A horoscope drawn up for a ruler sounds like a clue to the decisions made at court. But what kind of clue? A surviving chart tells us that someone recorded an astrological reading. It does not, by itself, tell us who requested it, who read it or whether anyone acted on it.
Three manuscripts offer a way to see the distinction. One brings astrological writings together with political prophecies; another contains a reading connected to a contested royal birth; a later collection preserves horoscopes of several European rulers. Each opens a window onto the political world in which astrology could be discussed. None gives us a shortcut from a horoscope to a particular decision.
Arundel MS 66: astronomy, astrology and prophecy on the page
The British Library catalogue dates Arundel MS 66 to 1490. It describes a compilation containing astronomical tables, astrological writings and political prophecies. That combination matters. Rather than treating a horoscope as an isolated curiosity, the manuscript places several ways of calculating, interpreting and writing about the heavens within the same collection as texts concerned with politics.
An astronomical table and a political prophecy are different kinds of writing. One may supply calculated positions; the other makes claims about human affairs. Finding them together does not make those claims reliable. It does, however, show that the compiler or users of the manuscript had access to material that could connect celestial interpretation with political subjects.
This is where the evidence stops being straightforward. The catalogue establishes what survives in the volume. It does not identify a royal decision taken because of its contents. We cannot turn the manuscript’s political prophecies into evidence that a ruler consulted this particular book before a coronation or a battle. Even a text written for a political setting needs a separate record of its reception before we can say what it changed.
Ee.3.61: a royal birth and a contested reading
A manuscript held by Cambridge University Library, Ee.3.61, contains an astrological treatise concerning the birth of Henry VI. Here the political context is more pointed. The library discusses a more favourable reading and, drawing on historian Hilary Carey’s interpretation, connects it to horoscopes commissioned by Eleanor Cobham. In that account, the favourable reading was a response to those earlier horoscopes.
The distinction between the manuscript and the explanation of its circumstances is important. We can say that the astrological treatise survives. We can also report that Cambridge presents a historian’s interpretation linking its favourable reading to horoscopes commissioned by Cobham. Those are not identical claims: one describes a document; the other proposes how that document fits into a political dispute.
The example shows how a reading about a royal birth could have political significance without serving as a record of policy. Competing interpretations might be used to argue over how a ruler should be understood. A favourable horoscope, in that setting, is not simply a private portrait of temperament. It can be read as part of a struggle over a public figure’s image. But that still leaves the question of effect open. The surviving treatise and the interpretation of its purpose do not, on their own, establish that it settled the dispute or determined a decision made by Henry VI or his court.
Sloane MS 1707: rulers’ horoscopes in a later collection
The British Library’s catalogue describes Sloane MS 1707 as a seventeenth-century manuscript containing horoscopes of several European royal figures. Among those named are Henrietta Maria, Ferdinand III and Louis XIV. The range of names makes the collection a useful reminder that rulers could be subjects of astrological writing well beyond a single court or a single political controversy.
It is tempting to picture each chart travelling straight to the person it describes. The catalogue does not support that picture. It records the horoscopes in the manuscript; it does not say who commissioned each one or whether the rulers saw, requested or used them. A chart about a monarch is not necessarily a chart for that monarch.
Collections also have their own histories. Texts can be copied and kept for reasons other than the ones that first prompted their composition. Without further evidence about the making and use of an individual horoscope, its presence in Sloane MS 1707 tells us about what was preserved, not what happened at a council table. That is a substantial finding, but a narrower one than the claim that astrology guided government.
Where the evidence ends
These manuscripts support three different levels of claim, and it helps to keep them apart. First, a text exists: a catalogue identifies its contents or a manuscript preserves a reading. Second, a historian may interpret its purpose and political setting, as in the discussion of Ee.3.61. Third, evidence may show that a specific person used a reading in making a specific decision. The examples here do not take us securely to that third level.
That does not make the documents unimportant. Arundel MS 66 shows astrological and political material sharing a volume. Ee.3.61 offers a case in which a reading of a king’s birth is understood in relation to a political dispute. Sloane MS 1707 shows the continued preservation of rulers’ horoscopes in a later collection. Together, they reveal a place for astrology in the written culture surrounding power.
They do not prove that astrology set coronation dates or decided battles. To make a claim like that, we would need evidence linking a particular reading to the people involved and to the decision itself. The most revealing question to ask of a court horoscope is therefore not just what does it say? It is what can we show happened to it after it was written?
