An Exorbitant Fire

In seventeenth-century England, astrology hovered at the edges of learned society. That is, until one man predicted the Great Plague and the Great Fire, both of which would strike at the very heart of London. This episode brings you the story of the English astrologer William Lilly and his legacy.

Researched, written, and produced by Corinne Wieben with original music by Purple Planet.

Episode sources

Chapters

• 0:00 Pre-roll
• 0:08 Intro
• 2:24 Poor William
• 6:34 Lilly Among Thorns
• 11:43 The Great Fire
• 19:03 Conclusion
• 22:19 Outro

Transcript

Pre-roll

You’re listening to Enchanted, a podcast on the history of magic, sorcery, and witchcraft. I’m Corinne Wieben.

Intro

The fire began in darkness. In the early hours of Sunday, September 2, 1666, as London slumbered beneath a late summer sky, a small ember flickered to life in the bakery of Thomas Farriner on Pudding Lane. By the time the city awoke, the flames had already taken hold, devouring timber-framed buildings and leaping hungrily from street to street, carried by the unrelenting east wind. When anxious officials urged the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, to order firebreaks by demolishing surrounding structures, he dismissed the danger. By that night, high winds had fanned the flames into a conflagration that swept through the heart of London. Panic followed, as rumors swirled that the fire was set on purpose, and Londoners forced from their homes began to attack French and Dutch inhabitants of the city. By Tuesday, the fire had destroyed St. Paul’s Cathedral and reached nearly every corner of the city. Finally, the winds died down on Wednesday, and firefighting efforts began to prevail, saving the Tower of London and the court of King Charles II at Whitehall Palace.

As the city slowly began to rebuild itself, officials and residents alike were anxious to discover the cause of the fire. Some remembered that an astrologer had predicted the Great Fire, but there’s a fine line between foretelling an event and bringing it about. The astrologer fell under suspicion of being something more: a sorcerer who had caused several of London’s most devastating disasters. In this episode, I bring you the story of seventeenth-century English astrologer William Lilly.

Poor William Lilly

William Lilly was born on May 1, 1602, in a quiet village in Leicestershire. He was the son of yeoman parents, and his mother was especially interested in giving him the best education the family could afford. He received an excellent classical education and excelled in the study of Latin. He had hoped to attend Cambridge University, but his father had long struggled to manage the family farm, and poverty had caught up with him. Later, in his autobiography, Lilly would write, “[A]ll and every of those scholars who were of my form and standing went to Cambridge… only poor I, William Lilly, was not so happy; fortune then frowning upon father's present condition, he not in any capacity to maintain me at the university.”

Opportunity, though modest, arrived by way of his father’s attorney, a man who, recognizing Lilly’s education, saw fit to recommend him to Gilbert Wright, Master of the Salters’ Company in London. Wright sought a literate youth to serve as secretary and general attendant. At the time, Lilly’s father—imprisoned for debt and eager to unburden himself of a son ill-suited to the rigors of farm life—readily consented, declaring the boy “good for nothing.” And so, with a letter of introduction and only a few shillings to his name, eighteen-year-old Lilly set out on foot for London, trudging alongside a carrier’s cart through a week of bitter storms, later recalling the journey as “cold and uncomfortable: I footed it all along.”

Despite the inauspicious journey, Lilly found in Gilbert Wright a benefactor both generous and kind. He entered his service without hesitation, tending faithfully to his master’s affairs until Wright’s death in 1627. In those intervening years, Lilly performed his duties with diligence, taking on the most menial tasks without complaint. He attended Gilbert’s ailing wife through the slow agony of breast cancer, remaining at her side until her death in 1624. He then witnessed Wright’s second marriage in 1626 to Ellen Whitehaire, a widow of some means, and was rewarded for his service with an annuity of £20 per year. When Wright passed in May of 1627, he left behind a legacy of kindness, and for Lilly, the first stepping stone on a path he could never have foreseen.

In the months following Wright’s death, his widow, Ellen, made her intentions plain. She had married twice for wealth. Now, she sought companionship, a husband who would care not for her fortune but for her. It was a sentiment Lilly, ever observant, did not let pass unnoticed. With what he would later call “audacity,” he stepped forward as a suitor, undeterred by the disparity in their ages. In September of that same year, they wed in secret, keeping the union hidden from her family and friends for two years.  

By Lilly’s own account, theirs was a happy marriage, lasting six years until Ellen’s death. In the end, she left all she had to him, a “considerable” amount, as he later noted, valuing the inheritance at nearly one thousand pounds. With this fortune, the young man who had once walked to London with little more than a letter of recommendation now found himself in possession of the means to shape his own future.

