Читать книгу The True Story vs. Myth of Witchcraft - William Godwin - Страница 231

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‘Lilly was a prominent, and, in the opinion of many of his contemporaries, a very important personage in the most eventful period of English history. He was a principal actor in the farcical scenes which diversified the bloody tragedy of civil war; and while the King and the Parliament were striving for mastery in the field, he was deciding their destinies in the closet. The weak and the credulous of both parties who sought to be instructed in “destiny’s dark counsels,” flocked to consult the “wily Archimagus,” who, with exemplary impartiality, meted out victory and good fortune to his clients, according to the extent of their faith and the weight of their purses. A few profane Cavaliers might make his name the burthen of their malignant rhymes—a few of the more scrupulous among the saints might keep aloof in sanctified abhorrence of the “Stygian sophister”—but the great majority of the people lent a willing and reverential ear to his prophecies and prognostications. Nothing was too high or too low, too mighty or too insignificant, for the grasp of his genius. The stars, his informants, were as communicative on the most trivial as on the most important subjects. If a scheme was set on foot to rescue the King, or to retrieve a stray trinket; to restore the royal authority, or to make a frail damsel an honest woman; to cure the nation of anarchy, or a lap-dog of a surfeit—William Lilly was the oracle to be consulted. His almanacks were spelled over in the tavern, and quoted in the Senate; they nerved the arm of the soldier, and rounded the period of the orator. The fashionable beauty, dashing along in her calash from St. James’s or the Mall, and the prim starched dame from Watling Street or Bucklersbury, with a staid foot-boy, in a plush jerkin, plodding behind her—the reigning toast among “the men of wit about town,” and the leading groaner in a tabernacle concert—glided alternately into the study of the trusty wizard, and poured into his attentive ear strange tales of love, or trade, or treason. The Roundhead stalked in at one door, whilst the Cavalier was hurried out at the other.

‘The confessions of a man so variously consulted and trusted, if written with the candour of a Cardan or a Rousseau, would indeed be invaluable. The “Memoirs of William Lilly,” though deficient in this particular, yet contain a variety of curious and interesting anecdotes of himself and his contemporaries, which, when the vanity of the writer or the truth of his art is not concerned, may be received with implicit credence.

‘The simplicity and apparent candour of his narrative might induce a hasty reader of this book to believe him a well-meaning but somewhat silly personage, the dupe of his own speculations—the deceiver of himself as well as of others. But an attentive examination of the events of his life, even as recorded by himself, will not warrant so favourable an interpretation. His systematic and successful attention to his own interest, his dexterity in keeping on “the windy side of the law,” his perfect political pliability, and his presence of mind and fertility of resources when entangled in difficulties, indicate an accomplished impostor, not a crazy enthusiast. It is very possible and probable that, at the outset of his career, he was a real believer in the truth and lawfulness of his art, and that he afterwards felt no inclination to part with so pleasant and so profitable a delusion.... Of his success in deception, the present narrative exhibits abundant proofs. The number of his dupes was not confined to the vulgar and illiterate, but included individuals of real worth and learning, of hostile parties and sects, who courted his acquaintance and respected his predictions. His proceedings were deemed of sufficient importance to be twice made the subject of a Parliamentary inquiry; and even after the Restoration—when a little more scepticism, if not more wisdom, might have been expected—we find him examined by a Committee of the House of Commons respecting his foreknowledge of the Great Fire of London. We know not whether it “should more move our anger or our mirth” to see our assemblage of British Senators—the contemporaries of Hampden and Falkland, of Milton and Clarendon, in an age which moved into action so many and such mighty energies—gravely engaged in ascertaining the cause of a great national calamity from the prescience of a knavish fortune-teller, and puzzling their wisdoms to interpret the symbolical flames which blazed in the misshapen woodcuts of his oracular publications.

‘As a set-off against these honours may be mentioned the virulent and unceasing attacks of almost all the party scribblers of the day; but their abuse he shared in common with men whose talents and virtues have outlived the malice of their contemporaries.’—Retrospective Review.

William Lilly was born at Diseworth, in Leicestershire, on May 1, 1602. He came of an old and reputable family of the yeoman class, and his father was at one time a man of substance, though, from causes unexplained, he fell into a state of great impoverishment. William from the first was intended to be a scholar, and at the age of eleven was sent to the grammar-school at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, where he made a fair progress in his classical studies. In his sixteenth year he began to be much troubled in his dreams regarding his chances of future salvation, and felt a large concern for the spiritual welfare of his parents. He frequently spent the night in weeping and praying, and in an agony of fear lest his sins should offend God. That in this exhibition of early piety he was already preparing for his career of self-hypocrisy and deception, I will not be censorious enough to assert; but in after-life his conscience was certainly much less sensitive, and he ceased to trouble himself about the souls of any of his kith and kin.

He was about eighteen when the collapse of his father’s circumstances compelled him to leave school. He had used his time and opportunities so well that he had gained the highest form, and the highest place on that form. He spoke Latin as readily as his native tongue; could improvise verses upon any theme—all kinds of verses, hexameter, pentameter, phalenciac, iambic, sapphic—so that if any ingenious youth came from remote schools to hold public disputations, Lilly was always selected as the Ashby-de-la-Zouch champion, and in that capacity invariably won distinction. ‘If any minister came to examine us,’ he said, ‘I was brought forth against him, nor would I argue with him unless in the Latin tongue, which I found few could well speak without breaking Priscian’s head; which, if once they did, I would complain to my master, Non bene intelliget linguare Latinam, nec prorsus loquitur. In the derivation of words, I found most of them defective; nor, indeed, were any of them good grammarians. All and every of those scholars who were of my form and standing went to Cambridge, and proved excellent divines; only I, poor William Lilly, was not so happy; fortune then frowning upon my father’s present condition, he not in any capacity to maintain me at the University.’

The res angustæ domi pressing heavily upon the quick-witted, ingenious, and active young fellow, he set forth—as so many Dick Whittingtons have done before and since—to make his fortune in London City. His purse held only 20s., with which he purchased a new suit—hose, doublets, trunk, and the like—and with a donation from his friends of 10s., he took leave of his father (‘then in Leicester gaol for debt’) on April 4th, and tramping his way to London, in company with ‘Bradshaw the carrier,’ arrived there on the 9th. When he had gratified the carrier and his servants, his capital was reduced to 7s. 6d. in money, a suit of clothes on his back, two shirts, three bands, one pair of shoes, and as many stockings. The master to whom he had been recommended—Leicestershire born, like himself—a certain Gilbert Wright, received him kindly, purchasing for him a new cloak—a welcome addition to Lilly’s scanty wardrobe; and Lilly then settled down, contentedly enough, to his laborious duties, though they were hardly of a kind to gratify the tastes of an earnest scholar. ‘My work,’ he says, ‘was to go before my master to church; to attend my master when he went abroad; to make clean his shoes; sweep the street; help to drive bucks when he washed; fetch water in a tub from the Thames (I have helped to carry eighteen tubs of water in one morning); weed the garden; all manner of drudgeries I willingly performed; scrape trenchers,’ etc.

In 1624 his mistress (he says) died of cancer in the breast, and he came into possession—by way of legacy, I suppose—of a small scarlet bag belonging to her, which contained some rare and curious things. Among others, several sigils, amulets, or charms: some of Jupiter in trine, others of the nature of Venus; some of iron, and one of gold—pure angel gold, of the bigness of a thirty-shilling piece of King James’s coinage. In the circumference, on one side, was engraven, Vicit Leo de tribu Judæ Tetragrammaton, and within the middle a holy lamb. In the circumference on the obverse side were Amraphel and three ⁺₊⁺, and in the centre, Sanctus Petrus Alpha et Omega.

