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ASTROLOGY AND HUMAN VARIATION IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2013

MARK S. DAWSON
MARK S. DAWSON*
Affiliation:
The Australian National University
*
School of History, Research School of Social Sciences, 2107 Coombs Building, Australian National University, Fellows Road, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australiamark.dawson@anu.edu.au
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Abstract

Processes for the identification of criminal suspects tell us a great deal about wider cultural assumptions and social prejudices regarding somatic difference; its causes, relative degree, and consequence. If early modern Europeans had something approaching a forensic science, it was astrology, which has recently garnered renewed attention from historians of ideas. Rather than assume astrology's seventeenth-century decline in the face of revolutionary natural philosophy, what follows suggests that English astrology remained significant for mundane bodily discrimination, in the context of both a more deliberate, gradual reform and the tenacity of centuries-old humoral physiology. More importantly, scrutiny of astrological practice, and the logic underpinning its lasting currency, can reveal much about the significance of bodily contrasts and the meanings ascribed to them by Tudor-Stuart folk.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 31 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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Footnotes

*

For helpful comments I thank the Journal's referees, my colleagues in Canberra, particularly Tania Colwell for also checking several British Library manuscripts, as well as seminar audiences in Newcastle and, across the Tasman, Auckland. At the University of Auckland, I had the opportunity to discuss my research with Michael Hunter, who has been unstintingly generous in sharing his knowledge of seventeenth-century natural philosophy and copies of archival material beyond my reach. I am grateful to the staff of the various archives, especially Jo Kirkham for the Rye Castle Museum. I thank my stars that I learnt about patient archival reconstruction and its rewards from Barry Reay and Keith Wrightson.

References

1 Anon., ‘Astrological treatises’, British Library, Sloane MS 3857, fo. 100v.

2 The aforementioned manuscript includes c. 250 horoscopes, dated April–October 1605, fos. 62r–106v. To my knowledge, these have not been attributed to Gresham, although the British Library catalogue describes another section of notes collected by ‘Mr Gresham’ from medieval works. The residences listed for many clients, or the locations whither they were directed by the astrologer, cluster around Gresham's place of business. The case-notes break off by early November 1605; when Gresham's situation became fraught because many believed that he had foretold the crime of the century, the Gunpowder Plot.

3 Salmon, William, Horae mathematicae (1679), p. 291Google Scholar. All pre-1800 works were published in London unless otherwise stated.

4 George Parker, Ephemeris (1718), sigs. B3rff. Ephemerides and almanacs were often printed with titles including the author's name and/or year. As the citations provide this information, titles have been abridged. Where there is ambiguity regarding a particular edition, a collection shelfmark or STC/Wing number is supplied.

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9 For the celestial connections, Geneva, Astrology, pp. 27–8.

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12 John Gadbury, Ephemeris (1668), sig. D3r. Gadbury may have borrowed from Levinus Lemnius (trans. Anon.), The secret miracles of nature (1658), pp. 59–67, 280–1; Samuel Boulton, Medicina magica tamen physica (1665), pp. 28–35.

13 His Latin tag for cases concerning theft. Similar consultations are discussed in Rowse, Alfred, Simon Forman: sex and society in Shakespeare's age (London, 1974), pp. 44Google Scholar, 79, 156, 172. Lauren Kassell is working to transcribe and digitize Forman's case-notes, see www.magicandmedicine.hps.cam.ac.uk/

14 Fenton, Edward, ed., The diaries of John Dee (Oxford, 1998), p. 255Google Scholar. John Aubrey's biography of Dee records his ‘conjuring’ for stolen clothes, and his recovery of lost plate. See Clark, Andrew, ed., Brief lives, chiefly of contemporaries, set down by John Aubrey (Oxford, 1898)Google Scholar, i, pp. 213–14; Parry, Arch conjuror, p. 228.