A Lilly Among Thorns

The fortune Lilly inherited from Ellen afforded him a life of comfort and, more importantly, the leisure to indulge his intellectual curiosities. He immersed himself in the sermons and lectures of London’s learned circles, absorbing the currents of thought that animated the city’s discourse. By 1632, even before Ellen’s passing, he had turned his attention to astrology, devouring every book he could find and cautiously experimenting with its practice. As political tensions mounted between King Charles I and Parliament, Lilly observed closely, tracing earthly conflicts to their celestial origins. He began to suspect that, if higher forces indeed governed all worldly affairs, then it must be possible to discern the course of events by studying planetary configurations. Testing his theory, he embarked on a series of astrological experiments and, finding success, developed the method he would employ for the rest of his career. 

In seventeenth-century England, astrology occupied a space of peculiar legitimacy. It was neither wholly embraced nor wholly dismissed but instead hovered at the edges of learned society. Astrologers, their calculations steeped in classical learning, relied on a knowledge of planetary movements, mathematics, and the principles of natural philosophy. Yet, astrology was more than an academic pursuit. It was also a tool of prophecy, wielded by those who sought to interpret the future, whether for personal fortune, political gain, or national stability. The mid-seventeenth century was a time of particular instability in England. The execution of Charles I in 1649, the rise of the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell, and the eventual Restoration of Charles II in 1660 left the nation divided and uncertain. In such times, astrology offered a framework through which individuals might understand the forces at work in the world. If the heavens dictated the rise and fall of empires, then the course of history was written in the stars, waiting to be deciphered. Astrologers could gain renown not simply for reading the stars but for interpreting their messages. Almanacs, filled with predictions of war, famine, and the fates of kings, were consumed by a public eager for guidance in uncertain times.

Lilly’s fame solidified in 1644 with the publication of Merlinus Anglicus Junior, a prophetic almanac that captivated a nation teetering on the edge of civil war. Lilly’s uncanny ability to divine the political tides earned him both favor and enemies. His most ambitious work, Christian Astrology, appeared in 1647. Its scope is so vast that it is divided into three volumes in modern editions. Never wholly out of print, the text remains a cornerstone of traditional astrology, particularly in the study of horary astrology, a discipline devoted to answering specific questions by constructing a horoscope for the exact moment a question is asked. Volume II of Christian Astrology offers practical demonstrations, illustrating the technique with examples of charts. Soon after this, Lilly’s reputation as an astrologer began to extend beyond scholarly circles. He began publishing prophetic almanacs and other astrological works, attracting the attention of prominent figures in Parliament. While many of Lilly’s contemporaries accepted astrology in a general sense, he distinguished himself by his willingness to make specific predictions—an audacity that set him apart from the broader populace. In 1650, Lilly penned the preface to Sir Christopher Heydon’s An Astrological Discourse with Mathematical Demonstrations, a defense of astrology written in 1608 but published posthumously, largely through the patronage of Lilly’s friend Elias Ashmole. By this time, Lilly’s influence was undeniable. He had not only mastered his craft but had established himself as one of the most formidable astrologers of his age.

The Great Fire

Yet it was his predictions of the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London that sealed his legacy. In 1665, the Great Plague of London, the last and most devastating outbreak of bubonic plague in England, wove its way through the teeming metropolis with a silent, insidious force. The disease moved with a grim inevitability. First, there were whispers of unexplained sickness. Then, the telltale signs: the fever, the swollen lymph nodes, the dark blotches that foretold an agonizing death. The city’s physicians, armed with beaked masks and tinctures of rosemary and vinegar, could do little to halt its advance. The poorest, packed into festering slums, were struck first and hardest, their suffering largely ignored by those who had the means to flee. By the height of summer, death had become a constant companion. Watchmen stood guard over plague-stricken homes, ensuring no one entered or escaped, sealing entire families in with their fate. Those who remained in the city clung to desperate remedies—smoking tobacco, carrying posies, or fleeing to the countryside if fortune allowed. Even the King and his court abandoned the capital, leaving London to its own despair.

Just as the plague began to abate, the Great Fire swept through London’s streets in 1666. Seventeenth-century London was a city of kindling. Its narrow, winding lanes were hemmed in by houses that leaned toward one another, their upper stories nearly touching. Thatched roofs, wooden beams, and stores of tar and oil fed the blaze, transforming the capital into a furnace. Families fled through the streets, dragging what few possessions they could carry. St. Paul’s Cathedral, its ancient stones trusted to withstand the flames, became a pyre when its wooden scaffolding ignited, sending molten lead streaming through the streets. The river Thames, normally a place of commerce, became a desperate refuge as boats crammed with the dispossessed sought escape. By the time the flames finally subsided, the fire had laid waste to thousands of homes, dozens of churches, and the very fabric of life in London.

Yet, even in devastation, London did not fall. The fire had also scoured the city of plague, eradicating the disease-ridden alleyways harboring the previous year’s pestilence. From the ashes, a new vision of London emerged. Sir Christopher Wren, entrusted with the city’s resurrection, drafted plans for a grander, more ordered metropolis. His masterpiece, a reborn St. Paul’s, would rise as a testament to what fire could destroy and what human ambition could rebuild.