According to Lilly, this sigil was framed under the following circumstances:

‘His mistress’s former husband travelling into Sussex, happened to lodge in an inn, and to lie in a chamber thereof, wherein, not many months before, a country grazier had lain, and in the night cut his own throat. After this night’s lodging he was perpetually, and for many years, followed by a spirit, which vocally and articulately provoked him to cut his throat. He was used frequently to say, “I defy thee, I defy thee,” and to spit at the spirit. This spirit followed him many years, he not making anybody acquainted with it; at last he grew melancholy and discontented, which being carefully observed by his wife, she many times hearing him pronounce, “I defy thee,” desired him to acquaint her with the cause of his distemper, which he then did. Away she went to Dr. Simon Forman, who lived then in Lambeth, and acquaints him with it; who having framed this sigil, and hanged it about his neck, he wearing it continually until he died, was never more molested by the spirit. I sold the sigil for thirty-two shillings, but transcribed the words verbatim as I have related.’

Lilly continued some time longer in the service of Master Gilbert Wright. When the plague broke out in London in 1625, he, with a fellow-servant, was left in charge of his employer’s house. He seems to have taken things easily enough, notwithstanding the sorrow and suffering that surrounded him on every side. Purchasing a bass-viol, he hired a master to instruct him in playing it; the intervals he spent in bowling in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, with Wat the Cobbler, Dick the Blacksmith, and such-like companions. ‘We have sometimes been at our work at six in the morning, and so continued till three or four in the afternoon, many times without bread or drink all that while. Sometimes I went to church and heard funeral sermons, of which there was then great plenty. At other times I went early to St. Antholin’s, in London, where there was every morning a sermon. The most able people of the whole city and suburbs were out of town; if any remained, it were such as were engaged by parish officers to remain; no habit of a gentleman or woman continued; the woeful calamity of that year was grievous, people dying in the open fields and in open streets. At last, in August, the bills of mortality so increased, that very few people had thoughts of surviving the contagion. The Sunday before the great bill came forth, which was of five thousand and odd hundreds, there was appointed a sacrament at Clement Danes’; during the distributing whereof I do very well remember we sang thirteen parts of the 119th Psalm. One Jacob, our minister (for we had three that day, the communion was so great), fell sick as he was giving the sacrament, went home, and was buried of the plague the Thursday following.’

Having been led by various circumstances to apply himself to the study of astrology, he sought a guide and teacher in the person of one Master Evans, whom he describes as poor, ignorant, boastful, drunken, and knavish; he had a character, or reputation, however, for erecting a figure (or horoscope) predicting future events, discovering secrets, restoring stolen goods, and even for raising spirits, when it so pleased him. Of this crafty cheat he relates an extraordinary story. Some time before Lilly became acquainted with him, Lord Bothwell and Sir Kenelm Digby visited him at his lodgings in the Minories, in order that they might enjoy what is nowadays called a ‘spiritualistic séance.’ The magician drew the mysterious circle, and placed himself and his visitors within it. He began his invocations; but suddenly Evans was caught up from the others, and transferred, he knew not how, to Battersea Fields, near the Thames. Next morning a countryman discovered him there, fast asleep, and, having roused him, informed him, in answer to his inquiries, where he was. Evans in the afternoon sent a messenger to his wife, to acquaint her with his safety, and dispel the apprehensions she might reasonably entertain. Just as the messenger arrived, Sir Kenelm Digby also arrived, not unnaturally curious to learn the issue of the preceding day’s adventure. This monstrous story Evans told to Lilly, who, I suppose, affected to believe it, and asked him how such an issue chanced to attend on his experiment. Because, the knave replied, in performing the invocation rites, he had carelessly omitted the necessary suffumigation, and at this omission the spirit had taken offence. It is evident that the spirits insist on being treated with due regard to etiquette.

Lilly, by the way, records some quaint biographical particulars respecting the astrologers of his time; they are not of a nature, however, to elevate our ideas of the profession. One would almost suppose that free intercourse with the inhabitants of the unseen world had an exceptionally bad effect on the morals and manners of the mortals who enjoyed it; or else the spirits must have had a penchant for low society. Lilly speaks of one William Poole, who was a nibbler at astrological science, and, in addition, a gardener, an apparitor, a drawer of lime, a plasterer, a bricklayer; in fact, he bragged of knowing no fewer than seventeen trades—such was the versatility of his genius! It is pleasant to know that this wonderfully clever fellow could condescend to ‘drolling,’ and even to writing poetry (heaven save the mark!), of which Lilly, in his desire to astonish posterity, has preserved a specimen. Master Poole’s rhymes, however, are much too offensively coarse to be transferred to these pages.

This man of many callings died about 1651 or 1652, at St. Mary Overy’s, in Southwark, and Lilly quotes a portion of his last will and testament:

‘Item. I give to Dr. Arder all my books, and one manuscript of my own, worth one hundred of Lilly’s Introduction.

‘Item. If Dr. Arder gives my wife anything that is mine, I wish the D—l may fetch him body and soul.’

Terrified at this uncompromising malediction, the doctor handed over all the deceased conjurer’s books and goods to Lilly, who in his turn handed them over to the widow; and in this way Poole’s curse was eluded, and his widow got her rights.

The true name of this Dr. Arder, it seems, was Richard Delahay. He had originally practised as an attorney; but falling into poverty, and being driven from his Derbyshire home by the Countess of Shrewsbury, he turned to astrology and physic, and looked round about him for patients, though with no very great success. He had at one time known a Charles Sledd, a friend of Dr. Dee, ‘who used the crystal, and had a very perfect sight’—in modern parlance, was a good medium.

Dr. Arder often declared to Lilly that an angel had on one occasion offered him a lease of life for a thousand years, but for some unexplained reasons he declined the valuable freehold. However, he outlived the Psalmist’s span, dying at the ripe old age of eighty.

A much more famous magician was John Booker, who, in 1632 and 1633, gained a great notoriety by his prediction of a solar eclipse in the nineteenth degree of Aries, 1633, taken out of ‘Leuitius de Magnis Conjunctionibus,’ namely, ‘O Reges et Principes,’ etc., both the King of Bohemia and Gustavus, King of Sweden, dying during ‘the effects of that eclipse.’

John Booker was born at Manchester, of good parentage, in 1601. In his youth he attained a very considerable proficiency in the Latin tongue. From his early years we may take it that he was destined to become an astrologer—he showed so great a fancy (otherwise inexplicable!) for poring over old almanacks. In his teens he was despatched to London to serve his apprenticeship to a haberdasher in Lawrence Lane. But whether he contracted a distaste for the trade, or lacked the capital to start on his own account, he abandoned it on reaching manhood, and started as a writing-master at Hadley, in Middlesex. It is said that he wrote singularly well, ‘both Secretary and Roman.’ Later in life he officiated as clerk to Sir Christopher Clithero, Alderman of London, and Justice of the Peace, and also to Sir Hugh Hammersley, Alderman, and in these responsible positions became well known to many citizens who, like Cowper’s John Gilpin, were ‘of credit and renown.’

In star-craft this John Booker was a past master! His verses upon the months, framed according to their different astrological significations, ‘being blessed with success, according to his predictions,’ made him known all over England. He was a man of ‘great honesty,’ abhorring any deceit in the art he loved and studied. So says Lilly; but it is certain that if an astrologer be in earnest, he must deceive himself, if he do not deceive others. This Booker had much good fortune in detecting thefts, and was not less an adept in resolving love-questions. His knowledge of astronomy was by no means limited; he understood a good deal of physic; was a great advocate of the antimonial cup, whose properties were first discovered by Basil Valentine; not unskilled in chemistry, though he did not practise it. He died in the sweet odour of a good reputation in 1667, leaving behind him a tolerable library (which was purchased by Elias Ashmole, the antiquary), a widow, four children, and the MSS. of his annual prognostications. During the Long Parliament period he published his ‘Bellum Hibernicale,’ which is described as ‘a very sober and judicious book,’ and, not long before his death, a small treatise on Easter Day, wherein he displayed a laudable erudition.

Lilly has also something to say about a Master Nicholas Fiske, licentiate in physic, who came of a good old family, and was born near Framlingham, in Suffolk. He was educated for the University, but preferred staying at home, and studying astrology and medicine, which he afterwards practised at Colchester, and at several places in London.