15 William Lilly, Christian astrology (1647), pp. 394–6. Lilly followed with an account of using his skills to retrieve his supper, some purloined fish. His autobiographical writings, and memories of mentors and rivals, also suggest the frequency with which people resorted to astrological detection. See William Lilly, History (1721), pp. 21–9, 52, 74–5, 115–16; Thomas, Keith, Religion and the decline of magic: studies in popular belief in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England (Harmondsworth, 1971), pp. 305–22Google Scholar; Parker, Familiar, pp. 120–22.

16 Geneva, Astrology, pp. 63–71.

17 For instance, Anon., The professour hereof being a mathematitian is ready to perfome these things following … (1651: Thomason E.624[6]); Charles Atkinson, Panterpe (1674), sig. Av; Richard Kirby, Diurnal speculum (1684), sig. D4v; Anon., In Wine-Office-Court, Fleetstreet, at the sign of the Acorn liveth a gentlewoman, who will (by the blesung [sic] of God upon her endeavors) resolve to her own sex all manner of lawful questions, so far as reason can require or art warrant (1685: Wing A627B); Daniel Woodward, Honest invitations (1690: Wing W3477A); John Axford, The merchants daily companion (1700: Tract Supplement E2:4[211]).

18 For example, George Parker, Mercurius Anglicanus (1693), sig. [E8]v. A British Library copy (P. P. 2465: Wing A2008) has a list of books, many astrological, which were apparently part of the library of the almanac's first owner.

19 Norris Purslow, ‘Astrological diary’, c. 1690–1737, Wellcome Library, London, MS 4021.

20 Hunter, Michael and Gregory, Annabel, eds., An astrological diary of the seventeenth century: Samuel Jeake of Rye, 1652–1699 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 93Google Scholar, 100.

21 Clark, Brief lives, i, p. 113; Porter, Martin, Windows of the soul: physiognomy in European culture, 1470–1780 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 164–5Google Scholar, 208–9, 240.

22 Clark, Brief lives, i, p. 113.

23 Davies, Owen, Popular magic: cunning-folk in English history (London, 2007), pp. 96–107Google Scholar; Thomas, Decline, pp. 212–22, 302–5; Curry, Prophecy, pp. 102–5 and passim.

24 Lilly, History, p. 26.

25 Hardy, William Le, ed., County of Middlesex: calendar to the sessions records, new series, volume 1, 1612–1614 (London, 1935–41)Google Scholar, 8–9 Sept. 1613, qu. in Thomas, Decline, p. 348 (case involving a London apothecary, glover, chandler, and cutler); Court minutes, East India Company, 2 Aug. 1633, in William Sainsbury, ed., Calendar of state papers colonial: East Indies and Persia (London, 1860–1994), viii, pp. 438ff (company factor said to have figure-cast for stolen bales of silk); Essex Record Office, Q/SBa 2/75 (quarter sessions deposition of a miller from 1651); Pope, F. J., ‘“A conjuror or cunning man” of the seventeenth century’, British Archivist, 1 (1914), pp. 145–7Google Scholar (1685 case of Nottingham shoemaker); Earle, Peter, A city full of people: men and women of London, 1650–1750 (London, 1994), p. 197Google Scholar (woolcomber's testimony in a 1690 Court of Arches proceeding); the example of Thomas Perks, blacksmith, in A copy of a letter sent to the right reverend father in God, Edward Lord Bishop of Glocester, from a clergy-man of the Church of England, living in Bristol (Bristol, 1704).

26 See, for example, John Poole, Country astrology in three books (1650), sig. A3r; Thomas, Decline, pp. 345–6.

27 Robert Doughty, ‘Notes on astrology’, c. 1650, Norfolk Record Office, MS AYL 759, unfoliated. Doughty's notes derived either from Anon., The compost of Ptolomeus (1638), or Alexander Barclay, The shepheards kalender newly augmented and corrected (1656). Both texts had convoluted publishing histories and it is possible Doughty was borrowing from an unknown edition(s).

