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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2021
Before the Royal Society there was the Society of Astrologers (c.1647–1684), a group of around forty practitioners who met in London to enjoy lavish feasts, listen to sermons and exchange instruments and manuscripts. This article, drawing on untapped archival material, offers the first full account of this overlooked group. Convinced that astrology had been misunderstood by the professors who refused to teach it and the preachers who railed against it, the Society of Astrologers sought to democratize and legitimize their art. In contrast to the received view of seventeenth-century London astrologers, which emphasizes their bitter interrelationships, this article draws attention instead to their endeavours to mount a united front in defence of astrology. The article locates the society's attempts to promote astrological literacy within broader contemporary programmes to encourage mathematical education. Unlike other mathematical arts, however, astrology's religious credibility was an area of serious concern. The society therefore commissioned the delivery and publication of apologetic sermons that justified astrology on the basis of its sacred history. In this context, the legitimacy of astrology was more a religious than a scientific question. The society's public relations campaign ultimately failed, however, and its members disbanded in the mid-1680s. Not only were they mounting a rearguard action, but also they built their campaign on out-of-date historical arguments.
1 Josten, C.H. (ed.), Elias Ashmole: His Autobiographical and Historical Notes, His Correspondence, and Other Contemporary Sources, 5 vols., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967, vol. 2, p. 580Google Scholar. The sermon, later printed, was Reeve, Edmund, New Jerusalem … in a Sermon Composed for the Learned Society of Astrologers, at their Generall Meeting, London: Nathaniel Brook, 1652Google Scholar.
2 E.g. George Wharton to Elias Ashmole, 30 September 1651, Bodleian Libraries, MS Ashmole 423, fol. 272r.
3 Gadbury, John, Animal Cornutum, London: William Larnar, 1654, p. 1Google Scholar; Partridge, John, Defectio Genituarum, London: Benjamin Tooke, 1697, p. 17Google Scholar.
4 John Webster used the term ‘resuscitation’ to describe the activities of society members in Academiarum Examen, London: Giles Calvert, 1654, p. 51.
5 On 24 April 1650, the society explained their motivations in a letter to the lawyer and prominent parliamentarian Bulstrode Whitelocke, their patron. The letter, which is the only surviving manuscript signed by the Society of Astrologers, is Ashmole 423, fol. 168r–v. A transcription is provided in the Appendix. Contrary to Vittoria Feola's account, this letter was not addressed to the Cambridge scholar Abraham Wheeloc. Cf. Vittoria Feola, Elias Ashmole and the Uses of Antiquity, Paris: Librairie Blanchard, 2013, p. 133.
6 Raunce, John, Astrologia Accusata Pariter & Condemnata, London: W. Learner, 1650, p. 4; Ashmole 423, fol. 168rGoogle Scholar.
7 Taub, Liba, ‘The rehabilitation of wretched subjects’, Early Science and Medicine (1997) 2(1), pp. 74–87, esp. 74–5CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
8 Sir Walter Scott claimed that the society tried to institutionalize ‘the dupe of astrology’. Scott, Walter, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, London: John Murray, 1830, pp. 347–8Google Scholar.
9 Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 304Google Scholar; Peter Wright, ‘Astrology in mid-seventeenth-century England: a sociological analysis’ (1983), unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, pp. 120–3; Curry, Patrick, Prophecy and Power: Astrology in Early Modern England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 40–4Google Scholar.
10 Feola, op. cit. (5), pp. 108–36, 160–3.
11 The quarrels of London astrologers were often very public, and played out in their pamphlets and almanacs. Accounts of various feuds can be found in Burns, William E., ‘Astrology and politics in seventeenth-century England: King James II and the Almanac Men’, Seventeenth Century (2005) 20(2), pp. 242–53, esp. 248–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Folke Dahl, King Charles Gustavus of Sweden and the English Astrologers William Lilly and John Gadbury, Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksells Boktryckeri-A.-B., 1937.
