A Reputation History of John Dee, 1527-1609: The Life of an Elizabethan Intellectual 0773446672, 9780773446670

Table of contents :
Dedication
Contents
Foreword by Nicholas H. Clulee
Chronology of John Dee’s Life
Acknowledgments
Preface
Part I. The Making of a Reputation
I. Dee’s Early Life: 1527-1553
II. Uneasy Times: Dee’s Fortunes during the Reign of Mary: 1553-1558
III. The Queen’s Philosopher: The Apex of a Career: 1558-1583
IV. Contact with Angels and Travels Abroad: Waning Fortunes and Desperate Hopes: 1583-1589
V. Twilight Years: Broken Promises and Broken Dreams: 1590-1608/9
Part II. The Evolution of a Reputation
VI. Seventeenth Century Reception: Casting the Die
VII. The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: A Reputations Journey from the Age of Reason through the Victorian Age
VIII. The Twentieth Century to the Present Day: A Reputation Revised
Conclusion. Dee’s Place in History
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Citation preview

F JTLTION HISTORY OF Jeri':

1527-1609

The Life of an Elizabethan Intellectual

Robert W. Barone With a Foreword by

Nicholas I-I. Clulee

The Edwin Mellen Press Lewiston.Queenston•Lampeter

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Barone, Robert W. A reputation history of John Dee, 1527-1609 : the life of an Elizabethan intellectual I Robert W. Barone ; with a foreword by Nicholas H. Clu lee. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7734-4667-0 ISBN-10: 0-7734-4667-2 1. Dee, John, 1527-1608.2. Dee, John, 1527-1608--Public opinion. 3. Intellectuals--Great Britain--Biography. 4. Occultists—Great Britain--Biography. 5. Scientists--Great Britain-Biography. 6. Scholars--Great Britain--Biography. 7. Astrologers--Great Britain-Biography. 8. Alchemists--Great Britain--Biography. 9. Great Britain—Intellectual life-16th century. 10. Great Britain--History--Elizabeth, 1558-1603--Biography. I. Title. BF1598.D5B37 2009 130.92--dc22 2009028140 hors sdrie. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Front cover: Painting of John Dee, c. 1594

Courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England

Copyright © 2009 Robert W. Barone All rights reserved. For information contact The Edwin Mellen Press Box 450 Lewiston, New York USA 14092-0450

The Edwin Mellen Press Box 67 Queenston, Ontario CANADA LOS ILO

The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd. Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales UNITED KINGDOM SA48 8LT Printed in the United States of America

To My dear wife, Deborah and my wonderful son, William

Contents Foreword by Nicholas H. Clulee Chronology

iii

Acknowledgments

vii

Preface

ix

Part I. The Making of a Reputation Chapter I.

Dee's Early Life: 1527-1553

Chapter II.

Uneasy Times: Dee's Fortunes during

1 3 13

The Reign of Mary: 1553-1558 Chapter III. The Queen's Philosopher: The Apex of a Career

37

1558-1583 Chapter IV. Contact with Angels and Travels Abroad:

63

Waning Fortunes and Desperate Hopes: 1583-1589 Chapter V.

Twilight Years: Broken Promises and Broken

81

Dreams: 1590-1608/9 Part II. The Evolution of a Reputation

93

Chapter VI. Seventeenth Century Reception: Casting the Die

95

Chapter VII The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries:

111

A Reputations Journey from the Age of Reason through the Victorian Age Chapter VIII. The Twentieth Century to the Present Day:

137

A Reputation Revised Conclusion. Dee's Place in History

169

Bibliography

177

Index

187

Foreword In 1971, while still a graduate student at the University of Chicago finishing a draft of my dissertation on John Dee, I attended the Thomas Harriot Symposium at the University of Delaware. Edward Rosen concluded his talk on "Harriot's Science: The Intellectual Background" by quoting from the preface to Andreas Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica (Basel, 1543) lamenting the long separation of the practice of dissection from those who expounded the treatises of anatomy. Rosen suggested that the reunification of "hand and brain" which marked Vesalius' reform of the study of anatomy was also the key to the fruitfulness of Harriot's work.' It struck me that Rosen could have made the same point more appropriately with reference to John Dee's "Mathematical' Praeface" to the first English edition of Euclid's Elements of Geometry of 1570. More appropriate, because Dee, with whom Harriot was acquainted, treated the mathematical sciences and advocated the cultivation of both mathematical theory and its application in the practical mathematical arts, which mapped onto Harriot's endeavors more clearly than anatomy. When I asked Rosen about his choice, his reply was an illuminating challenge. Although he acknowledged the textual appropriateness of Dee's "Praeface," he admitted that he did not want the issue of Dee's "angelic conversations," with all that implied about Dee's gullibility, occult vs. scientific proclivities, and irrationality, to confuse or taint the discussion of Harriot's science. As I did in 1971, every modern scholar who has devoted any significant attention to John Dee has had to confront, at least implicitly, some aspect of Dee's reputation. My approach, as has been the case with other scholars before and after me, was to confront this reputation indirectly by reviewing the record of

I Edward Rosen, "Harriot's Science: The Intellectual Background," in Thomas Harriot, Renaissance Scientist, edited by John W. Shirley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 14-15.

Ii

Dee's career and to establish the historical value of Dee as an entrée into significant aspects of Elizabethan and early modern European culture. Robert Barone's A Reputation History of John Dee is the first book to confront directly the formation and history of Dee's reputation. There are the two strands of Barone's treatment: a narrative and analysis of the formation and evolution of Dee's reputation, and his own largely negative assessment of Dee's place in history framed primarily in terms of his contribution to the development of science. While I have reservations about the second, he does a useful service in foregrounding the issue of Dee's reputation. In the first part he reviews Dee's career in a clear, broad, non-technical fashion, highlighting the various images Dee presented and the key episodes of his life that shaped his negative reputation. Barone's second part then follows the evolution of this negative reputation from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, culminating in a synopsis and assessment of the scholarly work on Dee from the 1950's to the present. Barone also brings out how, during the long period when Dee's negative reputation was dominant, the gradual publication of many of Dee's autobiographical records as well as his serious philosophical works provided an interesting counterpoint that built the foundation for the modern scholarly approach to Dee. In sum, Barone provides a clear introduction to Dee's life and career and a useful guide to the historiography to date. Nicholas H. Clulee, Ph.D. Professor of History Frostbburg State University

Chronology of John Dee's Life 1527 John Dee Born, July 13, in London, son of Rowland and Jane Wild. c. 1535-1542 Student at Chelmsford Grammar School. 1542 Entered St. John's College, Cambridge. 1546 Received B.A. Appointed Fellow and Under-Reader of Greek at Trinity College, Cambridge. 1547 Visited Low Countries. Produced Aristophanes' Peace at Trinity. 1548 Received M.A. Went to Louvain (December). 1550 Lectured in Paris on Euclid's Elements. 1551 Returned to London. Visited Cecil. 1552 Enterd service of Earl of Pembroke; later entered service of Duke of Northumberland. 1553 Granted Rectories of Upton-upon-Severn and Longleadenham. Edward VI died (July 6). Execution of Northumberland (August). 1554 Offered post to "read the Mathematical Sciences" at Oxford (refused). 1555 Birth of Jane Fromond. Dee arrested and placed in custody of Bishop Bonner. Took part in the examination of John Philpot as Bonner's chaplain. 1556 Wrote preface to John Feild's Ephemeris anni 1557.

Wrote a

"Supplication to Queen Mary." 1558 Published Propaedeumata Aphoristica. Death of Queen Mary ( November 17) 1559 Invented "paradoxall compass" for the Muscovy Company. January 15, coronation of Elizabeth I, the date was calculated by Dee at the request of Robert Dudley. 1562 At Louvain and Antwerp. 1563 Visited Gesner in Zurich. Went to Venice and Urbino.

iv 1564 Published Monas Hieroglyphica in Antwerp. Granted Deanery of Gloucester. (December 8) 1565 First marriage to Katherine Constable. (She died at some point prior to 1575.). 1566 Took up residence at Mortlake. 1568 Second edition of Propaedeumata Aphoristica presented to the Queen. Audience with the Queen. 1570 Published the "Mathematicall Preface" to Billingsley's Euclid. 1571 Traveled to Lorraine. 1573 Published Parallaticae cotnmentationis praxeosque nucleus quidam (lost). 1574 Visited Wales. 1575 Dee's second marriage to unknown wife. 1576 Death of second wife. 1577 Met with Leicester, Sidney, and Dyer Wrote the General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation. 1578 Married Jane Fromond (February 5.) 1579 Birth of son Arthur (July 13). 1580 Death of Dee's mother (October 10). 1581 Birth of daughter Katherine (June 7). Began Angelic Conversations. (December 22). 1582 Talbot (Kelley) at Mortlake (March 9). March 10, first session with Kelley. 1583 Dee worked on Calendar reform. Birth of son Rowland (February) Met Laski (March 18). Met Laski at Greenwich (May 13). Laski at Mortlake (May 18). Departed from Mortlake (September 21). In Briel (September 30). In Bremen (October 22). In Lubeck (November 7). In Stettin (December 25). 1584 In Poznan (January 19). In Lasko (February 13). In Cracow (March 13). In Prague (August 9). Had audience with Emperor Rudolf (September 3).

V

1585 Birth of son Michael (February 22). Left Prague for Cracow (April 5). Had audience with King Stephen (April 17). Back at Prague (August 6). Dee made Doctor of Medicine at Prague University. 1586 Met Roanberk. Left Prague (May 6). Banished from Prague (May 29). At Erfurt (June). In Trebona (September 14). 1587 Last Action with Kelley (May 23). 1588 Birth of son Theodore. (February 28). 1589 Left Trebona (March 11). In Nuremberg (March 18). In Frankfurt am Main (March 26). In Bremen (April 19). Sailed for England (November 29). Landed in England (December 8). 1590 Birth of daughter Madinia (late February) 1592 Birth of daughter Frances. (January 1). Queen's commissioners, Sir Thomas Gorge and John Walley, at Mortlake. 1594 Dee presented the "Compendious Rehearsal" to the Queen. Death of son Michael. (July 13). 1595 Received Wardenship of Manchester from Archbisop Whitgift (January 8). Birth of Margaret (August 14). 1596 Arrived at Manchester (February 15). 1599 Published A Letter, containing a most briefe Discourse Apologeticall. 1601 Death of son Theodore. 1602 Marriage of son Arthur. 1603 Death of Queen Elizabeth I (March 24). 1604 Dee petitioned King James I (June 5). Petitioned Parliament (June 8). 1605 Death of Jane Dee (March). Deaths of daughters Madinia and Margaret. (March). Forced to relinquish his post by the Fellows of Christ's College, 1608 Traditional date of Dee's death (December) 1609 New possible date of Dee's death (March 26).

Acknowledgments

I began my long journey into the world of Elizabethan intellectual history a quarter of a century ago. In the course of that journey I became familiar with a world strangely removed, both temporally as well as spatially, from our own; a world where such enterprises as Astrology, Alchemy, and Spiritualism were integral and normal components of what was considered science. A century later those very studies had been swept away by the tide of the scientific revolution, and relegated to the realm of pseudo-science. My study of John Dee is a glimpse into the life and career of a man whose intellectual talents placed him at the forefront of the science of his day, yet in the end, it was a failed science that he represented. This work seeks to provide an overview of Dee's life and career as well as an evaluation of how later generations have come to view Dee. This has been a work based not only on research, but also on a great deal of reflection. In the course of that journey I have had the good fortune to discuss with numerous individuals not only the figure of John Dee but the wider world in which he dwelled. A number of these individuals have directly aided me in bringing this work to completion. I must begin by thanking Michael Hunter, who first worked with me when I was studying at Birkbeck College, University of London. It was Michael who encouraged me to pursue my interests concerning John Dee; and I remember fondly the Seminar in which there was much lively discussion on the nature of Early Modern Science and the world views of that bygone age. As for my specific work on John Dee the commentary of two individuals, Nicholas Clulee and Bill Sherman, stands as indispensible. Both are eminent

viii scholars whose own works on Dee stand as models of scholastic erudition. I cannot thank them enough for their help in the completion of my work. They both read and commented on the entire manuscript and gave valuable suggestions. Also, my friend since our graduate school days at Ohio State, Doug Bisson, read the entire manuscript and provided me with valuable suggestions. I must give my special thanks to my colleague, Ruth Truss, for her reading and editing of the manuscript. Nobody could ask for a better or more congenial co-worker, and I enjoyed our exchanges concerning my work immeasurably. Special thanks are also given to Jim Day, Clark Hultquist, and Joe Walsh. All of whom also read and commented on the manuscript. Any academic work would be impossible to complete if not for the unfailing help and assistance of librarians. Patsy Sears and Mary Seagle in particular were of great aid to me in the completion of my project. Although I no longer remember their names my thanks go out to all the librarians at the British Library and at the Bodleian Library who aided in my research. I also want to extend my thanks to the Research and Special projects committee at the University Montevallo who granted me a sabbatical which allowed me to complete this project. Special thanks are given to Amanda Fox for all her help and assistance in dealing with technical and computer related issues. Ms. Fox possesses a cheerful good-heartedness that made my technical frustrations easier to contend with. Thanks are also given to Patricia Schultz, the Production Editor at Edwin Mellen Press, for her kind aid in seeing this work through the publication process. Finally, my heartfelt thanks are owed to my wife Deborah for all her love, encouragement, support, and general calm disposition in her dealings with her eccentric husband. As for the work itself all errors or misinterpretations remain mine alone; it is now up to you the reader to judge the merits of this work.

Preface It was during a very pleasant summer, spent at New College, Oxford. that I first happened across the writings of the Elizabethan polymath John Dee. The works and career of Dee instantly fascinated me. I especially was drawn, not just to his varied interests and endeavors in natural philosophy, which, as we shall see, could be both dizzying and somewhat cryptic, but to the evolution of his reputation. That aspect of Dee's life would be constantly shifting, and he took great pains during his lifetime to rectify any negative press concerning his reputation. Over the centuries since his death the reputation of John Dee has run a roller coaster of opinion and interpretation. That was due both to the nature of his studies as well as the temperament of the age in which he lived. Ensuing generations would also view Dee's life and career from a wide variety of perspectives—scientific, mystical, political, and cultural. Four centuries after his death we are still debating and wrestling with where Dee's work fits into the Elizabethan World picture, and what contributions, if any, he made to those intellectual advancements. Perhaps, with recent scholarship in the field of Early Modern Science, we can come closer to unlocking the life and career of John Dee. Hopefully we are now poised to understand better the role and relationship of occult mentalities in the development of early scientific thought, and thus be better equipped in defining, or refuting, Dee as a leading intellectual of his age. Of course, defining Dee in that context does not necessarily vindicate him and save his reputation as a leading light of his generation. The case can be made that Dee, despite his vast learning and cunning erudition, drew the wrong conclusions and fostered a mentality regarding scientific enquiry that led nowhere.

As we shall see in the course of this study there is a wide and diverse range of opinions and interpretations regarding Dee the man, as well as the nature of his studies. On the one extreme Dee can be seen as a leading light in sixteenth century natural science. From such a vantage point we can see Dee involved in such works as calendar reform, navigation, and mathematics; we also find him involved in the more practical application of mathematics in the devising of new measuring devices and instruments in facilitating those studies. Seen in the light of such studies it would be hard not to view Dee as a shining example of the new spirit of scientific enquiry—in fact, a key player in what has come to be termed the Scientific Revolution. Diametrically opposed to such a view are those works that focus on Dee's more esoteric and occult endeavors. From this perspective there is a much broader, and more complex, interpretation given to Dee. On the one hand there are those who, viewing Dee's works as being occult, reject his studies as being either delusional or demonic, and thus cast Dee in a negative tone. Such critics see little merit to Dee's accomplishments and relegate him to the fringe of the Elizabethan intellectual world. At the other side of this valley of opinion rests those who see Dee's works as being mystical, or even spiritual, and embrace Dee as a prophet of a deeper wisdom. As a result there has been, since Dee's own lifetime, rival camps formed in the appraisals of his studies. Over the past thirty years there has been a great deal of work done on the nature and dimensions of early modern scientific thought, and in the wake of that research Dee and his reputation have been swept along. In the attempts to broaden our understanding of the intellectual world of early modern Europe John Dee has come to be seen as a test case in unlocking the many vaults in which that intellectual tradition lies. My purpose in pursuing this study is two fold. In the first part I set out to ground Dee and his career firmly against the backdrop of the larger intellectual and cultural world of early modern Europe. The second part of this study is a

xi detailed and systematic look at the historiographical tradition concerning Dee and his reputation. In the end what I hope can be accomplished is to present a definitive statement concerning Dee and his place within the world of Early Modern European history.

Part I The Making of a Reputation

Chapter I Dee's Early Life: 1527-1553

Anyone studying the life and career of John Dee will quickly come to realize that Dee was his own propagandist; his voluminous autobiographical writings attest to that fact. The corpus of material on Dee emanates from his own pen. Beyond that fact we are faced with the daunting task of dealing with a paucity of source material concerning Dee. There are few contemporaries making any significant mention of John Dee. A brief statement in one place, a marginal note in another-hardly the type of flowing commentary one would expect about one of the leading lights of his age. Despite that obstacle there has been an ongoing flood of biographical reference concerning Dee, which has flowed from his own lifetime to the present day. This fact, I will contend, lies at the heart of the problem concerning any research on John Dee. This point, of course, does not diminish the possibility that Dee was in fact representative of the intellectual and cultural world of the sixteenth century, although hardly deserving of any adulations as an intellectual visionary as I shall contend. Dee's early life was connected to the city of London and a Welsh ancestry that was part of the Tudor takeover of power four decades earlier. This point continually appears in Dee's Autobiographical Tracts and his visions of a British Empire. There are frequent references to Wales, Welsh lore, and Welsh ancestry in his various writings. There are several manuscripts written by Dee tracing his lineage back to distant 'Welsh kings. His own origins were a bit more humble.

4 His father, Rowland Dee, had migrated to England at some undisclosed point, most likely during the early part of the reign of Henry VIII. By John Dee's account his grandfather, Bedo Dee, was a standard-bearer for the Griffiths, while his father was a "vinter," most likely some type of merchant, perhaps holding some connection with the Court.' His mother was one Johanna Wild. His mother had, later in her life, acquired enough money to purchase a cottage in Mortlake by the 1560s, where she died in 1580 at the age of 77.3 Both parents heralded from the Dees of Nant-y-Groes, Radnorshire, Wales.' Throughout his lifetime Dee maintained contact with his Welsh relatives, making several journeys to Wales. As an antiquarian Dee traced his ancestry to Roderick the Great, a ninth century Welsh prince, and yet further into a misty past of sixth century Welsh kings. He claimed a Welsh genealogy older than that of the Tudors, while also maintaining a connection to the Tudor monarchs themselves. Little else is known of his parents or family. There is some speculation that he might have had a brother, but Dee himself makes no mention of siblings. Nothing is known of Dee's early life in London, living in the shadow of the tower. The point that Dee focuses on in his autobiographical writings is his education. We first see him at the grammar school in Chelmsford and later as a student at St. John's College, Cambridge. As he recounted: "I had before, in London, and at Chelmsford, been metely well See Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. I; Dee, Diary, p. 5; Strype, Amides of the Reformation, vol. 2, part I, p. 523; Harleian MS. 7177, ff. 169r-172v; Anthony a Wood, Athenea Oxoniensis, ed. Philip Bliss, vol. I, pp. 240-242; Cotton Charter XIV, art. 1; Cotton Charter XIII, art. 38; Harleian MS. 5835, art. 2, 3. Strype mentions in his Anna/es that Rowland Dee was a "servant" to King Henry VIII. I. R. F. Calder, "John Dee Studied as an English Neoplatonist," 2 vols., unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1952, shows that Rowland Dee enjoyed a monopoly on freight forwarding and was awarded some income from the confiscated monastic lands. See, vol. 2, pp. 90-91. 2

3 Dee, Diary, pp. 5, 7, 9-10. In Dee's Preface to Billingsley's Euclid (1570) Dee gives Mortlake as his residence. Johanna Dee surrendered the house at Mortlake to John Dee on 15 June 1579. See, Diary, p. 5. On October 31, 1579 Dee had to pay a 20 shilling fine for the house. See, Diary, P. 7. 4 See, Harleian MS.473; Transactions of the Radnorshire Society, vol. III, pp. 10-15; vol. XXI, pp. 42-46; vol. XXV, pp. 15-16; vol. XXVI, pp. 15-16.

5 furnished with understanding of the Latine tongue."' The implications of that statement were that he came from a family of some modest social mobility and that he most likely showed an aptitude for learning early in his life. When he matriculated at St. John's College he was fifteen (in 1542), an average age for students to begin their university careers in the sixteenth century. Prior to his enrollment in the university his education would have been traditional and centered on the mastery of Latin, for Latin was the language of learning and scholarship, as well as the language of the church, and the church still controlled education. Dee's education at Cambridge would have been traditionally based on the medieval curriculum of the Seven Liberal Arts where simple rote mastery of a core of standard texts was the order of the day. His program would have begun with the Trivium, or the three grammatical arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic (or dialectic argument). The end result would be to train the student for a career within the ever-growing bureaucracies of the church or the state. After completing the study of the Trivium the student would be awarded the Bachelor of Arts degree (the Artium Baccalaureus).

For those students who chose to

continue their studies after the completion of the B.A. program they would move to the Quadriviurn, the four scientific (or mathematical arts) of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. The completion of those studies would lead to receiving the Master of Arts degree (the Artium Magister). Aside from that standard curriculum within the Seven Liberal Arts Dee would have undoubtedly engaged in studies in several other areas as well, particularly the study of Greek and later a rudimentary study of Hebrew. The fact that he would later be appointed as under-reader of Greek, as well as his later dealings with the cabala, or ancient Hebrew mystical writings, attests to that fact. In that regard Dee can clearly be seen as a product of the Renaissance humanist tradition with its emphasis on a philological appraisal of classical texts. 5 Dee,

Autobiographical Tracts, pp. 4-5

6

As well as engaging in those traditional academic studies at the university, Dee undoubtedly became acquainted with the occult arts. Recent scholarship has shown that there was no prohibition to those studies. Although Dee made no specific reference to that line of study, most likely he engaged in a study of the Hermetic Arts, or a curious Renaissance variation of Neoplatonism, as seen in the works of Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola.' As we shall see those studies absorbed more and more of Dee's time as his career progressed to the point that they became central to his understanding of what he saw as the natural sciences. Ultimately it was Dee's particular understanding of science as being tied to a more mystical or hermetic tradition that would lead scholars to place Dee as part of a failed scientific revolution in astrology.' Dee makes little mention of his career while at St. John's College except to state that he studied "logick, and so to proceede in the learning of good arts and sciences."' Fifty years later, as he wrote his Compendious Rehearsal to Queen Elizabeth, he recalled his time at St. John's stating: "In the years 1543, 1544, 1545, I was so vehemently bent to studie, that for those years I did inviolably keepe this order; only to sleepe four houres every night; to allow to meate and drink.., two houres everyday; and the other eighteen houres all (except tyme of going to and being at divine services) was spent in my studies and learning.' Whether that account was a true reflection of Dee's life at Cambridge or merely a fabrication written fifty years after the fact by a man whose luck and fame were

Mordechai Feingold, The Mathematicians' Apprenticeship: Science, Universities, and Society in England 1560-1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p.81.

6

Nicholas H. Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion (London: Routledge 1988), p. 26.

7

See Mary Ellen Bowden, "The Scientific Revolution in Astronomy: The English Reformers, 1558-1686." Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1974, pp. 62-107.

8

9

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 4.

I° Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 5.

7 waning is now undeterminable. What can be said is that however much time Dee did devote to his studies he certainly attained mastery of them. Three years passed with Dee remaining silent as to his progress. At the end of three years at St. John's he received the B.A. degree in 1545 Immediately he began his masters program at the newly founded Trinity College, Cambridge. Here Dee notes that he spent many hours a day devoted to study. During his stay at Trinity we begin to see more of Dee's activities. He tells of how he was made a fellow of the college and was appointed as the under-reader in Greek to a Mr. Pember." Dee takes pains to make clear to his readers that he was a scholar of rare distinction, and that point is clearly how Dee wanted to be remembered by posterity. Dee made his first trip to the continent in 1547 when he went to Flanders to consult with Gemma Frisius, a mathematician and cosmographer of some note, and the renowned cartographer Gerard Mercator.' Both men taught at the University of Louvain; Frisius was the cosmographer to Charles V. After some months in those men's company, Dee returned to Cambridge, bringing with him "the first astronomer's staff of brass that was made of Gernma Frisius' devising, the two great globes of Gerardus Mercator's making, and the astronomer's ring of brass..."" Those were apparently new types of mechanical instruments used for navigation and astronomy that had never been seen in England. For the first time Dee's interest in mathematics, astronomy, navigation, and apparently practical endeavors in applied science and mathematics is evident. We shall later see how Dee's scientific studies had a much more mystical tint to them. A year later, in 1548, Dee was back at Cambridge receiving his M.A. degree.