28 Nagy, Doreen, Popular medicine in seventeenth-century England (Bowling Green, OH, 1988)Google Scholar; Pollock, Linda, With faith and physic: the life of a Tudor gentlewoman, Lady Grace Mildmay, 1552–1620 (London, 1993)Google Scholar.

29 Ann Fanshawe, ‘Recipe book’, c. 1651–1707, Wellcome Library, MS 7113, fo. 57r. A similar instruction was recorded by Lady Grace Castleton, ‘Booke of receipts’, c. 1600–1699, Folger Shakespeare Library, MS Add. 940, p. 20. Which is not to say that such practice was the domain of women. See, for instance, from the pens of men who were apparently not physicians, George Noble, ‘Exellent recepts and medicines of all soartes to be used when necessarye both for younge and owld’, 1629, Wellcome Library, MS 579; Francis Elcocke, ‘List of diseases arranged under the signs of the zodiac’, 1651, Wellcome Library, MS 2287, pp. 1–136.

30 Cecelia Standish, ‘Astrological and horticultural notes’, c. 1625–75, Wigan Heritage Service, MS D/DSt C2/2, unfoliated.

31 This triangulation is readily apparent from diagrams in Christopher Heydon, An astrological discourse with mathematical demonstrations proving the powerful and harmonical influence of the planets and fixed stars upon elementary bodies in justification of the validity of astrology (1650), pp. 5, 10, 55, 86–8; William Hunt, Demonstration of astrology (1696), pp. 5–7, 27–30.

32 Thomas, Decline, pp. 358–85; Roos, Anna Marie, Luminaries in the natural world: the sun and the moon in England, 1400–1720 (New York, NY, 2001), pp. 11–65Google Scholar.

33 William Ramesey, Astrologia restaurata (1653), i, pp. 4–5; William Knight, Vox stellarum (1681), sigs. A3v–A5v.

34 Thomas Cooper, The mystery of witch-craft (1617), pp. 137–44; John Raunce, Declaration against judicial astrology (1650); John Gadbury, Animal cornutum (1654), sigs. C2rff; J[ohn] B[utler], Hagiastrologia (1680), pp. 51ff; Thomas Fowle, Speculum uranicum (1700), sig. Bv.

35 Thomas, Decline, pp. 285ff.

36 Richard Healy, Ephemeris (1658), sigs. A2–A3r; John Edwards, Cometomantia (1684), pp. 170–3, 204–11, 235.

37 William Lilly, Merlini Anglici (1679), sigs. A3–A[5]; John Gadbury's prefaces for Ephemeris (1670) and Thesaurus astrologiae (1674), as well as his astrological experiment where he had examined both the melancholic complexion and nativity of a woman claiming to be possessed by an evil spirit, Ephemeris (1679), sigs. [C7]v–[C8]v. Compare John Middleton, Practical astrology in two parts (1679), pp. 95–9, where the sincerity of the client and the accuracy of data they provided could be cross-checked against their physiognomy.

38 John Evans, Almanacke…composed according to art for the longitude & latitude of Shrewesburie (1630), sig. B[5]r; Richard Saunders, Apollo Anglicanus (1667), sigs. Crff; Jonathan Dove, Speculum anni (Cambridge, 1683), sigs. C2v–C4r.

39 Thomas Bretnor, Almanacke (1613), sigs. B2r–B4v.

40 Josten, Conrad, ed., Elias Ashmole (1617–1692): his autobiographical and historical notes, his correspondence, and other contemporary sources relating to his life and work (Oxford, 1967)Google Scholar, ii, p. 552. Parenthetical transliteration of astrological symbols is the author's own.

41 Lilly, Christian astrology, p. 391. See also for an almanac diarist's reference to a fugitive, Richard Allestree, Almanack (1643), sig. B4r, Bodleian Library copy, Wing A1244; a case and its prime suspect as explained by Daniel Woodward, Vox uraniae (1688), sig. [C7]v.

