a long speech in praise of himself and his pretended science. He said that, after the execution of Charles I., he was extremely desirous to know what might from that time forth happen to the parliament and to the nation in general. He therefore consulted the stars, and satisfied himself. The result of his judgment he put into emblems and hieroglyphics, without any commentary, so that the true meaning might be concealed from the vulgar, and made manifest only to the wise; imitating in this the example of many wise philosophers who had done the like.
“Did you foresee the year of the fire?” said a member. “No,” quoth Lilly, “nor was I desirous. Of that I made no scrutiny.” After some further parley, the house found they could make nothing of the astrologer, and dismissed him with great civility.
One specimen of the explanation of a prophecy given by Lilly, and related by him with much complacency, will be sufficient to shew the sort of trash by which he imposed upon the million. “In the year 1588,” says he, “there was a prophecy printed in Greek characters, exactly deciphering the long troubles of the English nation from 1641 to 1660.” And it ended thus: “And after him shall come a dreadful dead man, and with him a royal G, of the best blood in the world; and he shall have the crown, and shall set England on the right way, and put out all heresies.” The following is the explanation of this oracular absurdity:
“Monkery being extinguished above eighty or ninety years, and the Lord General’s name being Monk, is the dead man. The royal G or C [it is gamma in the Greek, intending C in the Latin, being the third letter in the alphabet] is Charles II., who for his extraction may be said to be of the best blood of the world.”
In France and Germany astrologers met even more encouragement than they received in England. In very early ages Charlemagne and his