Discover the Truth Behind Witchcraft Stories. William Godwin

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