12 Thomas, op. cit. (9), Chapter 12; Wright, Peter, ‘Astrology and science in seventeenth-century England’, Social Studies of Science (1975) 5(4), pp. 399–422, esp. 404, 413Google Scholar; Capp, Bernard, Astrology and the Popular Press, New York: Cornell University Press, 1979, pp. 190–1Google Scholar. There were, of course, ‘scientific’ attacks, but they were rarer in seventeenth-century England than on the Continent. The most notable English example remained unpublished: see Hunter, Michael, ‘Science and astrology in seventeenth-century England: an unpublished polemic by John Flamsteed’, in Curry, Patrick (ed.), Astrology, Science, and Society, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1987, pp. 261–300Google Scholar.
13 For English parodies of astrology see Dick, Hugh G., ‘Students of physic and astrology: a survey of astrological medicine in the age of science’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (1946) 1(3), pp. 419–33, esp. 430–1CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Nelson, Nicolas H., ‘Astrology, Hudibras, and the Puritans’, Journal of the History of Ideas (1976) 37(3), pp. 521–36, esp. 529–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Curry, op. cit. (9), pp. 90–1; Palmeri, Frank, ‘History, nation, and the satiric almanac, 1660–1760’, Criticism (1998) 40(3), pp. 377–408Google Scholar; John Clements, ‘The intellectual and social declines of alchemy and astrology, circa 1650–1720’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of York, 2017, Chapter 5. Perhaps the most famous example is Jonathan Swift's mock prediction, under the pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaff, of John Partridge's death in 1708: Eddy, William A., ‘The wits vs. John Partridge, astrologer’, Studies in Philology (1932) 29(1), pp. 29–40Google Scholar.
14 See the articles in Bennett, Jim and Higgitt, Rebekah (eds.), London 1600–1800: Communities of Natural Knowledge and Artificial Practice, BJHS (2019) 52(2)Google Scholar.
15 Thomas, op. cit. (9), Chapter 11; Curry, op. cit. (9); Ann Geneva, Astrology and the Seventeenth-Century Mind, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, Chapters 7, 8; Burns, op. cit. (11), pp. 242–53.
16 For astrology's success amongst lower and middling classes but diminishing respect amongst the learned in England see Curry, Patrick, ‘Astrology in early modern England: the making of a vulgar knowledge’, in Pumfrey, Stephen, Rossi, Paolo and Slawinski, Maurice (eds.), Science, Culture, and Popular Belief in Renaissance Europe, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991, pp. 274–91Google Scholar.
17 Ward, G.R.M. (ed. and tr.), Oxford University Statutes, vol. 1, London: William Pickering, 1845, p. 274Google Scholar; Allen, Phyllis, ‘Scientific studies in the English universities of the seventeenth century’, Journal of the History of Ideas (1949) 10(2), pp. 219–53, esp. 226CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas, op. cit. (9), p. 354.
18 Feingold, Mordechai, ‘Gresham College and London practitioners: the nature of the English mathematical community’, in Ames-Lewis, Francis (ed.), Sir Thomas Gresham and Gresham College, Abingdon: Routledge, 2016, pp. 174–88Google Scholar; Feingold, Mordechai, ‘The origins of the Royal Society revisited’, in Pelling, Margaret and Mandelbrote, Scott (eds.), The Practice of Reform in Health, Medicine, and Science, 1500–2000, Oxon.: Routledge, 2005, pp. 177–9Google Scholar; Beeley, Philip, ‘“To the publike advancement”: John Collins and the promotion of mathematical knowledge in Restoration England’, Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics (2017) 31(1), pp. 61–74, esp. 64–5Google Scholar.
19 Josten, op. cit. (1), vol. 2, p. 339. Feola argues, contra Ashmole's diary, that Lilly and Ashmole met earlier, drawing principally on a horoscope Lilly apparently drew up in 1643 that included Ashmole's birthdate. Vittoria Feola, ‘Antiquarianism, astrology, and the press in William Lilly's network(?)’, in Feola (ed.), Antiquarianism and Science in Early Modern Urban Networks, Paris: Blanchard, 2014, pp. 191–4. Yet Lilly may have accessed Ashmole's birthdate without having met him, and there seems no reason for Ashmole to be dishonest in his diary. Moreover, Lilly elsewhere confirmed they met in 1646. William Lilly, Merlini Anglici Ephemeris, London: Company of Stationers, 1664, sig. A1v. It is also worth mentioning that although Moore was at times hostile towards astrology, especially later in life, he nevertheless maintained close connections with society members, and Wharton claimed that Moore taught astrology. Frances Willmoth, Sir Jonas Moore: Practical Mathematics and Restoration Science, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1993, pp. 166–7; George Wharton, Merlini Anglici Errata, London, 1647, p. 58.