"John Venn, ed., "Grace Book": Containing the Records of the University of Cambridge for the years 1542-1589, pp. 31, 48, 51. John Venn, ed., Alumni Cantabrigienses, part 1, vol. 11, p. 28. C. H. Cooper and T. Cooper, ed., Athenae Cantabrigienses, vol. 11, pp. 497-510. 12

E. G. R. Taylor, Tudor Geography: 1485-1583,: Methuen, 1930), pp. 76-83, 85-86.

13

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p.5.

8 There was one other curious detail of Dee's time spent at Trinity College on which he took great care to elaborate. Apparently Dee showed an early aptitude for mechanical skills. In a production of Aristophanes's play Pax Dee set up an ingenious mechanical rigging where a character flew on the back of a Scara-beetle. As Dee stated: Hereupon I did sett forth...a Greeke comedy of Cristophanes, named in...Latin, Pax; with the performance of a Scarabeus [dungbeetle] his flying up to Jupiter's palace, with a man [Trygaeusthe "vine dresser" who wished to consult with Zeus] and his basket of victuals on her back: whereat was great wondering, and many vaine reports spread abroad of the meanes how that was effected." Again Dee was promoting himself as singularly unique, skilled, adept. That feat was Dee's first account of any negative press, or suspicion, being uttered as to his studies. Although there is no surviving record of that event, it most likely was a mechanical, rather than a magical, act that was carried out. It clearly shows Dee's ability as a technician more than anything else. One gets the sense that it was at that point Dee began to exhibit a certain amount of suspicion and paranoia regarding how he thought others observed his work. Throughout Dee's lifetime a cloud of mystery and secrecy overlay his works; and although Dee went to great pains to defray and derail any misgivings as to the nature of his studies, many critics continually regarded him, and his studies, with suspicion. As Dee's life unfolded, and his name became known to a larger audience, he developed several distinct images. Dee as a skilled technician in matters of navigation and geography, a man learned in astronomy and mathematics; as a figure seen in Court circles, usually being consulted on astrological and alchemical matters, or seen casting horoscopes; and finally, as a sorcerer or magician, are all representative depictions of Dee. Dee also developed a European persona, making several extended stays on the continent at various locales. The first, as we have seen, was his consultation with Frisius and 14

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, pp. 5-6.

9 Mercator, in 1547. His next continental venture was a longer stay at the University of Louvain, 1548-1550. No records other than his own statement survive of Dee having studied at Louvain. What Dee studied, or did, at Louvain is also questionable. Dee tells how, "Beyond the seas, far and neere, was a good opinion conceived of my studies philosophicall and mathematicall." He continues, going to some length, to show that many came from all over Europe as the "...fame of my skill in good literature so spread...." Again Dee is his own best propagandist. Later scholars assume that Dee was studying mathematics, astronomy, geography, and navigation under the likes of Frisius and Mercator, which is plausible. While at Louvain he apparently tutored those interested in soliciting his talents. Dee tells of a Sir William Pykering who "...was instructed [by Dee] in logick, rhetorick, arithmetick, in the use of the asttronomer's staff, and the use of the astronomer's ringe, the astrolabe, in the use of both globes, &c.""

This is also the first

reference to Dee tutoring others, but that activity became a consistent means of income for him through the 1580s. A curious addition to those studies was his development of an interest in the study of Civil Law, which has led some to speculate that Dee's -Doctoral" degree was in law. As Dee stated; "...I did for recreation, look into the method of civile law, and profited therein...." In actuality it is not known if Dee ever received a doctoral degree, although the title is frequently associated with his name.' 15

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 7.

16

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 7.

17

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 7.

18

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 7.

19 There is no record of Dee having received a doctorate from either of the English Universities; as well, there is no record from Louvain. C. H. Josten in, "An Unknown Chapter in the Life of John Dee," Journal of the Warberg and Coutauld Institute, 28 (1965), pp. 229, 236, n. 22, implies that Dee received a doctorate in Medicine from the University of Prague sometime in either 1586 or

10 In July of 1550 Dee traveled to Paris, where by his account; ...within a few daies after (at the request of some English gentlemen, made unto me to doe somewhat there for the honour of my country) I did undertake to read freely and publiquely Euclide's Elements Geometrical!, Mathematice, Physice, et Pythagorie; a thing never done publiquely in any University of Christendom." Unique and stunning was the event, as Dee relates further: My auditory in Rhemes Colledge was so great, and the most part elder then my selfe, that the mathematicall schooles could not hold them; for many were faine, without the schooles at the windowes, to be auditors and spectators, as they best could helpe themselves thereto. There is, unfortunately, no other reference to that event. Yet another curious aspect of Dee's career emerges at that point. He states that so many were desirous of his talents and to make his acquaintance and confer with him. He, however, refused them all, including the king of France himself who apparently wanted Dee as his own mathematical reader.' Despite those refusals of preferment Dee exclaims he was of "...good credit and estimation with the favour and love of very many (noble lovers of good learning, or well learned themselves)....'° All those accounts can best be seen as the self-aggrandizing of an older Dee who had fallen on hard times and was desperately looking for preferment.

1587 while Dee was in residence there. Walter J. Trattner in, "God and Expansion in Elizabethan England: John Dee, 1527-1583," Journal of the Histoty of Ideas, 25 (1964), p. 17, n. 2, probably comes nearest to the truth stating that the title "doctus" [from the Latin for educated, or learned] was used in honoring Dee as a learned man. Dee himself never gives a degree higher than the Master's in his signature. 20

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p.7.

21

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 8.

22

Autobiographical Tracts, p. 8.

11 Dee's future looked promising upon his return to England in 1551. Sir John Cheke, a fellow Cambridge man and schoolmaster to Edward VI, introduced Dee to secretary Cecil and to the Court. Soon after, he was introduced to the king, to whom he dedicated two works on the use of celestial globes and astronomy. Dee was rewarded for his studies two years later with a gift from Edward in the sum of one hundred crowns per annum. Later that year Dee exchanged that gift for the rectory of Upton-upon-Severn, in Worcestershire." At some point between 1553 and 1563 Dee also received the rectory of Longleadenham in Lincoln. Aside from the income that Dee received from those rectories his only other regular form of income seems to have been tutoring the Duke of Northumberland's children. He also acted in an advisory capacity for the Muscovy Company, but for which services no indication of payment exists." Perhaps also during his extended stay at Louvain, under the guidance of Frisius and Mercator, Dee acquired the skills most valued and sought by those involved in overseas ventures. Indeed, the next thirty years of his life Dee was closely connected with English overseas voyages, especially with those attempts to find a northeast, or northwest, passage to the Orient. It is somewhat curious that Dee, despite his vast learning and erudition, was never placed in a commanding position in either of the English Universities, Autobiographical Tracts, pp. 10, 25-26. Both of those works, along with most of Dee's other works he listed in accounts of his writings, are now lost. Further, there is no account of the impact that those works had upon the intellectual world of the sixteenth century.

11 Dee,

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, pp. 10, 12. Charlotte Fell Smith, pp. 13-14. In his Diary, p. 7— for 7 November 1579—Dee mentioned "the Lord Clinton came to me and offered Shirbeck by Boston for Longleadenham." Those rectories provided Dee with an income of 80 pounds a year. See, Shumaker, ed., John Dee, p. 8. That salary was twice what Cheke made as a Cambridge don. See, Strype, Life of Cheke, pp. 22-26. See Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 273, where he refers to Dee as a "beneficed Anglican clergyman." Strype, Ecclesiastial Memorials, vol. 2, part 2, p. 272, gives 15 September 1553 as the date Dee was presented the parsonage of Upton. 24

Barrett Beer, Northumberland: The political career of John Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland, p. 194. Taylor, Tudor Geography, p. 89. French, John Dee, pp.126-127. It is

15

not known in precisely what capacity Dee served the Dudley's beyond the simple tutoring of the Duke's children.

12 nor was he ever to attain a position in any European University. The only reference that exists of any university desiring his talents was, by his own account, an offer from Oxford University. As Dee stated in his Autobiographical Tracts; "Of the University of Oxford, some of the chiefe studientes (Doctors of Divinity and Masters of Art) caused a yearly good stipend to be offered unto me to read mathematicall sciences there. Mr. Doctor Smith of Oriel Colledge, and Mr. Dr. Bruarne of Christes Church, were chiefly agentes in that cause.' Dee refused the offer. Apparently the income from his rectories of Upton and Longleadenham, coupled with the fees he received for tutoring and consultations were enough to satisfy him financially. I would also suggest that Dee wished to foster a career that placed him close to court circles rather than pursue an obscure career in some Oxford College. With hindsight one can see that action as a somewhat curious decision on Dee's part considering that he would never achieve a commanding position at Court. At that very point where it seemed that Dee's star was ascending and his future prospects looked bright, his fortunes changed dramatically. The death of King Edward VI and the accession of Queen Mary I caused a dramatic reversal in Dee's position. Dee's sponsor, Northumberland, had fallen with his attempt to alter the succession by placing his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, on the throne. After nine nervous days of Jane's rule Mary gained the initiative and reclaimed the throne. Northumberland's days were now numbered; charged with treason he was soon executed, and his son Gilford and Jane followed his fate a year later. Northumberland's fall clearly had an effect on Dee's fortunes. Not only had Dee lost a means of income, but he would also be looked upon with some suspicion for having been in Northumberland's service. Mary's reign would prove to be a dark chapter in Dee's life.

26

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 10.

Chapter II Uneasy Times Dee's Fortunes during the Reign of Mary 1553-1558

The accession of Queen Mary I brought a dark cloud over the fate and fortune of John Dee. Dee's connection as tutor to the Duke of Northumberland's children, whose failed coup against Mary had led to the duke's execution, clearly placed Dee on the wrong side of the fence. In addition the demise of Northumberland meant the loss of at least one source of income for Dee as tutor to the duke's children. The first year of Mary's reign found Dee engaged in activities connected to English plans to find a north-east passage to the Orient. The expedition was originally sponsored by Northumberland and the Muscovy Company, and the captains of the venture were Richard Chancellor and Hugh Willoughby. Dee apparently taught Chancellor navigational and mathematical techniques associated with ocean going voyages in extreme northern latitudes." In 1556 Dee acted in a similar capacity for Stephen Borough, also a sea captain in the employment of the Muscovy Company.' One can deduce that it was the skills that Dee acquired while at Louvain, studying under the likes of Ftisius and "Nicholas H. Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion. (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 32-33. Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 28 28

Taylor, Geography, pp. 89-95; 253-254. Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, pp. 6-7; 8-9; 21.

14 Mercator, that made him such a valuable asset in the orchestration of such ventures. For the ensuing thirty years Dee served in a similar capacity to all the major voyages in search of both a north-east as well as a north-west passage to the Orient. Clearly Dee's work in navigation and applied mathematical studies stands as an example of the application of those studies for the achieving of practical, tangible ends. The Willoughby-Chancellor expedition of 1553 was the first example of Dee's work being seen in the light of consultant, teacher, and adviser for the voyages of exploration. Unfortunately for the study of John Dee and his relation with the voyages of exploration, little is actually known of what the exact role of Dee was as teacher or for that matter exactly what it was he taught beyond the somewhat vague notion of seafaring skills. Again it is almost exclusively through Dee's own autobiographical writings that any mention is made of his involvement in England's overseas designs. One can surmise, based on Dee's account, that he lectured the pilots on the use of new navigational tools such as Mercator's projection, or his own Parallax Compass, which was used to chart a course when sailing in areas of high latitude. It is unknown to what extent if any Dee added to the overall design and planning of those voyages. His talents, it seemed, were sought specifically for instruction in matters of cartography and navigation. Of course any suggestions that Dee did make to the pilots regarding the actual travels was largely a matter of guess work. To a large extent those voyages were literally into the unknown. It was only after their successful return, and only after having kept precise, accurate charts, that any definitive conclusions could be drawn pertaining to travel in those areas of high latitude. In fact the driving economic interest that propelled those endeavors was always adaptable to any alterations to the original design of reaching the Orient. For example, in the Willoughby-Chancellor expedition of 1553 they never reached the Orient, but they did establish a connection with Russia beginning a lucrative trade

15

relationship with that country. The immediate financial success of that enterprise suited the Muscovy Company well enough, and Dee was undoubtedly praised for his efforts. The praise would be short-lived. Chancellor's death in 1556 led to a lapse for requests for Dee's services to the Muscovy Company, and three years passed before his services were again sought. Any advances that Dee was making as an adviser to the Muscovy Company were halted when, in 1555, he found himself accused of attempting to take Queen Mary's life by magical means.' The events which transpired through the spring and summer of 1555 were directly responsible for much of the later negative press that he received. Those uneasy days swept Dee, a budding young intellectual, from being viewed in a favorable light to an individual of questionable religious and political loyalties, labeled a conjurer. In Dee's world there was a fine line separating science from magic and an even more fluid line separating good magic from bad magic. Dee's intellectual pursuits, always teetering toward the arcane, easily lent themselves to the charge of conjurer, or one dealing with the more dubious dimensions of natural philosophy. On May 28, 1555, Dee was arrested on the charge that he did "endeavor by enchantment to destroy Queen Mary."3° Sir Francis Englefield was directed by the Privy Council To make search for one John Dye [Dee], dwelling in London, and tapprehend (sic) him and send him hither, and make search for such papers and books as he maye thinke maye touche the same Dye [Dee]....n Why did the Privy Council want to apprehend Dee? What roused their suspicions? It is interesting to note that Englefield was a member of the Council,

" Calendar of State Papers: Domestic Series 1547-1580. Tracts, p. 20.

8 June 1555. Dee, Autobiographical

3° Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 20. Calendar of State Papers: Domestic 1547-1580, 5:67. 31 Acts

of the Privy Council 1554-1556, p. 137.

16 and a devout Roman Catholic, who in 1555 had been appointed by Mary to head the newly established witchcraft commission. The charge of "by enchantment" is a rather curious one. Exactly what were the means by which Dee supposedly sought the Queen's demise? Was Dee then guilty of conjuring or sorcery? Clearly the vast majority of Englishmen (and Europeans in general) believed in an animistic world order, and with such a paradigm structuring their views of reality supernatural forces clearly had their place within the overall scheme. Sorcery, conjuring, magic, astrology, witchcraft were all terms used, often interchangeably, with their concepts of science.' One can surmise that it was for the practicing of judicial astrology that Dee was apprehended. Judicial astrology is that form of astrology that dealt with the contacting and manipulation of demonic forces—usually aimed at inflicting harm on an individual. Often times the term "judicial astrology" would be lumped with that of sorcery, magic, or witchcraft. Support for the theory of judicial astrology as the specific charge against Dee came on June 8, 1555, when Dee, Cary and Butler, who calculated the nativities of the King and Queen, and Princess Elizabeth, are apprehended on the accusation of one Ferrys, whose children thereupon had been struck, one with death, the other with blindness." What was wrong with Dee's calculating nativities? Aristocrats were notorious for having their horoscopes cast. As Keith Thomas pointed out, "most Tudor Monarchs and their advisors encouraged astrologers and drew upon their advice!' Apparently what Dee calculated was not supportive of the King or Queen. Furthermore, Ferry's, whose own children's misfortunes he attributed to those mystical arts, and no doubt aware of Englefield's commission against 32

Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, pp. 283-385.

33

Calendar of State Papers: Domestic 1547-1580, p. 67.

34

Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic. p. 289.

17 witchcraft, lashed his accusations against Dee. In his Autobiographical Tracts, Dee stated that he was accused by "George Ferrys and another Prideaux, of endeavouring by enchantment to destroy Queen Mary.' It logically followed that "endeavouring by enchantment to destroy Queen Mary" brought with it the the greater charge of treason. In other words, Dee not only sought to calculate nativities which would only foretell the future and not in anyway manipulate it—but sought the actual overthrow of an anointed monarch--if we accept the accusations made by Ferrys and Prideaux. Unfortunately nothing is known concerning the actual litigation involved with those charges. Dee was questioned, first by the Privy Council, then by the Court of Common Pleas, and finally by the Star Chamber, after which he was remanded to Hampton Court for further questioning. While at Hampton Court Dee was questioned by Mr. Secretary Boume, who was one of Mary's Privy Councilors. On June 5, 1555, in a letter from the Privy Council to Mr. Bourne and Lord North (another Privy Council member involved with the interrogation) a clearer glimpse of those events emerges. The letter requested North and Bourne to procede to a further examination of Benger, Carye, Dye [Dee], and Fe1de, upon such poyntes as by their wisdom, shall gather out of their Former confessions towching thier lewed and vayne practices of Calculating and conjuring...and requesting them further as they shall by thier examination perceive any other man or woman towched in thies or like matters, to cause them to be forthwith apprehended and committed to be further ordered according to justice." The point is abundantly clear. It was for the calculating of nativities (seen by many as conjuring, or sorcery) that Dee was incarcerated. Nothing further is Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 20. It is not clear who Prideaux was, or what precisely his involvement in those events was.

35

Acts of the Privy Council 1554-1556, p. 143. FeIde [Fad] was the editor of a work on astrological calculations, Ephemeris Anni 1557, for which Dee wrote the preface. FeiId was also a proto-Copernican whose works were the first in England to promote Copemicanism. For his part Dee never came out with any written support for Copernicanism; he simply utilized the calculations for his astrological measurements.

36

18 known as to any proceedings in that case. Dee remained in the custody of the Privy Council through the summer of 1555, being further questioned by Lord Chief Justice Brooke of the Court of Common Pleas!' The questioning no doubt would have addressed the issue of conjuring and judicial astrology. Understanding that early modem man held a spiritual view of nature operating and controlled by supernatural forces, and that such forces could be manipulated and controlled by an adept, any form of questioning would center on the issue of were such powers being manipulated for malicious ends? Specifically were they being used for the demise of the Queen? Apparently answers given by Dee and the other defendants must have satisfied their inquisitors, for they were not executed for treason. However, the incident did not end at that point, and Dee apparently was held long and viewed with a certain apprehension despite the fact that he had been released from all charges of treason. He now found himself placed in the care of Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, for observation regarding his religious practices; "...remaining in his custody to be baounde for his goode ahearing betwist this Christmas next, and forthcoming whence he shall be called and thereupon set at libertie."" Bonner was to observe Dee and to attest (or deny) his religious orthodoxy. Considering that Bonner was a reactionary Catholic bishop, whose solemn duty under the Marian regime was to hasten England's reunion with Rome, and to prosecute (persecute?) those who continued to adhere to schismatic doctrine brought to England by Henry VIII and Edward VI, and further considering that Dee had been in the service of the Dudley family who had actively sought Mary's exclusion from the throne, it was remarkable that John Dee managed to stay in one piece. It can safely be surmised that Dee adopted the Catholic faith while he

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, pp. 20-21. As one might expect serving under Queen Mary Brooke was a zealous Catholic.

37

38

Acts of the Privy Council 1554-1556, p. 176.

19 was in Bonner's care." There was no mention of Dee's activities between August and November 1555; undoubtedly he was maintaining a low profile under Bonner's watchful eyes. The events that unfolded in November of 1555 were to seal Dee's reputation as a man of dubious character, not only as a practitioner of forbidden arts but also as one who actively participated in the Marian persecutions. On November 19th Dee played an active role in the examination of John Philpot. Aside from the cases of the most eminent English Protestants—the cases of Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VIII and Edward VI, Nicholas Ridley, bishop of London, Hugh Latimer, bishop of Worcester (resigned in 1539), and John Hooper, bishop of Gloucester (and Worcester from 15521554)—the case of John Philpot was one of the more important and fully documented in John Foxe's work Actes and Monuments.

Foxe's "Book of

Martyrs," as it was more commonly called is our best and most thorough report of the Marian persecutions.' Philpot's case exemplified the kind of sophisticated, stiff-necked, religiously unbending resistance that the Marian church and government faced from those convinced of the truth of their Protestant beliefs. Philpot was the archdeacon of Winchester Cathedral during the reign of Edward and a man of unbending Protestant conviction. Unwilling either to flee the country or to meekly accept the Catholic faith under Mary's rule, Philpot found himself held for questioning and attempted reeducation.

His failure either to answer

satisfactorily the question posed to him or to embrace the new Catholic order led Some have speculated that Dee might have been a -closet Catholic," or more likely an individual who was religiously flexible enough to live with the changes in religious policy under Mary's rule. Unfortunately for Dee his loyalty to the final Protestant settlement under Elizabeth would be viewed with suspicion. See Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy, pp. 34-35.

39

40 John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (first English edition, London, 1563). Foxe's work set the religious and political tone in England throughout the reign of Elizabeth, and beyond. Through Foxe's following prose England's destiny would be indelibly linked to the Protestant cause, and the martyrs would be the avant-garde of a new faith and a new Protestant English destiny.

20 to his being among the first of the Marian martyrs. Philpot was brought up for examination by a varied assortment of bishops, privy councilors, and learned disputants from the universities on more than a dozen occasions in the hope of persuading him to conform religiously.' Philpot, however, was unbending in his faith and he ultimately suffered a martyr's death on December 18, 1555. In the seventh examination of Philpot, on November 19, John Dee's name appeared on the list of examiners. Dee was listed, along with the Bishop of London, Bonner, the Bishop of Rochester, the Chancellor of Lichfield, and Dr. Chedsey, as Master Dee, Bachelor of Divinity." The questioning followed a standard form used in all cases of supposed heretics, resting on two points doctrinal in nature and exegetical in substance. The first point concerned the definition of transubstantiation. The Catholic Church holds that the bread and wine literally, and physically, are transformed into the substance and essence of the body and blood of Christ when consecrated in the Eucharist by a priest. This belief is central to Roman Catholic dogma. Various Protestant faiths deny that the Catholic priest has any such magical powers, and in general hold that the act was in fact only a commemoration of Christ's Last Supper—though some Protestant sects, particularly Lutherans, hold that Christ is present in the bread and wine, but reject the idea of the transubstantiation of the elements by a priest. These theological distinctions are subtle, yet of vital importance to all Christian groups. By denying the priests' ability to enact the "miracle" of transubstantiation the

See Foxe, Ades and Monuments, p. 1412 f., in the 1563 edition; p. 1978 E, in the 1570 edition; p. 1704 f. in the 1576 edition; and p. 1811 f. in the 1583 edition for an account of Philpot's case. For other accounts of Philpot's case see Robert Eden, ed., The Examination and Writings of John Philpot, B.C.L., pp. 69-80. Also see John Day, ed., Letters of the Reformation, p. 216 f; The Examination of John Philpot the Martyr, sig. I Iv-12r; and finally, The Letters of the Martyrs, pp. 229-245; 649. 41

The fact that Dee was listed as a Bachelor of Divinity presents a curious historical problem. There is no other reference available to support the claim that Dee ever received the Bachelor of Divinity degree from either of the English universities. The only two degrees Dee was known to hold were the B.A. and M.A. degrees from Cambridge University. A more perplexing problem is Dee being referred to as Bonner's chaplain. Did that suggest Dee had taken Catholic ordination? 42

Protestant creeds in one sweep eliminated the necessity of priests as mediators between man and God and thus removed notions of any supernatural powers held by priests. The second question, a question crucial to the Catholic Church's raison d'etre, centers on the doctrine of Petrine Supremacy. Again a fundamental divide is created between those opposing Christian faiths. The Roman Catholic Church's position concerning that issue rests firmly on its interpretation of Matthew 16:13-19, where Christ is understood (by Catholics) to place his earthly church in the hands of Peter and his successors, as Bishops of Rome. The Protestant churches, naturally enough, hold that the Roman Church has no such pre-eminence as a religious body. The questioning of Philpot, on his seventh examination, revolved around the second of those two points—the issue of Petrine Supremacy. The questioning that followed was highly technical and exegetical, exhibiting a command of Biblical history and a high level of scholarship. It also demonstrated the unbending conviction that each side held with a burning fervor concerning the truth of their beliefs. As each side saw it the salvation of any individual rested upon the truth of their convictions. Within that controversy John Dee was placed on the side of the Roman faith attacking one of God's chosen— John Philpot. The account given by Foxe of Philpot's examination placed Dee in a rather awkward position." The exchange between Dee and Philpot revolved around the issue of Petrine Supremacy, particularly as put forward by the third century Catholic Bishop and theologian, St. Cyprian. Philpot, as a protestant, denied the theory of Petrine Supremacy and further maintained that Dee did not understand the arguments used by St. Cyprian. The high point of their dialogue follows:

The actual dialogue between Dee and Philpot is identical in all four editions of Foxe's Ames and Monuments.