On Friday, October 25, 1666, Lilly was summoned to the Speaker’s Chamber of Parliament’s House of Commons. The city still bore the scars of the Great Fire, and Parliament’s special committee, tasked with uncovering the fire’s cause, now turned its attention to Lilly. In his almanac for 1665, William Lilly had described a conjunction of “malevolent Planets” from which “the Sword, Famine, Pestilence, and Mortality, or Plague, is like to succeed” and later predicted “Pestilence and Plague, a year of great Animosity.” While the plague could possibly be dismissed as a natural disaster outside of human control, a fire that destroyed most of London could not. In 1652, Lilly had published Monarchy or No Monarchy in England, a book containing nineteen enigmatic hieroglyphic drawings, each hinting at the nation’s fate. Among them, one illustration stood out: a depiction of a great fire. Some now claimed his prediction had been too accurate to be coincidence. Suspicions swirled as some wondered whether he had merely foreseen the disaster or somehow played a hand in it.

The stakes were high, and Lilly knew it. He had once read the stars to glimpse the future, but now, his survival depended on reframing his past. Questioned by Sir Robert Brook, the committee chairman, Lilly answered, “Having found, Sir, that the City of London should be sadly afflicted with a great plague, and not long after with an exorbitant fire, I framed these two hieroglyphics as represented in the book, which in effect have proved very true.” Before the committee, he argued that his vision had been vague, its meaning uncertain. There was no precise warning or actionable foresight. Asked if he had seen what year the fire would take place, he answered, “Of that I made no scrutiny.” Whether through persuasion or prudence, the committee dismissed the charges and allowed the astrologer to go free.

A decade later, however, in a 1676 publication touting the accuracy of his predictions, especially of recent fires, Lilly wrote:

It must be remembered, that the Inhabitants of this Earthly Globe have for several years past, and do at this present labour under the effects; or Male-significations of the Comet or Comets… appearing in the years 1664 and 1665. Sure we are, the last visible in March 1665 had a Tail eminently large and conspicuous, and towards the end of it’s appearance looked very red, fiery, and inflam’d, &c. Which (besides its martial significations whereof all Europe has been sadly sensible) did likewise very aptly denote many strange and unusual calamities by fire, (whereof the dreadful conflagration of London soon after following was a sad and amazing Instance.) Nor can it be reasonably imagined the effects of so wonderful a Phaiomenon should terminate in one single disaster…

Conclusion

Though he had escaped punishment, the suspicion placed on Lilly after the Great Fire never quite dissipated, and his alignment with Parliament, evident in his many predictions, did little to endear him to King Charles II following the Restoration. In 1664, Samuel Butler’s vicious satirical poem Hudibras cast Lilly as Sidrophel, a Rosicrucian conjurer and astrologer depicted as a wild quack whose activities bordered on the criminal. Yet, Lilly was no pauper. By the 1670s, he had amassed a respectable fortune, enough to purchase a modest estate in Surrey. There, he withdrew from public life, turning his talents to teaching his students and penning his memoirs.

Despite its influence, astrology in seventeenth-century England was increasingly challenged by the rise of empirical science. The work of astronomers such as Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei, alongside the growing influence of the Royal Society, ushered in a new era of skepticism. Astrology, long intertwined with astronomy, found itself relegated to the fringes of respectability. By the end of the century, Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation provided a new understanding of celestial mechanics, one that left little room for the guiding hand of fate.

Yet astrology did not vanish. Though dismissed by the intellectual elite, it remained embedded in popular culture, its presence lingering in the almanacs, medical treatises, and weather predictions that circulated among the public. The desire to glimpse the future, to find meaning in the patterns of the cosmos, persisted.

By the time of his death in 1681, William Lilly had left an indelible mark on the history of astrology. His publications include some 36 annual almanacs and more than twenty works on astrology and global politics. A man of humble origins who read the heavens and saw the future unfold, he remains a testament to the enduring allure of the stars.

More than three centuries later, his legacy lingers. In 2003, a commemorative plaque was placed near the disused Aldwych tube station on the Strand, marking the site where Lilly had once lived, a reminder of the man who had once read the stars and dared to divine the fate of nations.

Outro

If you enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe to Enchanted wherever you listen. This episode was produced by me with original music by Purple Planet. You can find them at purple dash planet dot com. If you want to learn more about William Lilly, be sure to check out the sources link in the show notes. Special thanks to Enchanted’s Patreon patrons for supporting the production of this and every episode. If you want to support Enchanted, please visit patreon dot com slash enchantedpodcast. If you’re looking for a way to support the show that won’t cost you anything, you can always give Enchanted: The History of Magic & Witchcraft a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, Audible, or wherever you listen and recommend it to your friends. You can get in touch with me via email at enchantedpodcast at gmail dot com or follow on Bluesky at enchantedpodcast. As always, for more information and special features, visit enchantedpodcast dot net. I’m Corinne Wieben. Thank you for listening and stay enchanted.