A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



ing made such a prediction, being, as he explained, 

 4 'more interested in determining affairs of much more 

 importance to the future welfare of the country." 

 Some of the explanations of his interpretations will 

 suffice to show their absurdities, which, however, were 

 by no means regarded as absurdities at that time, for 

 Lilly was one of the greatest astrologers of his day. 

 He said that in 1588 a prophecy had been printed in 

 Greek characters which foretold exactly the troubles 

 of England between the years 1641 and 1660. "And 

 after him shall come a dreadful dead man," ran the 

 prophecy, "and with him a royal G of the best blood 

 in the world, and he shall have the crown and shall 

 set England on the right way and put out all heresies." 

 His interpretation of this was that, "Monkery being 

 extinguished above eighty or ninety years, and the 

 Lord General's name being Monk, is the dead man. 

 The royal G or C (it is gamma in the Greek, intending 

 C in the Latin, being the third letter in the alphabet) 

 is Charles II., who, for his extraction, may be said 

 to be of the best blood of the world." 5 



This may be taken as a fair sample of Lilly's inter- 

 pretations of astrological prophesies, but many of his 

 own writings, while somewhat more definite and direct, 

 are still left sufficiently vague to allow his skilful 

 interpretations to set right an apparent mistake. One 

 of his famous documents was " The Starry Messenger," 

 a little pamphlet purporting to explain the phenom- 

 enon of a " strange apparition of three suns ' ' that were 

 seen in London on November 19, 1644 the anni- 

 versary of the birth of Charles I., then the reign- 

 ing monarch. This phenomenon caused a great stir 



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