42 Finger and palm prints, as well as the contours of one's forehead, were said to epitomize one's nativity in dermal form. See Anon., Compost of Ptolomeus, sigs. J3ff, and n. 120.

43 Henry Coley, Clavis astrologiae elimata (1669; 2nd edn, 1676), pp. 534ff, 580ff; Richard Saunders's explanation of ‘How the Nativity may be found by the Physiognomie’ in his Physiognomie and chiromancie, metoposcopie (1671), pp. 171–3.

44 Hunter, Michael, John Aubrey and the realm of learning (London, 1975), pp. 113–33Google Scholar, 233–6.

45 Lilly, Christian astrology, p. 546, refers to scholars as having to be of a particular complexion, and some of his model nativities also refer to compound complexions, pp. 742–3. See too John Gadbury, The nativity of the late King Charls astrologically and faithfully performed (1659), pp. 14–15.

46 Clark, Brief lives, i, p. 347.

47 John Aubrey, ‘Collectio geniturarum’, c. 1674–7, Bodleian Library, Aubrey MS 23, fo. 12r.

48 So almanacs lost sight of the ancient distinction that planets were made of a sempiternal substance rather than the four elements, and thus effected terrestrial change but did not produce it substantively. See Westman, Robert, The Copernican question: prognostication, skepticism, and celestial order (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 2011), pp. 52–3Google Scholar.

49 John Wybard, Almanacke (1636), sig. [B6]v. Further examples of almanacs surveying the character of the planets include Joseph Blagrave, Ephemeris (1660), sigs. Bvff; Jonathan Swallow, Almanacke (Cambridge, 1683), sigs. B3vff; Jonathan Dove, Speculum anni (1708), sig. C3; Job Gadbury, Ephemeris (1712), pp. 7ff.

50 Lilly, Christian astrology, p. 58.

51 Wybard, Almanacke, sig. [B6]v. Cf. Lilly, Christian astrology, p. 63.

52 For this critical issue, see John Woodhouse, Almanack (1617), preface; Hardick Warren, Magick & astrology vindicated from those false aspersions and calumnies, which the ignorance of some hath cast upon them (1651); William Lilly, Anima astrologiae (1676, second edn, 1683), p. 5; Lancelot Coelson, Speculum perspicuum uranicum (1687), sigs. C3v–C4v.

53 Coley, Clavis, pp. 139–40. Occasional dissent concerning the character of these virtues nonetheless shared the more fundamental assumption concerning celestial influence, cf. Hunt, Demonstration, pp. 17–21.

54 See n. 49. For additional commentary, Samuel Ashwell, Almanacke … rectified for the meridian and latitude of Ongar in Essex (1641), sigs. B3ff; Coley, Clavis, pp. 19–31; J[ohn] B[utler], Hagiastrologia, pp. 64–6; Knight, Vox stellarum, pp. 55–65.

55 Henry Alleyn, Almanack (1606), sig. [B5]v.

56 Cf., for example, Lilly, Christian astrology, pp. 98–9; Ramesey, Restaurata, pp. 90–1.

57 Jeffery Neve, Almanacke (1606), sigs. [C]v–C2r; Richard Allestree, Almanacke (1618), sigs. [A]–A3v.

58 For example, John Gadbury, Collectio geniturarum (1660), pp. 12–13, corrected what he thought common errors in Queen Elizabeth's nativity (with Gadbury's almanacs for 1666 and 1669). See also, and compare, John Partridge's Defectio geniturarum (1697), epistle to reader, pp. 275–6, and his Opus reformatum (1693), pp. iv–xi, 52–4; Ramesey, Restaurata, pp. 2–4 (preface); Robert Godson, Astrologia reformata (1696), pp. 1–14.

