Mistress Wright, the widow, ‘who had twice married old men,’ had now many suitors; ’old men, whom she declined; some gentlemen of decayed fortunes, whom she liked not, for she was covetous and sparing;’ ‘however, all her talk was of husbands,’ and, in short, William Lilly became the happy man; made happy within four months of the death of the old master.  ’During all the time of her life, which was till October, 1633, we lived very lovingly; I frequenting no company at all; my exercises were angling, in which I ever delighted; my companions, two aged men.’  ’I frequented lectures, and leaned in judgment to Puritanism; and in October, 1627, I was made free of the Salters’ company of London.’

Up to this time, therefore, the history of William Lilly, so far as he has made it known, is briefly this:  Born poor, the grandfather and father having wasted the family estates, he was sent by his mother, who intended him from his infancy for a scholar, to the school of Ashby-de-la-Zouch; where, at one time, he was in trouble about his soul and the souls of his parents; and he ’frequently wept, prayed, and mourned, for fear his sins might offend God.’  But the mother died, the father got into prison for debt, and poor Lilly, who had made himself the best scholar in the school, could not go up to the university as he had hoped to do, but after a wretched year at his father’s house, where he was accounted useless and an encumbrance, he had to become the servant of one who could neither read nor write, doing all kinds of drudgery.  Serving faithfully, the much-enduring young man won the love and confidence of the old master and mistress, and at last married the young widow, who was a wholesome-looking woman, of brown ruddy complexion, and had property, which served, among other things, to make Lilly ‘free of the Salters’ company.’  Not a bad history, certainly, if not one of the best:  he was a thriving young man, not a complaining one; but one who accepted the conditions under which he was placed, and made the best of them; which is what all young men ought to do.

And now Lilly—­being a man of some property and standing, without any profession or regular business, but with an inclination to the occult arts, begot in him probably by the folly of old Mistress Wright—­tells us how he ‘came to study astrology.’  ’It happened on one Sunday, 1632, as myself and a justice of peace’s clerk were, before service, discoursing of many things, he chanced to say that such a person was a great scholar; nay, so learned that he could make an almanac, which to me was strange:  one speech begot another, till at last he said he could bring me acquainted with one Evans, who lived in Gunpowder alley, who formerly lived in Staffordshire, that was an excellent wise man, and studied the black art.  The same week (after) we went to see Mr. Evans.  When we came to his house, he, having been drunk the night before, was upon his bed—­if it be lawful to call that a bed whereon he lay.’