20 Josten, op. cit. (1), vol. 2, pp. 417–19. Feola claims that it was Oughtred who persuaded Ashmole to attend Gresham lectures, but offers no evidence for this. Vittoria Feola, ‘Elias Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (1652): the relation between antiquarianism and science in seventeenth-century England’, in Konrad Eisenbichler (ed.), Renaissance Medievalisms, Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2009, pp. 321–43, esp. 322.
21 It is, of course, possible that more sermons were delivered to the society, and that the six we know of were the only ones deemed fit to publish.
22 The society's minister for that day noted ‘the great noise … among the common people’ regarding the eclipse. John Swan, Signa Coeli, London: John Williams, 1652, pp. 3–4. The astrologers’ predictions about the eclipse sparked extensive criticism and debate: William E. Burns, ‘“The terriblest eclipse that hath been seen in our days”: Black Monday and the debate on astrology during the Interregnum’, in Margaret J. Osler (ed.), Rethinking the Scientific Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 137–52.
23 Josten, op. cit. (1), vol. 4, p. 1712. Various societies by the same name have since been formed, including a recent revival in the US in 2007 explicitly in the image of its seventeenth-century predecessor.
24 William Lilly, Merlini Anglici Ephemeris, London: Humphrey Blunden, 1649, sig. B1r.
25 This table is undoubtedly incomplete. Many of those listed here were unlikely to have attended every meeting, if just for the simple fact that some had died by the 1670s. Possible additional members have been named in Curry, op. cit. (9), p. 41 ff, p. 43 ff: Joseph Blagrave, Joseph Atwell, John Goad, Francis Bernard, John Butler, William Eland, Robert Turner, Nathaniel Nye, Hardick Warren, Francis Moore, Richard Kirby, John Bishop, John Merrifield and John Holwell.
26 George Fox, Several Queries, London: Giles Calvert, 1657; Feola, op. cit. (5), pp. 108–9, p. 116.
27 Jack Adams, His Perpetual Almanack, 2nd edn, London, 1663, p. 38.
28 For Jenner's almanacs see Louise Curth, English Almanacs, Astrology and Popular Medicine, 1550–1700, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018, pp. 68–70.
29 Adams, op. cit. (27), p. 38. John Flamsteed poked fun at how ‘Lilly, Tanner, Swallow, Fly, Dade, and a number of like Birds shall fly abroad, and be permitted, because of their Names, to usurp on the Vulgar’. John Flamsteed to John Collins, 1 January 1672, Royal Society, LBO/29/73, p. 308.
30 For pseudonymous naming of almanac authors see Timothy Feist, The Stationers’ Voice: The English Almanac Trade in the Early Eighteenth Century, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2005, pp. 44–5; Capp, op. cit. (12), p. 43.
31 John Partridge, Nebulo Anglicanus, London, 1693, p. 21.
32 Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys (ed. Richard Lord Braybrooke), New York: Frederick Warne, 1887, p. 57.
33 Feola, op. cit. (5), pp. 111–17.
34 Lillies Banquet: or, the Star-Gazers Feast, London: R. Eels, 1653.
35 Lilly, op. cit. (24), sig. B1r.
36 To name just a few examples, at various points Booker and Wharton, Shakerley and Lilly, Lilly and Gadbury, and Gadbury and Partridge were at odds with each other. For the claim that political discussion was forbidden see Curry, op. cit. (9), p. 40; Mary Ellen Bowden, ‘The scientific revolution in astrology: the English reformers, 1558–1686’ (1974), unpublished PhD thesis, Yale University, p. 45; Derek Parker, Familiar to All: William Lilly and Astrology, London: Jonathan Cape, 1975, p. 164; Benson Bobrick, The Fated Sky: Astrology in History, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005, p. 219.
37 Ashmole also gave Lilly extensive assistance with his almanacs. Bodleian Libraries, Rawl. D 864, fols. 45r, 53r, 55r. Bowden oddly claims Ashmole was ‘minimally involved’ in the society. Bowden, op. cit. (36), p. 52.
