He was popularly believed "to have naturally a genius for the
knowing of future things, as he himself confesseth in 2
Epistles to King Henry II, and to Caesar, his own son. And
besides that genius, the knowledge of astrology did smooth him
the way to discover many future events. He had a greater
disposition than others to receive those supernatural lights,
and as God is pleased to work sweetly in his creatures, and to
give some forerunning dispositions to those graces he
intendeth to bestow, it seemeth that to that purpose he did
choose our author to reveal him so many wonderful secrets. We
see every day that God in the distributing of his graces,
carrieth Himself towards us according to our humours and
natural inclinations. He employeth those that have a generous
martial heart, for the defence of His Church, and the
destruction of tyrants.

"He leadeth those of a melancholick humour into Colledges and
Colisters, and cherisheth tenderly those that are of a meek
and mild disposition.

"Even so, seeing that Nostradamus inclined to this kind of
knowledge, He gave him in a great measure the grace of it."

LILLY

WILLIAM LILLY, a famous English astrologer of yeoman ancestry, was born
at Diseworth, an obscure village in northwestern Leicestershire, May 1,
1602. In his autobiography he described his native place as a "town of
great rudeness, wherein it is not remembered that any of the farmers
thereof, excepting my grandfather, did ever educate any of their sons to
learning." His mother was Alice, daughter of Edward Barham, of Fiskerton
Mills in Nottinghamshire.

When eleven years of age, he was placed in the care of one John Brinsley
at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, not far from Diseworth. Here he received
instruction in the classics. In April, 1620, he went to London to seek
his fortune, and obtained employment as foot-boy and general factotum in
the family of one Gilbert Wright, of the parish of St. Clement Danes, a
man of property, but without education.

Not long after his master's death in 1627, Lilly married the widow, and
being then in comfortable circumstances, devoted considerable time to
the pursuit of angling, and became fond of listening to Puritan
sermons.[268:1] Having abundant leisure, he was enabled to humor the
natural bent of his mind, and to begin the study of astrology, which he
continued with zeal, devotin