43

22 Dee: What? Wyll you understand S. Cyprian so? That were good indeed. Philpot: I think you cannot understand S. Cyprian better, than he doth declare himself. [here there is a pause as Bishop Bonner interrupts to tell of his having to leave to go to a meeting of Parliament] Philpot: [here Philpot is addressing the reader] Then M. Dee tooke agayne hys former authority in hand for want of another, and would have made a farther circumstance, digressing from hys purpose. To whom I sayed, he knew not where about he went, and there wytall he laughed. And sayd, hys divinity was nothing but scoffing. Dee responded: Yea? Then I have done with you: and so went away. [In a marginal note Foxe wrote "M. Dee slipped away."] Philpot then went on: M. Dee, you are to yonge in divinity to teach Me in the matters of my faith.... Philpot's questioning then continued with the remaining examiners. In the 1563 and 1570 editions of Foxe's Actes and Monuments, Dee's name was clearly placed, both in the heading of the seventh examination of John Philpot and in the margin.' A curious alteration does occur, however, in the 1576 and 1583 editions. In those two later editions the dialogue itself is identical to that in the previous two editions, but instead of Dee's name being used in the two later editions the title "a doctour" was substituted, and no mention of Dee was made in the introductory headings." What should one make of those alterations? Dee would have us believe that the alteration was Foxe's way of making up for the great wrong he had done to the character and reputation of John Dee." This

44

See Foxe, Actes and Monuments, p. 1412 in the 1563 edition and p. 1978 in the 1570 edition.

45

See Foxe, Actes and Monuments, p. 1704 in the 1576 edition and p. 1811 in the 1583 edition.

Dee, "A necessary Advertisement," to General and Rare Memorial pertaining to the Perfect Arte of Navigation, (London, 1577), sig. A. iii v.

46

23 much can be accepted, that by 1576 Dee managed to have his name removed from Foxe's text, thus seemingly removing the implications that placed him in an unfavorable light as a Catholic persecutor of the Marian martyrs. Yet the wording remained identical in all four of Foxe's pre-mortem editions. Upon closer examination one realizes that in fact "a doctour" must refer to Dee. Two reasons prove the point beyond a reasonable doubt. Firstly, at that point where Dee "slipped away" appeared the marginal note revealing that "a doctour" was in fact Dee. The point was revealed because Foxe, in the 1576 edition, wrote "M. Dee slipped away"; and in the 1583 edition the initials "M.D." [Master Dee] appeared." Secondly, and more conclusive still, was the fact that if Dee were not present the only other possible "doctour" would have been "Doctour Chadsey."" That could not have been the case—because Chadsey was still present when for the questioning of Philpot after "a doctour" slipped away, and because of Philpot's comment that Dee (or "a doctour") was too young in divinity to teach him in matters of faith, which implied that Dee must have been the mysterious "doctour", since in 1555 Dee would have only been twenty-eight years old, whereas Chadsey was forty-five, the same age as Philpot. Being the same age, Philpot would not have assumed that Dr. Chadsey was too young. Dee, on the other hand, could very easily have been seen as rather youthful, at twenty-eight years of age, to have earned a doctorate in divinity. The fact that Dee's name was (partially) removed from the later two editions of Actes and Monuments did little to conceal Dee's role in those proceedings—as contemporaries would have clearly known. The fact that Dee, after 1576, continually complained of charges of "slander" is proof enough that the slight change between the 1570 and 1576 editions of Actes and Monuments did little to alter, or improve, Dee's reputation

47

Foxe, Actes and Monuments, p. 1705 in the 1576 edition and p. 1811 in the 1583 edition.

William Chadsey, 1510-1579, was a Doctor of Divinity and a Chaplin to Bonner. He was also a zealous Catholic and spent the last years of his life imprisoned under Elizabeth I.

48

24 in the eyes of the Protestant establishment. A continual theme in Dee's life from that point onward was his ongoing refutation of charges of slander." One further reference to Dee's involvement in prosecutions under Bonner, which can be found in all four editions of Actes and Monuments, concerns the case of Bartlet Grene (or Greene).5° Dee was the "bedfellow" of Grene in his stay with Bonner—at least for the evening of 17 November 1555." Dee, in his later writings, constantly brought up the point of that occasion in order to show his critics that he, too, was being held by Bonner—another innocent victim of unjustified persecution and malicious slander." In the account as seen in Actes and Monuments Dee would have been viewed as a papist for a role he played in the proceedings of 19 November 1555 against Philpot. Furthermore, anyone who was familiar with Dee's case would realize that he was being held for practicing the art of conjuring, which could possibly be seen as being treasonous, and not for his religious beliefs, as Philpot and Grene undoubtedly were. In other words, the fact that Dee was being detained by Bonner, or that he shared a cell with Grene, does not put him in the same category with either Grene or Philpot, both of whom were burned as heretics.

For examples of that protestation and defense of his reputation see Preface to Billingsley's Euclide; Dee, General and Rare Memorials, sig. *r-E iij r; Dee's tract, To the King's Most Excellent Majestic; and finally Dee's own, Autobiographical Tracts and Diary.

49

Foxe, Actes and Monuments, p. 1470 in the 1563 edition; p.2024 in the 1570 edition; pp. 17441751 in the 1570 edition; and pp. 1852-1853 in the 1583 edition. Also see Dee, The Perfect Arte of Navigation, sig. A iiij. r.

39

The term "bedfellow" should be interpreted metaphorically as having shared the same room. It could also possibly be interpreted as meaning an associate. It should also be remembered that Dee was also still being held by Bonner for observation. It is not clear whether Dee, on the night of 17 November was "planted" there by Bonner to exact information from Grene in order to incriminate him, or that he simply was just sharing a lodging while in Banner's charge.

31

See for example Dee, utobiographical Tracts, p. 20 where Dee commented on his questioning by Star Chamber; "...I was discharged of the suspicion of treason, and was sent to the examining and custody of Byshop Bonner for religious matters. Where also I was prisoner long, and bedfellow with Bartlet Grene, who was burnt..." 32

25 However, it should also be realized that Dee was not placed at the same level as Bonner, the Bishop of Rochester, or Dr. Chadsey. All three men were later convicted of crimes under Elizabeth and would spend their last days in prison, victims of their own Catholic fanaticism. Dee's position was never quite pushed that far. What does remain crystal clear, and of paramount importance for the understanding of Dee's reputation, was the fact that the returning Marian exiles—and English Protestants in general—were swayed by Foxe's book and reacted accordingly. Foxe's Actes and Monuments was popular reading, and every Cathedral and many churches had a copy. Next to the Bible it was the most popular book in England and was the main instrument that formulated the English perception of Mary's reign. Dee passed the remainder of his days hounded by attacks on his reputation, which began occurring immediately after the first edition of Actes and Monuments was printed in 1563. The prominence which Dee had apparently held in Edward VI's reign was lost, and all that Dee did from that point onward was watched with suspicious eyes. That it was Foxe and his book that created the situation in which Dee found himself is apparent from the comments Dee made after Foxe's editions appeared. Dee's publications, Propaedeurnata Aphoristica in 1558, and Monas Hieroglyphica in 1564, contain no defense by Dee against any slanders mounted against him. This is a curious and interesting point, seeing how both of those works were highly esoteric, containing the essence of both neoplatonic and hermetic mysticism, and abstruse to all but a select few. In his introduction to the second edition of the Aphoristica, written in 1568, Dee stated: "...you must not reveal openly to unworthy and profane persons what—driven by yearning to illuminate and broaden truth so it might be fully apparent only to you [the initiate]—I have stretched the sinews of my poor wit to provide, least to your shame and mine, it should be turned to great harm."' Quotation from Dee's Propaedeumata Aphoristica, in Wayne Shumaker and J. L Heilbron, John Dee on Astronomy, p. 121.

53

26 All Dee's works done after 1564, his Mathematical Preface to the Elements of Euclide's Geometry (1570); his General and Rare Memorials

Pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation (1577); A Letter.., of a Certain Studious Gentleman (1599); and his tract To the King's Most Excellent Majestie (1604), all contain large sections devoted to the defense of his reputation, a reputation which Dee always held was damaged by unfounded prejudice and slander. As he stated in the Mathematical Preface: Shall the folly of Idiots, and the Mallice of the Scornful, so much prevaile, that He, who seeketh no worldly gain or glory at their handes: But onely, of god, the threasor of Heavenly wisdome, & knowledge of pure veritie [truth]: Shall he (I say) in the meane space, be robbed and spoiled of his honest name and fame? He continued with his defense:.. .Shall that man, be (in hugger mugger) [secrecy] condemned, as a Companion of Helhoundes, and a Caller, and Coniurer of wicked and damned Spirits? He that bewaileth his great want of time, sufficiently (to his contenation) for learning of Godly wisdome, and Goldly Verities in : and onely therm n setteth all his delight... Dee lamented on the great time and energy that his work required, and how his devotion to those endeavors had taken over the previous twenty-five years of his life. He then continued his apologetic lamentations: ...And, so, doth the Malicious scorner, secretly wishe, & brauely and boldly face down, behinde my back...0 (you such) my unkinde Countrymen. 0 unnaturall Countrymen. 0 unthankful Countrymen. 0 Brainsicke, Rashe, Spiteful, and Distainfull Countrymen. Why oppresse you me, thus violently, with your slaundering of me.. .And in the end (in your judgemet) am I become, worse, then when I began.. .A dangerous Member in the Common Wealth: and no Member of the Church of Christ? Call you this, to be Learned? Dee listed the four types of men who were slandering him: The first, I may name, Vaine prattling busybodies: The second, Fond [foolish] Frendes: The third, Imperfectly zealous: and the fourth, Malicious Ignorant.

27

To all four types Dee's response was, "Quia faciet Dominus ludicium afficti: & vindictam paupperum." [Since the Lord will make a judgment of the afflicted one, and vengeance for the poor.] Clearly he appealed to those unnamed voices to refrain from their slandering his reputation. He concluded his general appeal thusly: And (to conclude) most of all, let them be ashamed of Man, and afraide of the dreadful! and Juste Judge: both Foolishly or Maliciously to devise: and the, devilishly to father their new fond Monsters on me: Innocent in hand and hart: for trespacing either against the lawe of God, or Man, in any my Studies or Exercises, Philosophical!, or Mathematical!: As in due time, I hope, will be more manifest." That apologetic defense of his reputation was simply the first in a steady stream that ran its course for the remainder of Dee's lifetime. A second such defense came seven years later with the publication of The Perfect Arte of navigation. That work had an even longer section devoted to a defense of Dee's reputation--twenty-three full pages of text! Such a lengthy diatribe was of even greater lamentation than the apology seen in 1564. In it, Dee (writing in the third person) continued with a defense of his reputation: And, so, hath the Freede Infemall, most craftily, and unduly, gotten The honest Name and Fame, of one extraordinary Studious Gentleman, of this land [Dee] within his Claws:...by wicked and ungodly Arte, to be framed: and, by the help of Satan, or Beelzebub, to be finished; unleast, the wise, or the peculiarly chief Authorized, will use due, Carefully, and Charitable Discretion, From henceforth, to repress, abolish, and utterly extinguish this very Injurious Report... Spread & Credited, all this Realm over: it is to wete, That the Forsaid Gentleman, is, or was, Not Onely, a Conjurer, or Caller of Devils: but, A Great doer therin: Yea, The Great Conjurer: & so (as some would say) The Arche Conjurer, of the whole kingdom."

Dee, Mathematical! Preface (edited by Allen G. Debus, 1975 [1570]), sig. A. j r-A. j v. 55

Dee, The Perfect Arte of Navigation, sig., [] iij r-v.

28 Dee, throughout that advertisement, continued to refer to the "great hurt," "malicious injury," and "damage of the Gentleman," who was "harmless," done to him through that malicious slander. Dee expanded his defense to include his studies as well, which, in part, were the reason for the bad reputation he suffered. As he stated: Nerer to press this matter in particular, it is nedeless. But, by This, and such like foule oversight of Man, & Cruell despite of the hellish Enemy, it is come to pass.. .that, wheras the said Studious Gentleman, bath at god his most merciful handes, receyved a great Talent of Knowledge and Science: (after his long, painfull, and Costly Travails, susteyned for the same:)... undertaken chiefly, for the Advancement of the Wonderfull Veritie Philosophical]: And also, for the State Publick of this Brytish Monarchy." In that same work we also see that attacks against Dee came from several different directions—not only for his dubious position while in Bonner's care but also for his scientific work, especially in his Propaedeumata Aphoristica. One accuser was a loannes Offhuysius, who claimed that Dee stole the basic theory of the aphorisms from his work, De Divina Astrorum facultate." Again, Dee refuted those charges and defended his reputation: and spiteful] false devise: yea (most obstinately and impudently) they still touch to divers Gentlemen, and certaine Noble Men, that some other, or (in effect) any Man else, was the Author therof: rather, than they would honestly acknowledge the Truthe, of onely this Gentleman his peculiar Industry, and no small skill, used in the contriving and framing of the Booke: [Propaedeumata Aphoristica] containing the chief Crop and Roote, of Ten yeres his Outlandish & Homish Studies and exercises Philosopicall..." Dee's ultimate refutation of those "slanderous charges" can be seen in the substance of his work as a whole. Dee's goal was, of course, the promotion of

5

' Sig., iiij r-v.

57

Sig. siij r-v.

58

Sig., s jv-s ijr.

29 "Brytish Imperial designs," where the "Perpetual Politik Securitie and better preservation of this famous Kingdom, from all Forrein danger.. .to be the chiefest: and most needful Publik Benefit....' Dee stated his purpose in publishing that work: ...both for the Honor and Wealth of England, and no little furderance of the Glory of God... To which he added, Seeing, the same, conteineth in it, such Fragments of Instruction, Received for the foresaid Philosopher: being hitherto (almost) a FreendIess freend. Why say I, freendless? Seeing, a Gentleman, of great Experience in this world, sayd unto him, in my hearing, within these few dayes: Tu certe Infoelix, at multos inter Amicos. [You are really unlucky, but you are among a lot of friends.]... But, for all that, between a cold freend, and a faint hearted Enemy, is small diversity.' Dee concluded his "Advertisement to the Reader" with a statement on the importance of this work, which is of "great Benefit and Commodity Publik.'"' He included a final flurry in his defense, stating: I trust that this my sincere, blunt, and simple Advise, shall be some Occasion, that hensforward, this honest Gentleman, shall be fully restored to the Integrity of his deserved honest Name and Fame: and, also receyve great Publik Thanks, Comfort & Ayde of the Whole Brytish State." One can see that between the two publications of 1570 and 1577, Dee felt his reputation to be worsening, as seen in the more extensive apology in the later work. In fact the work as a whole can be seen as a defense of Dee's reputation. Dee's appeals continued throughout the 1570s and 1580s. Finally in 1583, with the publication of the fourth edition of Foxe's Acres and Monuments, after more than twenty years of attempting to rectify his reputation and refute those 59 Sig.

s iij V.

6° Sig.

s ij r-v.

61

Sig. e * iij r.

62 Sig.

e iij V.

30 accusations brought against him, Dee departed England for the Continent where

he hoped that his talents would be better appreciated. The hiatus would prove to be too brief. In 1589, when Dee finally returned to England, his negative reputation followed him. Finally, after seven years of petitioning for a living, Dee was awarded the Wardenship at Christ's College, Manchester. That position was a mixed blessing as Dee continually encountered hostility from the Fellows of the College. Dee was finally forced to relinquish the post in 1605. All the while from 1589 until his death in 1608/9, Dee continued to write in defense of his reputation. In 1594 Dee wrote an apologetical tract directed to the Archbishop of Canterbury." Here, as with his previous tracts, he goes to great lengths to show the validity of his varied and diverse studies, declaring that he had wonderfully labored, to finde, follow, use, and haunt the truth, straight, and most narrow path, leading all true, devout, zealous, faithful!, and constant Christian students...,"' and how it was God who had -...insinuated into my hart, an insatiable zeale, and desire, to knowe his truth..."; again he defended those studies against the "...rash, and malicious devisers, and contrivers of most untrue, foolish, and wicked reports, and fables, of, and concerning my foresaid studious exercises.. .and learning of true Philosophie....'"5 Dee further lamented: "...the great losses and damages which in sundry sorts I have sustained.. .as the rash, lewede, fond, and most untrue fables and reports of me and my studies philosophicall, have done...,"" and how, "...from my youth hitherto, I have used, and still use, good, lawful!, honest, Christian, and divinely prescribed meanes, to attaine to the knowledge of those truthes...." An interesting comment was made

63

John Dee, A Letter Containing a Most briefe Discourse Apologeticall... (1594)

64

Sig. A 2 v.

65

Sig. B 3 r.

66

Sig. B 3 v.

31

at that point which possibly can attest to Dee's Catholic leanings, as he described himself as a, "...true symetricall fellow member, of the holy and mystical body, Catholic extended and placed...."" Perhaps English Protestant attacks against Dee were not totally unwarranted and Dee's own defense along patriotic lines not totally helpful in justifying his position. Dee's final published protestation attempting to redeem his reputation came in 1604 at the beginning of the reign of James I. Two published tracts, to the King and to the House of Commons, show the continued plight of John Dee. In his petition to King James I Dee asked once again "...to be cleared of charges of slander.' Apparently by 1604 Dee was at his wits end in attempting to clear himself of accusations which had plagued him since 1564. He even went so far as to beg the king to be tried on those charges—and hopefully acquitted. As Dee stated; ...to cause your Highnesse sayd Servant, to be tryed and cleared of that horrible and damnable, and to him, most grievous and damageable Sclaunder: generally, and for these many years last past, in his kingdome raysed, and continued, by report, and print, against him: Namely, That he is, or hath bin a Conjurer, or Caller, or Invocator of divels: upon which most ungodly, and false report, so boldly constantly, and impudently avouched.... He continued with a call for a trial: ...to be tried, in the premises: who offereth himselfe [Dee] willingly, to the punishment of Death:.. .If by any due, true, and just meanes, the said name of the Conjurer, or Caller, or Invocator of Divels, or damned Spirits, can be proved, to have beene, or to be, duely or justly reported of him, or attributed unto him.... Dee ended the petition with high praise for the King, "...the most blessed and Triumphant Monarch that ever this Brytish Empire, enjoyed.' Dee's final tract, 67

Sig. B 3 v.

" John Dee, To the Kings Most Excellent Majestie, (1604) 69

Dee, To the Kings Most Excellent Majestic

32 to the House of Commons, followed several days later. It too followed the same format as Dee's other petitions, complaining of the "fowle slanderous tongues" and -divelish hate" heaped against him, and how for "halfe hundred yeeres, which hath had wrong, by false light tongues...", he had suffered. He begged the House of Commons for -Your helpe, therefore, by wisdome lore, and by your power, so great and sure, I humbly endure."' His petitions were never answered. The last years of Dee's life found him poverty-stricken and forgotten. Once released from Bonner's care, sometime in the early winter of 1556, Dee returned to a more reticent life devoted to his studies, showing a keen interest in mathematical and astronomical topics.' Dee, already on his way to accumulating one of the largest private libraries of the day, made an appeal to Queen Mary in 1556, for the preservation of ancient texts and the establishment of a Royal Library.' Although an enlightened and progressive idea, nothing came of it. It did not pique Mary's interest, and Dee retired to a quiet life engaged in his sundry studies. No doubt Dee was devoting a great deal of his time to his mathematical studies, which culminated in 1558 with the publication of his first major work to be put to print—his Propaedeumata Aphoristica.' In brief the Propaedeumata Aphoristica was an attempt to develop a scientific approach (i.e., reasoned, mathematical) to the study of astrology--or, an attempt to utilize magical doctrine to work out the operational principles of the physical universe, part of what could be referred to as a failed scientific revolution

" John 71 See

Dee, To the Honorable Assembly of the Commons in the present Parliament.

Nicholas Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy, p. 36.

72 Originally recorded in the British Museum, Cotton MS. Vite.lius C. VII, art. 6. It can also he found in Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, pp. 46-49. See also, Julian Roberts and Andrew Watson, John Dee's Library Catalogue, (London, 1990)

Wayne Shumaker and J. L. Heilbron.John Dee on Astronomy: Propaedeumata Aphoristica (1558 & 1568), Latin and English, (Berkeley. 1978). And Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy, pp. 21-22.

73 See

33 in astrology.' The work itself is somewhat enigmatic, reflecting Dee's conviction that certain fields of knowledge were meant for initiates only: Do you, therefore, who are by custom a most observant investigator of nature, search out in these aphorisms the true virtues of nature: virtues which are great, and barely credible to a few wise men, but known only to a very few. And when you receive them, I request you declare publicly that no 'incautious person' should strive to fish out and draw forth from them, to his own harm, things that are not written for him.' Simply put, Dee wished to compute astrological influences mathematically. In the aphorisms Dee set out to compute the strength of the rays emitted from celestial bodies at diverse times and places. The whole course of the working out of the aphorisms was an investigation of what Dee referred to as "not only those things to be said to exist which are plainly evident, and known by their actions in the natural order, but also those which, seminally present, as it were, in the hidden corners of nature wise men can demonstrate to exist."" Dee went on to argue that "everyplace in the universe contains rays of all the things that have active existence," and that those rays "...differ in their power of affecting and in the causing of their effects so long as they act wholly upon the same object."" In the aphorisms Dee emphasized the complexity of astrological influences and sought to show how differing astronomical bodies have differing astrological influences. Throughout the Propaedeumata Aphoristica Dee continually referred to "sensible rays." Such rays were then able to be analyzed and utilized by the adept. As Dee 74 Mary Ellen Bowden, "The Scientific Revolution in Astrology: the English Reformers, 15581686," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1974, pp. 65-79.

Shumaker and Heilbron, John Dee on Astronomy, p. 113. 76

Shumaker and Heilbron, p. 123; Aphorism III. Shumaker and Heilbron, pp. 123-124; Aphorisms IV and VI.

78

Cf. Aphorisms XIII and XXVIII.

34 asserted in the corollary to Aphorism LII, -By this means obscure, weak, and, as it were hidden virtues of things, when strengthened by catoptric art [the study of the reflection of light], may become quite manifest to our senses. The industrious investigator of secrets has great help offered to him from this source in testing the peculiar powers not merely of the stars but also of other things which they work upon through their sensible rays.' 79 The problem Dee faced in trying to make astrology a science was that astrology in essence is concerned with secret truths, accessable to the initiate alone. It was not a course of study available to the public at large,'nor did it show any productive or progressive effects for mankind generally. The aphorisms were concerned with the working out of how cosmic sympathies worked on man. As Dee wrote: "Nothing happens to man without cosmic sympathy.' Dee, in the course of the Propaedeumata Aphoristica, mapped out a study of astrology, or the operation of stellar rays,' in the hope of uniting celestial powers with human capacity for the advancement of humankind. As has been pointed out, -It seemed to contemporaries that astrology had the potential of becoming a modern science, and they pursued this goal accordingly.' For Dee and the astrologers, however, they were simply attacking problems that could not be solved; or even if they could be solved, the means of measurement required to illustrate those astrological laws successfully were generally absent." Dee's fortunes were again to change dramatically, with the death of Queen Mary in November 1558. The ascension of Queen Elizabeth I ushered in a more 7° Shumaker 8° Dee,

Autobiographical Tracts, p. 55.

81 Shumaker 82

and Heilbron, p. 199; Aphorism CX1X.

Shumaker and Heilbron, p. 189; Aphorism CXIII.

83 Mary 84

and Heilbron, p. 149.

Ellen Bowden, "The Scientific Revolution in Astrology," p. 218.

Bowden, 62.

35 fruitful chapter in Dee's career. For the next quarter century Dee would flourish as a scholar, perhaps coming the closest to achieving the notoriety he craved

Chapter III The Queen's Philosopher The Apex of a Career 1558-1583

The heady days of Mary's reign had ended in ignominy. Her designs to reestablish Catholic rule died with the Queen. The ascension of her half sister Elizabeth heralded the dawn of a new age for England. Dee, having by that point established himself as a philosopher of note with the publication of his

Propaedeumata Aphoristica, was asked to calculate the most auspicious day for the coronation of Elizabeth. At least that was what Dee claimed. In his

Autobiographical Tracts Dee noted that "Before her Majesties coronacion I wrote at large, and delivered it for her Majesties use by commandment of the Lord Robert, after Earle of Leicester, what in my judgment the ancient astrologers would determine of the election day of such a tyme, as was appointed for her Majestie to be crowned in." Every author writing on Dee has accepted at face value Dee's claim that he set the date for the coronation on January 15, 1559. Yet, no other corroboration exists to support such a claim. Dee would have us believe that he was a key figure in the Elizabethan Court and the Elizabethan Intellectual world at large. I argue that those claims do Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 21. See Woolley, The Queen's Conjurer, chapter VIII, especially p. 56.