59 Geneva, Astrology, pp. 151–74, provides the most succinct summary of genethliacal practice.

60 John Gadbury, Genethlialogia (1661 edn, first published 1658), title-page and p. 45.

61 John Partridge, Mikropanastron (1679), pp. 11–12.

62 Ramesey, Restaurata, p. 91.

63 Salmon, Horae, p. 67.

64 Samuel Jeake, ‘Animadversiones genethliacae’, 1672, Rye Castle Museum, Selmes MS 35, p. 5. Jeake undertook similar evaluations on several occasions, including when he factored his wife's geniture in ‘The nativity of Elisabeth’, 1685–6, Rye Castle Museum, Selmes MS 53(1), p. 27.

65 Ramesey, Restaurata, pp. 160ff; Gadbury, Genethlialogia, pp. 53ff. Physical limitations, such as stammering, and predilections, like lying, were also explained in these terms. For instance, Coley, Clavis, p. 548; Lilly, Anima, appendix (aphorisms from Cardan, pp. 7–9).

66 Josten, Ashmole, ii, pp. 547, 559, 576, 606, 640.

67 Lilly, Christian astrology, p. 54, and also n. 65.

68 For summaries of the techniques used in criminal detection, see Lilly, Christian astrology, pp. 331–66; Ramesey, Restaurata, pp. 184–5; John Russell, A coelestiall prospect … for the year (1661), sigs. [C4]r–[C5]r; Gadbury, Genethlialogia, pp. 279–83; William Eland, A tutor to astrologie (1657, 6th edn, 1670), pp. 84–6; Coley, Clavis, pp. 209–18; Middleton, Practical astrology, pp. 234–42; Partridge, Mikropanastron, pp. 68–70.

69 Coley, Clavis, pp. 552–4; Gadbury, Genethlialogia, pp. 132–9.

70 Lilly, Christian astrology, pp. 385–8; Gadbury, Genethlialogia, p. 56.

71 Lilly, Christian astrology, pp. 385ff, gives several examples which support this, or evidence of the services offered by practitioners in Anon., An elegy on the death of Dr. Thomas Saffold (1691).

72 For an instructive account of medieval astrology and the question of generation, see Darrel Rutkin, ‘Astrology, natural philosophy and the history of science, c. 1250–1700: studies toward an interpretation of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana, 2002), pp. 36–103.

73 Partridge, Mikropanastron, pp. 84–5, 98–103; Edwards, Cometomantia, 220–7; John Case, The angelical guide shewing men and women their lott or chance in this elementary life (1697), pp. 60–9.

74 Capp, Bernard, Astrology and the popular press: English almanacs, 1500–1800 (London, 1979), pp. 117–22Google Scholar; Curth, Louise, English almanacs, astrology and popular medicine, 1550–1700 (Manchester, 2007)Google Scholar.

75 For instance, Ramesey, Restaurata, pp. 152–3; Sarah Jinner, Almanack (1659: Wing A1845), sig. Bv, who refers her readers to Lemnius, Secret miracles of nature, pp. 20–1, 306; James Wolveridge, Speculum matricis (1670), 20–1.

76 Dorothy Partridge, The woman's almanack (1694), sig. Av.

77 See, for example, Jacques Gaffarel (trans. Edmund Chilmead), Unheard-of curiosities concerning the talismanical sculpture of the Persians (1650), pp. 60–246; Israel Hiebner (trans. B. Clayton), Mysterium sigillorum, herbarum & lapidum containing a compleat cure of all sicknesses and diseases of mind and body by means of the influences of the seven planets (1698), pp. 188–90; [Elias Ashmole], ‘Miscellany’, c. 1680, British Library, Sloane MS 3822, passim, for material derived from Forman's records.

