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Premonitions: A leap in to the future – Herbert Greenhouse [1971]

John Williams was not a professional seer. He was a manager of mining properties in Cornwall, and the furthest thought from his conscious mind was that of murder and prophetic dreams - until the night of May 3, 1812.

That night he dreamed he was in the lobby of the House of Commons, a building completely unfamiliar to him. A man was standing there dressed in a "snuff-coloured coat with metal buttons." Another man came into the lobby - "a small man, dressed in a blue coat and white waistcoat."

The first man took a pistol from his coat and shot the man who had just entered. As the latter fell to the floor, mortally wounded, someone in the dream told Williams that the dead man was Spencer Perceval, Britain's Prime Minister.

Williams woke up and described the dream to his wife, but she was not impressed. He fell asleep again and had the same dream. Once more he woke up and told it to his wife. Now he went back to sleep and dreamed a third time about the murder, then awoke greatly excited and determined to go to London and warn Perceval. His friends dissuaded Williams, saying that Perceval would ignore him.

On the night of May 10 another man dreamed that Perceval would be murdered on the following day by a man wearing a "green coat with brass-colored buttons."

The dream was identical to that of Williams, foretelling an assassination in the lobby of the House of Commons. The second dreamer was Perceval himself. All week he had had a premonition that he would be killed and had told his wife it would happen very soon. He had even set his affairs in order, although he had no enemies and knew of no one who might plan such a bloody deed. On the night before he was to be killed, Perceval was the guest of the Earl of Harrowby. When he told the Earl the following morning about his dream, the latter urged him not to go to Parliament that day.

But just as Caesar went to the Forum in spite of his misgivings, just as President Kennedy went to Dallas in the face of many warnings, Perceval set out for the House of Commons. That afternoon, as he hurried through the lobby on his way to a meeting, he was shot by a man wearing a "green coat with brass-colored buttons."

Oddly enough, the killer, John Bellingham, had not gone to the House of Commons to kill Perceval. A convicted embezzler, he had brooded over his hatred for Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, a member of the House of Lords who had ruled against his petition for a review of the case.

Perceval had rushed through the lobby in his haste to cast a vote on another measure before the House. Confused, Bellingham may have mistaken him for Lord Leveson-Gower and shot him.