From Servant to the Merlin of England

William Lilly was born in 1602 to a yeoman family in Leicestershire and arrived in London at seventeen with no money and no prospects, working as a servant to a merchant. A fortunate marriage to his master's widow gave him the leisure to study, and he turned that leisure to astrology, teaching himself from the available English and Latin manuals and quickly surpassing them. By the 1640s he was casting charts for a clientele that ran from servants asking after stolen goods to members of Parliament asking after the war, and his almanacs, issued yearly under titles such as Merlinus Anglicus, sold in the tens of thousands and were read for their political forecasts as closely as for their weather.

Lilly's sympathies ran with Parliament during the Civil War, and his predictions, phrased carefully enough to be read as confirmation whichever side won, kept him useful and protected through the upheavals of the 1640s and 1650s. His most notorious moment came after the Restoration: a set of enigmatic woodcuts he had published in 1651, showing burning buildings among other symbolic scenes, were read after the Great Fire of 1666 as a prophecy of the disaster, and a parliamentary committee investigating the fire's cause summoned him on suspicion that he knew more than a prophet should. He testified, was cleared, and continued practicing and teaching astrology at his home in London and later Surrey until his death in 1681.