STUDENT IN ASTROLOGY.

Wrote by himself in the 66th Year of his Age, at Hersham, in the
Parish of Walton-upon-Thames, in the County of Surry. _Propria
Manu._


I[1] was born in the county of Leicester, in an obscure town, in the
north-west borders thereof, called Diseworth, seven miles south of the
town of Derby, one mile from Castle-Donnington, a town of great
rudeness, wherein it is not remembered that any of the farmers thereof
did ever educate any of their sons to learning, only my grandfather sent
his younger son to Cambridge, whose name was Robert Lilly, and died
Vicar of Cambden in Gloucestershire, about 1640.

[Footnote 1: "William Lilly was a prominent, and, in the opinion
of many of his cotemporaries, a very important personage in the
most eventful period of English history. He was a principal
actor in the farcical scenes which diversified the bloody
tragedy of civil war; and while the King and the Parliament were
striving for mastery in the field, he was deciding their
destinies in the closet. The weak and the credulous of both
parties, who sought to be instructed in 'destiny's dark
counsels,' flocked to consult the 'wily Archimage,' who, with
exemplary impartiality, meted out victory and good fortune to
his clients, according to the extent of their faith, and the
weight of their purses. A few profane Cavaliers might make his
name the burthen of their _malignant_ rhymes--a few of the more
scrupulous among the _Saints_ might keep aloof in sanctified
abhorrence of the 'Stygian sophister'--but the great majority of