LILLY, WILLIAM (16oz-1681)

This article appears in Volume V16, Page 687 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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LILLY, WILLIAM (16oz-1681) , English astrologer, was born in 1602 at Diseworth in Leicestershire, his family having been settled as yeomen in the place for " many ages." He ;received a tolerably good classical education at the school of

Ashby

ASHBY, TURNER (1824-1862)

-dela-Zouche, but he naively tells us what may perhaps have some significance in reference to his after career, that his master
never taught logic." In his eighteenth year, his father having fallen into

great

GREAT

poverty, he went to London and was employed in attendance on an old citizen and his wife. His master, at his death in 1627, left him an

annuity

ANNUITY (from Lat. annus, a year)

of 2o; and, Lilly having soon afterwards married the widow, she, dying in 1633,left him property to the value of about rood. He now began to dabble in

astrology

ASTROLOGY

, reading all the books on the subject he could fall in with, and occasionally trying his hand at unravelling mysteries by means of his art. The years 1642 and 1643 were devoted to a careful revision of all his previous reading, and in particular having lighted on Valentine Naibod's Commentary on Alchabitius, he " seriously studied him and found him to be the profoundest author he ever met with." About the same time he tells us that he " did carefully take notice of every grand action betwixt king and

parliament

PARLIAMENT (Anglo-Lat. parliamentum, Fr. parlement, from parler, to speak)

, and did first then incline to believe that as all sublunary affairs depend on superior causes, so there. was a
possibility of discovering them by the configurations of the superior bodies." And, having thereupon " made some essays," he " found encouragement to proceed further, and ultimately framed to himself that method which he ever afterwards followed." He then began to issue his prophetical almanacs and other works, which met with serious attention from some of the most prominent members of the Long

Parliament

PARLIAMENT (Anglo-Lat. parliamentum, Fr. parlement, from parler, to speak)

. If we may believe himself, Lilly lived on friendly and almost intimate terms with

Bulstrode

BULSTRODE, SIR RICHARD (1610-1711)

Whitlock, Lenthall the speaker, Sir Philip Stapleton, Elias Ashmole and others. Even Selden seems to have given him some countenance, and probably the

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

difference between him and the mass of the community at the tame was that, while others believed in the general truth of

astrology

ASTROLOGY

, he ventured to specify the future events to which its calculations pointed. Even from his own account of himself, however, it is evident that he did not trust implicitly to the indications given by the aspects of the heavens, but like more vulgar fortune-tellers kept his eyes and ears open for any information which might make his predictions safe. It appears that he had correspondents both at

home

and in foreign parts to keep him conversant with the probable current of affairs. Not a few of his exploits indicate rather the quality of a clever police detective than of a profound astrologer. After the Restoration he very quickly fell into disrepute. His sympathy with the parliament, which his predictions had generally shown, was not calculated to bring him into royal favour. He came under the lash of Butler, who, making allowance for some satiric exaggeration, has given in the character of Sidrophel a probably not very incorrect picture,of the man; and, having by this time amassed a tolerable fortune, he bought a small estate at Hersham in Surrey, to which he retired, and where he diverted the exercise of his peculiar talents to the practice of

medicine

MEDICINE

. He died in 1681.
Lilly's life of himself, published after his death, is still worth looking into as a remarkable record of credulity. So lately as 1852 a prominent London publisher put forth a new edition of Lilly's Introduction to Astrology, " with numerous emendations adapted to the improved state of the science."

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