On the night of the second and third of May, 1812, in Cornwall, a wealthy mine-owner dreamt three times in succession of a scene in the Lobby of the House of Commons. A small man in a brown coat with brass buttons and a yellow waistcoat shot a small man in a dark green coat with brass buttons in the chest. The victim was the Prime Minister. He told the dream to his wife, his son, and seven friends. Eight days later it happened exactly.

The mine-owner's name was John Williams. He was fifty-nine. He lived at Scorrier House in the parish of Gwennap, in the Cornish tin-and-copper-mining district of Redruth. He was a respected member of the Cornish mining gentry. He was not associated with spiritualism, occult practices, or unusual claims of any kind. He had no political interests in London. He had no personal connection to the Prime Minister or to the British government. He had simply had the dream three times in one night.

He recounted the dream on the morning of the fourth of May, 1812, to his wife Catherine, to his son Charles, to the Reverend Charles Prideaux Brune of Padstow, to Mr Tucker of Trematon Castle, and to five other named Cornishmen including the surgeon of Truro and the bookseller of Truro. The Reverend Prideaux Brune wrote the dream down in detail. Williams signed and dated the deposition on the fourth of May, 1812. His friends dissuaded him from travelling to London to warn the Prime Minister personally on the grounds that he would be considered a lunatic if he presented himself at Downing Street. On the evening of Monday the eleventh of May, 1812, at approximately a quarter past five in the afternoon, the Prime Minister Spencer Perceval entered the Lobby of the House of Commons.

Perceval was wearing a dark-green wool coat with brass buttons. John Bellingham, who shot him in the chest with a small Wogdon & Barton flintlock pocket-pistol, was wearing a brown wool coat with brass buttons and a yellow waistcoat. Both men were small in stature. The location was the Lobby of the House of Commons. Perceval died within ten minutes. Williams's signed deposition of the fourth of May, 1812, is preserved today at the Cornwall Record Office in Truro.

They knew. Subscribe.