Witch, Warlock, and Magician

‘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 earsBe charmed with musick of th’ harmonious spheres:Let sun and moon withdraw, leave gloomy nightTo show their Nuncio’s fate, who gave more lightTo th’ erring world, than all the feeble raysOf sun or moon; taught us to know those daysBright Titan makes; followed the hasty sunThrough 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 dateThe flux and reflux of our dubious state.He saw the eclipse of sun, and change of moonHe 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 trainOf gilded stars, scorned longer to remainIn earthly prisons: could he a village loveWhom 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 dwellA 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 useThis Sidrophel to forebode news;To write of victories next year,And castles taken, yet i’ th’ air?Of battles fought at sea, and shipsSunk, 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 spitBestirs himself, and plies his feetTo climb the wheel, but all in vain,His own weight brings him down again,And still he’s in the self-same placeWhere at his setting out he was;So in the circle of the artsDid 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 beforeThe 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 familiarThan e’er was almanack well-willer;Her secrets understood so clear,That some believed he had been there;Knew when she was in fittest moodFor 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 applicationOf med’cines to th’ imagination;Fright agues into dogs, and scareWith rhymes the toothache and catarrh;Chase evil spirits away by dintOf sickle, horse-shoe, hollow flint;Spit fire out of a walnut-shell,Which made the Roman slaves rebel;And fire a mine in China hereWith sympathetic gunpowder.He knew whats’ever’s to be known,But much more than he knew would own …How many diff’rent speciesesOf maggots breed in rotten cheese;And which are next of kin to thoseEngendered 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 starBetween 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 suckOld 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 commoditiesTo be imported from the skies,And vended here among the rabble,For staple goods and warrantable?Like money by the Druids borrowedIn 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.

NOTE. – DR. DEE’S MAGIC CRYSTAL

Horace Walpole gives an amusing account of Kelly’s famous crystal, and of the useful part it played in a burglary committed at his house in Arlington Street in the spring of 1771. At the time, he was taking his ease at his Strawberry Hill villa, near Teddington, when a courier brought him news of what had occurred. Writing to his friend, Sir Horace Mann, March 22, he says:

‘I was a good quarter of an hour before I recollected that it was very becoming to have philosophy enough not to care about what one does care for; if you don’t care, there is no philosophy in bearing it. I despatched my upper servant, breakfasted, fed the bantams as usual, and made no more hurry to town than Cincinnatus would if he had lost a basket of turnips. I left in my drawers £270 of bank bills and three hundred guineas, not to mention all my gold and silver coins, some inestimable miniatures, a little plate, and a good deal of furniture, under no guard but that of two maidens…

‘When I arrived, my surprise was by no means diminished. I found in three different chambers three cabinets, a large chest, and a glass case of china wide open, the locks not picked, but forced, and the doors of them broken to pieces. You will wonder that this should surprise me, when I had been prepared for it. Oh, the miracle was that I did not find, nor to this time have found, the least thing missing! In the cabinet of modern medals there were, and so there are still, a series of English coins, with downright John Trot guineas, half-guineas, shillings, sixpences, and every kind of current money. Not a single piece was removed. Just so in the Roman and Greek cabinet, though in the latter were some drawers of papers, which they had tumbled and scattered about the floor. A great exchequer desk, that belonged to my father, was in the same room. Not being able to force the lock, the philosophers (for thieves that steal nothing deserve the title much more than Cincinnatus or I) had wrenched a great flapper of brass with such violence as to break it into seven pieces. The trunk contained a new set of chairs of French tapestry, two screens, rolls of prints, and a suit of silver stuff that I had made for the King’s wedding. All was turned topsy-turvy, and nothing stolen. The glass case and cabinet of shells had been handled as roughly by these impotent gallants. Another little table with drawers, in which, by the way, the key was left, had been opened too, and a metal standish, that they ought to have taken for silver, and a silver hand-candlestick that stood upon it, were untouched. Some plate in the pantry, and all my linen just come from the wash, had no more charms for them than gold or silver. In short, I could not help laughing, especially as the only two movables neglected were another little table with drawers and the money, and a writing-box with the bank-notes, both in the same room where they made the first havoc. In short, they had broken out a panel in the door of the area, and unbarred and unbolted it, and gone out at the street-door, which they left wide open at five o’clock in the morning. A passenger had found it so, and alarmed the maids, one of whom ran naked into the street, and by her cries waked my Lord Romney, who lives opposite. The poor creature was in fits for two days, but at first, finding my coachmaker’s apprentice in the street, had sent him to Mr. Conway, who immediately despatched him to me before he knew how little damage I had received, the whole of which consists in repairing the doors and locks of my cabinets and coffers.