Pseudonym for William Winstanley, who published 'The Character of a Scold,' etc., and Almanacks intended to satirise the astrological predictions with which it was in his day the custom to fill this kind of publication. The Almanack for 1677, 'A new kind of Almanack ,' is very amusing. Thus we have ' Observations on January ':—
'The year begins very bad with those who are taken picking of a pocket, for it is apt to breed a crick in the neck . . . We hear little of battles or skirmishes at present unless it be among the Oyster Wives at Billingsgate.'
March.
'We may probably have some wind this month which will blow very good news to him who hath a friend lately dead and left him £500 a year lands and £1000 in money.'
Again, on the eclipses of the year he says of the third eclipse:
'Now you must know that near the mountains of Sierra Nevada, and the North-West parts of America, unto them the moon's body will be half obscured; towards the end of it may be seen in New France, Greenland, Florida, Cuba, the Pacific Ocean, etc., and in some other places where I never was, nor (by God's help) never intend to be.'