William Lilly

England's most famous astrologer, a Civil War propagandist on retainer, and the man questioned by Parliament over whether he had helped start the Great Fire of London.

Who they were

William Lilly (1602–1681) was the leading English astrologer of the seventeenth century, author of Christian Astrology (1647) — the first substantial astrological textbook written in English — and a significant public figure in the politics of the English Civil War.

He is the best example available of astrology at its height: not a fringe practice, but a consulted profession with a large clientele, political influence and a mass readership.

Where they came from

He was born at Diseworth in Leicestershire to a family of modest and declining means, received a grammar school education, and came to London in 1620 as a servant. He married his employer's widow, who died leaving him around a thousand pounds — enough to live on independently.

He began studying astrology in 1632 under a teacher named Evans, whom he later described unflatteringly, and built a practice that at its peak saw something like two thousand consultations a year. His casebooks survive, which is unusual and valuable: they record the questions ordinary Londoners actually brought — missing property, absent husbands, whether an illness would prove fatal, whether a ship would return.

What they taught

Christian Astrology (1647). Three books: an introduction to the technique, a manual of horary, and a treatment of natal astrology. Written in English deliberately, at length and with worked examples, it made the tradition available outside Latin-reading circles and remains the core reference for modern horary practice. The revival of that branch in the twentieth century was essentially a return to this book.

Political astrology. Lilly's annual almanacs — Merlinus Anglicus and successors — sold in very large numbers and were unambiguously partisan. He supported Parliament, and his prognostications were used as propaganda, including a forecast of parliamentary success before Naseby in 1645. The royalists retained their own astrologer, George Wharton, and the two conducted a public feud in print. Both sides evidently believed the forecasts mattered to morale, which says something about astrology's standing that no argument about its validity can.

He was pragmatic about his allegiances and adjusted after the Restoration, which his critics have never let go of.

What we can and cannot say

We can say he was an extremely capable practitioner by his tradition's standards, and that his casebooks are a first-rate historical source on ordinary seventeenth-century life — the anxieties of servants, tradespeople and merchants, recorded because they came to him about them.

We can say his political forecasting was mixed and partisan, and that he was working for a side rather than reporting neutrally.

And the Fire of London episode is worth telling accurately, because it is a textbook case of retrospective validation. In 1651 Lilly published Monarchy or No Monarchy in England, which included a set of enigmatic hieroglyphic images. One depicted a city in flames, with figures apparently attempting to douse it.

Fifteen years later, in September 1666, London burned. In October a House of Commons committee investigating the fire's causes summoned Lilly and questioned him — the suspicion being either that he had foreknowledge or that he had been involved. He testified that he had drawn the image by astrological art without knowing the year, and he was dismissed without charge.

The episode is regularly cited as Lilly predicting the Great Fire. What he published was an undated picture of a burning city, in a work full of other undated symbolic images, at a time when London had burned repeatedly and plague and fire were standing fears. No date, no location, no specifics. The prediction was made by readers, afterwards, out of an image that fitted.

That is exactly the shape of confirmation that makes astrology hard to evaluate from anecdote, and Lilly's own tradition supplies the corrective: horary, his speciality, demands a specific answer to a specific question in a specific timeframe. He knew the difference. His admirers frequently do not.

We cannot say what he privately believed about the more political end of his work. His Autobiography, written late, is candid about a good deal and evasive about the rest.

Who they were

Where they came from

What they taught

What we can and cannot say

Further reading