05/01/1602 AD born
Lilly was born on 1 May 1602 in the small village of Diseworth.
The thatched cottage his family lived in still stands near the village church. It was a substantial house for its time, although Lilly's father, (also called William), struggled with the cost of running his farm.
By the time Lilly came to school age, his mother, Alice, complained about the family's back-slidings and decayed estate, yet she determined to give her son the best education the family could afford.
Lilly was fortunate in receiving a classical education at the Grammar school of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, under John Brinsley, one of the finest teachers of his time. Brinsley was strict in discipline but advocated encouragement and praise, and by the time Lilly left the school in 1619, he was excellently educated and excelled at Latin. This was to serve him well in his later astrological studies, since almost all astrological textbooks were written in Latin at that time.
Lilly's hopes of attending Cambridge University were dashed by his father's increasing poverty. His biography records his disappointment at being denied the opportunity that all of his fellow students enjoyed, even though he describes the knowledge of most of them as "defective":
[A]ll and every of those scholars who were of my form and standing went to Cambridge ... only poor I, William Lilly, was not so happy; fortune then frowning upon father's present condition, he not in any capacity to maintain me at the university.
A lesser opportunity came through his father's attorney, who recognized Lilly's level of education and recommended him to Gilbert Wright, Master of the Salters' Company and resident of the Strand in London (but formerly of Market Bosworth, Leicestershire).
