Christ's Hospital, and a like sum to the Company of Painter-Stainers to be laid out on a piece of plate (will registered in P. C. C. 106, Lee).
Lilly left in manuscript ‘Pedigrees of Nobility,’ which George Allan (d. 1800) [q. v.] considered ‘a book of undoubted authority’ (Nichols, Lit. Anecd. viii. 711). It is in the possession of the Earl of Egmont (Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. p. 233). He also executed on 271 leaves of thick vellum a magnificent volume, entitled ‘The Genealogie of the Princelie Familie of the Howards exactly deduced in a right line from 970 to 1638,’ which is enriched with monuments, portraits, armorial bearings, and tasteful compositions. The drawings and their colourings are of the first class. This work was probably undertaken by order of Thomas Howard, second earl of Arundel [q. v.] It was purchased from Lilly's daughter and executrix Elizabeth for 100l. by Lord Northampton in the reign of Charles II, and still remains in the family (ib. 3rd Rep. pp. 209–210; Nichols, Illustr. of Lit. vi. 385–6). In the British Museum are two manuscripts by Lilly, ‘Pedigrees of Families of Worcestershire, 1634’ (Addit. MS. 19816, ff. 100–124), and ‘Genealogies of the Families of Weston and Cave, 1632,’ in Latin (Addit. MS. 18667). Some ‘Extracts from a Roll given by Lilly to William Burton in 1628’ are preserved in the Bodleian Library (Rawlinson MS. B. 350. 40).
[Noble's College of Arms, pp. 249–50; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists, 1878, p. 271; Visitations of Essex (Harl. Soc.), pt. i. p. vi; Howard's Memorials of the Howard Family, fol., 1834, Preface.]
LILLY, JOHN (1553–1606), author of 'Euphues.' [See Lyly, John.]
LILLY, WILLIAM (1602–1681), astrologer, born 1 May 1602 at Diseworth, Leicestershire, was son of William Lilly, a yeoman farmer, by his wife Alice (d. 1618), daughter of Edward Barham of Fiskerton Mills, Newark. A rival astrologer, John Heydon [q. v.], insisted in his ‘Theomagia,’ 1664 (pt. i. p. 106), that Lilly's father was ‘a laborer or ditcher.’ In 1613 he was sent to the grammar school of Ashby-de-la-Zouch while John Brinsley the elder [q. v.] was chief master. According to his own story he learnt Latin, some Greek, and a little Hebrew, becoming an efficient writer of Latin verse and a good Latin conversationalist. When sixteen years old he was ‘exceedingly troubled in his dreams concerning his salvation and damnation.’ His father's circumstances compelled him to earn his own livelihood from an early age. On 3 April 1620 he left Diseworth for London, with a recommendation to Gilbert Wright, a native of Market Bosworth, who resided ‘at the corner house in the Strand.’ Heydon asserted that his first master in London was ‘Palin, a tailor.’ But there seems no reason to doubt Lilly's statement that Wright gave him immediate employment as a domestic servant. Wright lived on rents derived from house property in London, but could neither read nor write, and soon found the youth useful in helping him with his accounts. Wright's wife, a believer in ‘vigils,’ died in 1624, of a cancer in the breast, and Lilly acted as nurse and amateur surgeon throughout the illness. In the summer of 1625 he remained in London during the plague. In February 1625–6 Wright married again, but he died on 22 May 1627, and Lilly accepted an offer of marriage made him by the widow, whose maiden name was Ellen Whitehaire, in the following September. ‘The corner house in the Strand’ was thenceforth his permanent London residence. Next month he was made free of the Salters' Company, to which Wright had belonged, and, being well provided for by his wife, spent his time in angling, or hearing puritan sermons.
In 1632 Lilly first turned his attention to astrology. A friend introduced him to Arise Evans [see Evans, Rhys], an astrologer residing in Gunpowder Alley. Evans found Lilly an apt pupil. He bought books on the subject belonging to William Bedwell [q. v.], ‘lately dead,’ read them day and night, and within six or seven weeks could ‘set a figure.’ He came to know the chief astrologers of the day in various parts of the country, and gives many details concerning their modes of life in his autobiography. In October 1633 his wife died. In 1634 a scholar pawned with him for forty shillings a manuscript copy of the ‘Ars Notoria,’ which taught him the doctrine of the magical circle and methods of invocating spirits. Soon afterwards Davy Ramsey, the king's clockmaker, announced that much treasure was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, and obtained the permission of Dean Williams to make a search for it. Ramsey invited one John Scott, who ‘pretended the use of the Mosaical rods,’ and Lilly to assist him. One winter's night the three, with some thirty spectators, ‘played the hazel rod round about the cloisters; upon the west side the rods turned one over another.’ Labourers were ordered by Lilly to dig beneath the spot. A coffin was found at a depth of six feet, but it seemed to the operators too light to merit attention. On passing into the abbey a blustering wind
