Rich as the age was in the diaries of private men and memoirs of public transactions, it did not produce many narratives of private lives in strictly autobiographic form. The most important was that of William Lilly the astrologer, whose character of Charles I. has been already noticed. If, as most think, an astrologer must be either a fool or a knave, there can be no doubt under which class to range this entertaining author. Born (1601) at Diseworth in Leicestershire, 'a town of great rudeness,' he was indebted for his grammar-school education to his father's decayed estate, which made the farm not worth following, and for his transfer to London to his total unfitness for all agricultural work. He walked up to London by the side of the carrier's waggon, got a place in London as general servant, where 'I saw and ate good white bread, contrary to our diet in Leicestershire;' but, on the other hand, 'sometimes helped to carry eighteen tubs of water from the Thames in one morning.' Within a few years he made his fortune by marrying his master's widow, and devoted himself for the rest of his life to mathematical and astrological pursuits. He died, in good circumstances, in 1681, and was honourably interred at the expense of Elias Ashmole, to whom his autobiography is addressed. His numerous astrological writings do not concern us here; his memoirs are no less valuable than entertaining for the glimpses they afford into bygone manners and contemporary feeling on public affairs, and particularly for the lively portrayal of the singular characters with whom Lilly was professionally brought into connection, prototypes of the spiritualistic mediums of a later day, and not unfairly represented by William Hodges, 'whose angels were Raphael, Gabriel, and Uriel; his life answered not in holiness and sanctity to what it should, having to deal with those holy angels.' The following description of a Welsh conjuror is a characteristic example of Lilly's graphic touch: