Heydoniana II: Select City Quæries
In the last post about the moderately disreputable Rosicrucian compiler, John Heydon, I briefly mentioned some his criticism by Elias Ashmole. Ashmole was not Heydon's only detractor - among them were playwright John Wilson, who satiristed Heydon in his 1662 play The Cheats, and a pseudonymous pamphleteer styling himself Mercurius Philalethes.
Philalethes' eight-page pamphlet Select City Quæries: Discovering Several Cheats, Abuses and Subtlities of the City Bawds, Whores and Trapanners, was printed in London in 1660. The title page bears the Latin motto Ridentem dicere verum. Quis vetat? - roughly "Ridiculing to tell the truth. Who would object?"
This satirical work poses thirty-five rhetorical questions aimed at persons throughout the strata of London society, one of the drollest of which is the entry concerning Heydon whose reputation for incredibly precise divinations (such his prediction of the exact date of Cromwell's death) was apparently well established:
Whether Heydon the Ro-guie Crucian (during his Confinement in Jacobs Well Colledge) did study the Practice of the Law, Logick or Astrology; and whether he can tell by erecting a figure, how often he is Cornuted?
More substantial Heydoniana to follow in the New Year!