Gilbert Wright, who had been ’servant to the Lady Pawlet in Hertfordshire,’ had married a widow with property, and lived afterward ‘on his annual rents;’ or on his wife’s, and ’was of no calling or profession.’  This man had real need of a servant who could read and write, for he himself could do neither; but he was, however, ’a man of excellent natural parts, and would speak publicly upon any occasion very rationally and to the purpose.’  Lilly was kindly received by Master Wright, who found, it seems, employment enough for him.  ’My work was to go before my master to church; to attend my master when he went abroad; to make clean his shoes; sweep the street; help to drive bucks when he washed; fetch water in a tub from the Thames—­I have helped to carry eighteen tubs of water in one morning;—­weed the garden.  All manner of drudgery I willingly performed.’

Mrs. Wright, who brought money to her husband, brought also a jealous disposition, and made his life uncomfortable.  ’She was about seventy years of age, he sixty-six,’ ’yet was never any woman more jealous of a husband than she!’ She vexed more than one man, too, and her first husband had temptations to cut his own throat and escape from trouble so; but he, as we shall learn by and by, got some relief otherwise, and lived till death came by better means.

Tally had difficulty in keeping on good terms ’with two such opposite natures’ as those of his master and mistress, that he managed it somehow, and says:  ’However, as to the things of this world, I had enough, and endured their discontents with much sereneness.  My mistress was very curious to know of such as were then called cunning, or wise men, whether she should bury her husband.  She frequently visited such persons, and this begot in me a little desire to learn something that way; but wanting money to buy books, I laid aside these notions, and endeavored to please both master and mistress.’

This mistress had a cancer in her left breast, and Lilly had much noisome work to do for her; which he did faithfully and kindly.  ’She was so fond of me in the time of her sickness, she would never permit me out of her chamber.’  ’When my mistress died (1624) she had under her armhole a small scarlet bag full of many things, which one that was there delivered unto me.  There were in this bag several sigils, some of Jupiter in Trine; others of the nature of Venus; some of iron, and one of gold, of pure virgin gold, of the bigness of a thirty-three shilling piece of King James coin.  In the circumference on one side was engraven, Vicit Leo de Tribu Judae Tetragrammation~+~:  within the middle there was engraven a holy lamb.  In the other circumference there was Amraphel, and three ~+ + +~.  In the middle, Sanctus Petrus, Alpha and Omega.’