‘He was a person very studious, laborious, of good apprehension, and had by his own industry obtained both in astrology, physic, arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and algebra, singular judgment: he would in astrology resolve horary questions very soundly, but was ever diffident of his own abilities. He was exquisitely skilful in the art of directions upon nativities, and had a good genius in performing judgment thereupon; but very unhappy he was that he had no genius in teaching his scholars, for he never perfected any. His own son Matthew hath often told me that when his father did teach any scholars in his time, they would principally learn of him. He had Scorpio ascending (!), and was secretly envious to those he thought had more parts than himself. However, I must be ingenuous, and do affirm that by frequent conversation with him I came to know which were the best authors, and much to enlarge my judgment, especially in the art of directions: he visited me most days once after I became acquainted with him, and would communicate his most doubtful questions unto me, and accept of my judgment therein rather than his own.’

Resuming his own life-story, Lilly records an important purchase which he made in 1634—the great astrological treatise, the ‘Ars Notaria,’ a large parchment volume, enriched with the names and pictures of those angels which are thought and believed by wise men to teach and instruct in all the several liberal sciences—as if heaven were a scientific academy, with the angels giving lectures as professors of astrology, medicine, mathematics, and the like! Next he describes how he sought to extend his fame as a magician by attempting the discovery of a quantity of treasure alleged to have been concealed in the cloister of Westminster Abbey; and having obtained permission from the authorities, he repaired thither, one winter night, accompanied by several gentlemen, and by one John Scott, a supposed expert in the use of the Mosaical or divining rods. The hazel rods were duly played round about the cloister, and on the west side turned one over the other, a proof that the treasure lay there. The labourers, after digging to a depth of six feet, came upon a coffin; but as it was not heavy, Lilly refrained from opening it, an omission which he afterwards regretted. From the cloister they proceeded to the Abbey Church, where, upon a sudden, so fierce, so high, so blustering and loud a wind burst forth, that they feared the west end of the church would fall upon them. Their rods would not move at all; the candles and torches, all but one, were extinguished, or burned very dimly. John Scott, Lilly’s partner, was amazed, turned pale, and knew not what to think or do, until Lilly gave command to dismiss the demons. This being done, all was quiet again, and the party returned home about midnight. ‘I could never since be induced,’ says Master Lilly, with sublime impertinence, ‘to join with any in such-like actions. The true miscarriage of the business,’ he adds, ‘was by reason of so many people being present at the operation; for there were about thirty, some laughing, others deriding, so that if we had not dismissed the demons, I believe most part of the Abbey Church had been blown down! Secrecy and intelligent operators,’ he adds, ‘with a strong confidence and knowledge of what they are doing, are best for this work.’ They are, at all events, for conspiracy and collusion.

In reading a narrative like this, one finds it not easy to satisfy one’s self how far it has been written in good faith, or how far it is compounded of credulity or of conscious deception—how far the writer has unwittingly imposed upon himself, or is knowingly imposing upon the reader. That Lilly should gravely transmit to posterity such a record, if aware that it was an audacious invention, seems hardly credible; and yet it is still less credible that a man so shrewd and keen-witted should believe in the operations of demons, and in their directing a blast of wind against the Abbey Church because they resented his search for a hidden treasure, to which they at least could have no claim! As great wit to madness nearly is allied, so is there a dangerous proximity between credulity and imposture, and the man who begins by being a dupe often ends by becoming a knave. Perhaps there are times when the axiom should be reversed.

Lilly’s astrological pursuits appear to have affected his health: he grew lean and haggard, and suffered much from hypochondria; so that, at length, he resolved to try the curative effects of country air, and removed, in the spring of 1636, to Hersham, a quiet and picturesque hamlet, near Walton-on-the-Thames. He did not give up his London house, however, until thirty years later (1665), when he finally settled at Hersham as a country gentleman, and a person of no small consideration.

Having recovered his health in his rural quarters, our great magician returned to London, and practised openly his favourite art. But a secret intelligence apprising him that he was not sufficiently an adept, he again withdrew into the country, where he remained for a couple of years, immersed, I suppose, in occult studies. We may take it that he really entered on a professional career in 1644, when a ‘happy thought’ inspired him to bring out the first yearly issue of his prophetical almanac, or ‘Merlinus Anglicus Junior.’ In his usual abrupt and disjointed style he gives the following account of his publication: ‘I had given, one day, the copy thereof unto the then Mr. (afterwards Sir Bulstrode) Whitlocke, who by accident was reading thereof in the House of Commons. Ere the Speaker took the chair, one looked upon it, and so did many, and got copies thereof; which, when I heard, I applied myself to John Booker to license it, for then he was licenser of all mathematical books.... He wondered at the book, made many impertinent obliterations, formed many objections, swore it was not possible to distinguish betwixt King and Parliament (O shrewd John Booker!); at last licensed it according to his own fancy. I delivered it unto the printer, who being an arch Presbyterian, had five of the ministry to inspect it, who could make nothing of it, but said that it might be printed, for in that I meddled not with their Dagon. The first impression was sold in less than one week. When I presented some (copies) to the members of Parliament, I complained of John Booker, the licenser, who had defaced my book; they gave me order forthwith to reprint it as I would, and let me know if any durst resist me in the reprinting or adding what I thought fit: so the second time it came forth as I would have it.’

In June, 1644, Lilly published his ‘Supernatural Sight,’ and also ‘The White King’s Prophecy,’ of which, in three days, eighteen hundred copies were sold. He issued the second volume of his ‘Prophetical Merlin,’ in which he made use of the King’s nativity, and discovering that his ascendant was approaching to the quadrature of Mars about June, 1645, delivered himself of this oracular utterance, as ambiguous as any that ever fell from the lips of the Pythian priestess:

‘If now we fight, a victory stealeth upon us—’

which he afterwards boasted to be a clear prediction of the defeat of Charles I. at Naseby, and, of course, would equally well have served to have explained a royal victory. Whitlocke, in his ‘Memorials of Affairs in his own Times,’ states that he met the astrologer in the spring of 1645, and jestingly asking him what events were likely to take place, Lilly repeated this prophecy of a victory. He remarks that in 1648 some of Lilly’s prognostications ‘fell out very strangely, particularly as to the King’s fall from his horse about this time.’ But it would have been strange if a man so well informed of public affairs, and so shrewd, as William Lilly, had never been right in his forecasts. And a lucky coincidence will set an astrologer up in credit for a long time, his numerous failures being forgotten.

In this same memorable and eventful year he published his ‘Starry Messenger,’ with an interpretation of three mock suns, or parhelia, which had been seen in London on the 29th of May, 1644, King Charles II.’s birthday. Complaint was immediately made to the Parliamentary Committee of Examination that it contained treasonable and scandalous matter. Lilly was summoned before the Committee, but several of his friends were upon it, and voted the charges against him frivolous—as, indeed, they were—so that he met with his usual good fortune, and came off with flying colours.

All the English astrologers of the old school seem to have been startled and confounded by the innovations of this dashing young magician, with his yearly almanacks and political predictions and self-advertisement, especially a certain Mr. William Hodges, who lived near Wolverhampton, and candidly confessed that Lilly did more by astrology than he himself could do by the crystal, though he understood its use as well as any man in England. Though a strong royalist, he could never strike out any good fortune for the King’s party—the stars in their courses fought against Charles Stuart. The angels whom he interviewed by means of the crystal were Raphael, Gabriel, and Ariel; but his life was wanting in the purity and holiness which ought to have been conspicuous in a man who was favoured by communications from such high celestial sources.

A proof of his skill is related by Lilly on the authority of Lilly’s partner, John Scott.

Scott had some knowledge of surgery and physic; so had Will Hodges, who had at one time been a schoolmaster. Having some business at Wolverhampton, Scott stayed for a few weeks with Hodges, and assisted him in dressing wounds, letting blood, and other chirurgical matters. When on the point of returning to London, he asked Hodges to show him the face and figure of the woman he should marry. Hodges carried him into a field near his house, pulled out his crystal, bade Scott set his foot against his, and, after a pause, desired him to look into the crystal, and describe what he saw there.

‘I see,’ saith Scott, ‘a ruddy-complexioned wench, in a red waistcoat, drawing a can of beer.’

‘She will be your wife,’ cried Hodges.

‘You are mistaken, sir,’ rejoined Scott. ‘So soon as I come to London, I am engaged to marry a tall gentlewoman in the Old Bailey.’

