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