He was high steward of Oxford, member of the council of state, one of the keepers of the great seal, a man very learned in the law, who made long discourses to Oliver Cromwell on the matter of the kingship, and on other matters.  He went to Sweden as Cromwell’s ambassador, and was one of the great men of that time, or one of the considerable men.  Sir Bulstrode, according to Ashmole, was Lilly’s patron; and indeed the great man did befriend him long, and help him out of difficulties.  The acquaintance began in this wise:  Sir Bulstrode being sick, Mrs. Lisle, ‘wife to John Lisle,’ afterward one of the keepers of the great seal, came to Lilly, bringing a specimen of the sick man.  Whereupon the astrologer, having inspected the specimen, ’set a figure,’ and said, ’the sick for that time would recover, but by means of a surfeit would dangerously relapse within one month; which he did, by eating of trouts at Mr. Sands’ house in Surrey.’  Therefore, as there could no longer be any doubt of Lilly’s skill, he, at the time of Sir Bulstrode’s second sickness, was called to him daily; and though the family physician said ‘there was no hope of recovery,’ the astrologer said there was ‘no danger of death,’ and ’that he would be sufficiently well in five or six weeks; and so he was.’  This Mrs. Lisle, who brought the specimen, being apparently one of Lilly’s she friends, we will add that she made herself remarkable by saying at the martyrdom of King Charles I, in 1648, that ’her blood leaped within her to see the tyrant fall.’  For this, and for other things, the woman was finally beheaded; it being impossible otherwise to stop her tongue; and I have no tear for her.

Lilly’s most intimate friend, however, was Elias Ashmole, Esq.  Born in 1617, the name for him agreed on among his friends was Thomas; but at the baptismal font the godfather, ’by a more than ordinary impulse of spirit,’ said Elias; and under that prophetic name the boy grew up to manhood, and became for a time rather famous in high places.  He was a learned antiquary, and made a description of the consular and imperial coins at Oxford, and presented it, in three folio volumes, to the library there.  He made also a catalogue and description of the king’s medals; a book on the Order of the Garter; a book entitled, Fasciculus Chemicus, and another, Theatrum Chemicum.  He published, moreover, a book called ‘The Way to Bliss;’ but if he himself ever arrived at that thing, he found the way uncomfortable, if we may judge from his diary, half filled with record of his ailments, surfeits, and diseases, and of the sweatings, purgings, and leechings consequent thereupon, or intended as preventives thereof.  To one kind of bliss, however, he did certainly attain—­that of high society; dining often with lords, earls, and dukes, bishops and archbishops, foreign envoys, ambassadors, and princes; and they, many of them, came in turn, and dined with him, who had made a book on the Order of the Garter, and who understood the art of dining.  Continental kings sent to this man chains of gold, and his gracious majesty, Charles II, was very gracious to him, and gave him fat offices, mostly sinecures:  and over and above all he gave a pension.  This world is a very remarkable one—­especially remarkable in the upper crust of it.