38 Feola, op. cit. (5), pp. 126–8, p. 161.
39 Geneva, op. cit. (15), p. 57; The Lives of those Eminent Antiquaries Elias Ashmole, Esquire, and Mr. William Lilly, London, T. Davies, 1774, p. 64.
40 Josten, op. cit. (1), vol. 2, p. 513; vol. 4, p. 1712; John Gadbury, Ephemeris, London: Company of Stationers, 1684, sig. C8v.
41 Feola, op. cit. (5), p. 125.
42 Rowley to Lilly, 14 July 1651, Ashmole 423, fol. 187r.
43 Philip Beeley, ‘Practical mathematicians and mathematical practice in later seventeenth-century London’, BJHS (2019) 52(2), pp. 225–48, esp. 243, 245.
44 Wharton to Ashmole, 11 September 1649, Ashmole 423, fol. 278r.
45 Bruce Scofield, ‘A history and test of planetary weather forecasting’ (2010), unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, p. 27; Curry, op. cit. (9), pp. 40–4; Wright, op. cit. (9), pp. 412–13.
46 William Lilly, An Easie and Familiar Method Whereby to Judge … Eclipses, London: Company of Stationers, 1652, sig. A2v; Wharton to Ashmole, 30 September 1651, Ashmole 423, fol. 272r.
47 Oughtred to Lilly, 14 and 19 December 1652, Bodleian Libraries, MS Ashmole 394, fols. 56r, 57r.
48 William Lilly, Merlini Anglici Ephemeris, London: Company of Stationers, 1654, sigs. A4v–A7v.
49 Geneva, op. cit. (15), p. 160 ff. This followed Aubrey's own attempt in the 1670s to compile Collection of Genitures: see John Britton, A Memoir of John Aubrey, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. 48–9. For Aubrey and astrology see Michael Hunter, John Aubrey and the Realm of Learning, London: Duckworth, 1975, pp. 112–47.
50 Rowley to Lilly, 14 July 1651, Ashmole 423, fol. 187r.
51 William Rowland, Judicial Astrologie, Judicially Condemned, London: Joseph Blaiklocke, 1651, p. 2, p. 33. The work to which Rowland refers is William Ramsay, Lux Veritatis, London: Nathaniel Brook, 1651.
52 Bowden, op. cit. (36), p. 48; Shakerley to Lilly, 26 January 1648, Ashmole 432, fols. 111–14. Notably, through these efforts Shakerley was working to gain Lilly's patronage: Allan Chapman, ‘Jeremy Shakerley (1626–1655?): astronomy, astrology and patronage in Civil War Lancashire’, in Allan Chapman (ed.), Astronomical Instruments and Their Users: Tycho Brahe to William Lassell, Aldershot: Variorum, 1996, Chapter 6.
53 John Booker, Celestiall Observations, London: Company of Stationers, 1654, sigs. D6v, E2r.
54 Lilly publicized mainstream mathematical textbooks like Euclid's Elements. E.g. William Lilly, Merlini Anglici Ephemeris, London: Company of Stationers, 1661, sig. C8v. For advertisements in almanacs see Capp, op. cit. (12), pp. 54–6. For mathematical advertisements more generally see Beeley, op. cit. (43), pp. 228–30.
55 Vincent Wing, Olympia Domata, London: Company of Stationers, 1689, sig. C8v.
56 Bennett and Higgitt, op. cit. (14); Rob Iliffe, ‘Material doubts: Hooke, artisan culture and the exchange of information in 1670s London’, BJHS (1995) 28(3), pp. 285–318; Felicity Henderson, ‘Robert Hooke and the visual world of the early Royal Society’, Perspectives on Science (2019) 27(3), pp. 395–434.
57 Vincent Wing, Olympia Domata, London: Company of Stationers, 1665, sig. C8v.
58 John Booker, Celestiall Observations, London: Company of Stationers, 1653, sig. C8v.
59 Bennett and Higgitt, op. cit. (14); Katherine Hill, ‘“Juglers or schollers?”: negotiating the role of a mathematical practitioner’, BJHS (1998) 31(3), pp. 253–74.