‘You will marry the red gentlewoman,’ replied Hodges, with an air of imperturbable assurance.

On returning to London, Scott, to his great astonishment, found that his tall gentlewoman had jilted him, and taken to herself another husband. Two years afterwards, in the course of a Kentish journey, he refreshed himself at an inn in Canterbury; fell in love with its ruddy-complexioned barmaid; and, when he married her, remembered her red waistcoat, her avocation, and Mr. Hodges ‘his crystal.’

An amusing story is told of this man Hodges.

A neighbour of his, who had lost his horse, recovered the animal by acting upon the astrologer’s advice. Some years afterwards he unluckily conceived the idea of playing upon the wise man a practical joke, and obtained the co-operation of one of his friends. He had certainly recovered his horse, he said, in the way Hodges had shown him, but it was purely a chance, and would not happen again. ‘So come, let us play him a trick. I will leave some boy or other at the town’s end with my horse, and we will then call on Hodges and put him to the test.’

This was done, and Hodges said it was true the horse was lost, and would never be recovered.

‘I thought what fine skill you had,’ laughed the gentleman; ‘my horse is walking in a lane at the town’s end.’

Whereupon Hodges, with an oath, as was his evil habit, asserted that the horse was gone, and that his owner would never see him again. Ridiculing the wise man without mercy, the gentleman departed, and hastened to the town’s end, and there, at the appointed place, the boy lay stretched upon the ground, fast asleep, with the bridle round his arm, but the horse was gone!

Back to Hodges hurried the chap-fallen squire, ashamed of his incredulity, and eagerly seeking assistance. But no; the conjurer swore freely—‘Be gone—be gone about your business; go and look for your horse.’ He went and he looked, east and west, and north and south, but his horse saw never more.

Let us next hear what Lilly has to tell us of Dr. Napper, the parson of Great Lindford, in Buckinghamshire, the advowson of which parish belonged to him. He sprang from a good old stock, according to the witness of King James himself. For when his brother, Robert Napper, an opulent Turkey merchant, was to be made a baronet in James’s reign, some dispute arose whether he could prove himself a gentleman for three or more descents. ‘By my soul,’ exclaimed the King, ‘I will certify for Napper, that he is of above three hundred years’ standing in his family; all of them, by my soul, gentlemen!’ The parson was legitimately and truly master of arts; his claim to the title of doctor, however, seems to have been dubious. Miscarrying one day in the pulpit, he never after ventured into it, but all his lifetime kept in his house some excellent scholar to officiate for him, allowing him a good salary. Lilly speaks highly of his sanctity of life and knowledge of medicine, and avers that he cured the falling sickness by constellated rings, and other diseases by amulets.

The parents of a maid who suffered severely from the falling sickness applied to him, on one occasion, for a cure. He fashioned for her a constellated ring, upon wearing of which she completely recovered. Her parents chanced to make known the cure to some scrupulous divines, who immediately protested that it was done by enchantment. ‘Cast away the ring,’ they said; ‘it’s diabolical! God cannot bless you, if you do not cast it away.’ The ring was thrown into a well, and the maid was again afflicted with her epilepsy, enduring the old pain and misery for a weary time. At last the parents caused the well to be emptied, and regained the ring, which the maid again made use of, and recovered from her fits. Thus things went on for a year or two, until the Puritan divines, hearing that she had resumed the ring, insisted with her parents until they threw the ring away altogether; whereupon the fits returned with such violence that they betook themselves to the doctor, told their story, acknowledged their fault, and once more besought his assistance. But he could not be persuaded to render it, observing that those who despised God’s mercies were not capable or not worthy of enjoying them.

We do not dismiss this story as entirely apocryphal, knowing that, in the cure or mitigation of nervous diseases, the imagination exercises a wonderful influence. There are well-authenticated instances of ‘faith healing’ not a whit less extraordinary than this case described by Lilly of the maiden and the ring. It would be trivial, perhaps, to hint that a good many maidens have been cured of some, at least, of their ailments by a ring.

In 1646 Lilly printed a collection of prophecies, with the explanation and verification of ‘Aquila; or, The White King’s Prophecy,’ as also the nativities of Archbishop Laud and the Earl of Strafford, and a learned speech, which the latter intended to have spoken on the scaffold. In the following year he completed his ‘Introduction unto Astrology,’ or ‘Christian Astrology,’ and was summoned, along with John Booker, to the head-quarters of Fairfax, at Windsor. They were conveyed thither in great pomp and circumstance, with a coach and four horses, welcomed in hearty fashion, and feasted in a garden where General Fairfax lodged. In the course of their interview with the general he said to them:

‘That God had blessed the army with many signal victories, and yet their work was not finished. He hoped God would go along with them until His work was done. They sought not themselves, but the welfare and tranquillity of the good people and whole nation; and, for that end, were resolved to sacrifice both their lives and their own fortunes. As for the art that Lilly and Booker studied, he hoped it was lawful and agreeable to God’s Word: he himself understood it not, but doubted not they both feared God, and therefore had a good opinion of them both.’

Lilly replied:

‘My lord, I am glad to see you here at this time. Certainly, both the people of God, and all others of this nation, are very sensible of God’s mercy, love, and favour unto them, in directing the Parliament to nominate and elect you General of their armies, a person so religious, so valiant.

‘The several unexpected victories obtained under your Excellency’s conduct will eternize the same unto all posterity.

‘We are confident of God’s going along with you and your army until the great work, for which He ordained you both, is fully perfected, which we hope will be the conquering and subversion of your and the Parliament’s enemies; and then a quiet settlement and firm peace over all the nation unto God’s glory, and full satisfaction of tender consciences.

‘Sir, as for ourselves, we trust in God; and, as Christians, we believe in Him. We do not study any art but what is lawful and consonant to the Scriptures, Fathers, and antiquity, which we humbly desire you to believe.’

They afterwards paid a visit to Hugh Peters, the famous Puritan ecclesiastic, who had lodgings in the Castle. They found him reading ‘an idle pamphlet,’ which he had received from London that morning. ‘Lilly, thou art herein,’ he exclaimed. ‘Are not you there also?’ ‘Yes, that I am,’ he answered.

The stanza relating to Lilly ran as follows:

‘From th’ oracles of the Sibyls so silly,

The curst predictions of William Lilly,

And Dr. Sibbald’s Shoe-Lane Philly,

Good Lord, deliver me.’

After much conference with Hugh Peters, and some private discourse betwixt the two ‘not to be divulged,’ they parted, and Master Lilly returned to London.

In 1647 he published ‘The World’s Catastrophe,’ ‘The Prophecies of Ambrose Merlin’ (both of which were translated by Elias Ashmole), and ‘Trithemius of the Government of the World, by the Presiding Angels’—all three tracts in one volume.

Notwithstanding his services to the Parliamentary cause, Lilly secretly retained a strong attachment towards Charles I., and he was consulted by Mrs. Whorwood, a lady who enjoyed the royal confidence, as to the best place for the concealment of the King, when he escaped from Hampton Court. After the usual sham of ‘erecting a figure’ had been gone through, Lilly advised that a safe asylum might be found in Essex, about twenty miles from London. ‘She liked my judgment very well,’ he says, and being herself of sharp judgment, remembered a place in Essex about that distance, where was an excellent house, and all conveniences for his reception. But, either guided by an irresistible destiny, or misled by Ashburnham, whose good faith has been sometimes doubted, he went away in the night-time westward, and surrendered himself to Colonel Hammond, in the Isle of Wight.

With another unfortunate episode in the King’s later career, Lilly was also connected. During the King’s confinement at Carisbrooke the Kentishmen, in considerable numbers, rose in arms, and joined with Lord Goring; at the same time many of the best ships revolted, and a movement on behalf of the King was begun among the citizens of London. ‘His Majesty then laid his design to escape out of prison by sawing the iron bar of his chamber window; a small ship was provided, and anchored not far from the Castle, to bring him into Sussex; horses were provided ready to carry him through Sussex into Kent, so that he might be at the head of the army in Kent, and from thence to march immediately to London, where thousands then would have armed for him.’ Lilly was brought acquainted with the plot, and employed a locksmith in Bow Lane to make a saw for cutting asunder the iron bar, and also procured a supply of aqua fortis. But, as everybody knows, the King was unable to force his body through the narrow casement, even after the removal of the bar, and the plot failed.

