Humour, Wit, & Satire of the Seventeenth Century

by Unknown

[⁹³] ? Laurence Price.

[⁹⁴] He published from 1641 to 1683.

Astrology (in the middle of the seventeenth century) was beginning to fall into disrepute, and Butler, in Hudibras, as well as Ben Jonson in The Alchemist, satirised unmercifully both the science and its professors. The accompanying engraving "The Astrologer's Bugg Beare" refers to an eclipse of the sun, an event, which even at that time was considered of dire portent. Take the title of one tract as a sample. [⁹⁵]"The Shepherds Prognostication, Foretelling the sad and strange Eclipse of the Sun, which will happen on the 29 of March this present year 1652. which Eclipse will begin about eight of the Clock in the fore noon, and so continue till past the hour of eleven, which will be the dismallest day that ever was known since the year 33, when our Savior Christ suffered on the Crosse for the sins of Mankind, at which time the Seas did roare, the earth did quake, the graves did open, the temple rent from the top to the bottom, Luke 23. 45. And there was a darknesse over all the Land. This Prediction also foretells of many strange Presages and Passages which will follow after that horrible Eclipse of the Sun, and what will insue. With a perfect way whereby to avoid the insuing danger. By L. P." (? Laurence Price.) And the contents of the tract fully bears out its title.

But "L. P.," whoever he was, entered thoroughly into the joke of the thing, and, when it was all over, wrote a book, teeming with quiet satire, which was published on 9th April 1652, called—

The Astrologer's Bugg Beare.

[64.] In his little tract he chaffs the people most unmercifully, yet very quietly, at times so much so that one might almost think it written in earnest. For instance: "A Usurer that was to receive money of a country man that was his debter on that day, durst not to venter fourth of his house; by which meanes the man rid forth out of London and paid not in his moneyes, for which cause the Usurer was about to cut his own throat, and had don it, if he had not bin prevented by some of his Neighboures.

Some other Christians were so fearefull of what would befall, that they sent their maids two dayes before Black monday for to fetch in faire water in a redynesse to wash, fearing that the ayre would infect the water.

Some tooke Medicines, Pils, and Antidotes, which was administred unto them by a supposed out landish doctor, which he had set bils for in severall places, caling his Medicines, an Antidote against the tirrible Eclipes of the Sun, so he got money, and they went away as wise as woodcockes."