60 Henry Coley, for example, taught astrology and mathematical instruments at his London home. William Lilly, Merlini Anglici Ephemeris, London: Company of Stationers, 1681, sig. F7v.
61 See the correspondence in Ashmole 423.
62 William Lilly, The Worlds Catastrophe, London: Humphrey Blunden, 1647, pp. 63–4, 71. For parhelia in the seventeenth century see Geneva, op. cit. (15), pp. 99–117.
63 Moreover, some of these printed letters were by individuals for whom only one manuscript letter survives. See, for example, Robert Sterrell to Lilly, 14 January 1649, Ashmole 423, fol. 147r; Sterrell to Lilly, 14 December 1652, in William Lilly, Merlini Anglici Ephemeris, London: Company of Stationers, 1654, sigs. A5r–v. Cf. Feola, op. cit. (20), p. 202.
64 Christopher Heydon, An Astrological Discourse, London: Nathaniel Brook, 1650, sig. A5v.
65 Vittoria Feola, ‘Elias Ashmole's collections and views about John Dee’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A (2012) 43(3), pp. 530–8, esp. 531. For the importance of translation in the history of astrology see Jacques E. Halbronn, ‘The revealing process of translation and criticism in the history of astrology’, in Patrick Curry (ed.), Astrology, Science, and Society: Historical Essays, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1987, pp. 197–217.
66 Letters from Shakerley to Lilly, February, March and April 1649, Ashmole 423, fols. 117r–122r.
67 See, for instance, Edward Bishop to Lilly, 12 January 1649, Ashmole 423, fol. 135r. Ashmole and Lilly collaborated to make Christian astrology appear both accessible and scholarly. Feola, op. cit. (20), pp. 195–9.
68 Ashmole 423, fol. 168r.
69 William Lilly, Merlini Anglici Ephemeris, London: Humphrey Blunden, 1650, sig. A5r; John Booker, Celestiall Observations, London: Company of Stationers, 1651, sigs. C1r–C3v.
70 Wright, op. cit. (9), pp. 121–2.
71 Curry, op. cit. (9), p. 42.
72 Matthew Poole claimed that many of Gell's parishioners were astrologers. G.F. Nuttall and N.H. Keeble (eds.), Calendar of the Correspondence of Richard Baxter, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991, vol. 1, p. 335. Notably, at Christ's College, Cambridge, Gell was tutor to Henry More, who later wrote vehemently against astrology.
73 Robert Gell, Stella Nova, A New Starre, Leading Wisemen unto Christ, London: Samuel Satterthwaite, 1649, sig. C2r.
74 Josten, op. cit. (1), vol. 2, p. 364.
75 For astrology amongst Laudians see Thomas, op. cit. (9), p. 369.
76 Alison Shell, ‘Multiple conversion and the Menippean Self: the case of Richard Carpenter’, in A. Marotti (ed.), Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern English Texts, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991, pp. 154–97. Feola refers to Carpenter as the society's ‘Catholic’ preacher, but Carpenter recanted before preaching to the society. Cf. Feola, op. cit. (5), pp. 130, 133, 135.
77 For Gell's acquaintance with society members see Gell, op. cit. (73), p. 21; Robert Gell, A Sermon Touching God's Government of the World, London: Nathaniel Webb, 1650, p. 43, p. 47.
78 William Lilly, Annus Tenebrosus, London: Henry Blunden, 1651, sig. A4r. The quotation is from Reeve, op. cit. (1), p. 24.
79 Thomas Gataker, Vindication, London: Richard Thrayle, 1653, p. 94. As we will see below, Gataker was defending his own annotations upon Jeremiah 10:2 against both Lilly and Swan. Gataker likely pointed out this vetting process in an attempt to discredit the minister by making him look like a preacher for hire.
80 Thomas Swadlin, Divinity No Enemy to Astrology, London: Nathaniel Brook, 1653, p. 21.
81 Gataker, op. cit. (79), p. 95.
82 Gell unfortunately offers no further clues as to the identity of these note takers. However, the fact that Gell admits to having experienced this ‘indirect dealing’ before might suggest that the employer was motivated by a personal animosity towards Gell rather than general aversion to astrology. Gell, op. cit. (73), sig. A3v.
