liament, yet at
the Restoration professed to disclose the fact that Cornet Joyce had
beheaded Charles. Whenever his predictions or his divining-rod failed,
he always attributed his failures, as the modern spiritualists, the
successors of the old wizards, still conveniently do, to want of faith
in the spectators. By means of his own shrewdness, rather than by
stellar influence, Lilly obtained many useful friends, among whom we may
specially particularise the King of Sweden, Lenthal the Puritan Speaker,
Bulstrode Whitelocke (Cromwell's Minister), and the learned but
credulous Elias Ashmole. Lilly's Almanac, the predecessor of Moore's and
Zadkiel's, was carried on by him for six-and-thirty years. He claimed to
be a special _protege_ of an angel called Salmonaeus, and to have a more
than bowing acquaintance with Salmael and Malchidael, the guardian
angels of England. Among his works are his autobiography, and his
"Observations on the Life and Death of Charles, late King of England."
The rest of his effusions are pretentious, mystical, muddle-headed
rubbish, half nonsense half knavery, as "The White King's Prophecy,"
"Supernatural Light," "The Starry Messenger," and "Annus Tenebrosus, or
the Black Year." The rogue's starry mantle descended on his adopted son,
a tailor, whom he named Merlin, junior. The credulity of the atheistical
times of Charles II. is only equalled by that of our own day.

Lilly himself, in his amusing, half-knavish autobiography, has described
his first introduction to the Welsh astrologer of Gunpowder Alley:--

"It happened," he says, "on one Sunday, 1632, as myself and a justice of
peace's clerk were, before service, discoursing of many things, he
chanced to say that such a person was a great scholar--nay, so learned
that he could make an almanac, which to me then was strange; one speech
begot another, till, at last, he said he could bring me acquainted with
one Evans, in Gunpowder Alley, who had formerly lived in Staffordshire,
that was an excellent wise man, and studied the black art. The same week
after we went to see Mr. Evans. When we came to his house, he, having
been drunk the night before, was upon his bed, if it be lawful to call
that a bed whereon he then lay. He roused up himself, and after some
compliments he was content to instruct me in astrology. I attended his
best opportunities for seven or eight weeks, in which time I could set a
figure perfectly. Books he had not any, except Haly, 'D