(O noble Esquire) if now I make a short
digression of such persons as then professed astrology, that posterity
may understand in what condition I found it, and in whose hands that
little that remained was lodged.

There lived then in Houndsditch one Alexander Hart, who had been a
soldier formerly, a comely old man, of good aspect; he professed
questionary astrology, and a little of physick; his greatest skill was
to elect young gentlemen fit times to play at dice, that they might win
or get money. I went unto him for resolutions for three questions at
several times, and he erred in every one. To speak soberly of him, he
was but a cheat, as appeared suddenly after; for a rustical fellow of
the city, desirous of knowledge, contracted with Hart to assist for a
conference with a spirit, and paid him twenty pounds of thirty pounds
the contract. At last, after many delays, and no spirit appearing, or
money returned, the young man indicts him for a cheat at the Old Bailey
in London; the Jury found the bill, and at the hearing of the cause this
jest happened: some of the bench enquired what Hart did? 'He sat like an
Alderman in his gown,' quoth the fellow; at which the court fell into a
great laughter, most of the court being Aldermen. He was to have been
set upon the pillory for this cheat; but John Taylour, the Water Poet,
being his great friend, got the Lord Chief Justice Richardson to bail
him, ere he stood upon the pillory, and so Hart fled presently into
Holland, where he ended his days. It was my fortune, upon the sale of
his books in 1634, to buy _Argoll's Primum Mobile_ for fourteen
shillings, which I only wanted.

In Lambeth Marsh at the same time lived one Captain Bubb, who resolved
horary questions astrologically; a proper handsome man, well spoken, but
withal covetous, and of no honesty, as will appear by this story, for
which he stood upon the pillory. A certain butcher was robbed, going to
a fair, of forty pounds; he goes to Bubb, who for ten pounds in hand
paid, would help him to the thief; appoints the butcher such a night
precisely, to watch at such a place, and the thief should come thither;
commanded him by any means to stop him; the butcher attends according to
direction. About twelve in the night there comes one riding very
fiercely upon a full gallop, whom the butcher knocks down, and seized
both upon man and horse: the butcher brings the man and horse to the
next town, but then the person whom the butch