83 As well as the examples in the final section of this article, see Edward Allen et al., Vavasoris Examen, & Purgamen, London: Thomas Brewster and Livewell Chapman, 1654, pp. 9–10; The Feign'd Astrologer, London: Thomas Thornycroft, 1668, p. 32. Although the latter was based on a French and Spanish text, it contains various English allusions, including a reference to the society. See Alberto Zambrana Ramírez, ‘¿La astrología como cienca? Un studio comparativo entre el “Astrólogo Fingido” de Calderón de la Barca y la version en Inglés “The Feign'd Astrologer” (1668)’, RILCE: Revista de filología hispánica (2004) 20(1), pp. 99–116, esp. 100.
84 This is made clear on the title page of Swadlin's printed sermon.
85 On Brooke see Willmoth, op. cit. (19), pp. 64–5.
86 Nicholas Culpeper, Semeiotica Uranica, London: Nathaniel Brooke, 1651. The date and location of this lecture are unknown.
87 Advertised in 1684 in Gadbury, op. cit. (40), was Five Several Sermons Preached for and Dedicated to the Society of Astrologers … Brought into One Volume. I have been unable to locate this volume, which is not listed in the English Short Title Catalogue. It is likely that the bookseller simply bound together unsold copies of the sermons rather than having them printed anew.
88 Gell, op. cit. (73), sig. B2r.
89 Lilly, op. cit. (69), sig. A5r.
90 Curry, op. cit. (9), p. 42.
91 Examples of the perceived connection between astrology and paganism in England are manifold. See, for instance, Gataker, op. cit. (79); Rowland, op. cit. (51); Raunce, op. cit. (6); John Brayne, Astrology Proved to be the Old Doctrine of Demons, London: John Hancock, 1653; Henry More, An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness, London: William Morden, 1660, p. 358; Edward Stillingfleet, Origines Sacrae, London: Henry Mortlock, 1662, p. 42. See the final section of this article for more discussion on this point.
92 E.g. William Lilly, Christian Astrology, London: John Partridge and Henry Blunden, 1647, sig. A3v.
93 Philo, On the Migration of Abraham, 32–4; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Book 1, Chapter 8; Clement Alexandria, Stromata, Book 5.
94 Nicholas Jardine, The Birth of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 259–69.
95 Gell, op. cit. (77), p. 35; Swadlin, op. cit. (80), pp. 19–20; Reeve, op. cit. (1), p. 20; Richard Carpenter, Astrology Proved Harmless, Useful, Pious, London: John Allen and Joseph Barber, 1657, p. 4.
96 Josephus, op. cit. (93), Book 1, Chapter 2.
97 Carpenter, op. cit. (95), pp. 4–5, p. 37.
98 Ashmole 423, fol. 168r.
99 Gell, op. cit. (77), pp. 36–7.
100 Swadlin, op. cit. (80), p. 20.
101 Swan, op. cit. (22), p. 17.
102 Tim Hegedus, ‘The Magi and the star in the Gospel of Matthew and early Christian tradition’, Laval théologique et philosophique (2003) 59(1), pp. 81–95, esp. 85–8.
103 Swadlin, op. cit. (80), pp. 5–7.
104 Reeve, op. cit. (1), sig. A3v.
105 Swadlin, op. cit. (80), pp. 13, 21; Gell, op. cit. (73), p. 14.
106 Swadlin, op. cit. (80), pp. 5–7; Gell, op. cit. (73), pp. 3–8.
107 Gell, op. cit. (77), p. 46. See also Swan, op. cit. (22), p. 6; Carpenter, op. cit. (95), p. 27.
108 Carpenter, op. cit. (95), pp. 24–5.
109 Swadlin, op. cit. (80), pp. 18–19.
110 Swadlin, op. cit. (80), p. 19; Gell, op. cit. (73), p. 19; Carpenter, op. cit. (95), p. 27.
111 Reeve, op. cit. (1), sigs. A2r–v.
112 Swan, op. cit. (22), p. 22.
113 Booker, op. cit. (69), sigs. D4v, D5r, E5r is one of many examples.
114 John Gadbury, ‘Envy diffected, or an examination of a spurious pamphlet’, in Gadbury, op. cit. (3), p. 20.
115 William Lilly, Merlini Anglici Ephemeris, London: Humphrey Blunden, 1647, sig. A3v.
116 John Gadbury, Doctrine of Nativities, London: Giles Calvert, 1658, sig. B4r. See also Vincent Wing, An Ephemerides, London: Company of Stationers, 1658, sigs. *3r–v.