78 Lilly, Christian astrology, p. 318.

79 John White, Almanacke (1615), sig. C; Turner, Thomas, Almanack (Cambridge, 1633)Google Scholar, sig. [C4]r; William Dade, Country-man's kalendar (1700), unpaginated. Almanacs like Dade's offered the same sort of advice year on year, effectively branding theirs as a particular kind of almanac. Readers, in turn, used almanacs to keep records of animal breeding and plant cuttings. See, for instance, George Wharton, Calendarium Carolinum (1666), sig. B2r, University of Illinois Library copy, Wing A2657; Sir John Nicholas in Thomas Gallen, Almanack (1668), interleaving between sigs. B4–B5, Folger Shakespeare Library, V.a.419–20; idem, in Thomas Gallen, Almanack (1673), sig. [B]r, British Library, Additional MS 41202(J), Wing A1790A; Sarah Sale in Riders British Merlin (1680), interleavings between sigs. B4–[B6], Folger Shakespeare Library, A2254.5.

80 Samuel Jeake, ‘Astrological experiments exemplified’, c. 1688–92, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, MS 1959.005, p. 101; Hunter and Gregory, eds., Astrological diary, pp. 106, 155, 174, 239.

81 See the endpapers of John Norgate's family Bible, c. 1615–36, Norfolk Record Office, MC 175/1/1–4; Isabella Twysden's diary, 1647, British Library, Additional MS 34169, fo. 28r, kept in that year's almanac from John Booker, Mercurius coelicus; A. Howe's reading and use of Richard Saunders, ‘Transcripts from Physiognomie, chiromancie and metoposcopie’, c.1675–1700, Wellcome Library, MS 4370, natal horoscopes appended. Almanac birth records include Arthur Hopton, Almanacke … to the meridian and latitude of the ancient shiretowne of Shrewsbury (1613), sigs. [A5]r–[A8]r, Bodleian Library copy, Ashmole MS 66; Richard Allestree, Almanack … calculated and properly referred, to the longitude and sublimitie … Derby (1620), sig. Br, Bodleian Library copy, STC 407; John Kinde, Almanacke … for the meridian of the famous city of Yorke (1625), sigs. [A5]r–[A8]r, Newberry Library copy, STC 469.9; Pond, Edward, A new prognostication … for the auncient burrough towne of Stanford (Cambridge, 1626)Google Scholar, endpapers, Bodleian Library copy, STC 501.16; John Booker, Almanack (1640), interleaving between sigs. [A]4–[A]5, Bodleian Library copy, STC 419.9; Cardanus Rider, Brittish Merlin (1658), passim, British Library copy, P. P. 2469.b; John Goldsmith, Almanack (1695), flyleaf, Bodleian Library copy, Wing A1799. Cf. Salmon, Horae, 225–7.

82 Glennie, Paul and Thrift, Nigel, Shaping the day: a history of timekeeping in England and Wales 1300–1800 (Oxford, 2009), esp. pp. 269–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 Smyth, Adam, Autobiography in early modern England (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 15–56Google Scholar.

84 Parish register, St. Thomas, Dudley Archives and Local History Service, located courtesy of C. D. Gilbert, ‘Smith, Samuel (1584–1665)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography.

85 Wilson, Douglas, ed., The register of the parish church of St. Mary, Todmorden: baptisms, 1670–1780, marriages, 1669–1780, burials, 1666–1780 (Leyland, 1978), p. 6Google Scholar.

86 For instance, Partridge, Defectio, p. 200, where he disputes another astrologer's accuracy because the horoscope did not match what Partridge knew of its subject's physique.

87 Christopher Heydon, A defence of judiciall astrologie in answer to a treatise lately published by Mr. John Chamber (1603), pp. 129–30; Coley, Clavis, pp. 443–4 (and aphorisms in ‘his’ 1714 and 1715 almanacs, Merlinus anglicus junior); Lilly, Anima, appendix, p. 6. Understandably, critics registered this debate too: J. S., The starr-prophet anatomiz'd & dissected (1675), pp. 4ff; John Brinley, A discourse proving by scripture & reason and the best authors, ancient and modern, that there are witches…and likewise the use and abuse of astrology laid open (1686), pp. 116–17.