When the Parliament sent Commissioners into the Island to negotiate with Charles the terms of a concordat, of whom Lord Saye was one, Lady Whorwood again sought Lilly’s assistance and advice. After perusing his ‘figure,’ he told her the Commissioners would arrive in the Island on such a date; elected a day and hour when the King would receive the Commissioners and their propositions; and as soon as these were read, advised the King to sign them, and in all haste to accompany the Commissioners to London. The army being then far removed from the capital, and the citizens stoutly enraged against the Parliamentary leaders, Charles promised he would do so. But, unfortunately, he allowed Lord Saye to dissuade him from signing the propositions, on the assurance that he had a powerful party both in the House of Lords and the House of Commons, who would see that he obtained more favourable conditions. Thus was lost almost his last chance of retaining his crown, and baffling the designs of his enemies.

Whilst the King, in his last days, was at Windsor Castle, on one occasion, when he was taking the air upon the leads, he looked through Captain Wharton’s ‘Almanack.’ ‘My book,’ saith he, ‘speaks well as to the weather.’ A Master William Allen, who was standing by, inquired, ‘What saith his antagonist, Mr. Lilly?’ ‘I do not care for Lilly,’ remarked his Majesty, ‘he has always been against me,’ infusing some bitterness into his expressions. ‘Sir,’ observed Allen, ‘the man is an honest man, and writes but what his art informs him.’ ‘I believe it,’ said his Majesty, ‘and that Lilly understands astrology as well as any man in Europe.’

In 1648 the Council of State acknowledged Lilly’s services with a grant of £50, and a pension of £100 a year, which, however, he received for two years only.

In the following January, while the King lay at St. James’s House, Lilly began his observations, he tells us, in the following oracular fashion:

‘I am serious, I beg and expect justice; either fear or shame begins to question offenders.

‘The lofty cedars begin to divine a thundering hurricane is at hand; God elevates man contemptible.

‘Our demigods are sensible, we begin to dislike their actions very much in London; more in the country.

‘Blessed be God, who encourages His servants, makes them valiant, and of undaunted spirit to go on with His decrees: upon a sudden, great expectations arise, and men generally believe a quiet and calm time draws nigh.’

Our garrulous and egotistical conjurer, who seems really to have believed that he exercised a considerable influence upon the course of events, though his position was no more important than that of the fly upon the wheel, evidently wished to connect these commonplaces with the execution of Charles I.:

‘In Christmas holidays,’ he writes, ‘the Lord Gray of Groby, and Hugh Peters, sent for me to Somerset House, with directions to bring them two of my almanacks. I did so. Peters and he read January’s observations. “If we are not fools and knaves,” saith he, “we shall do justice.” Then they whispered. I understood not their meaning until his Majesty was beheaded. They applied what I wrote of justice to be understood of his Majesty, which was contrary to my intention; for Jupiter, the first day of January, became direct; and Libra is a sign signifying justice. I implored for justice generally upon such as had cheated in their places, being treasurers and such-like officers. I had not then heard the least intimation of bringing the King unto trial, and yet the first day thereof I was casually there, it being upon a Saturday. For going to Westminster every Saturday in the afternoon, in these times, at Whitehall I casually met Peters. “Come, Lilly, wilt thou go hear the King tried?” “When?” said I. “Now—just now; go with me.” I did so, and was permitted by the guard of soldiers to pass up to the King’s Bench. Within one quarter of an hour came the judges; presently his Majesty, who spoke excellently well, and majestically, without impediment in the least when he spoke. I saw the silver top of his staff unexpectedly fall to the ground, which was took up by Mr. Rushworth; and then I heard Bradshaw, the judge, say to his Majesty: “Sir, instead of answering the Court, you interrogate their power, which becomes not one in your condition.” These words pierced my heart and soul, to hear a subject thus audaciously to reprehend his Sovereign, who ever and anon replied with great magnanimity and prudence.’

Lilly tells us that during the siege of Colchester he and his fellow-astrologer, Booker, were sent for, to encourage the soldiers by their vaticinations, and in this they succeeded, as they assured them the town would soon be surrendered—which was actually the case. Our prophet, however, if he could have obtained leave to enter the town, would have carried all his sympathies, and all his knowledge of the condition of affairs in the Parliament’s army, to Sir Charles Lucas, the Royalist Governor. He had a narrow escape with his life during his sojourn in the camp of the besiegers. A couple of guns had been placed so as to command St. Mary’s Church, and had done great injury to it. One afternoon he was standing in the redoubt and talking with the cannoneer, when the latter cried out for everybody to look to himself, as he could see through his glass that there was a piece in the Castle loaded and directed against his work, and ready to be discharged. Lilly ran in hot haste under an old ash-tree, and immediately the cannon-shot came hissing over their heads. ‘No danger now,’ said the gunner, ‘but begone, for there are five more loading!’ And so it was. Two hours later those cannon were fired, and unluckily killed the cannoneer who had given Lilly a timely warning.

The practice of astrology must have been exceedingly lucrative, for Lilly is known to have acquired a considerable fortune. In 1651 he expended £1,030 in the purchase of fee-farm rents, equal in value to £120 per annum. And in the following year he bought his house at Hersham, with some lands and buildings, for £950. In the same year he published his ‘Annus Tenebrosus,’ a title which he chose not ‘because of the great obscurity of the solar eclipse,’ but in allusion to ‘those underhand and clandestine counsels held in England by the soldiery, of which he would never, except in generals, give information to any Parliament man.’ Unfortunately, Lilly’s knowledge was always embodied ‘in generals,’ and the misty vagueness of his vaticinations renders it impossible for the reader to pin them down to any definite meaning. You may apply them to all events—or to none. Their elastic indications of things good and evil may be made to suit the events of the nineteenth century almost as well as those of the seventeenth.

Many characters Mr. William Lilly must be owned to have represented with great success. But that all-essential one—if we desire to secure the confidence of our contemporaries, and the respect of posterity—of an honest man, I fear he was never able to personate successfully. Of the craft and cunning he could at times display he records a striking illustration—evidently with entire satisfaction to himself, and apparently never suspecting that it might not be so favourably regarded by others, and especially by those plain, commonplace people who make no pretensions to hermetic learning or occult knowledge, but have certain unsophisticated ideas as to the laws of morality and fair dealing.

In his 1651 ‘Almanack’ he asserted that the Parliament stood upon tottering foundations, and that the soldiery and commonalty would combine against it—a conclusion at which every intelligent onlooker must by that time have arrived, without ‘erecting a figure’ or consulting the starry heavens.

This previous attempt at forecasting the future ‘lay for a whole week,’ says its author, ‘in the Parliament House, much criticised by the Presbyterians; one disliking this sentence, another that, and others disliking the whole. In the end a motion was made that it should be examined by a Committee of the House, with instructions to report concerning its errors.

‘A messenger attached me by a warrant from that Committee. I had private notice ere the messenger came, and hasted unto Mr. Speaker Lenthall, ever my friend. He was exceeding glad to see me, told me what was done, called for “Anglicus,” marked the passages which tormented the Presbyterians so highly. I presently sent for Mr. Warren, the printer, an assured cavalier, obliterated what was most offensive, put in other more significant words, and desired only to have six amended against next morning, which very honestly he brought me. I told him my design was to deny the book found fault with, to own only the six books. I told him I doubted he would be examined. “Hang them!” said he; “they are all rogues. I’ll swear myself to the devil ere they shall have an advantage against you, by my oath.”

‘The day after, I appeared before the Committee. At first they showed me the true “Anglicus,” and asked if I wrote and printed it.’

Lilly, after pretending to inspect it, denied all knowledge of it, asserting that it must have been written with a view to do him injury by some malicious Presbyterian, at the same time producing the six amended copies, to the great surprise and perplexity of the Committee. The majority, however, were inclined to send him to prison, and some had proposed Newgate, others the Gate House, when one Brown, of Sussex, who had been influenced to favour Lilly, remarked that neither to Newgate nor the Gate House were the Parliament accustomed to send their prisoners, and suggested that the most convenient and legitimate course would be for the Sergeant-at-Arms to take this Mr. Lilly into custody.

