In the judgment of his contemporaries, this William Lilly, astrologer, was, as we can see, ‘a respectable man.’  Such judgment, however, is never conclusive; for the time clement is always a deceptive one; and, as all navigators know, the land which looms high in the atmosphere of to-day does often, in the clearer atmosphere of other days, prove to be as flat as a panecake:  but we must say of Lilly, that though unfortunately an impostor, he was really rather above the common level of mankind—­a little hillock, if only of conglomerate or pudding stone:  for, in his pamphlet entitled ’Observations on the Life and Times of Charles I,’ where he, looking away from the stars and treating of the past, is more level to our judgment, he is still worth reading; and does therein give a more impartial and correct character of that unhappy king than can be found in any other contemporary writing; agreeing well with the best judgments of this present time, and showing Lilly to be a man of ability above the common.  On the whole, we will say of him, that he was the product of a mother who was good for something, and of a father who was good for nothing, or next to that; that with such parentage, and under such circumstances as we have seen, he became an astrologer, the best of his kind in that time.

It would be easy to institute other moral reflections, and to pass positive judgment on the man:  but instead thereof I will place here two questions: 

First:  Did William Lilly, in the eighteenth year of his age, need anything except a little cash capital to enable him to go up to the university and become a respectable clergyman of the Church of England, or the minister of some dissenting congregation, if he had liked that better?

Second:  When this impostor and the clergymen, who as boys stood together in the same form of the school at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, come together before the judgment bar of the Most High, will the Great Judge say to each of the clergymen:  Come up hither; and to the impostor:  Depart, thou cursed?

‘A fool,’ it is said, ‘may ask questions which wise men cannot answer;’ and the writer, having done his part in asking, leaves the more difficult part for the consideration of the reader.[5]

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 1:  The Lives of those eminent Antiquaries, Elias Ashmole, Esquire, and Mr. William Lilly, written by themselves; containing first, William Lilly’s History of his Life and Times, with Notes by Mr Ashmole; secondly, Lilly’s Life and Death of Charles I; and lastly, the Life of Elias Ashmole, Esq., by way of Diary, etc.  London, 1774.]

[Footnote 2:  Lilly’s Life and Death of King Charles I.]

[Footnote 3:  The Lives of those eminent Antiquaries, Ellas Ashmole and William Lilly, &c.  London, 1774.]

[Footnote 4:  See Pepys’ Diary and Correspondence.  London, 1858.  Vol. i, p. 116.]