85

38 not hold up under close scrutiny. Dee certainly did have mathematical knowledge and skills with a variety of arts, but his place within the Elizabethan World was peripheral and marginal. Dee's services and skills were needed on occasion, but that was due more to the world view held by his contemporaries rather than his talents having ushered in some new scientific paradigm. In an age filled with supernatural explanations, an age not yet molded by a scientific model based on reason and a more Baconian methodology, Dee's arcane studies could be seen as pertinent and useful. A majority of Dee's contemporaries would not have made much of a distinction between mathematics and more occult endeavors. Even Dee himself seemingly made little distinction between the two. For Dee mathematics was a tool, or an art, that could help the adept to unlock the more obscure and mysterious forces of nature. In that dimension for understanding science Dee certainly could be seen as skilled and learned; a man whose talents could be of use to others. In that regard also Dee could be seen as having made valuable contributions to mathematical studies. One contemporary said of Dee that he was "accounted of the learned mathematicians throughout Europe ye prince of Mathematicians of this age...."SG Despite that acclaim Dee's services were occasional and of little lasting importance to the English State, or to the advancement of any scientific knowledge. His primary service to the Elizabethan Court was related to his abilities in casting horoscopes and interpreting astrological signs. In an age not yet fully governed by a more enlightened rational methodology those services did have a limited appeal. The most fruitful aspect of Dee's career can be found in his role as navigational adviser to the Muscovy Company and as a teacher for a select group of individuals in mathematics and geographical topics. We are already familiar

86 Edward Worsop, A Discoverie of sundrie errors and faults daily committed by Landemeaters, (London, 1582), sig. G3v.

39 with Dee's work for the Willoughby-Chancellor expedition of 1553. When trading relations with Russia began paying off, the Muscovy Company would continue to use Dee's services. In 1559-1560 Stephen Bourne, another of the seamen trained by Dee, set out with the hope of completing the voyage begun by Chancellor and Willoughby. Bourne made it as far as Novaya Zemlya (a large island, north of Russia, in the Arctic Ocean) and the Kara Strait (separating Russia from Novaya Zemlya) before heavy ice and bitterly cold temperatures forced him to turn back. At that point that the voyages in search of a north-east passage to Asia ceased, and the Muscovy Company settled down to a satisfactorily lucrative trade with Russia. Fifteen years lapsed before Dee's services were again needed for continued voyages of exploration." One can assume that during the interim Dee continued to teach and advise pilots and navigators, although much of his time in the 1560s was also consumed with his arcane endeavors in astrology and alchemy. The publication of his Monas Hieroglyphica and a second edition of his Propaedeumata Aphoristica, his two most famous published works dealing with the application of mathematics to the unlocking of nature's hidden powers, appeared in those years. The 1570s found Dee's attentions again turning to issues of navigation and exploration as a propagandist more so than as a consultant. In 1577 Dee published the first part of a projected four-part work General and Rare memorials pert ayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation entitled "The Petty Navy Royall."" In that work Dee made an appeal to the English Nation to be aware of its greatest resource—its connection to the sea. "The Petty Navy Royall" was Dee's plea for the creation of a royal navy financially supported by the nation at large (a half

87

See above, pp.13-15.

88

See, Shumalcer, John Dee on Astronomy, pp. 9-10: and Taylor, Tudor Geography, pp. 89-97.

Dee, General and Rare Memorials.... "The Petty Navy Royall" was the only part of that larger projected work to be published. Part Three exists in a badly charred manuscript. The other two sections have long since vanished. 89

40 century ahead of Charles I's entanglement with Ship Money!). That navy, as envisioned by Dee, was to have the dual function of protecting the realm and protecting and promoting commerce. In terms of promoting commerce Dee was implying the protection of the English monopoly of cod fishing in the Grand Banks. An added bonus in Dee's mind would have been a continued exploration of the northern seas. Unfortunately as far as Dee's designs were concerned, his work was never fully published nor was his call for a royal navy heeded. A second purpose behind the General and Rare Memorials, and perhaps one that had a greater appeal for the Crown and venturors, was the assertion of British claims to foreign lands. On that point we see Dee's attempts as an antiquarian to support British claims to the northern sections of the New World. Here especially we can see Dee's attempts to trace the lineage of the Tudor monarchy back to the legends of King Arthur and to the supposed mythical founder of a British Empire, the Trojan hero Brutus.' Dee's polemical and promotional talents were in full swing as he proclaimed his patriotism and loyalty to Elizabeth and the Tudor dynasty, as well as attempting to advance his own position. One of Dee's more ingenious and elaborate proposals towards that end was his claim that the twelfth-century Welsh Prince Madoc had actually settled North America c. 1170. The Madoc tale was a marginal story seized upon by Elizabethan Empire builders such as Dee and utilized in their arguments supporting British claims to North America. British overtures towards New World territories became specifically connected to the Madoc myth due to the Welsh affinity of both Dee and the Tudor monarchs. Dee, in an imaginative piece of antiquarian propaganda, proceeded to justify British claims to North America. As historian William Sherman has commented, "In Dee's 1576-1578 manuscript 9° For Dee's comments on Arthur and British claims to foreign lands see General and Rare Memorials; Cotton MS Vitellius C. VII, if 201f. Also see Dee, Brytanici Imperil Lir-rates, British Library Additional MS 59681. See also Ken MacMillan, ed., John Dee: The Limits of the British Empire, (Westport, CT.: Praeger, 2004).

41 Madoc became the linchpin of claims for North America." Or as Welsh scholar Gwyn Williams has observed, Dee "snatched what had been a marginal, perhaps underground story and thrust it into the centre of Elizabethan enterprise."' Dee's assertions of the Madoc legend were used as the principal justification for British claims to a sizeable portion of North America. The fact that Madoc was a Welshman of royal lineage, who sailed the stormy seas of the North Atlantic three hundred years before Columbus, clearly gave the Elizabethan Empire builders a legal claim to the New World. For Dee's part it was a beautiful and ingenious use of antiquarianism that served the dual purpose of supporting the British quest for territorial aggrandizement and Dee's own quest for place and preferment.' Undoubtedly to Dee's disappointment, Elizabethan designs of Empire never implemented Dee's propaganda. Dee's services as a navigational expert and geographer were again called upon in 1576 in an attempt to locate a north-west sea route to the Orient.' Martin Frobisher and Christopher Hall undertook the voyage, and both men spoke highly of Dee's service to them. In a letter from Scotland en route on their 1576 voyage they wrote: To the worshipful and our approved good friend M. Dee, give these with speed. I and M. Hall make our dutiful Commendations to you, with many thanks as we Can wish, till we be better furnished with farder matters to satisfy our duties for Your friendly Instruction: which when we use we do remember you, and hold ourselves bound to you as poor disciples, not able to be Scholars William H. Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance, p. 188. Gwyn A. Williams, Madoc: The Making of a Myth, p. 66. Robert W. Barone, "Madoc and John Dee: Welsh Myth and Elizabethan Imperialism," Elizabethan RCS'

91

(Spring, 2000). 92

Barone, "Madoc and John Dee," pp. 3-4.

93 Here it is curious to note that Dee apparently had no firm belief as to whether a North-East, or North-West, route was the more advantageous in reaching the desired goal of the Orient. Dee simply speculated that in either instance the Orient could be reached and the ventures prove profitable. Ultimately navigators advised by Dee failed in their attempts in locating any passage to the Orient.

but in good will for want of learning, and that we will furnish with good will and diligence to the uttermost of our powers. The cause of our stay here was to stop a leake... Your loving frend to use and command, Martin Frobisher. Yours to command, Christopher HallY

Dee's role in Frobisher's and Hall's expedition was that of instructor "in the rules of Geometry and Cosmography," as well as "in the better use of Instnunents.' 95 In three separate voyages Frobisher and Hall managed to penetrate into the Davis Strait and Baffin Bay, but no passage to the east was discovered. They did, however, return to England with their ships laden with an ore believed to be gold and with Eskimos they claimed to be Asians. Investors were initially hopeful, and Michael Lok, the chief financial backer of the venture, also spoke highly of Dee's service: The learned man Mr. John Dee hearing the common report of this new enterprise, and understanding of the preparation for furniture of the ships, being thereby persuaded that that would now proceed, and having not been acquainted with our purpose in any part before, about the 20th day of may, A* 1576 of his own good nature favoring the enterprise in respect of the service and commodity of his natural country, came unto me desiring to know of me the reasons of my foundation and purpose in this enterprise, and offering his furtherance therof, with such instructions and advise as by his learing he could give therm. Whereupon I conceived a great good opinion of him, and therefore appointed a time of meeting at my house, whereat were present Martin Frobisher, Stephen Burrough, Christopher Hall, with others. Upon which matters when he had thus heard and seen, he answered that he was right glad to know of me this much of this matter, and that he was greatly satisfied in his desire above his expectation, and that I was so well grounded in this... Likewise he shewed me all his books and writings of his own: and also showed me his instruments which I did very well like. And afterwards.., he took pains to demonstrate the Rules of Geography and Cosmography for the better instruction of the Masters and Mariners in the use of 99

In Taylor, Tudor Geography, p. 202.

95 Taylor, Tudor Geography, p. 108. There was no detail given as to the specific "rules" in Geometry and Cosmography, nor any reference as to what the "Instruments" being used were.

43 Instruments for Navigation in their voyages.. .whereby he deserved much cornmentation.96 Clearly an obvious admiration existed for Dee's skills and talents. Two additional voyages were undertaken based on those discoveries, but when the ore was found not to be gold and no easy access to Asia was forthcoming, the voyages were terminated. Despite that setback, quests for a northern route to the Orient continued as fervently as before. In 1579 Dee was already in contact with Adrian Gilbert and John Davis, proposing further plans for a north-west voyage, while simultaneously becoming involved in additional plans with the Muscovy Company for a north-east voyage. The planner behind the North-East voyage was William Borough who had been commissioned by the Muscovy Company to undertake the venture. Borough appointed Arthur Pet as commander of the voyage with Charles Jackman as his second in command. Once again Dee acted in the role of adviser and instructor for the venture. Dee laid down his instructions for the best route to the East in a "new chart made by his own hand, expressing ther Cathay voyage more expertly than any other yet published."' Pet and Jackman, like Frobisher and Hall before them, expressed their thanks to Dee for his service to them. Dee's instructions and charts for the venture expressed "more expertly than any other yet published" his conception of a north-easterly route to Asia. Yet his charts were fraught with errors. Dee in his mapping of a north-east route to Asia never imagined that Russia extended as far north as it did. As he wrote to Pet and Jackman: When you pass Tabin, or come to the longitude of 142, or 143, or 144, or 145 degrees farder easterly, yt is probable, that you shall

96

Cotton MS. Otho E. Vifi, f. 27 r-v.

97

Cotton MS. Otho E. VIII. f. 79 r.

44 fynde the land on your right hand running much Southerly and Easterly." Dee assumed that the coast sloped sharply to the south, allowing for easy, warm water sailing. That assumption of Dee's was accepted by other geographers as correct. As the famous cartographer Mercator wrote, "the voyage to Cathais by the East is doubtless very easy and short, and I have oftentimes marveled, that being so happily begun, it hath been left off, and the course changed into the West, after more than half of your voyage was discovered.' Thus others valued Dee for his geographical and navigational knowledge, although much of the actual exploring was simply a matter of guesswork and trial and error. In the end the Pet-Jackman voyage, like the others before it, discovered not a north-east passage to the Orient but only the ice of the Arctic Ocean. The failure of the Pet-Jackman venture, however, in no way lessened Dee's desire to find a northerly passage to the Orient. That same year, 1580, Dee also became involved in the Davis-Gilbert venture, again in a search for that illusive north-west passage. Dee's interest in that voyage might, however, have been motivated by more than just the desire to discover a northerly passage to the East. In the design for the voyage Dee obtained a grant for the royalties of all the lands discovered above the 50th degree of latitude—which, if carried out, would have given Dee a lucrative financial interest in most of what is Canada.' Like all the other voyages in search of a northerly passage to Asia, the Davis-Gilbert expedition ended in failure. No passage providing easy access to the Orient was discovered, nor was any settlement established as a result of the voyage.

98

Landsdowne MS. 122. f. 30 r-v.

99

Taylor, Tudor Geography, p. 130.

1°° Calendar of State Papers: Domestic, Elizabeth 1581-1596, p. 114. The entry for June, 1583 reads; "Heads of the grant to Adrian Gilbert to discover and settle the Northerly parts of Atlantis, called Novus Orbis. Not inhabited or discovered by any Christian hitherto but by him. The said Adrian Gilbert, John Dee, and John Davis to be exempt from all customs for ever."

45 Dee's reputation and position as a mathematician of note was secured during those years. Commentary by some of the leading mathematicians of the day attested to Dee's importance. Thomas Digges, son of Leonard Digges and Dee's ward after the death of his father, commented in the "Preface" to his work Alae seu scalae mathematicae that Dee -was his mathematical father."' Dee tutored Digges in geometry and arithmatic, providing the groundwork for Digges's own interest in those subjects.

William Bourne also praised Dee,

referring to him as "that famous and learned man, who hath made mention therof in his Mathematical Preface, wherein I haue hadde my principall instructions, as touching that Arte or Science." Bourne also gave praise to Dee for his work in optics.'" Edward Worsop, in his book entitled A Discoverie of sundrie errors and faults committed by Landemeaters, accounted Dee "ye Prince of Mathematicians of this age."°3 Finally Thomas Hyller, in The Arte of Vulgar Arithematic, published as late as 1600, praised Dee's "Preface" to Euclid.' Even the great Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe, praised Dee's work in mathematics and astronomy. As he stated in a letter to Sir Thomas Savelle, in 1590: Saluta quoque meo nomine officiose nobilissimum et excellentissum dominum Johannem Dee, quem in patriam feliciter reversum audivi, ipsique hoc nomine congratulor, omniaque prospera opto. [Courteous greetings to my noble and excellent friend John Dee, who I have heard returned to his native land. To him I offer congratulations and all success.]'"

101

Thomas Digges, Aloe seu scalae mathe aticae, sig. A 2.

102

William Bourne, Treasure for Travellers, sig. Aaaa.ii. r.

103

Edward Worsop, A Discoverie of sundrie errors and faults committed by Landemeaters, sig. G

144

Thomas Hylles, The Arta of Vulgar Arithematic, sig. B 4 v.

ISO

Harlian MS. 6995, 1.40.

3.

46 Yet apart from those few affirmations of Dee's importance as a mathematician, scarcely anyone of importance within the world of science or mathematics said another word.'" Much of the praise of Dee's role as a mathematician, in fact, came from Dee's own pen. Dee was an expert at self aggrandizement. Any positive role that Dee played within the Elizabethan intellectual world must be consigned to his role as a popularizer of mathematics rather than as an innovator on the cutting edge of the new sciences.'" Dee's role as a promoter of mathematics was first seen in his editing of Robert Recorde's Ground of Aries, first edition 1561, and more especially in his "Preface" for the Billingsley edition of Euclide 's Geometry, 1570.1" Recorde's book, the first mathematical work done in English, was aimed primarily for educating those people not versed in Latin—especially to serve seamen and mechanics. Undoubtedly Recorde wished to remove the veil of mystery that often surrounded the mathematical arts. Dee, in a somewhat ostentatious tone, stated in his introduction to The Ground of Aries that "such work is good for the simpler ignorant sort (which needeth the most help) it may be a good furtherance and means to knowledge."° Again, clearly Dee's role in the editing of Recorde's 1°6 It is interesting to note that Dee was not included in van Roomen's book on Mathematicians. See A. van Roomen, Ideae Alatheinaticae pars prima, (Antwerp, 1593), quoted in P. Gilbert, "Les sciences exactes dans l'ancienne Universite de Louvain," Revue des questions scientifiques, 16 (1884) 438-453.

J. L. Heilbron has pointed out that Dee's contributions [to science] "were promotional and pedagogical: he advertised the uses and the beauties of mathematics, collected books and manuscripts, and assisted in saving and circulating ancient texts; he attempted to interest and instruct artisans, mechanics, and navigators, and strove to ease the beginner's entry into arithmetic and geometry. It is in this last role, as [teacher], that Dee displayed his competence, and made his occasional small contribution.. .to the study of mathematics." From J. L. Heilbron's "Introduction" in Wayne Shumaker, ed., John Dee on Astronomy, p. 17. Dee certainly did not posses the "profundity" as a mathematician that Peter French suggests. See French, John Dee, p. 168. 107

1°' Robert Recorde, Ground of Arte, (London, 1561) a second edition was published in 1582. Both works were edited by Dee. Dee, "Mathematicall Preface," in Euclide's Geometry, (London, 1570). 1°9

Recorde, Ground of ArIa, (1561 edition), sig. v.

47 work was a promotional one, attempting to make mathematics available to a wider audience. Dee was obviously a popularizer, not an initiator. Dee edited the second edition of Recorde's work in 1582, twelve years after the publication of his own "Preface" in the Billingsley edition of Euclide's Geometty.

In that

second edition Dee added the following verses addressed to "the earnest Arithemeticians," expressing his conception of the relationship between geometry and arithmetic: My loving friend to Science bent. Something thou hast by this booke woone But if thou wilt be excellent, Another race thou must yet nmne... The famous Greeke of Platoes lore, Euclide I meane Geometer:

So true, so plaine, so faught with store, (as in our speech) is yet no where A treasure straunge, that booke wil prove, With numbers skil, matcht in due sort, This I thee warn of sincere love, And to proceede to thee exhort.' Apparently Dee was confident that his verse style would appeal to wouldbe students of mathematics! The last work Dee produced as a popularizer of mathematics was his "Mathematicall Praeface" to the 1570 Billingsley edition of Euclide's Geometry. Dee stated that such work was necessary in order to educate those unfamiliar with the mathematical arts. As he stated. "...that which I know to be most commendable: and (in the first bringing into common handling, the Artes 11° John Dee and John Mellis, ed., The Grounde of Arte, by Robert Recorde (1582), sig. Yy. Vi v.

48 Mathematical!) to be most necessary: is full of great difficulty and sundrey daunger."1" As with his editing of Recorde's work, Dee role was to inform an educated public as to the usefulness of the mathematical arts. Upon further reflection of that statement one is puzzled by what Dee meant by the statement "full of great difficulty and sundrey daunger." It is easy enough to understand the difficulty a student might have when confronting mathematics, and one can be sympathetic with an audience that might not be very comfortable with the mathematical arts.' Most likely, the phrase "sundrey daungers," was a reference to the common suspicion with which mathematics (and science in general) was viewed by contemporaries. Recall that Dee's dabbling in those strange arts got him into trouble in Queen Mary's reign. Of course, in Dee's view of science little real distinction existed between the mathematical arts and his more mystical studies. One would be safe to say that the mathematics was simply an aid to what Dee saw as the more important spiritual and mystical studies.'" The mathematics, in Dee's great blueprint of nature, was only a tool to be utilized in unlocking more erudite mysteries. Dee divided nature into three parts--the supernatural, the natural, and things mathematical, which acted as the connecting link between the first two. As Dee stated in his Praeface: All things which are, & haue beyng, are found vnder a triple diuersitie general For, either, they are deemed Supernatural!, Natural!, or, of a third beyng...Thinges Supernaturall, are, of the mind onely, comprehended: ... chief demonstration, & most sure Science is to be had.. .those thinges, which, we before termed of a third beyng: which, by a peculiar name also, are called Thynges Mathematical'. For, things beyng.. .middle, between thinges supernatural' and nattunll are not so absolute and excellent, as thinges supernatural!: Nor yet so base

'" Dee, "Mathematicall Praeface," sig. iiij r. '2 See for example, Mortechai Feingold, The Mathematicians' Apprenticeship: Science, Universities, and Society in England 1560-1640, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). I" See Deborah E. Harkness, John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

49 and grosse, as thinges natural!.. .A meruaylous newtraility haue these thinges Mathematicall. And also a Straunge participation between thinges supematurall...and thinges Naturall.'" Dee's true estimation of those arts are seen in his comment that it was in the supernatural realm that "most sure Science" was found."' Mathematics for Dee was a tool, to "behold in the Glas of Creation, the Forme of Formes, the Exemplar Number of all thinges Numerable: both visable and invisible: mortal! and immortal!, corporall and spirituall."

Dee went on with his summation of the

mathematical arts: But, in any case, I would wish that those Conclusions were red diligently, and perceiued of such, as are earnest Observers and Considerers of the constant law of numbers: which is planted in thynges Natural! and Supernatural!: and is, prescribed to all Creatures, inviolably to be kept. For, so, besides many other thinges, in those Conclusions to be marked, it would apeare, how sincerely, & within my boundes, I disclose the wonderful! mysteries, by numbers, to be atteyned."7 Dee continued his exposition on the mathematical arts, and as he progressed a clearer picture emerges of his perception of those arts. As he stated, "the perfect Science of Arithmetic: that of all Sciences, next to Theologie, it is the most divine, most pure, most ample and general!, most profound, most subtile, most commodious and most necessary."

Dee seems to exhibit a sensitivity towards

mathematics that went far beyond any modern perceptions of that discipline. Dee made the point yet again when he stated: 114

Dee, "Mathematicall Praeface," sig. i. v.

115

See Dee, "Mathematicall Praeface," sig. iiij. v.

115 Dee, "Mathematical Praeface," sig. *j. r-v. Nicholas H. Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion, (London and New York: Routledge, 1988), pp. 145-

176. 117

Dee, "Mathematicall Praeface," sig. *j. v.

'is Dee, "Mathematicall Praeface," sig. a. j.v.

50 That Geometrie is learned, for the knowing of that, vvhich is ever: and not of that, which, in tyme, both is bred and is brought to an ende.&c. Geometrie is the knowledge of that which is everlasting. It will lift up therefore (0 Gentle Syr) our mynde to the veritie: and by that meanes, it will prepare the Thought, to the Philosophical love of wisdome: that we may turne or convert, toward heavenly thinges (both mynde and thought) which now, otherwise then becommeth us, we cast down on base or inferior thinges. Thus, Dee sought to utilize mathematics for more than just mechanical, astronomical, or navigational reforms. In fact, he presented a manifesto of his mystical conception of nature, which could be both understood and unlocked by means of the mathematical arts. Only on the most rudimentary level was mathematics perceptible to the common sort. For one truly to perceive the grandeur and magnitude of mathematics one needed to be listed among the ranks of the adept. Dee's last important work as a scientist came in 1582 when he received a commission from Elizabeth I concerning reform of the Julian calendar. Dee apparently saw this commission as an opportunity not only to serve his country but also to also gain a lasting position as one of the great minds of his age. Fiscal rewards, of course, would be welcome as well.'" Dee was confident in the outcome his work would have on not only the British State but also on all of Christendom. In 1582 he produced a sixty-two page tract to that end entitled An Advise and Discourse for her majestie about the Reformation of the Vulgar Julian Yere, by her Majestie and the Right honorable Council....' The reform of the Julian calendar was desirable from both religious and scientific points of view. The great stumbling block was the fact that the Roman Catholic Church had

119

Dee, -Mathematicall Praeface," sig. a. ij.v.

129 Robert Poole, "John Dee and the English Calendar: Science, Religion and Empire," Electronic Seminars in History, St. Martin's College, Lancaster. littp://www.inrinfo.ac.ukiihriesh/jdee.html 121 That work has since been lost. But sections of it, along with Dee's comments can be found in Ashmole MS. 1789 ff. 1-35, and Corpus Christi MS. 254 f. 147.

51 initiated a calendar reform under Pope Gregory XIII in 1581. A reform so imposed was thus religiously suspect by the Protestant countries of Europe. Calendar reform was needed since the Julian calendar, having fixed the year at 365 1/4 days, was 11 minutes and 8 seconds too long. The need for reform had long been recognized, and the Roman Church had taken the initiative, recalculating the calendar based on the planetary positions seen at the time of the Council of Nicaea, in A.D. 325. The result was the elimination of ten days to bring the calendar in line with actual planetary positions. Dee, in his calculations, took issue with the Gregorian model and insisted that calendar reform needed to be based on the birth of Christ, not the Council of Nicaea. The result of this calculation would be that eleven days should be removed from the Julian calendar. Dee observed "that Christ was conceived at the Suns entrance into Aries, and was borne on the shortest day of the year when the sun enters Capricorn"; he continued his explanation by stating that "I have not attempted this as a new fangle, and lover of novilties (that which I have always hated) but as a furtherer of the trueth, which I have always loved."' The work was largely an expression of Dee's astrological calculations, and his work initially received a favorable reception by the Queen's Council and other scientists. The commission of Thomas Digges, Henry Saville, and John Chancellor reported favorably on Dee's calculations. However, the plan was ultimately rejected by the Bishops on religious grounds. They feared that because it had been originally issued by the pope, who was in their thoughts the antichrist, a bad precedent would be established, and it might breed a new schism.'

122 Ashmole MS. 1789 f. 10 r. One should note that Dee was stepping on thin ice at that point considering it was illegal to calculate the horoscope of Christ!