‘Mr. Strickland, who had for many years been the Parliament’s ambassador or agent in Holland, when he saw how they inclined, spoke thus:

‘“I came purposely into the Committee this day to see the man who is so famous in those parts where I have so long continued. I assure you his name is famous over all Europe. I come to do him justice. A book is produced by us, and said to be his; he denies it; we have not proved it, yet will commit him. Truly this is great injustice. It is likely he will write next year, and acquaint the whole world with our injustice, and so well he may. It is my opinion, first to prove the book to be his ere he be committed.”

‘Another old friend of mine spoke thus:

‘“You do not know the many services this man hath done for the Parliament these many years, or how many times, in our greatest distresses, on applying unto him, he hath refreshed our languishing expectations; he never failed us of comfort in our most unhappy distresses. I assure you his writings have kept up the spirits both of the soldiery, the honest people of this nation, and many of us Parliament men; and at last, for a slip of his pen (if it were his), to be thus violent against him, I must tell you, I fear the consequence urged out of the book will prove effectually true. It is my counsel to admonish him hereafter to be more wary, and for the present to dismiss him.”

‘Notwithstanding anything that was spoken on my behalf, I was ordered to stand committed to the Sergeant-at-Arms. The messenger attached my person said I was his prisoner. As he was carrying me away, he was called to bring me again. Oliver Cromwell, Lieutenant-General of the army, having never seen me, caused me to be produced again, when he steadfastly beheld me for a good space, and then I went with the messenger; but instantly a young clerk of that Committee asks the messenger what he did with me. Where is the warrant? Until that is signed you cannot seize Mr. Lilly, or shall not. Will you have an action of false imprisonment against you? So I escaped that night, but next day stayed the warrant. That night Oliver Cromwell went to Mr. R——, my friend, and said: “What, never a man to take Lilly’s cause in hand but yourself? None to take his part but you? He shall not be long there.” Hugh Peters spoke much in my behalf to the Committee, but they were resolved to lodge me in the Sergeant’s custody. One Millington, a drunken member, was much my enemy, and so was Cawley and Chichester, a deformed fellow, unto whom I had done several courtesies.

‘First thirteen days I was a prisoner, and though every day of the Committee’s sitting I had a petition to deliver, yet so many churlish Presbyterians still appeared I could not get it accepted. The last day of the thirteen, Mr. Joseph Ash was made chairman, unto whom my cause being related, he took my petition, and said I should be bailed in despite of them all, but desired I would procure as many friends as I could to be there. Sir Arthur Haselrig and Major Galloway, a person of excellent parts, appeared for me, and many more of my old friends came in. After two whole hours’ arguing of my cause by Sir Arthur and Major Galloway, and other friends, the matter came to this point: I should be bailed, and a Committee nominated to examine the printer. The order of the Committee being brought afterwards to him who should be Chairman, he sent me word, do what I would, he would see all the knaves hanged, or he would examine the printer. This is the truth of the story.’

Lilly’s biographer, however anxious he may be to imitate biographers generally, and whitewash his hero, feels that in this episode of his life the great seer fell miserably below the heroic standard, and was guilty of pusillanimous as well as unveracious and dishonourable conduct. Yet Lilly is evidently unaware of the unfavourable light in which he has shown himself, and ambles along in an easy and well-satisfied mood, as if to the sound of universal applause.

On February 26, 1654, Lilly lost his second wife, and I regret to say he seems to have borne the loss with astonishing equanimity. On April 20 Cromwell expelled from the House our astrologer’s great enemies, the Parliament men, and thereby won his most cordial applause. He breaks out, indeed, into a burst of devotional praise—Gloria Patri—as if for some special and never-to-be-forgotten mercy. A German physician, then resident in London, sent to him the following epigram:

Strophe Alcaica: Generoso Domino Gulielmo Lillio Astrologo, de dissoluto super Parliamento:

‘Quod calculasti Sydere prævio,

Miles peregit numine conscio;

Gentis videmus nunc Senatum

Marti togaque gravi leviatum.’

His widower’s weeds, if he ever wore them, he soon discarded, marrying his third wife in October, eight months after the decease of his second. This, his latest partner and helpmate, was signified in his nativity, he says, by Jupiter in Libra, which seems to have been a great comfort to him, and perhaps to his wife also. ‘Jupiter in Libra’ sounds as well, indeed, as ‘that blessed word, Mesopotamia.’

In reference to the restoration of Charles II., in 1660, Lilly unearths an old prophecy attributed to Ambrose Merlin, and written, he says, 990 years before.

‘He calls King James the Lion of Righteousness, and saith, when he died, or was dead, there would reign a noble White King; this was Charles I. The prophet discovers all his troubles, his flying up and down, his imprisonment, his death, and calls him Aquila. What concerns Charles II. is,’ says Lilly, ‘the subject of our discourse; in the Latin copy it is thus:

‘Deinde ab Austro veniet cum Sole super ligneos equos, et super spumantem inundationem maris, Pullus Aquilæ navigans in Britanniam.

‘Et applicans statim tunc altam domum Aquilæ sitiens, et cito aliam sitiet.

‘Deinde Pullus Aquilæ nidificabit in summa rupe totius Britanniæ: nec juvenis occidet, nec ad senem vivet.’

This, in an old copy, is Englished thus:

‘After then shall come through the south with the sun, on horse of tree, and upon all waves of the sea, the Chicken of the Eagle, sailing into Britain, and arriving anon to the house of the Eagle, he shall show fellowship to these beasts.

‘After, the Chicken of the Eagle shall nestle in the highest rock of all Britain: nay, he shall nought be slain young; nay, he nought come old.’

Master William Lilly then supplies an explanation, or, as he calls it, a verification, of these venerable predictions. We shall give it in his own words:

‘His Majesty being in the Low Countries when the Lord-General had restored the secluded members, the Parliament sent part of the royal navy to bring him for England, which they did in May, 1660. Holland is east from England, so he came with the sun; but he landed at Dover, a port in the south part of England. Wooden horses are the English ships.

‘Tunc nidificabit in summo rupium.

‘The Lord-General, and most of the gentry in England, met him in Kent, and brought him unto London, then to White-hall.

‘Here, by the highest Rooch (some write Rock) is intended London, being the metropolis of all England.

‘Since which time, unto this very day, I write this story, he hath reigned in England, and long may he do hereafter.’ (Written on December 20, 1667.)

Lilly quotes a prophecy, printed in 1588, in Greek characters, which exactly deciphered, he says, the long troubles the English nation endured from 1641 to 1660, but he omits to tell us where he saw it or who was its author. It ended in the following mysterious fashion:

‘And after that shall come a dreadful dead man, and with him a royal G’ (it is gamma, Γ, in the Greek, intending C in the Latin, being the third letter in the alphabet), ‘of the best blood in the world, and he shall have the crown, and shall set England in the right way, and put out all heresies.’

To a man who could read the secrets of the stars, and divine the events of the future, there was, of course, nothing mysterious or obscure in these lines, and their meaning he had no difficulty in determining. Monkery having been extinguished above eighty or ninety years, and the Lord-General’s name being Monk, what more clear than that he must be the ‘dead man’? And as for the royal Γ, or C, who came of the best blood of the world, it was evident that he could be no other than Charles II.? The unlearned reader, who has neither the stars nor the crystal to assist him, will, nevertheless, arrive at the conclusion that if prophecies can be interpreted in this liberal fashion, there is nothing to prevent even him from assuming the rôle of an interpreter!

But let it be noted that, according to our brilliant magicians, ‘these two prophecies were not given vocally by the angels, but by inspection of the crystal in types and figures, or by apparition, the circular way, where, at some distance, the angels appear, representing by forms, shapes, and motions, what is demanded. It is very rare, yea, even in our days, for any operator or master to have the angels speak articulately; when they do speak, it is like the Irish, much in the throat.’

