ires were
kindled with sweet wood and oil or resin; and their candles, of the
fat of men and children. Their vessels were earthenware; their
candlesticks had three feet, of dead men's bones. Their capes were
like pyramids, with lappets or ears on each side, and lined with fur.
Their gowns were, for ordinary purposes, long, reaching to the ground,
and lined with fox-skin. Their girdles were three inches broad, having
cabalistical names, signs, and circles inscribed thereon.

Some magicians had such piercing sight that they could discover
everything, however carefully concealed, and look into futurity with a
certainty of making known what was to come to pass. Lilly the
astrologer was a great authority in England. He was consulted by the
Royalists, (with the king's privity) as to whether the king would
escape from Hampton Court, and whether he would or should sign the
propositions of Parliament. For giving his opinion on these and a few
other subjects, the astrologer received L20. In Lilly's _Astrological
Predictions_ in 1648 occurs the following passage:--

"In the year 1656, the aphelium of Mars, who is the general
signification of England, will be in Virgo, which is assuredly the
ascendant of the English monarchy, but Aries of the kingdom. When this
apsis, therefore, of Mars shall appear in Virgo, who shall expect less
than a strange catastrophe of human affairs in the commonwealth,
monarchy, and kingdom of England? There will then, either in or about
these times, or near that year, appear in this kingdom so strange a
revolution of fate, so grand a catastrophe and great mutation unto
this monarchy and government, as never yet appeared; of which, as the
time now stands, I have no liberty or encouragement to deliver my
opinion--only, it will be ominous to London, unto her merchants at
sea, to her traffic on land, to her poor, to her rich, to all sorts of
people inhabiting in her or her liberties, by reason of consuming
fires and devastating plagues."

Accomplished events, even those which happened in his own time, and
information obtained from the writings of ancient astrologers, enabled
Lilly to predict important results. We find in a work _On the Probable
Effects of the Great Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter_, that "the
mean or second greatest conjunction that happened in 1603"--Lilly was
born in 1602--"was in the eighth degree of Sagittarius, the opposite
sign of the ascendant of London. They were nearly conjoined