See Corpus Christi MS. 254, ff. 182-188 and Landsdowne MS. 39, ff. 28-29, for the favorable reception given to Dee's plans. See Additional MS. 32092, f. 33, for the Bishop's response. Also see Dee, Diary, p. 18. Here Dee, in his entry for December 15", stated; "the 15 day being cownted the 25, 50, 10 dayes are imagined spent, which have crept in between the day of Crist his birth regarding the place of the sonne, and the sonnes place not the 25" day of the month, whiche is civile aequation, but mathematically and religiously to be substantiated to be for the true term of 123

52 We have already seen how Dee had a limited connection with the English Court going back to the reign of Edward VI. The theme of Dee as an "adviser" to Elizabeth I and her Court was one that Dee himself promoted throughout his career. Most later writers, as we shall see, took those claims at face value and continued the myth of Dee as a sort of scientific adviser to the Elizabethan Court. I maintain that although Dee did have an occasional connection with the Court, he was never a Court -favorite." In fact, I shall contend that Dee was not the influential, intellectually vibrant character, nor dominant personality, at the center of the Elizabethan intellectual scene, but was in fact an eccentric, sociable curiosity, on the fringe of the Elizabethan Court, whose skills in publicizing himself and his supposedly unlimited knowledge has deceived later readers. Dee's autobiographical writings are filled with the names of Courtiers, such as Burghley, Leicester, Walsingham, and Hatton, with Elizabeth's name also added, Dee would lead us to believe that his role at Court was a significant one. We have seen how in his early career Dee claimed to have been the tutor of Robert Dudley, attached to the household of the Duke of Northumberland. However, works about Leicester make little reference to Dee.' Peter French, in John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus, misleadingly quoted Anthony a Wood to demonstrate Dee's intimacy with Leicester and his role as Leicester's teacher. Wood did write that no one was more familiar with Leicester than Dee, but that was a passage about Dee's "figuring and conjuring for procuring the said Earl's designs" in trying to bring about a marriage between Leicester and the Queen "by black arts."125 Rosenburg's study of those -writers and scholars protected by the Earl of Leicester," with its omission of Dee, seriously calls into question any support the periods of annuall revolutions of the sonne sinse the day of Christ his birth." See Calder, "John Dee," pp. 725-733. 124

See, Eleanor Rosenberg, Leicester, Patron of Letters, (New York, 1955.), p. 21.

125

Philip Bliss, ed., Anthony a Wood, Athenae Oxoniensis, Vol. 11, (London, 1813-1820), p. 542

53 given to Dee by the Earl.'" While Peter French wrote that Dee "must have encouraged Robert Dudley's special concern with mathematics.. arid geometry," no such evidence is found in either Rosenberg's or Beer's accounts of Dudley's education.' Dee's Diary does show that Leicester occasionally visited Dee, but the evidence does not show an intimacy existed between the two.'" It has also been assumed that Dee's circle of intimates extended to include Philip Sidney and his family. Dee makes several references to the Sidney family in his Diary and Autobiographical Tracts, but further investigation reveals that those claims were not totally truthful.'2° Firstly, a preliminary comment on the use of Dee's Diary to demonstrate "intimacy" between Dee and his visitors to his home at Mortlake is necessary. We have seen how Leicester's rare and fleeting appearances in the Diary have been interpreted as evidence of a close friendship. The same can be said of Sidney, where Dee's Diary shows only two visits made by Sidney, both times in the company of other men.'" References of Dee's letters to Sidney's mother, notably those of 1571, are entirely misleading yet again. In his Autobiographical Tracts, Dee lists many eminent people who have written to him as proof of his importance in Court circles.' Sidney's mother is a case in point as he wrote: "The honourable Lady Sydney's most courteous and many letters unto me, and inviting me to court. etc.

126

Rosenberg, Leicester-, Patron of Letters, p. xviii.

127 See, Rosenberg, Leicester, Patron of Letters and Barrett Beer, Northumberland: The Political Career of John Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland, Peter French, John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972.), p.33. 128

See, Dee, Diary, pp. 2, 21.

129

Dee, Diary, pp. 2, 20. Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 11.

13° Dee,

Diary, pp. 2, 20.

121 Dee, Autobiographical, pp. 9-11.

54 A. 1571." 132 Dee, in his eagerness to ingratiate himself with any member of the Court, recorded that fact with a certain pompous pride, and for him -many letters" could easily be only two or three. Reference to Thomas Moffett's work, Noblis, or a view of the Life and Death of a Sidney, can also be misleading in analyzing Dee's intimacy with Sidney.'" No doubt Moffett, in his attempts to show that Philip Sidney was learned and keen on science from a young age, would have been only to willing to seize upon a rather well known mathematician, whom Sidney had visited at least once, and retrospectively inserted him into Sidney's formative years. To accept the passing reference unhesitatingly, although convenient, is not sensible. We can see, for example, in Fulk Grenville's Life of Sir Philip Sidney no reference to Dee as Sidney's tutor."4 J. M. Osborn's Young Philip Sidney, 1572-1577, which closely examines Sidney's education and patrons, made no reference to Dee as being either the tutor or intimate friend of Philip.'" Dee was first mentioned in a letter from Sidney to Languet, in which Sidney makes a satirical pun on Dee and his Monas Hieroglyphica. The reference pokes fun at Dee's pretensions stating: "...he may perhaps brattish his hieroglyphic monad at you like Jove's lightening bolt—for such is the wrath of heavenly spirits." And as Osborn has pointed out, "undoubtedly Sidney and Languet had joked on some previous occasion about Dee's arcane volume."36 That can hardly be seen as the reverence one would expect from Sidney in awe of his great master John Dee! Osborn later dismissed the assertion that Sidney's visit to Dee in 1577 was for astrological consultation to 132

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, pp. 9-11.

133 Thomas Moffett, Noblis, or A View of the Life and Death of a Sidney, translated and edited Virgil B. Heltzel and Hoyt H. Hudson, (San Marino, 1940), p. 75. 134

Fulke Grenville, Sir Fulke Grenville "Life of Sir Philip Sidney etc.." (London, 1652).

135

J. M. Osborn, Young Philip Sidney, 1572-1577, (New Haven, 1972.).

136

Osborn, pp. 146-147.

55 determine an auspicious moment for Sidney's embassy to Germany. The evidence available, Osborn argued, suggested that the decision for Sidney to go abroad had not yet been reached."' Moffett also pointed out that Sidney hated astrology "with a certain innate loathing," again showing the tenuous claims of Dee as Sidney's tutor.'" Edward Dyer has also been claimed as a close disciple and student of Dee's and, as William Sherman showed, acted as a go between for members of the Privy Council with Dee.'" That assertion is deceptive. All authors citing Dee's connection with Edward Dyer look to R. M. Sargent's work on Dyer, At the Court of Queen Elizabeth: The Life and Lyrics of Sir Edward Dyer, as their

source.'' A closer investigation of Sargent's work reveals that it contains no mention of Dee's teaching anything to Dyer. Dyer first appeared in the 1577 visit recorded in Dee's Diary, and Sargent depicted that as a casual friendship based on Dee as an astrologer."' From Sargent's summary of Dyer's relationship with Dee, a picture emerged of Dyer as a client and acquaintance, fascinated by and intensely inquisitive about Dee's mysterious activities. Dyer, visiting Dee along with the various other gentlemen ostentatiously referred to by Dee in his Diary, would be confronted by Dee, "the seer in his long robes, surrounded by the mysterious apparatus of his studies.. jars, skulls, talisman, divining rods, gazing globes., an experience likely to impress even the most skeptical beholder with the importance of Dee's activities."42 Sargent's narrative of Dyer's contact with Dee 137 38

Osborn, p. 449. Dee, Diaiy, p. 2. Moffett, Nob! is, p. 75.

139 William Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance, (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), p. 130.

14° R. M. Sargent, At the Court Of Queen Elizabeth: The Life and Lyrics of Sir Edward Dyer, (London, 1935). See Peter French, John Dee, p. 128. Sherman, John Dee, p.I30. Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy, p. 181. 141

Sargent, p. 40.

142

Sargent, pp. 99-106.

56 shows quite clearly that the motivating factor behind Elizabeth's and Dyer's interest in Dee and his work was their acceptance of Dee's claims to have transmuted base metals into gold. Clearly it was Dee's alchemical activities that piqued their interest." Years later when Dee was in Bohemia he wrote to Dyer of the work he and his assistant Kelley were doing in the transmutation of base metals into gold, and Dyer traveled to Bohemia, where he was more impressed with Kelley's extravagant claims than Dee's modest converting of pewter and brass into silver. Dee entered sadly in his Diary, "Mr. Edward Dier did injure me unkindly." A reconciliation occurred once Dee had returned to England, and the Queen sent Dee £50, urging him to proceed with his alchemical labors.' Alchemy, a weakness of both the Queen and Burghley, seemed a potential new source of revenue, and Dee had probably hinted at his expertise in that realm of "great secrets."' The picture was very similar on the Continent; Dee's usefulness in the area of renumeration was undoubtedly what had given him any reputation he had at the Court of Rudolf II As a secretary of the Emperor commented, "I am indeed of the opinion that [Rudolf and friends] prefer one philosopher's stone to ten visions of angels."' Once Elizabeth had seen Dee's work to be useless, her attention rapidly shifted to Kelley, who still was on the Continent, leaving the mob to talk daddy of "Maister Dee's... fabulous divinations.'"48 Dee's reputation on the Continent was not as high as Dee would

143

Dee, Diary, p. 22.

144

Dee, Diary, p. 28.

145 See Wood Athenae Oxoniensis, vol. II., p. 290. Where stated, "...in 1592, [Elizabeth) sent [Dee] 200 marks and words.. .that he do what he would in alchemy and philosophy and none should controul or molest him." See also, Dee, Diary, p. 37.

146

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, pp. 13, 19,21.

147 C. H. Josten, "An Unknown Chapter in the Life of John Dee," Journal of the Warburg and Coutauld Institute, vol. 28 (1965), p. 229. 148

Thomas Nash, Christ's Tears Over Jerusalem, (London, 1593), p. 90.

57 lead us to believe that it was, nor was he regarded as some sort of intellectual savior. Indeed his attempts to impress Rudolf II with his alchemical knowledge came to naught and finally resulted in his expulsion from Bohemia by Imperial decree. Dee's own record of one of his seances showed clearly that he was receiving no financial aid from England, that rumors denying the integrity of his actions were spreading, that Kelley's communication with angels sent by God was a farcical sham in which Dee reached new levels of gullibility and credulity, and, finally, that his reputation at home was not all it should be: a priest, referring to Dee and Kelley's standing in England, "asserted that there indeed we were accounted very odious men.""9 Dee had been invited abroad originally by the Polish Prince Albert a Laski in 1583. Laski is described by R. J. W. Evans, an authority on Rudolf II as "a great patron of alchemists.. .heavily involved in occult or magical speculation of all kinds,"t55 had visited Dee at Mortlake and Dee, with characteristic reverential pride recorded that Laski "cam of purpose to do me honor, for which God be praysed!' Dee's sojourn on the Continent was in truth a minor episode for all concerned, and if, as Wood wrote, Dee was -more admired and reverenced beyond, than within, the seas," his complete failure to achieve anything in his alchemical studies soon changed that. In fact, here, as in all other spheres touched by Dee, again emerge the increasingly familiar characteristics of John Dee—the vanity, the embellishment, the self-publicitywhat one could describe as reputation mongering. Wood, forgetting that he was extolling the virtues of John Dee in his previous volume, inconsistently lapsed into a most perceptive summary of Dee the man: he was "the most ambitious person ever lived, and none more desirous of fame and renown than he, being

149

Josten, "An Unknown Chapter in the Life of John Dee," Journal of the Warburg and Coutauld

Institute, vol. 28 (1965), pp. 227-230.

R. J. W. Evans, Rudolf II and his World: A study in Intellectual History, 1576-1612, (Oxford, 1973), p. 220.

150

151

Dee, Diary, p. 20.

58 never so well pleased as when he heard himself stiled most excellent or most learned."'" It would be well to remember Wood's description, and to bear in mind a more recent observation on Dee's "insufferable vanity that duped both himself and his latter-day admirers into inflating his importance."53 Examination of Dee's relation with Elizabeth illustrates both the true significance of the garrulous doctor, and the process by which Dee deluded himself, and many historians and writers since. Most of the writings on which Dee's reputation has been based would never have been set down if Dee had been as proficient at fooling his contemporaries as he has been at conning his more recent admirers. Dee claimed an intimacy with Elizabeth, where Elizabeth promised him protection against those who -would by reason of any my [Dee's] rare studies and philosophical! exercises unduely seeke my overthrow."54 In fact, that is a totally inaccurate portrayal of what really happened between Dee and Elizabeth. We have seen how the Queen merely used Dee, in the hope that his excursions into alchemy would bring forth gold, and how she discarded him once it became clear how empty his promises were in revealing the great secret of transmutation. Dee repeatedly learned how empty Elizabeth's promises were in his relentless quest for rewards and recognition. In his Autobiographical Tracts Dee wrote of his promise of great importance to the Queen, "the first part whereof, God is my witness, I have truly, and sincerely performed though it be not yet evident, how truly, or of what incredible value: The second part by God his great mercyes and helpes may in due tyme be performed, if my plat for the meanes be not misused or defaced."55 The last sentence is a clear hint that if Elizabeth wishes Dee to keep his promise, she had to make sure he was protected.

153

Wood, Athenae Oxoniensis, vol. II, pp. 288-292.

153

Shumaker and Heilbron, (ed.), John Dee on Astrology, p. ix.

154

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 21.

135

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 21.

59 In that case, where money was at stake, she was only too happy to help: in numerous other instances, where the Crown had nothing to gain, Dee's pleas fell on deaf ears. Elizabeth's promises to Dee may have been a figment of Dee's imagination, or they may have been polite, diplomatic brush-offs. It is, however, abundantly clear that they were never transformed into reality for Dee. There is no need to spend a great deal of time proving the inadequacy of Elizabeth's promises, and there is certainly not enough room to include all, or even half. of Dee's references to his disappointments. Most of his Autobiographical Tracts is a variation on the theme of the great sacrifices Dee had made in the cause of learning, and the great neglect shown to him by his ungrateful country. Dee's "Compendious Rehearsal" (the first section of the Autobiographical Tracts) was a grand exercise in martyrdom, revealing Dee's persecution complex and showing exactly how "Her Majesty's Specially Gracious and Very Bountifull Favours," operated.' Dee's chapter on Elizabeth's favors towards himself was in fact a record of disappointment after disappointment, culminating in Dee's being deprived of a living, thus spurring him into writing that supplication. He may be at pains to demonstrate the great favor shown to him by the Queen; yet if he could be believed, and Elizabeth did smile so benignly on him, he would never have had to write the Autobiographical Tracts in the first place. W. Gwyn Thomas has shown that Dee did obtain a small parish benefice in Wales before being granted the Wardenship of Manchester College in 1596, but she also quite clearly demonstrated that Dee was always at the bottom of the list as it were. Originally Dee had been promised five lowly parishes, three were denied him, and one was successfully contested by one Richard Vaughn, not withstanding the Queen's promise to the contrary and Dee's subsequent appeals.'" In the end, Dee 156 Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, pp. 11-20. For a selection of examples of promises broken see pp. 12-17, 35, 39, etc.

151 Dee,

Diary, p. 49.

60 managed to obtain only one, almost being excluded from that.'" Further evidence of Dee's lack of maintenance can be found in a letter he wrote to Burghley in 1574, in which he complained of the lack of support, despite promises from the Queen and various counselors, and offered his service as a treasure hunter in a seemingly desperate bid to ingratiate himself with the Court. His sparse support at the Court was attested to by the following plaintive lament: "Of which sutes [that Dee had made] no-one (hitherto) hath taken the wishes for success, for any of my behofe."'" That picture of Dee takes us a step closer to the real figure who cowers somewhere behind his wall of arrogant propaganda. Making a reputation out of knowing, or at least seeming to know, more about the mysterious affairs of the spiritual world, he attracted courtiers much as any novelty would attract the curious. Certainly there was a mind there, and Dee was consulted as a scientist, mathematician, navigator, and astrologer, but he was also as one of the curiosities of his age. With his collection of books and instruments, his aura of magical wizardry, and his off beat ideas, it was no wonder that some resorted to him as the local cunning-man, who could diagnose witchcraft, and that others visited as one of the colorful eccentrics of the age.'" Far from being the vital, influential Hermeticist, indoctrinating the members of the so-called "Sidney Circle" and advising the Queen on matters of state, Dee was a peripheral oddball and perennial source of entertainment, curiosity, and, no doubt, amusement.' Perhaps the last words should be left to Dee himself, who wished that he might "be found and undoubtedly acknowledged of the wise and just to have 158 W. Gwyn Thomas, "An Episode in the Later Life of John Dee," The Welsh Historical Review, Vol. 5 (1971), pp. 250-256. 158 J. 0. Halliwell-Phillips (ed.), A Collection of Letters Illustrative of the Progress of Science in England, from the Reign of Queen Elizabeth to that of Charles II, pp. 13-16.

16° Keith

Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 663.

Graham Yewbrey, "John Dee and the 'Sidney Group': Cosmopolitics and Protestant 'Activism' in the 1570s." Ph. D. Thesis, University of Hull, 1981.

181

61 beene a zealous and faithful student in the Schoole of 'Verity' and an Ancient Graduate of the Schoole of 'Charity'."'' Sadly, one gets the impression that it was all just wishful thinking! Dee certainly was a scholar of note, albeit that his scholarship profited neither him nor the intellectual world at large. A measure of Dee's scholarship can be glimpsed from his extensive personal library. Dee apparently spent a significant amount of his income in the acquiring of books and manuscripts. In a catalog account given by Dee he estimated that he possessed approximately four thousand books and manuscripts. That number, if accurate, would have given Dee a personal library larger than either Oxford or Cambridge Universities! In those years, when Dee's reputation and career stood at its apex, yet another curious dimension was revealed.

John Dee, the learned adept,

mathematician par excellence, consultant to nobles and the Queen herself, married no less than two and possibly three times! That surely stood out as an interesting facet of his life, and perhaps was the reason he never accepted a position at a University where the faculty remained celibate. Of Dee's first and second wives little is known. Even their names have been lost to the ravages of time. Of Dee's third wife, however, we see a long and, by all accounts, happy marriage, despite a twenty-five-year age difference. John Dee's marriage to Jane Fromond, in 1578, was a union that produced eight children and lasted until Jane's death in 1605. Given Dee's uncertain means of income, the fiscal responsibilities of seeing to an ever growing family undoubtedly placed stress and anxiety in his life. Perhaps his family responsibilities made him gravitate more towards occult endeavors which began after 1582. As Dee's major projects declined by the early 1580s he never again published any significant works in science. His intellectual interests began shifting towards more esoteric, occult activities. In 1582 the direction of Dee's 162

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 83.

62 life took a dramatic shift as he began to engage in his now-infamous Angelic conversations. As we shall see, much of his later reputation was forged as a result of those activities. For the next quarter century, Dee became more and more obsessed with that activity.

Chapter IV Contact with Angels and Travels Abroad Waning fortunes and desperate hopes 1583-1589

The direction of Dee's scientific and public career seemingly ground to a halt after his failed attempt at calendar reform. Dee's plan for reforming the English calendar, though highly admired by mathematicians, and even by the queen, smelled too much of Popish practice, and was therefore rejected. Pressure from the Bishops, no doubt, had a great deal to do with the failure of the project.' The reform of the Julian calendar was Dee's last purely scientific endeavor. From 1583 onward Dee would be almost solely occupied with more occult pursuits. Although more recent scholarship, as we shall see below, tries to show a consistency concerning Dee's mystical outlook, the facts cannot be overlooked that Dee, after 1583, abandoned any productive applications of mathematics, or technologies, to engage in mystical angelic summoning and desperate pleas for preferment. Perhaps the patronage, which helped in sustaining Dee up until that point, was drying up, and Dee sought more lucrative means of supporting himself and his growing family. Apparently Dee had not received either the intellectual fulfillment, or pecuniary rewards, he believed he deserved through his scientific works; thus with the rejection of his calendar reform he turned exclusively to See Additional MS. 32092, if. 29-33 for the Bishops' letter to Walsingham rejecting the proposal. Also see Landsdowne MS. 39, f. 22, for Burghley's comments on Dee's proposal.

163

64 mystical means of unlocking nature's secrets in the hope he could at last gain his rightful reward and recognition as a scholar, or magus. Clearly Dee's own views of Natural Philosophy made no distinction between the natural and supernatural in operating within the world. Mathematics was but a means of discovering the way those forces operated and of controlling them. The first glimpse of Dee's attempting to tap into the spiritual realm occurred on 22 December 1581, although recent scholarship suggests that Dee began to engage in his spiritual activities as early as 1568.'" The point should be noted that Dee's interest in -tapping into" the supernatural coexisted with what today would be considered his purely scientific works. Although Dee, as a Natural Philosopher, functioned in an intellectual world that operated under quite different methodological and cosmological principles from what would later develop, the point needs to be stressed that only after 1581 did he actively engage in a singular drive to tap into the mystical powers of the supernatural realm. Dee's -actions" with the spiritual world, as he termed them, would continue, under a host of mediums, or "skryers," until at least 1607, the date of his last recorded spiritual contact.'65 As far as Dee's angelic conversations were concerned, he himself never claimed to see any of the spirits that his skryers, conjured up. Nevertheless, he earnestly believed spiritual creatures were present on such occasions, and he

164 See Ashmole MS. 423, f. 295. See Sloane MS. 3188, f. 8. See Christopher Whitbyohn Dee's Actions with Spirits, (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1988) for a through account of the first spiritual actions.

See Meric Casaubon, ed., A True and Faithful Relation of what passed for many Yeers Between Dr. John Dee... and Some Spirits. And Cotton MS., Appendix XL1/1, parts 1 and 2. It was from Cotton's copy of Dee's Diary that Casaubon got his material. The term "skryer" was apparently of Dee's own devising and can be understood as a "crystal gazer." See Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, (New York, 1971), pp. 215 f. See Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Relgion, pp. 140-144. We know of at least four "skryers"— Bamabus Saul, Edward Kelley, Dee's son Arthur, and Bartholomew Hickman—there were probably several others. 165

65 faithfully recorded in great detail those conversations. Dee placed full faith in his skryers' ability to summon and communicate with such beings. By 1582 Dee was using the services of Edward Kelley, the most famous of his skryers and the one whom he considered to have the best results at angelic contact.' Under the almost hypnotic abilities of Kelley, Dee became totally entrenched in angelic summoning, forever abandoning any productive or fruitful scientific endeavors. All of 1582 and 1583 found Dee actively involved with Kelley in their angelic summoning. Dee, with naïve faith in Kelley's abilities, diligently recorded his conversations with spirits, taking as truth anything that Kelley reported the spirits having said. In the midst of those events of 1582-1583 Dee met an individual who convinced him that his talents would find a far greater appreciation outside of the British Isles. Traveling from Eastern Europe the Polish Count Albrecht a Laski had been a guest of the Queen's since March of 1583. Laski was the Count Palatine of Siradia in central Poland and a patron of alchemists and those engaged in occult studies—like Dee. No doubt Dee's reputation, and engagement with his skryers in occult studies, had attracted Laski's attention.'" Dee met Laski at Greenwich, in the chamber of the Earl of Leicester, on 13 May. Five days later, Laski traveled to Mortlake to meet Dee for a second time.' Laski visited at Mortlake several more times during the course of the summer. On those occasions Laski sat in on the angelic conversations with Dee and Kelley. Laski undoubtedly made a strong impression on Dee, fueling his ego and ultimately convincing Dee that his fortunes lay with him. During that summer Dee convinced himself that 166 Dee, Diary, pp. 15 f. Also see Casaubon, ed., A True and Faithful Relation..., which goes into great detail describing Dee's and Kelley's exploits. Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion, p. 197. 167 Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion, pp. 196-199; Deborah E. Harkness, John Dee's Conversations with Angels, pp. 52-54; Benjamin Woolley, The Queen's Conjurer: The Science and Magic of Dr. John Dee, Adviser to Queen Elizabeth, pp. 185-194. 168

Dee, Diary, p. 20.

66 his studies could be more fruitfully pursued, and rewarded, on the Continent, in the service of a patron like Laski. Pursuant to that end, on 21 September 1583 Dee and Kelley and their families left Mortlake, with Laski, to travel to the Continent. Dee would not return to England for six years. It is curious to note that neither Dee nor Kelley received an official visa allowing them to leave England. In fact their departure with Laski was carried out secretly and in some haste.' Dee's time spent wandering through the Empire most strongly cements his reputation as an eccentric, dupe, charlatan, dabbler in the black arts, and summoner of demons. Dee's reasons for wanting to leave England, as suggested above, were ultimately connected to his own failing fortunes. Dee, now in his mid-fifties, had outlived his usefulness. With little opportunity available to him through his former means--his tutoring and mathematical work connected with the voyages of exploration, as well as his casting of horoscopes, or any value he had for the court—he turned to more desperate measures for supporting himself, his family, and his ego. Dee's endeavors to that point had given him a noted position within the intellectual community of Europe. His works, although not necessarily ground breaking or revolutionary, were for the most part sound within the framework of the existing paradigm. Yet, the condition of Dee's life by the 1580s was strained, his fortunes spent. Dee exhibited a degree of frustration as the commanding position to which he believed his talents entitled him never materialized. As a result of that change of fortune Dee's intellectual energies seemed to shift as well. Dee apparently abandoned a more secular scientific search for truths in favor of a more mystical, or spiritual, means to improve the direction his life was heading-thus we see his almost desperate appeal to the supernatural for compensation. "

169

Whitby, John Dee's Actions with Spirits, pp. 28-29.