In June, 1660, Lilly was summoned before a Committee of the House of Commons to answer to an inquiry concerning the executioner employed to behead Charles I. Here is his account of the examination:

‘God’s providence appeared very much for me that day, for walking in Westminster Hall, Mr. Richard Pennington, son to my old friend, Mr. William Pennington, met me, and inquiring the cause of my being there, said no more, but walked up and down the Hall, and related my kindness to his father unto very many Parliament men of Cheshire and Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cumberland, and those northern counties, who numerously came up into the Speaker’s chamber, and bade me be of good comfort; at last he meets Mr. Weston, one of the three (the two others were Mr. Prinn and Colonel King) unto whom my matter was referred for examination, who told Mr. Pennington that he came purposely to punish me, and would be bitter against me; but hearing it related, namely, my singular kindness and preservation of old Mr. Pennington’s estate, to the value of £6,000 or £7,000, “I will do him all the good I can,” says he. “I thought he had never done any good; let me see him, and let him stand behind me where I sit.” I did so. At my first appearance, many of the young members affronted me highly, and demanded several scurrilous questions. Mr. Weston held a paper before his mouth; bade me answer nobody but Mr. Prinn; I obeyed his command, and saved myself much trouble thereby; and when Mr. Prinn put any difficult or doubtful query unto me, Mr. Weston prompted me with a fit answer. At last, after almost one hour’s tugging, I desired to be fully heard what I could say as to the person who cut Charles I.’s head off. Liberty being given me to speak, I related what follows, viz.:

‘That the next Sunday but one after Charles I. was beheaded, Robert Spavin, Secretary unto Lieutenant-General Cromwell at that time, invited himself to dine with me, and brought Anthony Peirson and several others along with him to dinner: that their principal discourse all dinner-time was only who it was that beheaded the King. One said it was the common hangman; another, Hugh Peters; others also were nominated, but none concluded. Robert Spavin, so soon as dinner was done, took me by the hand, and carried me to the south window: saith he, “These are all mistaken, they have not named the man that did the fact: it was Lieutenant-Colonel Joyce. I was in the room when he fitted himself for the work, stood behind him when he did it; when done, went in again with him. There is no man knows this but my master, namely, Cromwell, Commissary Ireton, and myself.” “Doth not Mr. Rushworth know it?” said I. “No, he doth not know it,” saith Spavin. The same thing Spavin since had often related unto me when we were alone. Mr. Prinn did, with much civility, make a report hereof in the House; yet Norfolk, the Serjeant, after my discharge, kept me two days longer in arrest, purposely to get money of me. He had six pounds, and his messenger forty shillings; and yet I was attached but upon Sunday, examined on Tuesday, and then discharged, though the covetous Serjeant detained me until Thursday. By means of a friend, I cried quittance with Norfolk, which friend was to pay him his salary at that time, and abated Norfolk three pounds, which he spent every penny at one dinner, without inviting the wretched Serjeant; but in the latter end of the year, when the King’s Judges were arraigned at the Old Bailey, Norfolk warned me to attend, believing I could give information concerning Hugh Peters. At the Sessions I attended during its continuance, but was never called or examined. There I heard Harrison, Scott, Clement, Peters, Harker, Scroop, and others of the King’s Judges, and Cook the Solicitor, who excellently defended himself; I say, I did hear what they could say for themselves, and after heard the sentence of condemnation pronounced against them by the incomparably modest and learned Judge Bridgman, now Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England.’

In spite of Spavin’s circumstantial statement, as recorded by Lilly, it is now conclusively established that the executioner of Charles I. was Richard Brandon, the common executioner, who had previously beheaded the Earl of Strafford. It is said that he was afterwards seized with poignant remorse for the act, and died in great mental suffering. His body was carried to the grave amid the execrations of an excited and angry populace.

Though our astrologer, as we have seen, was at heart a Royalist, his services towards the Parliamentary cause were sufficiently conspicuous to expose him after the Restoration to a good deal of persecution; and he found it advisable to sue out his pardon under the Great Seal, which cost him, as he takes care to tell us, £13 6s. 8d.

He claimed to have foreseen the Restoration, and all the good things which flowed—or were expected to have flowed—from that ‘auspicious event.’ In page 111 of his ‘Prophetical Merlin,’ published in 1644, dwelling upon three sextile aspects of Saturn and Jupiter made in 1659 and 1660, he says: ‘This, their friendly salutation, comforts us in England: every man now possesses his own vineyard; our young youth grow up unto man’s estate, and our old men live their full years; our nobles and gentlemen rest again; our yeomanry, many years disconsolated, now take pleasure in their husbandry. The merchant sends out ships, and hath prosperous returns; the mechanic hath quick trading; here is almost a new world; new laws, new lords. Now any county of England shall shed no more tears, but rejoice with and in the many blessings God gives or affords her annually.’

He also wrote, he says, to Sir Edward Walker, Garter King-at-Arms in 1659, when, by the way, the restoration of Charles II. was an event that loomed in the near future, and was anticipated by every man of ordinary political sagacity: ‘Tu, Dominusque vester videbitis Angliam, infra duos annis’ (You and your Lord shall see England within two years). ‘For in 1662,’ adds the arch impostor, in his strange astrological jargon, ‘his moon came by direction to the body of the sun.’

‘But he came in upon the ascendant directed unto the trine of Sol and antiscion of Jupiter.’

No doubt he did. Who would presume to contradict our English Merlin?

In 1663 and 1664 he served as churchwarden—surely the first and last astrologer who filled that respectable office—of Walton-upon-Thames, settling as well as he could the affairs of that ‘distracted parish’ upon his own charges.

An absurdly frivolous accusation was brought against him in the year 1666. He was once more summoned before a Committee of the House of Commons, because in his book, ‘Monarchy or No Monarchy,’ published in 1651, he had introduced sixteen plates, of which the eighth represented persons digging graves, with coffins and other emblems of mortality, and the thirteenth a city in flames. Hence it was inferred that he must have had something to do with the Great Fire which had destroyed so large a part of London, if not with the Plague, which had almost depopulated it. The chairman, Sir Robert Burke, on his coming into the Committee’s presence, addressed him thus:

‘Mr. Lilly, this Committee thought fit to summon you to appear before them this day, to know if you can say anything as to the cause of the late Fire, or whether there might be any design therein. You are called the rather hither, because in a book of yours, long since printed, you hinted some such thing by one of your hieroglyphics.’

Whereto Mr. Lilly replied, with a firm assumption of superior wisdom and oracular knowledge:

‘May it please your Honours,—After the beheading of the late King, considering that in the three subsequent years the Parliament acted nothing which concerned the settlement of the nation in peace; and seeing the generality of people dissatisfied, the citizens of London discontented, the soldiery prone to mutiny, I was desirous, according to the best knowledge God had given me, to make inquiry by the art I studied, what might from that time happen unto the Parliament and nation in general. At last, having satisfied myself as well as I could, and perfected my judgment therein, I thought it most convenient to signify my intentions and conceptions thereof in Forms, Shapes, Types, Hieroglyphics, etc., without any commentary, that so my judgment might be concealed from the vulgar, and made manifest only unto the wise. I herein imitating the examples of many wise philosophers who had done the like.’

‘Sir Robert,’ saith one, ‘Lilly is yet sub vestibulo.’

‘Having found, sir,’ continued Lilly, ‘that the city of London should be sadly afflicted with a great plague, and not long after with an exorbitant Fire, I framed those two hieroglyphics as represented in the book, which in effect have proved very true.’

‘Did you foresee the year?’ inquired a member of the Committee.

‘I did not,’ said Lilly, ‘nor was desirous; of that I made no scrutiny. Now, sir,’ he proceeded, ‘whether there was any design of burning the city, or any employed to that purpose, I must deal ingenuously with you, that since the Fire, I have taken much pains in the search thereof, but cannot or could not give myself any the least satisfaction therein. I conclude, that it was the only finger of God; but what instruments he used thereunto, I am ignorant.’

