atises on astrology is a poor measurement for the actual prestige of the subject. Despite the lack of a vernacular literature, most Tudor monarchs and their advisers encouraged astrologers and drew upon their advice. Both Henry VII and those engaged in plotting against him maintained relations with the Italian astrologer William Parron. The Earl of Leicester employed Richard Forster as his astrological physician and commissioned Thomas Allen to set horoscopes. It was at Leicester's invitation that John Dee chose an astrologically propitious day for the coronation of Elizabeth I.
             For intellectuals astrology remained a topic of consuming interest. A random list of sympathizers could include such celebrated names as those of Sir Walter Raleigh, Robert Burton, and Sir Thomas Browne. As a young man Isaac Newton bought a book on judicial astrology at Stourbridge Fair.These miscellaneous names testify to the sympathetic attitude in which many men of rank and intellectual importance held astrology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Of course it is
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