17° Whitby,

John Dee's Actions with Spirits, pp. 157 f.

67

When Dee received an audience with the Emperor, Rudolf Hin 1584, he told him how "...for forty years he had sought knowledge, only to find that no book or living man could tell him what he wanted. He had therefore determined, with the aid of a special stone and holy angels, to make intercession to God to reveal to him the nature of creation.""' Dee's involvement with angelic summoning, or skrying, had three specific ends to it. Firstly, there was the desire for worldly wealth. Dee used the spirits conjured up by his mediums to reveal lost or hidden treasures. The hunting for hidden treasures was, as Keith Thomas has pointed out, "...one of the more bizarre of contemporary illusions, but it should be remembered that in the absence of an alternative system of deposit banking the possibility of coming across hidden treasure was by no means a chimera." Thomas goes on to point out that frequently conjuring would be utilized as a means of not only finding buried treasure but also "...to exorcise the demon or evil spirit who was likely to be mounting guard over it."' The hunting for lost treasure was for Dee a quick way to rebuild his crumbling fortunes, as well as a method of continuing to finance the upkeep of his vast library, laboratories, and growing family. Kelley, eager to assist Dee, convinced him that he would receive the angelic help necessary for such ends. Initially, although somewhat hesitant, the spirits gave some advice for finding such hidden treasure. Yet before Dee could benefit from the discovery of any hidden treasure the spirits seemed to change their minds and warned Dee how "...small are the treasures of this world, in respect of the wisdom that judgeth

Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 269; Casaubon, A True and Faithful Relation..., p.231; C. H. Josten, "An Unknown Chapter in the Life of John Dee," Journal of the Warburg and Coutauld Institutes, xxviii (1965), p. 235.

171 Thomas,

"2 Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, pp. 235-236. Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy, p. 195. Woolley, The Queen's Conjurer, pp. 89-93.

68 Nature." At that point Dee gave up on any hopes he had for the spirits leading him to any worldly wealth via finding hidden treasures.'" A second area to which Dee devoted a great deal of time in his later life was to uncovering the Philosophers' Stone. The Philosophers' Stone was endowed with the power to transform base metals, such as lead, tin, copper, or iron, into the precious metals gold and silver."4 Although certain elements of alchemy could be seen as a precursor to modern chemistry, for the most part alchemy was shrouded in mystery where true enlightenment could only be achieved through divine assistance. Thus, Dee used spirits as a means for aid in helping to uncover the secrets of alchemical transmutation. As E. J. Holmyard has pointed out, "[T]he belief that it [the Philosophers' Stone] could be obtained only by divine grace and favour led to the development of esoteric or mystical alchemy, and this gradually developed into a devotional system where the mundane transmutation of metals became merely symbolic of the transformation of sinful man into a perfect being through prayer and submission to the will of God."'" Certainly Dee would have subscribed to that belief system, and although the quest for worldly wealth and fame were always on Dee's mind, the spiritual dimensions of alchemy always seemed to take precedence. That was probably not the case with Kelley, or Prince Laski, or Emperor Rudolf II, all of whom were much more interested in the acquiring of a more tangible worldly form of wealth. Kelley apparently stumbled across the Philosophers' Stone, which was some reddish powder, through which he claimed to have produced an ounce of

173 See Sloan MS. 3188; Dee, A True and Faithhil Relation..., p. 71; Whitby, John Dee's Actions with Spirits, pp. 159-160. 174 See E. J. Holmyard, Alchemy, (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1990 [1957)), for a good introduction on the subject. 175

Holmyard, Alchemy, pp. 15-16.

69 gold from an ounce and a half of the powder.'' Clearly, that claim attracted Laski and later Emperor Rudolf to Dee and Kelley. Ultimately for Dee, however, neither of those two more tangible aspects of the angelic summoning lured him to follow that path. Rather, what Dee saw through the angelic contact was the dawning of a new age for mankind. His concerns, unlike Kelley's, were of a much deeper spiritual nature. Two events in the 1570s helped cement Dee's views as to the spiritual nature of the universe and turn his gaze to dreams of the dawning of a new age. On 11 November 1572 a new star—now judged to be a supernova—appeared in the constellation Cassiopeia.'77 Astronomical occurrences had been, since ancient times, seen as signs of impending change and generally interpreted as ominous. Such events were indications that some new direction to the cosmic order of things was close at hand. One has only to consider the significance of the Star of Bethlehem as an example of monumental change associated with such astronomical phenomenon. Tycho Brahe, the great Danish astronomer, had commented on the new star, interpreting it as a sign that the Roman Catholic Church's power in Europe would diminish.'78 Dee also followed the standard interpretations of such astronomical events, viewing such occurrences as the beginning of some impending monumental political or religious change. As Dee commented "...that the star's shinning forth with a jovial, cleere, and bright luster, doth seeme to fore-shew a prosporous and peaceable state in human affaires, while its Martian fiery glistening signified that some violence and trouble shall be intermingled with

176

Dee, Diary, p. 22.

177

Woolley, The Queen's Conjurer, p. 141.

178

Woolley, The Queen's Conjurer, pp. 132-133, 141.

179

Whitby, John Dee's Actions with Spirits, p. 163.

70 Dee's involvement in plans for a British Empire and colonization of North America at that same point comes as no mere coincidence. Clearly Dee saw the New Star as a favorable sign from God for his expansionist plans. He envisioned that the establishment of a British Empire would bring harmony and concordance to the world. Dee envisioned Elizabeth I as the leader of a new united Christendom, where he would have a commanding role as her Philosopher. Much of what he wrote in his General and Rare Memorials Pertaining to the Perfect Arte Of Navigation suggested such designs. Of course nothing ever came of it. His plans and pleas, as we have seen, fell on deaf ears. The second astronomical event in the 1570s that would further galvanized Dee's confirmation of a mystical and spiritual universe was a comet that appeared on 10 November 1577. The comet, like the supernova five years earlier, served as the sign of a monumental change and dawn of a new age. As Dee related, in his Autobiographical Tracts; Her Majestie tooke great pleasure to hearer my opinion of the comet appearing A.1577: whereas the judgment of some had unduly bred great feare and doubt in many of the Court; being men of no small account. This was at Windsore, where her Majestie most graciously, for three divers daies, did use me; and, among other pointes, her most excellent Majestie promised unto me great security against any of her kingdome, that would, by reason of any my rare studies and philosophicall exercises, unduly seeke my overthrow.'" Dee refused to interpret those events in a negative light. They both were signs that an enlightened new age was about to dawn. As Dee's own material fortunes began to wane in the early 1580s and as reward and preferment for his services never materialized, he began to place his hopes in spiritual assistance to facilitate both the dawning of the new age that all the signs foretold and his personal rewards for all his efforts—thus the impetus behind Dee's Continental travels. As Whitby has pointed out: "the promise of a new age and a universal religion 18° Dee, A utobiographical Tracts, p. 2E

71 together with Dee's desire to share his knowledge with his fellow man (perhaps as much motivated by desire for renown as a genuine philanthropy) are primarily responsible for his move to the Continent."" Dee's departure to the Continent, with Kelley and Laski, in September 1583 was sudden, but not unexpected. The departure would make the most colorful and exotic chapter in Dee's life, and certainly it was that time spent wandering around Central Europe that did the most to cement his reputation as a sorcerer and dabbler in the black arts and as an eccentric duped by those whom he trusted. The party set off from London journeying first to Brill, Haarlem, Amsterdam, Bremen, Hamburg, and Lubeck, eventually arriving in Cracow in March 1584. Cracow was then the capital of Poland and a University town. Dee and his family "were lodged in the suburbs by the church, where we remained for several nights, and then we.. .removed to St. Stephen Street, which I had hired [a lodging] for a year..."82 Here Dee and Kelley continued to engage in their angelic summoning, an exercise with which Dee was becoming more and more obsessed. Their time spent at Cracow was not fruitful for them. Dee's fortunes did not seem to be faring any better on the Continent. Dee had visions of improving fortunes in August 1584 when he and Kelley traveled to Prague. Prague was the city of alchemists and steeped in a rich tradition of occult studies.'" A year earlier Emperor Rudolf II, famous for his occult interests, had moved the imperial seat of government from Vienna to Prague.'" Emperor Rudolf II was exactly the type of enlightened ruler whom Dee envisioned leading Europe into a golden age. England had apparently missed its 1s1

Whitby, John Dee's Actions with Spirits, p. 173.

182

Smith, John Dee, p. 133.

183

Smith, p. 146.

184 See R. 1. W. Evans, Rudolf II and His World: A Study in Intellectual Hisioty 1576-1612 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.)

72 chance as the center of a new commonwealth. But England's failure could be the Empire's, and Dee's, gain. Dee at last believed he had found a monarch who would both recognize and reward his talents. Again Dee met with bitter disappointment as his hopes were unrealized. Dee wrote a letter of introduction to the Emperor on August 17 informing him of his past services to his father, Maximilian H, to whom Dee had dedicated his Monas Hieroglyphica. Apparently, was beginning to shift his hopes from Laski to Rudolf—if only he would "listen to God's word" as interpreted, via angels, by Dee.'" Dee sent his letter via the Spanish ambassador to Rudolf along with a copy of his Monas, and was given an audience with the Emperor on September 3. Dee went through a longwinded retelling of his life of study and pursuit of wisdom through books, only to find that they were lacking. It was only through his contact with angelic powers that true enlightenment had come to him, implying that those spirits had shown him the Philosophers' Stone. Surely, Rudolf s interest was piqued by that bit of information! Dee concluded with a stern admonishment that the Emperor was to "forsake his sins and turn to the Lord."6 The Emperor promised Dee his friendship and patronage, but nothing ever materialized in terms of reward or fiscal gain. What the Emperor did instead was send one of his Privy Councilors, Doctor Curtius [or Kurtz, or Kurz] "a wise, learned, and faithful councilor," to listen to Dee on his behalf.'" Clearly the Emperor would "prefer one philosophers' stone to ten visions of angels."88 The meeting between Dee and Curtius took place twelve days later and lasted for most of the day. Any enthusiasm that Dee had regarding Rudolf was soon extinguished. Apparently Dee's mystical rhapsodies concerning the 186

See Casauhon, A True and Faithful Relation..., p. 220.

186

Smith, John Dee, p. 150.

187

Smith, John Dee, p. 151.

188

Josten, "An Unknown Chapter in the Life of John Dee," p. 229.

73 dawning of a new age were not exactly what the Emperor was interested in hearing. Dee would quickly find that what would be a better carrot to dangle before the Emperor was the secret he and Kelley possessed to turn base metals into gold—the Philosophers' Stone! Kelley had realized that all along. He had always been interested in the more lucrative, and profitable, aspects of conversing with angels. Under Kelley's skryering the angels would soon tell Dee to write to the Emperor telling him that they had the Philosophers' Stone. But even with that new morsel the Emperor's interest with Dee did not progress. Curtius later refered to Dee as "a bankrupt alchemist, a conjuror and necromancer who had sold his own goods and given the proceeds to Laski, whom he had beguiled, and now he was going to fawn upon the Emperor."" Despite that rather negative assessment of Dee's work, one historian suggests that it was through the efforts of Curtius that Dee was awarded the degree of Doctor of Medicine by the University of Prague.'" If that was the case the degree must have been an honorific one, for no evidence indicates that Dee had ever received any medical training. Further, the title doctor had been used as early as 1573 in a reference by Digges regarding Dee. Most likely the term doctor was a simple reference to the Latin word doctor meaning educated or learned. Dee's fortunes in Prague were fading. He and Kelley were falling under some suspicion both for their English Protestantism as well as allegations of necromancy. They left Prague to return to Cracow where they were introduced by Laski to King Stephen. Dee met with King Stephen on three separate occasions, but again nothing ever materialized from those encounters. While in Cracow Dee and Kelley came in contact with Francesco Pucci, a Catholic who had converted to Anglicanism and who had attended Oxford University receiving his M. A. in 1574. He then journeyed back to the Continent

189

Smith, John Dee, p. 154.

19° Josten,

"An Unknown Chapter in the Life of John Dee," p. 236.

74 where he recanted his new-found faith to become a Catholic priest. Pucci traveled to Prague with Dee and Kelley when they returned in the Fall of 1585, but Dee was living on borrowed time. Rumors had been circulating of Dee's and Kelley's alleged necromancy and questionable spiritual activities, coupled with the fact that they were members of the heretical Anglican Church, placing them in a rather uncomfortable position in the Empire. Pucci, who himself had an interest in Hermetic lore, which probably was what attracted Dee to him in the first place, had been invited to sit in on several of the spiritual sessions with Dee and Kelley, and Dee regarded him as a friend. But Pucci had other designs. Apparently he was still in the service of the Papal nuncio in Prague, whose interest in Dee had been aroused by Dee's and Kelley's dubious activities, and the nuncio and Pucci were doing all in their power to induce Dee to go to Rome. The Pope himself, Sixtus V, receiving reports from the nuncio, sent a letter to Rudolf dated 29 May 1586, ordering him to arrest the English magicians and send them to Rome for questioning.'" The reaction by the Emperor resulted in a public burning of three of Dee's manuscripts that dealt with the angelic conversations conducted by Dee and Kelley—the Book of Enoch, Forty-eight Keys of the Angels, and the Liber Scientiae Auxilii et Victoriae Terrestris.'

When Dee had gone to see King

Stephen, Rudolf's suspicions were most likely heightened due to the animosity between the two rulers.'" Rudolf, sensing a growing hostility in Prague towards Dee and Kelley, simply banished them from Prague. Possibly another ground for suspicion, beyond Dee's mystic angelic activities, was that Dee was actually acting as a spy in the service of Sir Francis Walsingham.'' A series of letters to See Smith, John Dee, pp. 166-167; Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp. 343-346; Casauhon, A True and Faithful Relation..., pp. 430-431.

191

192

Smith, John Dee, p. 167.

193

Edward Fenton, ed., The Diaries of John Dee, (Oxfordshire, Day Books, 1998.), p. 341.

194

This idea of Dee as a spy working for Walsingham was first put forward by Robert Hooke

(Posthumous Works, 1705), pp. 206-207; Charlotte Fell Smith (see Smith, pp. 168-169.) and later

75 Walsingham made reference to what could be construed as secret affairs, but beyond accusations of Dee's using a secret cipher to convey messages to England nothing definitive has ever been concluded regarding those accusations. At any rate the activities which Dee was engaging in were of a great enough suspicion to warrant his removal from Rudolf s lands. Dee and Kelley continued their wanderings over the summer of 1586 until, finally, in September, they settled at Trebon in Bohemia, under the patronage of Count Rosenberg.

Count William [Vilern] Rosenberg [Rozmberk] was

Bohemia's wealthiest and most powerful magnate, whose interests in the occult arts were in line with those of the Emperor Rudolf. He has been referred to as "one of Bohemia's most generous patrons of alchemical research, rivaling even the emperor Rudolf."95 His attraction to Dee's and Kelley's activities was motivated, as was Rudolf s, not so much with an interest to converse with angels as to unlock alchemical mysteries and gain access to the Philosophers' Stone.'" Kelley's motivation for his activities with Dee had always been his interest in procuring gold via the Philosophers' Stone. Now secure under Rosenberg's patronage and protection he and Dee would have no trouble or distractions from engaging in their mystical studies. Yet, if Kelley, in fact, already had that ability via his mysterious red powder to make gold, why did he require Dee's services or anyone's patronage? Why no contemporary saw that anomaly is somewhat baffling! Regardless of those inconsistencies, Dee and Kelley settled into their usual activities of using spiritual guidance to unlock nature's secrets. Under Kelley's skyering the spirits had instructed Dee to tell his elaborated by Richard Deacon in his book John Dee: Scientist, Geographer, Astrologer and Secret Agent to Elizabeth I, (London, 1968). As for their expulsion from Rudolf's court see; Casaubon, A True and Faithful Relation..., pp. 420 f.; Josten, "An Unknown Chapter in the Life of John Dee," JWC1, 28, (1965), pp. 223-257; and Ashmole MS. 1790, if 1-10; and Cotton MS. Appendix XLVI, parts 1 and 2. 195

Woolley, The Queen's Conjurer, p. 251.

See Elias Ashmole, Theatrum Chemicum Britannic-um, p. 481, where he gives an account of Dee's and Kelley's transmutation of base metal into gold.

76 patron that he had discovered the Philosophers' Stone. Rosenberg was quite motivated with Dee's and Kelley's activities and spared little expense in providing laboratories and materials for their use. Word of their activities, and murmurings that they had unlocked the secret for making gold, had traveled as far as Russia. In December 1587, Dee received an invitation from the Russian Czar, Feodor Ivanowich, the successor of Ivan the Terrible, to take up residence at his Court with a hefty stipend of £2000, no doubt inspired to make that offer by the prospect of easy riches.'" No doubt Feodor was in a difficult position following the death of Ivan the Terrible in 1584 which marked the beginning of the time of trouble for Russia. Despite that possibility, it is again curious to consider how Dee, despite his never certain means of income, would turn down such a sumptuous offer. One can assume that Dee was satisfied with the wealth Kelley could produce via his craft! In the year and a half that Dee and Kelley spent at Trebona in the service of Count Rosenberg, their relationship became more and more strained. Kelley, who became completely absorbed in alchemical experimentation and who shied further away from the angelic summoning, would frequently travel back and forth to Prague, often accompanied by the Count. Apparently relations with the Emperor had improved, no doubt through the intersession of Rosenberg and the allure of gold. Dee remained at Trebona entranced in his mystical delusions. His concern always was with a grander vision of a new Europe brought about through angelic power. How sad for Dee that his hopes of unlocking the secrets of nature and attaining fame and reward were foiled at each turn by recalcitrant angels and less than sincere friends. Kelley had grown tired of Dee's grand angelic designs and he sought his satisfaction in more tangible ways. By the spring of 1587 Kelley, content with his new found fame and prestige, wished to dissolve the partnership. Of course being a shrewd and calculating individual, he used his ability to converse with spirits as 197

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 9. Smith, John Dee, pp. 176-178.

77 the means by which to convince Dee to release him from his service. Dee, duped into believing that the spirits were truthful, accepted the judgment. Here the story entered into its most comical and bizarre phase. To start with, Dee, wishing to continue the angelic discourse, and never having had the ability to summon the spirits through his own powers, enlisted the services of his seven year old son Arthur to act as his slcryer. One can only assume that it was Dee's spiritual conception of the innocence of a child, pure and blameless, that motivated him to choose his son as his medium. Kelley must have rolled with laughter at that proposition! With great solemnity Dee prepared his son to act as his skryer, but to no avail. Arthur proved to be incapable of seeing any spirits, despite all of Dee's grave and formal spiritual preparations. In desperation Dee appealed to Kelley to resume his services, at which point the story moved from the ridiculous to the bizarre. To Dee's great satisfaction Kelley did return to resume his previous duties. The ensuing séance tested the limits of Dee's beliefs as to the truth of what the spirits asked of him. When the séance began the spirits informed Dee that he and Kelley must share all they had in common, including their wives. When Dee protested that such an act went against the laws of God, the spirits informed him that "nothing is unlawful which is lawful unto God."95 The assumption was that the voices (supposedly) of angels in those visions of Kelley's spoke a higher truth than anything thus far revealed in scripture. One can only assume that Kelley had pushed conditions within his relationship with Dee to that extreme in order to assure once and for all that any bond would be irreconcilably severed, thus freeing him to pursue his own ends. Being a self-absorbed individual, one can surmise that he had little concern for anyone else's psychological well being! At first Dee was shocked and dismayed, and he and Kelley discussed that strange request long into the evening until Dee was finally brought around and convinced of the truth 198 See Woolley, The Queen's Conjurer, pp. 258-265, for a good account of that episode in Dee's life.

78 of the angels appeal. Needless to say, Jane Dee was distraught when her husband informed her of the strange commandment the angels had issued. Dee was only able to quell his wife's dismay with "...the fear of God, and in believing of his admonishment...;" Jane responded saying, "I trust though I give myself thus to be used, that God will turn me into stone before he would suffer me, in my obedience, to receive any shame, or inconvenience."

Later that evening the

deed was done. Dee and Kelley remained in Trebona for another year, their relationship becoming more and more strained, with no further angelic actions taking place. To add insult to injury, in July 1588 Sir Edward Dyer, a long-time friend of Dee's and godfather to his son Arthur, appeared at Trebona sent by Lord Burghley as a diplomat to the Imperial Court. Dyer, however, was not interested in his old acquaintance Dee, but shifted all his attention to Kelley. Apparently the English Court was boning with reports of Kelley's ability to make gold, and Dyer had been sent to retrieve Kelley and return him to England. Dee's only response to that abandonment by Dyer was recorded in his diary where he lamented that Dyer

-did injure me unkindly.' Dee's fortune was spent. All attention was on Kelley. By the early winter of 1589 the odd and tempestuous relationship between Dee and Kelley reached its conclusion. Kelley remained in Bohemia for the next six years. At first he was well received at Rudolf's Court and even elevated to a knighthood. But he was living on borrowed time; within a few years Rudolf's disposition towards him had soured and Kelley was imprisoned. He languished in

" Woolley, The Queen's Conjurer, p. 263.

1

200 Dee, Diary, p. 28.

79 prison in Prague until 1595, at which point he died apparently from injuries sustained in a fall trying to escape his imprisonment."' Dee and his family left Bohemia in March for their long return to England. Dee certainly must have departed from the Empire with a grave and heavy heart. His grand visions and designs had come to naught. The angels who had given Dee such high hopes failed him in the end. Dee was returning to England a failure, unsure what prospects awaited him in the home he had almost forsaken. Despite Dee's never steady means of income he and his family traveled in grand style across the Empire through the spring of 1589, arriving in Bremen in April.'" Dee and his family remained in Bremen throughout the summer and fall of 1589. While in residence there Dee continued to "mingle with the learned and distinguished men of the time."' Dee lingered in Bremen awaiting Kelley, thinking that he would soon join him and that the two would return to England to resume their activities. But Kelley had already decided that his fortunes lay in Prague in the service of Rudolf Finally, by November, Dee's patience had run out and he departed for London and the home he had not seen in six years. It is hard to imagine Dee not being filled with great apprehension as to what fate awaited him in England. He was not returning as a hero, but rather a failure. His grand visions and designs for a new Europe had fallen on deaf ears, and none of his apocalyptic predictions—of which he was convinced--ever materialized into reality. Even the more tangible gains made through alchemy did not follow him back to England, the secrets unlocked in Trebona remained there with Kelley. Lost to Dee forever was the Philosophers' Stone and the wealth it could create. Dee also discovered that the income from his rectories had ceased. For the next Smith, John Dee, pp. 201-213. Although there were rumors circulating that he survived until at least 1597, practicing his alchemy throughout Eastern Europe—see Ivan Svitak, "John Dee and Edward Kelley," Kosmos, 5 (1968), p. 137.

201

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, pp. 32-34. Dee calculated that the cost of the trip was £ 796; traveling in three coaches drawn by twelve horses.

202

203 Smith, John Dee, p.216.

80 six years Dee would find himself living off the generosity of friends and the sales of his hooks, as he frantically and desperately tried to receive another living from

Elizabeth 1. A final sad note concerning Dee's condition upon his return to England was the wanton ransacking of his home and especially his vast library. Dee had left his house at Mortlake in the care of his brother-in-law, Nicholas Fromond. Apparently, at some point not long after Dee's departure with Laski in 1583, a mob broke into Dee's house and "made havoc of his priceless books and instruments, and wrought irreparable damage." One is left to believe that it was Dee's occult and esoteric activities that had aroused fear in the hearts of his neighbors in Mortlake and caused the incident. As M. R. James wrote, "...a raid was made upon his [Dee's] house by the less respectable residents in Mortlake (among the better sort he seems to have been popular and well-liked), his books were, to some extent, dispersed, and valuable scientific instruments broken or stolen."" More recent scholarship has shown convincingly that a variety of motives inspired some to ransack Dee's empty, seemingly deserted, house."' Dee estimated that in his vast library of over 4000 books and manuscripts more than 500 were lost, as well as irreplaceable equipment, at a cost of 533. 7 Dee's time, resources, energy, efforts, and monies were apparently spent.

204

Smith, John Dee, p. 126-127.

205

M. R. James, Lists of Manuscripts fortnerbr owned by Dr John Dee (Supplement to the

Transactions of the Bibliographical Society's Transactions, 1921), p. 4.

Julian Roberts and Andrew G. Watson (edited), .Jo/in Dee's Libraty Catalogue, (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1990), pp. 49-52.

206

262

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, pp. 27-31.