In 1665 Lilly finally left London, and settling down at Hersham, applied himself to the study of medicine, in which he arrived at so competent a degree of knowledge, assisted by diligent observation and experiment, that, in October, 1670, on a testimonial from two physicians of the College in London, he obtained from the Archbishop of Canterbury a license to practise. In his new profession this clever, plausible fellow was, of course, successful. Every Saturday he rode to Kingston, whither the poorer sort flocked to him from all the countryside, and he dispensed his advice and prescriptions freely and without charge. From those in a better social position he now and then took a shilling, and sometimes half a crown, if it were offered to him; but he never demanded a fee. And, indeed, his charity towards the poor seems to have been real and unaffected. He displayed the greatest care in considering and weighing their particular cases, and in applying proper remedies for their infirmities—a line of conduct which gained him deserved popularity.

Gifted with a robust constitution, he enjoyed good health far on into old age. He seems to have had no serious illness until he was past his seventy-second birthday, and from this attack he recovered completely. In November, 1675, he was less fortunate, a severe attack of fever reducing him to a condition of great physical weakness, and so affecting his eyesight that thenceforward he was compelled to employ the services of an amanuensis in drawing up his annual astrological budget. After an attack of dysentery, in the spring of 1681, he became totally blind; a few weeks later he was seized with paralysis; and on June 9 he passed away, ‘without any show of trouble or pangs.’

He was buried, on the following evening, in the chancel of Walton Church, where Elias Ashmole, a month later, placed a slab of fair black marble (‘which cost him six pounds four shillings and sixpence’), with the following epitaph, in honour of his departed friend: ‘Ne Oblivione conteretur Urna Gulielmi Lillii, Astrologi Peritissimi Qui Fatis cessit, Quinto Idus Junii, Anno Christi Juliano, MDCLXXXI, Hoc illi posuit amoris Monumentum Elias Ashmole, Armiger.’ There is a pagan flavour about the phrases ‘Qui Fatis cessit,’ and ‘Quinto Idus Junii,’ and they read oddly enough within the walls of a Christian church.

There are two sides to every shield. As regards our astrologer, the last of the English magicians who held a position of influence, let us first take the silver side, as presented in the eulogistic verse of Master George Smalridge, scholar at Westminster. Thus it is that he describes his hero’s capacity and potentiality. ‘Our prophet’s gone,’ he exclaims in lugubrious tones—

‘No longer may our ears

Be charmed with musick of th’ harmonious spheres:

Let sun and moon withdraw, leave gloomy night

To show their Nuncio’s fate, who gave more light

To th’ erring world, than all the feeble rays

Of sun or moon; taught us to know those days

Bright Titan makes; followed the hasty sun

Through all his circuits; knew the unconstant moon,

And more constant ebbings of the flood;

And what is most uncertain, th’ factious brood,

Flowing in civil broils: by the heavens could date

The flux and reflux of our dubious state.

He saw the eclipse of sun, and change of moon

He saw; but seeing would not shun his own:

Eclipsed he was, that he might shine more bright,

And only changed to give a fuller light.

He having viewed the sky, and glorious train

Of gilded stars, scorned longer to remain

In earthly prisons: could he a village love

Whom the twelve houses waited for above?’

The other side of the shield is turned towards us by Butler, who, in his ‘Hudibras,’ paints Lilly with all the dark enduring colours which a keen wit could place at the disposal of political prejudice. When Hudibras is unable to solve ‘the problems of his fate,’ Ralpho, his squire, advises him to apply to the famous thaumaturgist. He says:

‘Not far from hence doth dwell

A cunning man, hight Sidrophel,

That deals in Destiny’s dark counsels,

And sage opinions of the Moon sells;

To whom all people, far and near,

On deep importances repair:

When brass and pewter hap to stray,

And linen slinks out o’ the way;

When geese and pullen are seduced,

And sows of sucking pigs are choused;

When cattle feel indisposition,

And need th’ opinion of physician;

When murrain reigns in hogs or sheep,

And chickens languish of the pip;

When yeast and outward means do fail,

And have no pow’r to work on ale;

When butter does refuse to come,

And love proves cross and humoursome;

To him with questions, and with urine,

They for discov’ry flock, or curing.’

After this humorous reductio ad absurdum of Lilly’s pretensions as an astrologer, the satirist proceeds to allude to his dealings with the Puritan party:

‘Do not our great Reformers use

This Sidrophel to forebode news;

To write of victories next year,

And castles taken, yet i’ th’ air?

Of battles fought at sea, and ships

Sunk, two years hence, the last eclipse?’

The satirist then devotes himself to a minute exposure of Lilly’s pretensions:

‘He had been long t’wards mathematics,

Optics, philosophy, and statics;

Magic, horoscopy, astrology,

And was old dog at physiology;

But as a dog that turns the spit

Bestirs himself, and plies his feet

To climb the wheel, but all in vain,

His own weight brings him down again,

And still he’s in the self-same place

Where at his setting out he was;

So in the circle of the arts

Did he advance his nat’ral parts ...

Whate’er he laboured to appear,

His understanding still was clear;

Yet none a deeper knowledge boasted,

Since old Hodge Bacon and Bob Grosted.’

(Robert Grostête, Bishop of Lincoln (temp. Henry III.), whose learning procured him among the ignorant the reputation of being a conjurer.)

‘He had read Dee’s prefaces before

The Dev’l and Euclid o’er and o’er;

And all th’ intrigues ’twixt him and Kelly,

Lascus, and th’ Emperor, would tell ye;

But with the moon was more familiar

Than e’er was almanack well-willer;

Her secrets understood so clear,

That some believed he had been there;

Knew when she was in fittest mood

For cutting corns or letting blood ...’

Continuing his enumeration of the conjurer’s various and versatile achievements, the poet says he can—

‘Cure warts and corns with application

Of med’cines to th’ imagination;

Fright agues into dogs, and scare

With rhymes the toothache and catarrh;

Chase evil spirits away by dint

Of sickle, horse-shoe, hollow flint;

Spit fire out of a walnut-shell,

Which made the Roman slaves rebel;

And fire a mine in China here

With sympathetic gunpowder.

He knew whats’ever’s to be known,

But much more than he knew would own ...

How many diff’rent specieses

Of maggots breed in rotten cheese;

And which are next of kin to those

Engendered in a chandler’s nose;

Or those not seen, but understood,

That live in vinegar and wood.’

In the course of the long dialogue that takes place between Hudibras and the astrologer, Butler contrives to introduce a clever and trenchant exposure of the follies and absurdities, the impositions and assumptions, of the art of magic. With reference to the pretensions of astrologers, he observes that—

‘There’s but the twinkling of a star

Between a man of peace and war,

A thief and justice, fool and knave,

A huffing officer and a slave,

A crafty lawyer and pick-pocket,

A great philosopher and a blockhead,

A formal preacher and a player,

A learn’d physician and man-slayer;

As if men from the stars did suck

Old age, diseases, and ill-luck,

Wit, folly, honour, virtue, vice,

Trade, travel, women, claps, and dice;

And draw, with the first air they breathe,

Battle and murder, sudden death.

Are not these fine commodities

To be imported from the skies,

And vended here among the rabble,

For staple goods and warrantable?

Like money by the Druids borrowed

In th’ other world to be restored.’

The character of Lilly is to some extent a problem, and I confess it is not one of easy or direct solution. As I have already hinted, it is always difficult to draw the line between conscious and unconscious imposture—to determine when a man who has imposed upon himself begins to impose upon others. But was Lilly self-deceived? Or was he openly and knowingly a fraud and a cheat? For myself I cannot answer either question in the affirmative. I do not think he was entirely innocent of deception, but I also believe that he was not wholly a rogue. I think he had a lingering confidence in the reality of his horoscopes, his figures, his stellar prophecies; though at the same time he did not scruple to trade on the credulity of his contemporaries by assuming to himself a power and a capacity which he did not possess, and knew that he did not possess. Despite his vocation, he seems to have lived decently, and in good repute. The activity of his enemies failed to bring against him any serious charges, and we know that he enjoyed the support of men of light and leading, who would have stood aloof from a common charlatan or a vulgar knave. He was, it is certain, a very shrewd and quick observer, with a keen eye for the signs of the times, and a wide knowledge of human nature; and his success in his peculiar craft was largely due to this alertness of vision, this practical knowledge, and to the ingenuity and readiness with which he made use of all the resources at his command.