove true, both in foretelling things to come, and discovering things past; and the particular is this:—This Thomas, a little before his death, dreamed that the university treasury was robbed by townsmen and poor scholars; and that the number was five; and being that day to write to his son Henry at Oxford, he thought it worth so much pains as by a postscript in his letter to make a slight inquiry of it. The letter) which was writ out of Kent, and dated three days before (came to his son’s hands the very morning after the night in which the robbery was committed; and when the city and university were both in a perplexed inquest of the thieves, then did Sir Henry Wotton show his father’s letter, and by it such light was given of this work of darkness, that the five guilty persons were presently discovered and apprehended, without putting the university to so much trouble as the casting of a figure.
Source & context
Izaak Walton reports Thomas Wotton’s separate dream of five thieves and a university treasury. This differs from his uncle Nicholas’s warning dream. The source’s unusual reversed parentheses remain as printed; its claimed discovery of a crime is a historical assertion rather than legal proof.
Izaak Walton, Life of Sir Henry Wotton, as quoted by Frank Seafield, The Literature and Curiosities of Dreams, second edition, revised (London: Lockwood & Co.,1869), printed pp. 362. Source: Wellcome Collection. Dreamer and anthology compiler are distinguished. Descriptive title and navigation themes added by Synastry; original published English wording retained, including historical translation where applicable.
1869 is the anthology publication year, not the date of the dream. Any years, ages or letter dates in the historical text remain source statements; no exact date is inferred.
Public Domain Mark 1.0 (source status) ↗
Wellcome’s catalogue and IIIF manifest identify the original 1869 revised second edition as public domain. Public Domain Mark identifies status, not a new license grant. The English text is retained as printed, including historical translations; no modern translation is included. Earlier works and authors are credited as printed in this anthology, not claimed independently reverified.
Source locator and text provenance
Original 1869 edition, printed pp. 362
The original text and redactions are preserved. The page title is an editorial navigation label.
Editorial descriptive navigation title. Scan-confirmed OCR repairs and repeated anthology paragraph-quote furniture omissions exactly replayable from normalizedOCR. Original line-wrap hyphens between word letters joined; whitespace normalized. No translation, narrative creation, source identity/date invention or stylistic rewrite.
- Account text SHA-256
- 3e93853d70e8790ab95cb571f631a478deed18fc06be6bfd6c5c97375e15512f
- Source file SHA-256
- a73a0cec3f3d14cf9cf75b6335ee55d560d5b927017f27a081afdc3bc7ca3dba
Content notes
- Crime
- Historical prediction claim
Connections in the Loom
Titles, theme labels, illustrations and map connections are editorial navigation aids. They are separate from the account’s words and do not establish connections between real people.