LILLY, John, a dramatic poet, was born in the Wealds of Kent, about the year 1553, and educated in Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took the degree of bachelor of arts in 1573, and that of master in 1575. From Oxford he removed to Cambridge; but how long he continued there is uncertain. On his arrival in London, he became acquainted with some of Queen Elizabeth’s courtiers, by whom he was caressed and admired as a poet and a wit; and her majesty, on particular festivals, honoured his dramatic pieces with her presence. His plays are nine in number. His first publication, however, printed in 1580, was a romance called Euphues, which was universally read and admired. This romance, which Blount, the editor of six of his plays, says, introduced a new language, especially amongst the ladles, is, according to Berkenhout, in fact a most contemptible piece of affectation and nonsense. Nevertheless it is very certain, that it was in high estimation amongst the women of fashion of those times, who, we are told by Whalley, the editor of Ben Jonson’s works, had all the phrases by heart; and those who did not speak Euphuism were as little regarded at court as if they could not speak French. “He was,” says 01dys, “a man of great reading, good memory, ready faculty of application, and uncommon eloquence; but he ran into a vast excess of allusion.” When or where he died is not known. Anthony Wood says he was living in 1597, when his last comedy was published. After attending the court of Queen Elizabeth for thirteen years, notwithstanding his reputation as an author, he was under the necessity of petitioning the queen for some small stipend to support him in his old age. His two letters or petitions to her majesty on this subject are preserved in manuscript.

Lilly, William, a noted English astrologer, was born in 1602 in Leicestershire, where his father not being able to give him more learning than common writing and arithmetic, [7:13:346]he resolved to seek his fortune in London. He arrived in 1620, and lived four years as a servant to a mantua-maker in the parish of St Clement Danes; but be then moved a step higher to the service of Mr Wright, master of the Salters’ Company in the Strand; and as he was not able to write, Lilly, amongst other offices, kept his books. In 1627, when his master died, he paid his addresses to the widow, whom he married with a fortune of L.1000. Being now his own master, he followed the puritanical preachers; and turning his mind to judicial astrology, became the pupil of one Evans, a profligate Welsh parson, in that pretended art. Getting a manuscript of the Ars Notitiae of Cornelius Agrippa, with alterations, he drank in the doctrine of the magic circle, and the invocation of spirits, with great eagerness. He was the author of the Merlinus Anglicus junior, the Supernatural Sight, and the White King’s Prophecy. In him we have an instance of the general superstition and ignorance that prevailed in the time of the civil war between Charles I. and his parliament; for the king consulted this astrologer to know in what quarter he should conceal himself, if he could escape from Hampton Court; and General Fairfax, on the other side, sent for him to his army, to ask him if he could tell by his art, whether God was with them and their cause. Lilly, who made his fortune by favourable predictions to both parties, assured the general that God would be with him and his army. In 1648, he published his treatise of the Three Suns seen the preceding winter; and also an astrological judgment upon a conjunction of Saturn and Mars. This year the council of state gave him in money L.50, and a pension of L.100 per annum, which he received for two years, and then resigned on some disgust. In June 1660, he was taken into custody by order of the parliament, by whom he was examined concerning the person who had cut off the head of King Charles I. The same year he sued out his pardon under the great seal of England. When the plague raged in London, he removed with his family to his estate at Hersham; and in October 1666, he was examined before a Committee of the House of Commons concerning the fire of London, which happened in September that year. After his retirement to Hersham, he applied himself to the study of physic, and, by means of his friend Mr Ashmole, obtained from Archibald Sheldon a license for the practice of it. A little before his death he adopted for his son, by the name of Merlin the Younger, one Henry Coley, a tailor by trade; and at the same time gave him the impression of his almanack, after it had been printed for thirty-six years. He died in 1681 of a dead palsy. Mr Ashmole placed a monument over his grave in the church of Walton-upon-Thames. His Observations on the Life and Death of Charles, late king of England, if we overlook the astrological nonsense, may be read with as much satisfaction as more celebrated histories; Lilly being not only very well informed, but strictly impartial. This work, with the Lives of Lilly and Ashmole, written by themselves, were published in one volume 8vo, in 1774, by Mr Burman.