LILLY, WILLIAM (1602-1681), English astrologer, was born in 1602 at Diseworth in Leicestershire. He received a toler ably good classical education at the school of Ashby-de-la-Zouche. In his eighteenth year, his father having fallen into great pov erty, he went to London and was employed in attendance on an old citizen and his wife. His master, at his death in 1627, left him an annuity of £20; and, Lilly having soon afterwards mar ried the widow, she, dying in 1633, left him property to the value of about f r,000. He now began to dabble in astrology, reading all the books on the subject he could find, and particularly study ing Valentine Naibod's Commentary on Alchabitius. He then began to issue his prophetical almanacs and other works, which met with serious attention from some of the most prominent members of the Long Parliament. The chief difference between Lilly and the mass of the community at the time was that, while others believed in the general truth of astrology, he ventured to specify the future events to which its calculations pointed. Even from his own account of himself, however, it is evident that he did not trust implicitly to the indications given by the aspects of the heavens, but kept his eyes and ears open for any information which might make his predictions safe.
After the Restoration Lilly very quickly fell into disrepute. His sympathy with the parliament, which his predictions had generally shown, was not calculated to bring him into royal favour. He came under the lash of Butler, who, making allow ance for some satiric exaggeration, has given in the character of Sidrophel a probably not very incorrect picture of the man; and, having by this time amassed a tolerable fortune, he bought a small estate at Hersham in Surrey, to which he retired, and where he diverted his talents to the practice of medicine. He died in 1681.
Lilly's life of himself, published after his death, is still worth looking into as a remarkable record of credulity. In 1852 a prominent London publisher put forth a new edition of Lilly's Introduction to Astrology, "with numerous emendations adapted to the improved state of the science."