mankind--or for some other purpose; and we will now get from it what we
conveniently can.[1]

'I was born,' says this renowned astrologer, 'in the county of
Leicester, in an obscure town, in the northwest part thereof, called
Diseworth, seven miles south of the town of Derby, one mile from Castle
Donnington.' 'This town of Diseworth is divided into three parishes; one
part belongs under Lockington, in which stands my father's house (over
against the steeple), in which I was born' on the first day of May,
1602. After this rather too minute account of his birthplace, Lilly
tells us of his ancestors, substantial yeomen for many generations, who
'had much free land and many houses in the town;' but all the family
estates were 'sold by my grandfather and father, so that now our family
depends wholly on a college lease.' 'Of my infancy I can speak but
little; only I do remember that in the fourth year of my age I had the
measles.' 'My mother intended I should be a scholar from my infancy,
seeing my father's backslidings in the world, and no hopes by husbandry
to recruit a decayed estate.' Therefore, after some schooling at or near
home, the boy, when eleven years old, was sent to Ashby-de-la-Zouch,
Leicester, to the school of Mr. John Brinsley, who 'was very severe in
his life and conversation, and did breed up many scholars for the
universities; in religion he was a strict Puritan.' 'In the fourteenth
year of my age, about Michaelmas, I got a surfeit, and thereupon a
fever, by eating beechnuts.' 'In the sixteenth year of my age I was
exceedingly troubled in my dreams concerning my salvation and damnation,
and also concerning the safety and destruction of my father and mother:
in the nights I frequently wept and prayed, and mourned, for fear my
sins might offend God.' 'In the seventeenth year of my age my mother
died.' The next year, 'by reason of my father's poverty, I was enforced
to leave school, and so came home to my father's house, where I lived in