"And after him shall come a dreadful dead man," ran the prophecy, "and with him a royal G of the best blood in the world, and he shall have the crown and shall set England on the right way and put out all heresies." His interpretation of this was that, "Monkery being extinguished above eighty or ninety years, and the Lord General's name being Monk, is the dead man.

The royal G or C (it is gamma in the Greek, intending C in the Latin, being the third letter in the alphabet) is Charles II., who, for his extraction, may be said to be of the best blood of the world."(5) This may be taken as a fair sample of Lilly's interpretations of astrological prophesies, but many of his own writings, while somewhat more definite and direct, are still left sufficiently vague to allow his skilful interpretations to set right an apparent mistake.

One of his famous documents was "The Starry Messenger," a little pamphlet purporting to explain the phenomenon of a "strange apparition of three suns" that were seen in London on November 19, 1644---the anniversary of the birth of Charles I., then the reigning monarch.

This phenomenon caused a great stir among the English astrologers, coming, as it did, at a time of great political disturbance.

Prophecies were numerous, and Lilly's brochure is only one of many that appeared at that time, most of which, however, have been lost.