Chapter V Twilight Years Broken Promises and Broken Dreams 1590-1608/9

The final stage of Dee's life was a long series of appeals for preferment, recognition, and monetary assistance. Dee was in a desperate condition upon his return to England in December of 1589. For all his wanderings on the Continent and the great secrets and treasures he and Kelley uncovered, nothing tangible was to return with him. His life was teetering on the edge of the abyss, all hope seemingly evaporated; all that was left were his family and a few close friends. His home, virtually abandoned for six years, was ransacked and in disarray. The only thing that would keep Dee and his family solvent over the next six years was the generosity of friends and the pawning of his plate. All his designs and pleas for preferment and place fell on deaf ears. Perhaps it was that Dee, an old man of sixty-two, had simply outlived his usefulness and most of his supporters. Leicester, his one-time student and advocate, had died a year earlier in September 1588; Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir Christopher Hatton died in 1590 and 1591 respectively; Burghley, although their senior, lingered until August 1598; all those significant court figures who supposedly consulted Dee were gone, and no new courtiers emerged to take their place. Dee's situation at home was also growing more financially strained. He would continue, despite his diminished resources, to employ servants and

82 assistants, and he and Jane continued to have children. Two more sons, Michael and Theodore, had been born while Dee was on the Continent. In late February 1590, a daughter, Madinia, was born, followed two years later by another daughter, Frances. Their final child, Margaret, was born in 1595, when Dee was sixty-eight! The only thing keeping Dee from utter destitution was the occasional fiscal gift or loan from friends and the pawning of his plates."' Upon his return to England Dee also received the bad news that any hope of income from his former rectories of Upton and Longleadenham had been lost. As Dee wrote in his Diary for January 21, 1591; "utterly put owt of hope for recovering the two parsonages by the Lord Archbishop and the Lord Thresurer."2" In his Autobiographical Tracts Dee also pleaded over his loss, Being, by favour, protection, and helpe of Almighty God, now come home to my native country,.. .and, finding my selfe barred, and, contrary to her Majesties very gracious commandment, cut off from all receipt of rents for my two rectories, Upton and LongLedman for ever...210 That was quite a blow for Dee. The loss of the only sure means of income that he had been living on for the past thirty-five years had made Dee anxious. The next five years would find Dee frantically trying to recoup that loss. The loss of his former livings had Dee pin his hope on acquiring the mastership of St. Johns' Cross in Winchester, or a host of other livings that Dee saw fit for him to have.'" As Dee lamented; ...yea four times within these three last yeares already pronounced in my behalfe of the Mastership of St. Crosses, or of the Wardenship of Winchester, or Provostship of Eaton, or Mastership 208

See Dee, Diary, pp. 32-51 for examples of monies loaned or given to Dee for his maintenance.

209

Dee, Diary, p. 37.

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, pp. 31-31; 34-35. Dee estimated the income from the rectories to be HO p.a. See p. 31.

210

211

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, pp. 39-43.

83 of Sherbom, or such like, being speedily preformed and assured unto me, and of me enjoyed, may be a sufficient remedy against all inconveniences, otherwise most likely to ensure:..." Dee began that petitioning in the late spring of 1591. Actually Dee had long desired the mastership of St. Johns' Cross and had first petitioned the Queen to grant it to him twenty years earlier.' Dee certainly had delusional designs on St. Johns' Cross, not least of which being the fact that the office was already held by Dr. Bennett! But Dee had already concocted in his mind that Dr. Bennet should be promoted to a bishopric and he expressed the idea that the Queen ...might have bishopricks enough vacant; unto one of which the worshipful' Mr. Doctor Bennet (the present incumbent of the Mastership of St. Crosse's) might be perswaded to be promoted unto by her Majestic; especially if the bishoprick be of a better living farr, than St. Crosse's; or by commendams were holpen to be of better revenue.' Dee might have been a devout and pious man but one gets the impression that he certainly appreciated the fiscal dimension associated with church benefices; and to be sure, he was not alone in that regard. It also stands out as a somewhat curious fact that Dee never was a theologian, or priest, or deacon, or in any other way religiously trained, except in a general learned sense. Yet, throughout his life he petitioned for and held church offices. The fact that, in his earlier life, during Mary's reign, he had served as a confessor for Bishop Bonner, and that throughout his career he would lobby for church livings, although always with the stipulation that he would not be responsible for overseeing the salvation of souls, stand as a somewhat glaring anomaly. Certainly Dee's work was of an esoteric and spiritual nature, as we have seen, yet it was certainly irregular and unorthodox. Even his desire to 212 Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 39. 2" Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 16. Smith, John Dee, p. 225. 214

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 16.

84 receive St Johns' Cross was more so that he could have a means of income to set it up as an elaborate laboratory where he could pursue his true mystical, alchemical designs, rather than to oversee spiritually the care of souls. Little wonder that Dee's designs to receive church livings more often than not met with an unfavorable reception from the more orthodox representatives of church polity. One can only imagine the response the church hierarchy would have given to the thought of Dee transforming a religious establishment into a laboratory-transforming the church role in guiding sinful man to the heavenly city to the conjuring of spirits and the transformation of base metals into gold! Dee may have accepted and practiced an orthodox Anglicanism, but clearly his own religious proclivities geared him to quite unorthodox metaphysical means for unlocking hidden spiritual dimensions within a larger Christian framework. That deviation from the mainstream often put him at odds with religious authorities who were intent on maintaining their conservative hold on religious orthodoxy. What should be seen as amazing is not the fact that Dee was frequently passed over and denied religious preferment, but that he ever received any position at all! The fact that he did was clearly at variance with established practice. The Mastership of St. Johns' Cross was appealing to Dee because, located in Winchester, it would be near Mortlake, or London and the Court. Dee envisioned it as an advanced research facility, coupled with ample accommodations for his family, which was "...most necessary for divers my purposes of my dutifull service performing in due tyme to her Majestie and thes my native country." Dee elaborated on his grand design of a facility: For our learned men to be entertained and lodged in, in far better manner, than I could do in [Mortlake] in tymes past; and for me to For lodging have conference with them and their helpe. conveniently several mechanicall servants in. For a printing house to be set up in for divers good, rare, and ancient bookes in Greeke and Latine, and some of my owne to be printed with my own ordering and oversight....215 215

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 40.

85

Dee convinced himself that both Burghley and the Queen were his advocates in his request for the Mastership. When Dee went to London to meet with Burghley, however, he found that Burghley's interest was in appealing to him to help convince Kelley to return to England. As far as the request for the Mastership was concerned, all Dee received was "a jentle answer of the Lord Threasorer that the Queene wold have me have something at this promotion of bishops at hand

Again, the distinct notion emerges that Dee's pleas were falling on deaf

ears and his grand designs evaporating. Dee quite possibly received some income from a rectorship within St. David's diocese in Wales. As Dee recorded in his Autobiographical Tracts; And so it came to pass by her Majesties very bountifull purpose in giving unto the right worshipfull Doctor Awbrey, one of the Masters of Requests, a few advowsons of rectories endowed, with vicarages, in St.David's diocese to my use onely, when any of them shall become vacant....2'7 Historian Gwyn Thomas suggests that Dee, in fact, did receive the rectorship of Tenby, in Pembrokeshire, on March, 16, 1601. Of course that was ten years after his initial appeal for preferment, and no details are known concerning the amount or longevity of that Dee's situation was bleak—and growing more desperate by the day. By November of 1592 Dee made an appeal to Anne Dudley, countess of Warwick, and daughter-in-law of his old patron the duke of Northumberland, to present a plea he had drawn up bemoaning his plight to the Queen. Dee certainly had far flung notions of his value and service to the British State and lamented that it was nothing short of "a national reproach that a man of science like himself should be

216

Dee, Diary, p. 39.

217

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 15.

W. Gwyn Thomas, "An Episode in the Later Life of John Dee," Welsh Historical Review, vol. 5, no. 3 (1971), p.255. The document Thomas cited was P.R.O. E 331/8 M.5.

218

86 left in beggary.' 219 Lady Warwick had apparently done her charge, and as Dee related in his Diary, "Her Majestie's grant of my supplication for commissioners to comme to me. The Lady Warwik obteyned it." Several weeks later Dee added, "...the commissioners from Her Majestie, Mr. Secretary Wolly and Sir Thomas George, cam to Mortlak to my howse."2" The two commissioners chosen by Elizabeth were Sir John Wolley, her Latin secretary, and Sir Thomas Gorge, knight of the Queen's Wardrobe and a member of her Privy Council. The two men went to Mortlake to ...see, heare, and perceive some things, according to the intent of the former Supplication. To whome being set at one table in the midle of my library-roome, and next before them two other great tables, being covered; the one, with many letters and records of fifty years course, and testimony of my studious lyfe, in and from the most famous places and parties of all Christendome; and the other with such divers books of my making, printed and unprinted, as I had in my foresaid tyme written or devised: then I did begin my declaration, concurring orderly with the text of this booke, purposely and by the Commissioners' advise, in some order of method most briefly and speedily contrived against his day.22' After listening to Dee's initial appeals the commissioners suggested that Dee write an autobiographical account of his life for them. The result of that effort, produced in less than two weeks, was Dee's -Compendious Rehearsal," which has since been edited and comes to us as The Autobiographical Tracts of Dr. John

Dee, Warden of the College of Manchester.

The work is a rambling and

somewhat disorganized array of Dee's life and accomplishments seen through the eyes of an elderly and doleful man desperately seeking a steady means of income. The immediate effect of the commission was for her majesty to grant Dee the sum of 100 marks. Dee recorded in his Diary, "...that Sir Thomas George

219

Smith, John Dee, p. 230.

229

Dee, Diary, p. 42.

221

Dee, Autobiographical Tracts, p. 4.

87 had very honorably dealt for me in the cause." And how

Sir Thomas George

browght me a hundred marks from her Majestie."' Despite the fiscal aid given by the Queen, which was not inconsequential, no other action was taken to advance Dee's suit for a church living. By the spring of 1593 Dee's financial situation improved somewhat when he accepted Mr. Francis Nicholls as a student to learn "the conclusion of fixing and teyning the moon.' According to Dee's account in his diary the fees for that learning were quite hefty. The final sum that Nicholls was to pay Dee was £300. Certainly that would be enough to keep Dee fiscally solvent for a while! Yet rather than living frugally on that money Dee would continue to spend it on equipment, books, and his servants! Clearly one can see that Dee had little understanding of fiscal priorities and clearly lived far beyond his means. Throughout the next year and a half Dee would continue his petitioning to the Queen until in May, 1594 his designs seemed on the verge of fulfillment. Apparently the Queen was convinced to give Dee St. Johns' Cross "on the death or resignation of the present incumbent Dr. Robert Bennett."' But short of giving the living to Dee outright the Queen left the matter in the hands of John Whitgift, the Archbishop of Canterbury. When Dee finally met with Whitgift a month later his hopes were dashed. As Dee related; ...after I had hard [heard] the Archbishop his answers and discourses, and that after he had byn the last Sunday at Tybald's with the Quene and Lord Threasurer, I take myself confounded for all suing or hoping for Anything that was. And so adiew to the court and courting tyll God direct me otherwise! ....God be my help as he is my refuge! Amen.'

222

Dee, Diary, p. 42.

223

Dee, Diary, p. 44.

224

CSP Domestic, 1594, p. 513.

225

Dee, Diary, p. 50.

88 Dee's hopes were crushed: and to add even greater anguish to Dee's already crumbling world, three weeks later his third son Michael, aged nine, died. Little hope seemed left and Dee braced himself for an uncertain future. The remainder of 1594 passed unconcerned with Dee's troubles. With the coming of the new year Dee's fortunes seemed to be improving. On January 8 Dee recorded in his Diary that there had been some talk, by Whitgift, of the Wardenship of Manchester coming available. It must have been an anxious four months for Dee until finally in April the "bill for Manchester Wardenship [was] signed by the Queue.' The ensuing ten months passed with Dee corresponding with the Fellows of the College, preparing to leave London, and journeying northward to Manchester. Manchester was a small, parochial city, when compared to the urban bustle to which Dee was accustomed in London. For Dee the trip to Manchester, away from the center of Court life, to which he thought himself connected, must have seemed like an exile of sorts. No longer were his intellectual services needed at Court; no longer would he have the fortune of meeting Elizabeth on her trips to and from Richmond, or having courtiers come to Mortlake to seek his counsel, or being summoned to Court for his unique scholarly acumens on diverse topics; no, Dee was sent packing. Perhaps all those to whom Dee looked for reward for his scholarship had given up any hope of anything of a tangible value being produced by Dee's activities. That was the bitter and harsh reality that Dee never seemed to have grasped, that despite all the grand claims he made of himself, he never produced anything of value, either intellectually or monetarily, or of any lasting merit. Dee and his family arrived in Manchester in February 1596, and be was installed in his new position as Warden of Christ's College on the 20th of that month."' His new office and responsibilities were a far cry from his previous 226

Dee, Diary, pp. 51, 52.

222

Dee. Diary, p. 55.

89 visions of St. Johns' Cross. No laboratories awaited him in Manchester, no flocks of world renowned scholars sought his learned guidance; he only dealt with the drudgery of administrative duties and the tempestuous Fellows of the College. Dee had begun his correspondence with the Fellows of the College by the summer of 1595. Two of particular interest were Oliver Carter, a Fellow of the College and a zealous Puritan, and Thomas Goodier, a lessee of tithes belonging to the Warden and Fellows of the College."' Dee soon found himself at variance with all parties involved in the operation of the College as he tried his skills at mending the disorganized affairs of the College. Carter especially had had suspicions and concerns about Dee's alchemical activities. Dee even recorded in his Diary how [Carter's] "wrangling and denying and despising alchemical] philosophers" was already known to him."' The College itself consisted of a Warden, four Fellows, and two chaplains. Carter was one of the original Fellows, installed after the granting of a new charter for the College in 1578.230 Dee soon found that his responsibilities were of a fiscal and managerial nature; nowhere is there any indication that Dee had responsibilities for preaching or the care of souls. Dee threw himself into his new duties trying to mend the affairs of the College, but finally his only recourse was to appeal to the Court for aid, at which point a Royal Commission was established to examine the administration of the College." By 1598 Dee was back in London, where he remained for the next two years, trying to restore the College's fiscal state, and his own. Dee's short tenure as Warden had already found him engaged in four lawsuits. To his relief they ended favorably for him."' Dee 228 John Eglington Bailey ed., Diary, for the years 1595-1601, of Dr. John Dee, Warden of Manchester..., (no publication information, 1880), pp. 20-21. 229

Dee, Diary, p. 47.

230

Smith, John Dee, p. 264.

231

Smith, John Dee, pp. 266-267.

232

Dee, Diary, p. 61.

90 remained at Manchester until 1605, continuing his administrative duties, dealing with the Fellows of the College, and trying to collect rents due to the College. Those years at Manchester also found Dee continuing to engage in his angelic actions, an activity that he pursued until at least 1607, the date of his last seance."' The years Dee spent in Manchester were hectic ones. Not only did Dee have to continue his dealings with the tempestuous Fellows and administrative headaches of the College, but with the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, he was faced with a new monarch whose views of the supernatural were at variance with his own. With the ascension of James I, Dee was once again embroiled in petitioning both the King and Parliament to clear his name of charges of slander. The exact accusations made against Dee are somewhat hazy. The only account was from Dee's own pen. In a direct way Dee was a victim of his own esoteric studies, where such studies often placed the adherent in an uncomfortable position where mere accusation was more than enough to not only destroy a person's reputation but also lead to persecution as a practitioner of the dark arts. Dee was imploring the King to help clear his name and reputation, petitioning James that he ...be tried and cleared of that horrible and damnable, and to him, most grievous and damageable Sclaunder: generally, and for these many yeeres last past, in his kingdome raysed, and continued, by report, and print, against him: namely, That he is, or hath bin a Conjurer, or Caller, or Invocator of divels: upon which most ungodly, and false reports, so boldly, constantly, and impudently avouched: yea, and uncontrolled, and hitherto unpunished, for so many yeeres, continuing:... Dee continued with an appeal to James, ...to have your Highnesse said supplicant tried on these charges, which supplicant offers himself willingly to the punishment of Death... if by any due, true and just means the said name of Conjurer or Caller or Invocator of divels or damned spirits can be 233

Smith, John Dee, p. 301.

proved to have been or duly and justly reported of or attributed to Dee ended the appeal lamenting his tribulations that "...can no longer possibly be endured... so long as his utter undoing, little by little, been most unjustly planned and executed." Dee appealed to God to "...direct your Majestie's royal heart in His ways of justice and mercy...and make your Majestie the most blessed and triumphant Monarch that ever this British Empire enioed."' Three days later Dee sent a second petition to the House of Cc

is

again asking to be exonerated from charges of slander. He made this ay... -• I in verse:

...Your helpe, therefore, by wisdoms lore, And by your POWre, so great and sure, I humbly crave, that never more, This hellish wound, I shall endure. And so your Act, with honor great, All ages will hereafter prayse: And Trueth, that sitts in Heavenly seat, Will, in like case, your comforts rayse.' Sadly for Dee, nothing resulted from his appeals. He was, to a large extent, simply ignored. Dee's career as Warden ended a year later in 1605. In that sad year, when an outbreak of the plague hit Manchester, Dee suffered the deaths of his wife, Jane, and two of his daughters, Madinia and Margaret, as well as his own dismissal as Warden. There is no clear indication as to why Dee was dismissed from his position as Warden. One can only surmise that he had grown too old to continue his duties. Dee returned to London and Mortlake, by that point a broken old man left with little save the dreams of his past glories. Nothing is known of the last three years of Dee's life other than that he continued to delve into spiritual summoning, at least until 1607, according to the To the King's Most Excellent Majestic. Dated June 5, 1604 133 John

8. 1604.

Dee, To the Honorable Assemblie of the Commons in the Present Parlament. Dated June

92 last entry made in his spiritual diary."' It is assumed that his eldest daughter, Katherine, attended him in his last years.' The exact date of his death is unknown. Traditionally it was assumed he died towards the end of December 1608, in Mortlake. More recent speculation has suggested that Dee passed away in March 1609. Yet, the precise date for Dee's death does not alter the fact that he died ignominiously, poverty stricken and forgotten. It has been assumed that Dee was buried in the Church at Mortlake, although no stone, marker, or monument denotes the precise spot for Dee's final resting place. In the end one can look back across Dee's life and career and see a man of profound erudition, one of the rarities of his age. Yet, we also see a scholar whose writings are aridly ponderous, and with a somewhat limited value for the advancement of knowledge. Throughout much of his writing one gets the growing impression of an overt paranoia on Dee's part, where he was habitually defensive and subjectively emotional. Clearly, Dee was no prophet of the scientific revolution.

236

Smith, John Dee, p. 301.

237

See French, John Dee, pp. 10-11.

238

See Roberts and Watson, ed., John Dee's Library Catalogue, p. 60.

Part II The Evolution of a Reputation

Chapter VI Seventeenth Century Reception Casting the Die

As we have seen in the previous section Dee's life and career, allowing the widest breadth of positive acclaim, ended ignominiously. The task confronting us now is to assess how ensuing generations viewed Dee. Clearly such a colorful life would find its commentators, and over the next five centuries a great deal of ink would be spilt evaluating, criticizing, and defending Dee's work and reputation. Ultimately various conclusions were drawn as to the value of Dee's varied pursuits and as to Dee's place in the worlds of both science and the occult. Seemingly there is no simple line of demarcation, despite various commentators presenting plausible arguments to view Dee from this light or that, when it comes to evaluating John Dee and his role within the intellectual world of the Early Modern period. Immediately following Dee's passing in 1608/9 not a word was said concerning him. No great announcements of his passing appeared. In fact the actual year of Dee's death is uncertain. Answers to that question vary from December 1608 through March 1609. Dee was apparently laid to rest in the parish Church in Mortlake, although no stone or monument marks the point of his

96 final earthly resting place. It is commonly held that he was buried in the Chancellery of the Church, although this is by no means certain?' More than forty years passed before any written reference concerning Dee appeared. Certainly there were those with an interest in Dee's arcane studies who would continue to look towards his works with interest. But nowhere would Dee's studies be part of the mainstream of the scientific development of the seventeenth century. Dee was quickly becoming a footnote to the direction thot science was taking in the new century, representing an earlier era of intellectual inquiry. Scientific inquiry began to make a noticeable departure from the more arcane and mystical/religious interests of the sixteenth centiuy. With the new methodological approaches of Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes winning the day in terms of how scientific research was to be conducted, Dee's form of investigation fell out of fashion. Paramount to that intellectual shift was the segregating of religion from science. God might have created the universe, but it was mathematical laws that accurately showed the mechanical working of that universe, not mystical revelation. Dee's vision of mathematics as a key to unlocking the hidden mysteries of nature as part of some grand apocalyptic design did little (if anything) to advance scientific knowledge in the new century. Nowhere would Dee be looked upon as the architect of modem science. Dee's contributions to science were marginal and minimal at best. Where Dee's studies piqued interest was not among the scientists but among the antiquarians and mystics in the new century. The first author to make reference to Dee, over forty years after Dee's death, was Elias Ashmole in his work Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum.2'4° As Michael Hunter has pointed out, "Ashmole was a man of paradox passionately See Elias Ashmole, Theairtcum Chemicum Britannicum (London, 1652). Edited by Allen G. Debus (New York and London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1967), p. wt.

239

24° Elias Ashmole, Theatrum Chemicum Britannicwn (London, 1652). Edited by Allen G. Debus (New York and London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1967).

97 committed to astrology, alchemy and magic and the arcane view of the natural world, yet the museum that bears his name embodies the rational science of the Enlightenment."' And although Ashmole was a member of the Royal Society his intellectual interests put him at a polar opposite from the mechanical world view that that Society would embrace.' Ashmole's Theatrum was an editing of all the major English alchemical works from the Middle Ages through the early seventeenth century. As Allen G. Debus has noted, "...the Theatrum has made him [Ashmole] one of the greatest figures in the history of English alchemy."' One can look at Ashmole's work as being among the greatest compendia of English alchemical lore stretching from Celtic times and mystical Druidic lore through the myths of the Middle Ages up through the seventeenth century. Ashmole makes no claim to be among the alchemical adepts. As Debus has pointed out, "...Asmole freely admitted that he had not yet 'set my selfe Effectually upon the Manual' Practice'." 744 Dee was certainly not a key or even significant character in Ashmole's work. In fact in Ashmole's vast text there was only a short excerpt from a letter of Dee's to John Gwynn touching upon Dee's Monas.' However in Ashmole's addendum of notes he goes into a longer expos6 on the career and relationship of Dee and Kelley. As Ashmole stated, "...I must also mention that famous Artist [scholar], Doctor John Dee;.. .He being sometime his [Kelley's] Intimate Friend, and long Companion in Philosophical Studies, and Chemical' Experiments.. "247 Michael Hunter, Elias Ashmole and His World 1617-1692 (Oxford: Ashmole,an Museum, 1983), g. I.

241

242

Hunter, p.10.

243

Ashrnole, p. XXX.

244

Ashmole, p. xxxiii.

245

Ashmole, p. 334.

246

Ashmole, p.478-484.

98 Clearly Ashmole was much more interested in Kelley as the adept in those hidden arts as opposed to Dee the scholar. What Ashmole does have to say about Dee was mostly a positive affirmation of Dee's scholarly abilities in mathematics and astrology. Ashmole described Dee: As touching Doctor Dee, he chiefly bent his Studies to the Mathematicks; in all parts of which he was an absolute and perfect Master. Witnessse his Mathematical! Preface to Euclids Elements, wherein are enumerated many Arts of him wholly invented (by Name, Definition, Propriety, and Use) More than either the Grecian or Roman Mathematicians have left to our knowledge: with divers and many Annotations, and Inventions, Mathematicall, added in sundry places of the said Booke: Together with severall pieces of Navigation, Perspective, and other rare Mathematicall works of his in Manuscript... And lastly that he was a good Astrologian and a studious Philosopher, ...afford no small evidence to the World.'" Clearly Ashmole was in line with many of Dee's contemporaries in regarding him as a scholar of singular abilities in the mathematical arts. But, as in Dee's lifetime, after the praises came the detractions. As Ashmole went on to say: His great Ability in Astrologie, and the more secret parts of Learning (to which he had a strong propensity and unwearyed Fancy,) drew from the Envious and Vulgar, many rash, lewd, and lying Scandalls, upon his most honest and justifiable Philosophicall Studies; and many times forced him out of the bittemesse of his soule (which was even Crucified with the malice of Impudent Tounges) most seriously and fervently to Apologize. Nor could he enjoy Tranquility in his Studies, but was oftentimes disquieted and vexed with the sower dispositions of such as most Injuriously Scandalized both him and them...'"

247

Ashmole, p. 478.

248

Ashmole, p. 480.

249

Ashmole, p. 480.