88 Arthur Dee, ‘Miscellany’, c. 1600–1650, British Library, Sloane MS 1902, fo. 10v.

89 Heydon, Defence, pp. 85, 101–6, 155–7, 163, 318–21, 531–2; Coley, Clavis, pp. 632–3. See Baumbach, Sibylle, Shakespeare and the art of physiognomy (Penrith, 2008), pp. 98–124Google Scholar.

90 Lilly, Christian astrology, pp. 500–1, registers this debate; Partridge, Mikropanastron, p. 313; J[ohn] B[utler], Hagiastrologia, pp. 68–70; Edwards, Cometomantia, pp. 250–5.

91 Instances of these terms include Heydon, Defence, p. 106; Nicholas Culpeper, Opus astrologicum (1654), sig. Bv; Augur Ferrier (trans. Thomas Kelway), A learned astronomicall discourse of the judgement of nativities (1593; 2nd edn, 1642), p. 64; Knight, Vox stellarum, p. 42; Coley, Clavis, p. 20; Job Gadbury, Ephemeris (1710), sig. C3vff.

92 Jeake, ‘Astrological experiments exemplified’, p. 102.

93 Coley, Clavis, p. 140. Similar assumptions are evident from Heydon, Defence, pp. 149–52; Lilly, Christian astrology, p. 55; Ramesey, Restaurata, pp. 19–20. In circuitous fashion, celestial influences were considered to have relatively greater effect on geographical locations with which they shared natural sympathy. See Golinski, Jan, British weather and the climate of Enlightenment (Chicago, IL, 2007), pp. 99–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

94 Lilly, Anima, pp. 101–4.

95 For links between natal inclination, humoral temperament, and one's vocation in life, see Gadbury, Genethlialogia, pp. 109–10; Partridge, Mikropanastron, pp. 108–10; William Dade, Country man's kalender (1685), sigs. [A8]v–Br.

96 Richard Gibson, Astrologus Britannicus (1710), sig. Av; Chapman, Alison, ‘Marking time: astrology, almanacs, and English Protestantism’, Renaissance Quarterly, 60 (2007), pp. 1257–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cameron, Euan, Enchanted Europe: superstition, reason, and religion, 1250–1750 (Oxford, 2010), pp. 187–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97 Curry, Prophecy, pp. 10–11.

98 As Aquinas's proverb had it, the stars inclined but did not compel, or a Ptolemaic maxim spoke of the wise man overcoming the stars. See Jonathan Dove, Speculum anni (Cambridge, 1653 for 1654), sigs. B6vff; John Tanner, Angelus Britannicus (1666), title-page; Henry Coley, Nuncius coelestis (1683), rubrics; Fowle, Speculum (1700), sig. [B]v. Compare the notion that the stars ruled men but God ruled the stars: Daniel Browne, Almanacke (1629), title-page; Thomas Langley, Almanack (1637), sig. C4r; Blagrave, Ephemeris (1660), sigs. A3ff.

99 Thomas Tryon, Some memoirs of the life of Mr. Thomas Tryon, late of London, merchant (1705), pp. 23–4.

100 Ramesey, Restaurata, p. 6.

101 Partridge, Mikropanastron, sig. [A8]r–v.

102 George Atwell, An apology, or, defence of the divine art of natural astrologie (1660), pp. 30–1; [Henry Coley], Merlinus Anglicus junior (1706), sigs. B4vff.

103 Jeake, ‘Nativity’, Selmes MS 53(1), p. 29.

104 Kirby, Diurnal speculum, sig. A3r. Kirby seems to have borrowed this saw from Lilly in whose 1644 almanac it appears. See too Henry Crawford, Vox uraniae (1676), sig. A2r.

