Palmistry, or chiromancy, was the art of telling the future by reading the lines of the hand. According to early modern religious theory, God’s providential plan permeated everything in the natural world, including the human form. It might therefore be possible to tease out divine secrets through close attention to the body’s distinctive features.

Palmistry could be practised at different social levels. Learned men might use a complex system of mapping the palm to astrological zones. Cheap pamphlets described simpler methods. Palmistry was especially associated with so-called ‘Egyptians’, or ‘gypsies’, who travelled about the country offering readings at fairgrounds, in the streets, and in people’s homes. The authorities did not approve. In 1530, Henry VIII’s parliament passed an act seeking to expel the group from the country, and critiquing their palm-reading: ‘many outlandish people calling themselves Egyptians … have come into this realm, and gone from shire to shire, and place to place … and used great, subtle, and crafty means to deceive the people, bearing them in hand, that they by palmistry could tell men’s and women’s fortunes, and so many times … have deceived the people of their money…’¹The Egyptians Act (1530), 22 Henry 8 c. 10, The Statutes Project.

The act does not seem to have been very effective, and palmistry remained popular.