117 Ramsay claimed that Adam was taught astrology by God himself. See William Ramsay, Astrologia Restaurata, London: Robert White, 1653, sigs. *1v–*2r.
118 Ramsay, op. cit. (51), pp. 21–5.
119 Christopher Heydon, A Defence of Judicial Astrologie, Cambridge: John Legat, 1603, sigs. zzz4v–Aaaa3r; Ramsay, op. cit. (51), p. 26. Such catalogues were common currency, though they usually emphasized that the list was of astronomers, not astrologers; see, for example, Edward Sherburne, The Sphere of Marcus Manilius, London: Nathaniel Brooke, 1675, pp. 6–127, which was itself taken from Giovanni Battista Riccioli's Almagestum Novum (1651).
120 Gataker, op. cit. (79), p. 163.
121 Mercurius Politicus, London, 15 August 1650, issue 10.
122 This story is yet to be told in full. For preliminary work see Wouter Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 161–73; Anthony Grafton, Cardano's Cosmos, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999, pp. 127–41; Nicholas Popper, ‘“Abraham, Planter of Mathematics”: histories of mathematics and astrology in early modern Europe’, Journal of the History of Ideas (2006) 67(1), pp. 87–106.
123 Eugenio Garin (ed.) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem, 2 vols., Florence: Vallecchi, 1952, vol. 2, pp. 476–500.
124 Robert Boyle, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature, London, 1686.
125 Fox, op. cit. (26), pp. 2–5.
126 John Gaule, The Mag-Astro-Mancer, London: Joshua Kirton, 1652, sigs. A2r–v.
127 Gaule, op. cit. (126), pp. 133–4.
128 Gaule, op. cit. (126), p. 376, p. 129.
129 Thomas Gataker, Annotations, 2nd edn, London: John Legatt, 1651, sigs. O3r–O4r.
130 Lilly, op. cit. (78), sig. A4r. Lilly believed that Gataker's criticism of astrology in Annotations was specifically directed at himself. See Lilly, op. cit. (78), p. 8.
131 Gataker, op. cit. (79), pp. 32, 93.
132 Gataker, op. cit. (79), pp. 93–186.
133 Gataker, op. cit. (79), p. 175.
134 Gataker, op. cit. (79), pp. 4, 92. It is worth noting that in an attack on Lilly published in 1654, Gataker included a long ‘Character’ of Carpenter, in which he condemned the latter's ‘Popish conceits’ and writings against the Presbyterians. Gataker claimed that Carpenter was on good terms with Lilly, and in fact had received money from him to ‘write in defence of him against my former Vindication’. Thomas Gataker, Discours Apologetical; Wherein Lillies Lewd and Lowd Lies … are Clearly Laid Open, London: Thomas Newberry, 1654, pp. 64–95, esp. 82. Yet by this point Carpenter's society sermon had not yet been delivered, and Gataker did not mention any interest of Carpenter's in astrology. Gataker's concern with Carpenter stemmed from Lilly's 1654 almanac, in which the astrologer responded to Gataker's ‘late frothy Vindication’ with a Latin slur from ‘Master Carpenter’ against the ‘sectæ Calvinisticæ’. Lilly, op. cit. (48), sig. F8r.
135 Raunce, op. cit. (6), p. 32.
136 Raunce, op. cit. (6), p. 20.
137 Raunce, op. cit. (6); John Raunce, A Brief Dclaration [sic] Against Judicial Astrologie, London: W.L., 1650.
138 Feola, op. cit. (5), p. 109.
139 Adams, op. cit. (27), p. 28.
140 The Two Grand Ingrossers of Coles, London: John Harrison, 1653, pp. 14–15.
141 See, for example, National Portrait Gallery D21637, D30331, D30389, D31571, D29138 and D30395.
142 John Astington, ‘Visual texts: Thomas Middleton and prints’, in Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (eds.), Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007, pp. 238–9. The woodcut, originally used in the satirical Owl's Almanac in 1618, appeared in several other pamphlets and broadsides critiquing or lampooning Lilly in the early 1650s.
