(John), a dramatic poet, was born in the wilds of Kent, about the year 1553, and educated in Magdalen-college, Oxford, where he took the degree of bachelor of arts in 1573, and that of master in 1575. From Oxford he removed to Cambridge; but how long he continued there, is uncertain. On his arrival in London, he became acquainted with some of Queen Elizabeth's courtiers, by whom he was caressed, and admired as a poet and a wit; and her majesty, on particular festivals, honoured his dramatic pieces with her presence. His plays are nine in number. His first publication, however, printed in 1580, was a romance called Euphues, which was universally read and admired. This romance, which Blount, the editor of six of his plays, says introduced a new language, especially among the ladies, is, according to Berkenhout, in fact a most contemptible piece of affectation and nonsense: nevertheless it seems very certain, that it was in high estimation by the women of fashion of those times, who, we are told by Whalley the editor of Ben Jonson's works, had all the phrases by heart; and those who did not speak Euphuism were as little regarded at court as if they could not speak French. "He was (says Oldys) a man of great reading, good memory, ready faculty of application, and uncommon eloquence; but he ran into a vast excess of allusion." When or where he died is not known. Anthony Wood says he was living in 1597, when his last comedy was published. After attending the court of Queen Elizabeth 13 years, notwithstanding his reputation as an author, he was under a necessity of petitioning the queen for some small stipend to support him in his old age. His two letters or petitions to her majesty on this subject are preserved in manuscript.

(William), a noted English astrologer, born in Leicestershire, in 1602; where his father not being able to give him more learning than common writing and arithmetic, he resolved to seek his fortune in London. He arrived in 1620, and lived four years as a servant to a mantua-maker in the parish of St Clements Danes; but then moved a step higher to the service of Mr Wright, master of the Salter's company in the Strand, who not being able to write, Lilly among other offices kept his books. In 1627, when his master died, he paid his addresses to the widow, whom he married with a fortune of 1000l. Being now his own master, he followed the puritanical preachers; and, turning his mind to judicial astrology, became pupil to one Evans, a profligate Welsh parson, in that pretended art. Getting a MS. of the Ars notitia of Corn. Agrrippa, with alterations, he drank in the doctrine of the magic circle, and the invocation of spirits, with great eagerness. He was the author of the Merlinus Anglicus junior; The Supernatural Sight; and The White King's Prophecy. In him we have an instance of the general superstition and ignorance that prevailed in the time of the civil war between Char. I. and his parliament: for the king consulted this astrologer, to know in what quarter he should conceal himself, if he could escape from Hampton court; and general Fairfax, on the other side, sent for him to his army, to ask him if he could tell by his art, whether God was with them and their cause? Lilly, who made his fortune by favourable predictions to both parties, assured the general that God would be with him and his army. In 1648, he published his Treatise of the three Suns seen the preceding winter; and also an astrological judgment upon a conjunction of Saturn and Mars. This year the council of state gave him in money £50, and a pension of £100 per annum, which he received for two years, and then resigned on some difficulty. In June 1660, he was taken into custody by order of the parliament, by whom he was examined concerning the person who cut off the head of king Charles I. The same year he sued out his pardon under the great seal of England. The plague raging in London, he removed with his family to his estate at Herstham; and in October 1666 was examined before a committee of the house of commons concerning the fire of London, which happened in September that year. After his retirement to Herstham, he applied himself to the study of physic, and, by means of his friend Mr Ashmole, obtained from archbishop Sheldon a licence for the practice of it. A little before his death he adopted for his son, by the name of Merlin junior, one Henry Coley, a taylor by trade; and at the same time gave him the impression of his almanac, after it had been printed for 36 years. He died in 1681 of a dead palsy. Mr Ashmole set a monument over his grave in the church of Walton upon Thames. His Observations on the Life and Death of Charles late King of England," if we overlook the astrological nonsense, may be read with as much satisfaction as more celebrated histories; Lilly being not only very well informed, but strictly impartial. This work, with the Lives of Lilly and Ashmole, written by themselves, were published in one vol. 8vo, in 1774, by Mr Burman.