105 Examples of such claims include Partridge, Mikropanastron, pp. 305–6.

106 Thomas Browne, Religio medici (1642), pp. 149–50.

107 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Eleventh report: appendix, part vii (London, 1888), pp. 86–8Google Scholar; Williamson, George, ed., Lady Anne Clifford: countess of Dorset, Pembroke & Montgomery, 1590–1676: her life, letters and work (Kendal, 1922), p. 58Google Scholar.

108 See Bamborough, J. B., ‘Robert Burton's astrological notebook’, Review of English Studies, 32 (1981), pp. 267–85Google Scholar.

109 Gómez, Nicolás Wey, The tropics of empire: why Columbus sailed south (Cambridge, MA, 2008), pp. xiiiGoogle Scholar, 66.

110 William Jackson, ‘Relation’, 1642, British Library, Sloane MS 793/894, pp. 1–3. Cf. Harlow, Vincent, ed., The voyages of captain William Jackson (London, Camden miscellany, xiii, 1923)Google Scholar.

111 William Dampier, ‘Voyages through the South Seas’, c. 1700, British Library, Sloane MS 3236, fo. 81.

112 Edward Maynard, ‘Collections’, c. 1667–72, British Library, Sloane MS 1426, fos. 65–75.

113 Richard Browne to Sir Joseph Williamson, 28 Sept. 1672, in Sainsbury, William, ed., Calendar of state papers colonial, America and West Indies (London, 1860–1994)Google Scholar, vii, p. 416. See also Atkins, Samuel, Kalendarium Pennsilvaninse (Philadelphia, PA, 1686)Google Scholar, and Danforth, Samuel, New England almanack (Cambridge, MA, 1686)Google Scholar.

114 Henry Coley, Nuncius coelestis (1679), sigs. C2v–C6r.

115 Dove, Jonathan, Speculum anni (Cambridge, 1679)Google Scholar, sig. Cv.

116 John Booker, A bloody Irish almanack (1646), title-page and pp. 24ff.

117 For instance, John Gadbury, Ephemeris (1695).

118 For instance, Earle, Rebecca, ‘“If you eat their food … ”: diets and bodies in early colonial Spanish America’, American Historical Review, 115 (2010), pp. 688–713CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

119 Compare Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia epidemica (1646, 6th edn, 1672), pp. 370ff; Jordan, Winthrop, White over black: American attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1968), pp. 13–19Google Scholar.

120 Sarah Jinner, Womans almanac (1659), sigs. A6v–A7r; Saunders, Physiognomie, pp. 257ff; William Lilly, Mirror of natural astrology (?1675), pp. 5–8; Anon., The art of courtship (1686), sigs. B2v–B3v; J. S., The true fortune-teller (1698), pp. 74–100; Anon., Aristotle's legacy (1699), p. 18.

121 Samuel Jeake, ‘Diapason. The harmony of the signes of Heaven’, 1672, Rye Castle Museum, Selmes MS 34, p. 53.

122 See Verbeke, Demmy, ‘Swag-bellied Hollanders and dead-drunk Almaines: reputation and pseudo-translation in early modern England’, Dutch Crossing, 34 (2010), pp. 182–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

123 Tabular summaries found in almanacs are telling of this drive to social taxonomy. See Claude Dariot (trans. F. W.), A briefe and most easie introduction to the astrologicall judgement of the starres (1598); John Napier, The bloudy almanack for this present jubilee (1647), title (verso); Anon., Almanack (Aberdeen, 1666), sig. B4r; Thomas Trigge, Calendarium astrologicum (1681), sig. A2r. English astrologers were not alone in their typological practice. See Esguerra, Jorge, ‘New world, new stars: patriotic astrology and the invention of Indian and Creole bodies in colonial Spanish America, 1600–1650’, American Historical Review, 104 (1999), pp. 33–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Azzolini, Monica, ‘Refining the astrologer's art: astrological diagrams in Bodleian MS Canon. misc. 24 and Cardano's Libelli quinque (1547)’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 42, 1 (2011), pp. 1–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.