After that his Majesty was beheaded, the Parliament for some years effected nothing either for the publick peace or tranquillity of the nation, or settling religion as they had formerly promised.  The interval of time betwixt his Majesty’s death and Oliver Cromwel’s displacing them, was wholly consumed in voting for themselves, and bringing their own relations to be members of Parliament, thinking to make a trade thereof.

The week, or three or four days before his Majesty’s beheading, one Major Sydenham, who had commands in Scotland, came to take his leave of me, and told me the King was to be put to death, which I was not willing to believe, and said, ’I could not be persuaded the Parliament could find any Englishman so barbarous, that would do that foul action.’  ‘Rather,’ saith he, ’than they should want such a man, these arms of mine should do it.’  He went presently after into Scotland, and upon the first engagement against them, was slain, and his body miserably cut and mangled.

In 1651 I published Monarchy or no Monarchy, and in the latter end thereof some hieroglyphics of my own, composed, at spare time, by the occult learning, many of those types having representations of what should from thence succeed in England, and have since had verification.

I had not that learning from books, or any manuscript I ever yet met withal, it is reduced from a cabal lodging in astrology, but so mysterious and difficult to be attained, that I have not yet been acquainted with any who had that knowledge.  I will say no more thereof, but that the asterisms and signs and constellations give greatest light thereunto.

During Bradshaw’s being President of the Council of State, it was my happiness to procure Captain Wharton his liberty, which when Bradshaw understood, said, ’I will be an enemy to Lilly, if ever he come before me.’  Sir Bolstrode Whitlock broke the ice first of all on behalf of Captain Wharton:  after him the Committee, unto whom his offence had been committed, spoke for him, and said he might well be bailed or enlarged:  I had spoken to the Committee the morning of his delivery, who thereupon were so civil unto him, especially Sir William Ermin of Lincolnshire, who at first wondered I appeared not against him; but upon my humble request, my long continued antagonist was enlarged and had his liberty.

In 1651 I purchased one hundred and ten pounds per Annum in fee-farm rents for one thousand and thirty pounds.  I paid all in ready money; but when his Majesty King Charles the Second, 1660, was restored, I lost it all again, and it returned to the right owner; the loss thereof never afflicted me, for I have ever reduced my mind according to my fortune.  I was drawn in by several persons to make that simple purchase.  The year I bought it, I had my ascendant directed into a Trine of Jupiter first, and in the same year into the Cauda Draconis—­my fortune into a quadrant of Mercury.  When Colchester