143 Lillies Banquet, op. cit. (37).
144 Black Munday Turn'd White, London: G. Whiting, 1652, pp. 3, 6–8
145 Black Munday Turn'd White, op. cit. (144), p. 6.
146 Jim Bennett and Rebekah Higgitt, ‘Introduction, London 1600–1800: communities of natural knowledge and artificial practice’, BJHS (2019) 52(2), pp. 183–96, esp. 188.
147 Mordechai Feingold claims that ignoring astrology ‘contradict[s] the nature of scientific enterprise’ in the seventeenth century. Yet he nevertheless washes his hands of astrology. Feingold, Mordechai, The Mathematician's Apprenticeship: Science, Universities and Society in England, 1560–1640, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, p. 18Google Scholar. An exception is Taylor, E.G.R., The Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954Google Scholar.
148 Curry, op. cit. (9), pp. 42–3.
149 Wright, op. cit. (9), p. 413.
150 Hunter, Michael, Establishing the New Science: The Experience of the Early Royal Society, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1989Google Scholar; Wood, Paul, ‘Methodology and apologetics: Thomas Sprat's “History of the Royal Society”’, BJHS (1980) 13(1), pp. 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
151 Hunter, Michael and Wood, Paul, ‘Towards Solomon's house: rival strategies for reforming the Early Royal Society’, History of Science (1989) 24, pp. 185–244Google Scholar.
152 For the Royal Society see Levitin, Dmitri, Ancient Wisdom in the Age of the New Science: Histories of Philosophy in England, c.1640–1700, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 295–328CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
153 Vermij, Rienk and Hirai, Hiro, ‘The marginalization of astrology: introduction’, Early Science and Medicine (2017) 22(5), pp. 405–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Michelle Pfeffer, ‘Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment, and the decline of astrology: recent work on a major desideratum in the history of science and culture’, forthcoming.
154 Curry, op. cit. (9), pp. 45–56.
155 Feola, op. cit. (5), pp. 111–17. Curry is in fact aware of Royalist counterexamples within the society, but suggests that this did not moderate or obviate ‘a widespread association of astrologers with radicalism’. Curry, op. cit. (9), p. 38. See also Nelson, op. cit. (13); Burns, op. cit. (11); Capp, Bernard, ‘Wing and political astrology’, Rutland Record (2010) 30, pp. 386–96Google Scholar.
156 For the latest on astrology and science see Vermij and Hirai, op. cit. (153), p. 407.
157 Gadbury, John, Ephemeris, London: Company of Stationers, 1697, sigs. A2v–A3rGoogle Scholar.
158 Hunter, Michael, The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is worth mentioning that Hunter's book deliberately sidesteps astrology. Although see Hunter, Michael, ‘The Royal Society and the decline of magic’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London (2011) 65(2), pp. 103–19, esp. 108, 110CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Wright, op. cit. (12), p. 414, makes a similar point.
159 Members of both societies included Elias Ashmole, Charles Scarborough, Joseph Moxon, William Wagstaffe, Jonathan Goddard and (perhaps) Jonas Moore. Contra Feola, Prujean and Wharton were not Royal Society fellows. Feola, op. cit. (5), p. 117.
160 On the ‘vulgarization’ of astrology in England see Curry, op. cit. (16).
161 Josten, op. cit. (1), vol. 4, pp. 1485–6; Capp, op. cit. (12), p. 238; Curry op. cit. (9), p. 55.
162 Gadbury, John, A Brief Relation, London: T. Milbourn, 1669, pp. 35–6Google Scholar.
163 Josten, op. cit. (1), vol. 4, pp. 1485–6.
164 This is a semi-diplomatic transcription. Superscript letters have been lowered and contractions expanded, with supplied letters italicized, and thorns replaced with ‘th’.
165 This is a slight twist on a famous line from the Roman poet Ennius's second-century BCE Annales (‘ergo plusque magisque viri nunc gloria claret’). This line marks the end of fol. 168 recto, and the letter continues on verso.
166 Greek ἀκμὴ, meaning ‘zenith’.
167 This is a shortened version of the Latin epigram ‘Stet domus haec donec fluctus formica marinos ebibat, et totum testudo perambulet orbem’.