99 In keeping in line with the theme of Ashmole's book he then goes on to describe Dee's and Kelley's alchemical activities. As he stated: Tis generally reported that Doctor Dee, and Sir Edward Kelly were so strangely fortunate, as to finde a very large quantity of the Elixir in some part of the Ruines of Glastenbury Abbey, which was so incredibly Rich in virtue.. .that they lost much in making Projection, by way of Triall; before they found out the true height of the Medicine. He went on to state: And whether they found it at Glastenbury (as is aforesaid) or howsoever else they came by it, tis certain they had it: for at Trebona in Bohemia... Sir Edward Kelley made Projection with one small Graine thereof.. .and it produced almost an ounce of most pure Gold.' One cannot help wonder, if Dee and Kelley had that ability why Dee was habitually pleading for money and continually lamenting his poverty. The remainder of Ashmole's addendum is just a brief synopsis of Dee's and Kelley's activities between 1586 and 1595 where he ends the story with Kelley's death in Bohemia. The conclusion that one draws from Ashmole's evaluation of Dee is consistent with Dee's own appraisal of himself. Through Ashmole's eyes we again can see Dee as a scholar of unparalled ability who was often maligned due to the esoteric nature of the studies and activities he pursued. In a world that had not yet fully embraced a modern understanding of science, where those activities that were termed scientific were more often shrouded in mystical and metaphysical jargon, it is easy to see how Dee could be viewed as one of the intellectual rarities of his age often misunderstood and maligned. As a virtuoso of those arcane arts—arts esteemed by the intellectually curious and feared by the religiously sensitive and superstitiously oriented—Dee's activities were to receive a mixed reception both in his own lifetime and in the ensuing centuries. 25° Ashmole, p.481.

100

The seventeenth century witnessed a number of learned antiquarians also commenting on and making reference to Dee in a positive light. The first of those men was the antiquarian and bibliophile Robert Cotton (1570-1631). Cotton is most famous for his vast private library, which by the seventeenth century housed the largest collection of manuscripts in England. The library was later donated by his grandson to the British Nation and is now housed in the British Library. Within Cotton's collection were a number of Dee's manuscripts, and foremost among them was the bulk of Dee's angelic conversations. Apparently Cotton had purchased the land where Dee's house was located in Mortlake, c. 1619 and began to search for anything of interest or value that Dee had left. In his searching he had discovered those manuscripts containing Dee's angelic conversations. Cotton himself never wrote or commented on Dee's manuscripts, and the manuscripts most likely would have gone unnoticed in his private library. After Cotton's death his son, Sir Thomas Cotton, gave Dee's manuscripts to the classical scholar Meric Casaubon, who would edit and publish them in what would become the most scathing attack on the dubious nature of Dee's activities. More shall be made of this below. Aside from Ashmole, two other scholars who made brief comments on Dee in the second half of the seventeenth century were the astrologer William Lilly (1602-1681) and the antiquarian John Aubrey (1626-1697). Both men, as with Ashmole, gave a positive account of Dee's life and praised his learning. Lilly mistakenly began his account of Dee by stating that "...he was educated in the University of Oxford, there took his degree of Doctor;...."1" Lilly may simply have mistaken Dee's son Arthur, who was a doctor and did graduate from Oxford, for his father. John Dee, as we have seen, received all his degrees William Lilly, Air. William Lilly's History of his Life and Times; from the years 1602168/. edited by Elias Ashmole (London, 1715). John Aubrey, Brief Lives, edited Andrew Clark

251 See

(Oxford, 1898). 252

Lilly, p. 56.

101 from Cambridge University. That small mistake aside, Lilly went on to paint a very positive picture of Dee as "...a ready witted man, quick of apprehension, very learned, and of great judgment in the Latin and Greek tongues." Continuing, "He was a very great investigator of the most secret Hermetical learning, a perfect astronomer, a curious astrologer, a serious geometrician; to speak truth, he was excellent in all kinds of learning."' After the acclaim Lilly gives Dee he comments on a flaw he detects in Dee's personality seeing him as "...the most ambitious person living, and most desirous of fame, and renown, and was never so well pleased as when he heard himself stiled Most Excellent."' Lilly was clearly making a character judgment of Dee as a man whose ego demanded notoriety. The remainder of Lilly's short account of Dee focused on Dee's and Kelley's activities with Pucci at the Court of Emperor Rudolf II. Lilly ended his commentary looking at Dee's "Conferences with Spirits." Here Lilly was critical of Dee "...perceiving many weaknesses in the manage of that way of Mosaical • learning: but I conceive, the reason why he had not more plain resolutions and more to the purpose, was, because Kelly was very vicious, unto whom the angels were not obedient...."' This seems to be a rather cryptic ending in Lilly's account of Dee's life and career and one cannot help but notice that the main points of Dee's vast learning were offset by his pride and credulity concerning Kelley. As we have seen, it was Kelley who was viewed as the manipulator and Dee as the naïve and willing dupe. Of course, the vast majority of individuals in the seventeenth century did believe in spiritual and supernatural powers and forces. Lilly clearly believed in that aspect of Dee's activities. Few would doubt that Dee and Kelley were, in fact, conversing with spirits. Where critics took issue with Dee concerned the nature of those spiritual aberrations, which detractors saw as demonic. That fact would remain at the heart of criticism 253

Lilly, p. 56.

254

Lilly, p. 56.

255

Lilly, p. 57.

102 directed towards Dee, his activities, and his role within the intellectual world of Early Modern Europe. Another positive appraisal of Dee came from the antiquarian John Aubrey. Elias Ashmole enlisted Aubrey's services in gathering information on Dee. In 1673 Aubrey interviewed the widow Faldo, of Mortlake, who had known Dee when she was a child. Aubrey then wrote a favorable account of Dee included in his Brief Lives. Aubrey began with a physical description of Dee based on a print found in Billingsley's Euclid, noting: "Hee had a very faire clear rosie complexion; a long beard as white as milk; he was tall and slender; a very handsome man."' Aubrey ended his appraisal of Dee stating, "...a mighty good man he was.'"" Aubrey, in fact, had another connection with Dee beyond a mere antiquarian interest. Apparently Aubrey's grandfather, William Aubrey, and Dee were cousins, and Aubrey related how Ashmole had acquired some letters between them—noting how Aubrey and Dee were friends. Aubrey went on to describe Cotton's acquiring of Dee's Spiritual Diaries and related a story of Dee and Kelley"...conjuring at a poole in Brecknockshire, and that they found a wedge of Gold; and that they were troubled and indicted as Conjurors at the Assize; that a mighty storme and tempest was raysed in harvest time, the countrey people had not known the like." Again we can see that it was due to his arcane mystical activities that Dee was suspect and feared by many. As Aubrey accounted; "That the children dreaded him [Dee] because he was accounted a Conjuror."2" Continuing, Aubrey also suggested that Ben Johnson modeled the lead character in his play The Alchemist after Dee helping to galvanize Dee's reputation.

236

Aubrey, Brief Lives, p. 89.

257

Aubrey, p. 89.

158

Aubrey, p. 90.

103 The antiquarian accounts of Dee that appeared in the seventeenth century were all of a fairly positive nature praising Dee for his erudition and breadth of scholarship, detracting only for his overreaching ego and credulity concerning Kelley. That attitude would be most strikingly highlighted with the publication of Meric Casaubon's edition of Dee's Spiritual Diaries. Meric Casaubon (15991671) was a classicist perhaps most noted for his editing and translating of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. Casaubon, as noted above, had obtained Dee's manuscript through Thomas Cotton, the son of Robert Cotton, and proceeded to edit the work, producing the most famous account of Dee's angelic activities with Kelley and helping to seal Dee's reputation as a credulous individual engaged in the black arts. Casaubon's A True & Faithfil Relation of what passed for many years Between Dr. John Dee...and Some Spirits.., set the tone for much of the popular attitude towards Dee over the next three hundred years.' Casaubon set the tone for his evaluation of Dee and his activities in the opening sentence of his Preface: What is here presented unto thee (Christian Reader) being a True and Faithfid Relation...though by the carriage of it, in some respects, and by the Nature of it too, it might be deemed and termed, A Work of Darknesse: Yet it is no other than what with great tendemesse and circumspection, was tendered to men of highest Dignity in Europe, Kings and Princes, and by all (England excepted) listened unto for a while with good respect.' Apparently Casaubon was of the belief that Dee's activities were more highly prized outside of his native land—a belief heralded by Dee himself. Casaubon also believed that Dee's work was "not to be paralleled in that kind by any book that hath been set out in any age to read."' The work clearly struck an

259 Meric Casaubon, ed., A True & Faithful Relation of What Passed for many years benveen Dr. John Dee.. and Some Spirits... (London, 1659).

260

Casaubon sig. A r.

261

Casaubon sig. A r.

104 intellectual and religious chord with Casaubon. Casaubon's interest in editing Dee's angelic diaries was ultimately to discourage others from embarking with such folly on such a spiritually perilous course. Casaubon fully accepted the existence of a spiritual world. As he stated: "I cannot satisfie my self how any Learned man, sober and rational, can entertain such an opinion (simply and seriously) That there be no Dive's nor Spirits, etc."' Casaubon fully accepted that Dee was in contact with spirits, but Casauhon's criticism lay in trying to show that those spirits were not angels, but, in fact, demons. That was a fiict, Casaubon contended, that Kelley was aware of, yet he continually deceived Dee into believing the spirits to be angels. As Casaubon related, "that Kelley was a great Conjurer, one that daily conversed by such art as is used by ordinary Magicians, with evil Spirits, and knew them to be so." Dee, for his part, readily accepted that the spirits being summoned were angels of light. Casaubon saw it from the opposite direction, arguing that Dee's only error was "that he mistook false lying Spirits for Angels of Light, the Divel of Hell (as we commonly term him) for the God of Heaven."' At the conclusion of his Preface Casaubon made a final admonition that All men may take warning by this example [of Dee], how they put themselves out of the protection of Almighty God, either by presumptuous unlawful wishes and desires, or by seeking not unto DiveIs onely, directly (which Dr. Dee certainly never did, but abhorred the thought of it in his heart) but unto them that have next relation unto DiveIs, as Witches, Wiz.zards, Conjurors, Astrologers, (that take upon them to foretell humane events) Fortune tellers, and the like, yea, and all Books of that subject, which I doubt, were a great occasion of Dr. Dees delusion:..."

252

Casaubon sig. C v.

252

Casaubon sig. D ii V.

264

Casaubon sig. D v.

255

Casaubon sig. 1 v.

105 As Deborah E. Harkness has pointed out in her work on Dee's Angelic Conversations: Casaubon hoped that the publication of the sordid details of Dee's angel conversations would convert atheists to a belief in the spiritual world, moderate the opinions of advocates of prophecy and revelation (such as the Anabaptists) who relied too much on spirits for answers to their dilemmas, and encourage people to appreciate the power of prayer. In addition, the publication would reorient people who consulted astrologers and conjurers—as well as those who read about such dangerous ideas in books.2" Casaubon's work certainly aroused interest in Dee's activities—if out of a sense of spiritual curiosity if nothing else. The vast majority of people in the seventeenth century believed in the existence of a spiritual world and for Dee to have communicated with spirits was not beyond the realm of the plausible. Though Casaubon's work is the most famous example of a rather negative commentary on Dee's activities, his was not the most scathing attack made on Dee in the seventeenth century. That distinction belongs to Robert Hooke. Robert Hooke (1635-1703) can be viewed, after Isaac Newton, as the most illustrious scientific mind of the later seventeenth century. In his Posthumous Works, Hooke included, along with a variety of technical, mechanical, and scientific topics, a brief commentary on Dee's conversations with spirits. At first glace this seems oddly out of place in a work of science, but Hooke maintained that Dee's actions with spirits was really a work of cryptography. Hooke began his essay on a positive note, stating that Dee seemed "...to be an extraordinary man, both for learning, integrity and industry...2'2' Most of the pages of Hooke's commentary are taken up with an explanation of why he is including Dee in his work and a critical summation of Casaubon's Preface. Quickly we see Hooke making an about face from what appeared to be an initially positive view of Dee. Deborah E. Harkness, John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 222.

266

Robert Hooke, The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke, edited with an introduction by Richard S. Westwall, (New York and London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1969), P. 203.

267

106

In his general appraisal Hooke saw Dee's Actions with Spirits as being "...at best stale...," and a sign of "Dr. Dee's Delusion," and as a work that had "...nothing to do with the Improving [of] Natural Knowledge.' As for the Actions Dee and Kelley had with spirits, Hooke sarcastically pointed out how the Actions were "...a rhapsody of incoherent and unintelligible Whimsies of prayers and Praises, Invocations and apparitions of Spirits, strange Characters, uncouth and unintelligible Names, Words and Sentences, and Relations of incredible Occurrences."' But Hooke was not satisfied at leaving it simply as the unintelligible raging of a deluded scholar. Hooke refused to follow Casaubon's lead in assuming the actions were real (albeit that the spirits were devils and not angels). Instead Hooke offered another interpretation of Dee's actions and activities. He suggested that Dee's Angelic Conversations were, in fact, a form of cryptography. That interpretation of Dee's work was rather novel. Three centuries later Richard Deacon, in John Dee: Scientist, Geographer, Astrologer and Secret Agent to Elizabeth I, would use the same thesis. As Hooke elaborated:

To come to the Book [A True and Faithful Relation...] it self Upon turning it over, and comparing several Particulars in it one with another, and with other Writings of the said Dr. Dee, and considering also the History of the Life, Actions and Estate of the said Author, so far as I can be informed, I do conceive that the greatest part of the said Book, especially all that which relates to the Spirits and Apparitions, together with their Names, Speeches, Shews, Noises, Clothing, Actions, and the Prayers and Doxologies, &c. are all Cryptography, and that some Parts Also of that which seems to be a Journal of his Voyage and Travels into several Parts of Germany, are also Cryptographical; that is, that under those feigned Stories, which he there seems to relate as Matters of Fact, he hath concealed Relations of quite another thing; and that he made use of this way of absconding it, that he might more securely escape discovery, if he should fall under suspicion as to the true 268

Hooke, p. 204.

269

Hooke, p. 205.

107

Design of his Travels, or that the same should fall into the hands of any Spies, or such as might be employed to betray him or his Intentions; conceiving the Inquisition that should be made, or Prosecution, if discovered, would be more gentle for a Pretended Enthusiast, than for a real Spy."' Although Hooke stated that, "I would not detain too long upon this subject,'"27 he did go on for two full folio pages in bringing home that point. Hooke's new twist on Dee's activities provided yet another dimension to the growing litany of interpretations of Dee. A final footnote of seventeenth century commentary on Dee is found in Anthony a Wood's Athenae Oxonienses.' Anthony a Wood (1632-1695) was an antiquarian most noted for his magisterial multi-volume work on Oxford, particularly those educated at Oxford. Although John Dee never attended Oxford and has no direct connection with that ancient university, there were a number of his acquaintances, and most importantly his son, Arthur, who did so. It is in Wood's writing on those figures that we catch mention of John Dee, especially in the section on Arthur Dee, which actually is mostly commentary on John Dee. But in each instance where Wood includes a mention of Dee, he stated nothing that in any way added to knowledge of Dee and his reputation. In concluding this section on seventeenth-century commentary on Dee two points can be made concerning Dee's spiritual activities. The first was made by Nicholas Clulee, who showed that Dee's spiritual activities were not a type of cabalistic magic, but rather a "...religious experience sanctioned by the scriptural records of others to whom God or his angels imparted special illumination.'' If we accept Clulee's interpretation of Dee's activities then Dee was certainly not 270

Hooke, p. 206.

271

Hooke, p.207.

272

Anthony a Wood Alhenae Oxonienses (London, 1813), edited, Philip Bliss.

273

Clulee, p.206.

108 engaging in spiritual magic per se, but rather in a form of religious worship. As Harkness has pointed out: "Dee used prayer to facilitate the angel conversations rather than spells and conjuring, but prayer could never be completely divorced from occult practices."'" At any rate it eased Dee's religiously governed mind that he was praying for aid rather than engaging in the more sinister act of conjuring. On this count Dee can certainly be seen as a man with a very high opinion of himself, that he ranked himself among the spiritual elite who could directly receive divine revelations. Yet Dee can also be seen as a man raked by emotional pressures manifest in his constant desire for divine guidance and assurance. As Clulee has stated, "The frequent concern with his spiritual worthiness and with the angelic revelations as a token of his special spiritual merit speaks to a profound sense of spiritual anxiety and insecuri "275 The second point concerns the necessity for angels in the first place to act as intermediaries between Dee and God. This fact says something about the nature of Dee's religious convictions. Certainly since the break from Rome, Protestant theology frowned upon the ideas of intermediaries being necessary for sinful man to speak to God. Gone was the role of angels and saints as gobetweens when it came to man's prayers to God. Yet Dee, or more correctly Kelley, never invoked God directly. It was only with the angels of God that they communicated. That point clearly shows the intellectual hold of an earlier theology. Dee, of course, did deviate from any truly orthodox position, either Catholic or Protestant, when it came to the simple fact that he was looking for religious truths beyond that of any established church. When it comes to an evaluation of Dee from the perspective of seventeenth century commentary Dee's brand of scholarship had fallen out of

274

Harkness, p. 124.

275

Clulee, p. 208.

109 fashion in a century marked by a more pragmatic and mechanical view of nature and science.

Chapter VII The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries A Reputation's Journey from the Age of Reason Through the Victorian Age

The reception of Dee's reputation in the seventeenth century had galvanized his place as an intellectual eccentric deceived by his colleagues and deluded by devils. The ensuing two centuries did little to alter that view in the popular mind. Dee's esoteric studies found little room for tolerance in a century of reason and scientific enlightenment. Dee became marginalized as a sad example of intellectual folly and a representative of an arcane brand of science strangely out of step with the currents of a new and enlightened age. The eighteenth century witnessed a number of authors commenting on Dee but doing little to change the reputation inherited from the seventeenth century. The most significant work was the publication in 1707 by Dr. Thomas Smith of the first true biography of Dee. Thomas Smith (1638-1710) was an academic affiliated with Oxford University and later in the service of Sir John Cotton. His 1707 publication, Vitas Quorundam Eruditissimorum et Illustrium Vivorum, included a large section titled Vita Joannis Dee, which was the first biographical account of Dee's life.'"

Thomas Smith, Vita Joannis Dee, in Vitae Quorundarn Eruditism o in et Illustrium Vivorum (London, 1707).

276

112 Smith's work unfortunately was written in Latin and thus only available to a select few connected with the universities or the church, although perhaps making it more accessible to a continental audience. Two hundred years passed before Smith's work was translated into English. Smith drew most of his information on Dee from those manuscripts of Dee's housed at the Bodleian library at Oxford, especially those manuscripts of Ashmole's including Ashmole's copy of Casaubon's True and Faithful Relation....' Smith's appraisal of Dee began on a positive note showing how Dee, as a young student at Cambridge, had been "inflamed by a most ardent love of learning" and was "sufficiently aware that not without great industry could a great fame of learning be acquired."2Th Yet, as Smith pointed out, Dee's intellectual passions were driven by a thirst for the mathematical arts, "with which he was desperately in love, according to the bent of his genius,""9 as the clearest road for unlocking natures mysteries. Smith, in his assessment of Dee's interest in pursuing that brand of wisdom, pointed out how from this time [Dee's student days at Cambridge] it appears to me to be very much like the truth, that Dee nourished vain hopes in his mind, although under the specious pretext that he at length at some time or other, would attain to what is scarcely ever given to mortals, that is to attain to pure truth, and the discovering the treasures of celestial wisdom, and thence from the study of Mathematical Sciences.. .of penetrating into the secrets of Nature and the most profound secrets of natural as of Divine things, and of introducing a new.. .Mystical Philosophy.. .and at length that he hoped to gain an advantage to himself, from the indulgence of vain and altogether to be condemned curiosity.... The impiety of this

See Smith MS 86, fol. 97-108; Smith MS 95, fol. 131-146 which contain Smith's notes on Dee. Ashmole MS 580 is Ashmole's copy of Casaubon's True and Faithful Relation...; Ashmole MS 431, fol. 178-222 contains information on Dee that had been collected by William Lilly. Also see Ashmole MS 1788, arts 1-18 and Ashrnole MS 1790,1-V.

277

278

Thomas Smith, The Life of John Dee, translated by William A. Ayton, (London, 1908), p. 2.

279

Smith, p. 4.

113 purpose, he wished to hide from everyone's sight under the plausible pretext of the Mathematical Sciences Smith crafted a work that certainly exhibited a level of respect for Dee's intellectual achievements, going so far as to refer to Dee as "a versatile genius."' Yet, for Smith, Dee was also seen as an individual who "investigated the secrets of curious learning, whatsoever they might be, hitherto plunged in the deepest darkness and which lay hidden from vulgar eyes with equal subtilty and diligence.'"" Smith systematically criticized Dee's Manus Hieroglyphica, referring to Dee as an individual -evidently seized with a fanatical fury, and altogether inspired boasting, he [Dee] pretends that God had given him both the will and the divine power of opening out this mystery to all." Smith noted that "so great was the obstinacy which had entered into his mind, that by no arguments could it be expelled."' Clearly, for Smith, one of Dee's greatest failings was his lack of humility and inflated self-promotion of his own intellectual worth. Dee was cast as a man puffed up by his own self importance and pride. Dee's unrelenting desire to unlock the pure truths of nature caused him to stray from a more mechanical inquiry into the operation of the sciences. Dee was refusing to play by the accepted rules of either science or religion and as a result was attempting to rewrite both. That fact was not missed by Smith when he pointed out how Dee was unwilling to be wise according to the dictates of right reason and the sacred Scriptures, but had eagerly sought by an unlawful and impious ambition to surpass the power of the human mind, by the just judgment of God being left to himself and given over to the arbitrament of his own will, he became the sport, the laughingstock and the prey of daemons, to whose wiles and illusions, 28'3

Smith, pp. 5-6.

281 Smith,

p. 8.

282 smith,

p. 18.

283

Smith, pp. 19,20.

114 without any distrust, yea most greedily embracing them, by so great a solicitation he had rendered himself apt and easy.' Smith, utilizing Casaubon's work as his main source of information on Dee, dealt primarily with his spiritual actions. Smith would reiterate Casaubon's theme of Dee's delusions in his discussion of Dee's and Kelley's actions with spirits, making frequent reference to the "clear illusions" and "feigned mysteries" of those actions."' As shown above, Smith went so far as to imply that Dee, in fact, was advocating the creation of a new religion. According to Smith, Dee, "puffed up and joyful, had flattered himself that he at length would soon be the strenuous favourer and patron of introducing that world of new religion under the pretext of Divine revelations; as formerly Mohammed had introduced his fantasies."286 The remainder of Smith's diatribe against Dee was a repetition of that theme. Ultimately, Dee was portrayed as a man "fascinated by the diabolical lies, [one who] was hardened in embracing and retaining his errors and dreams."287 Smith's work told the story of a vain man inflated by his own sense of importance, yet one duped and deceived by both men and spirits. Smith chastised Dee for his "deplorable stupidity" and "execrable insanity"--a man unable to see the "foolishness and madness" he had undertaken in his studies."'

Dee was

portrayed simultaneously as an individual both comic and tragic, a warning to those others who would follow such a path. Smith's account galvanized Dee's reputation as a deluded enthusiast engaging in dark, secret, and forbidden arts.

284

Smith, p. 44.

285

Cf. Smith, p. 54 f.

286

Smith, p. 58.

287

Smith, p. 76.

288

Smith, pp. 78, 79.

115 Portrayed as a necromancer, Dee's reputation was sealed for the next two centuries. Next to Smith's work, which as mentioned above was geared for a learned audience, the more important eighteenth-century work promoting an interest in Dee was Thomas Hearne's edition of Johannis Confratrisis Glastoniensis, Chronica, sive historia rebus Glastoniensis.'

Hearne (1678-1735) was an

antiquarian/historian and librarian at the Bodleian library, Oxford. Despite both the work's weighty title and being composed in Latin, the section concerning Dee was included in the appendix and was a compilation of some of Dee's autobiographical and diary writings most (although not all) of which were in English. Although Hearne made no attempt to comment upon or to assess Dee's writings, the mere fact that he made them available threw a whole new variable on any assessment of Dee because from Dee's death until Hearne's publication, the only real source for appraisals of Dee came from Dee's spiritual diaries, most commonly accessible through Casaubon's True and Faithful Relation. Hearne's edition helped shed new light on Dee's work and his character. Clearly, when one reads the case that Dee made for himself in his autobiographical writings one cannot help feeling a certain respect, or even awe, for his numerous and varied accomplishments. Here, for the first time, can be seen a less sinister and less melodramatic presentation of Dee and his work. Quite a different view of Dee comes to light in a presentation devoid of the more sensationalistic spiritual writings. That new sentiment toward Dee can be summed up from a comment made by fellow antiquarian, George Ballard (1706-1755), in a letter sent to Hearne in 1732. Ballard commented: He [Dee] being a person that had made such surprising acquisitions in several parts of learning that he was justly accounted one of the greatest learned men of that age: and yet for all his valuable and wonderfull partes, and the fair promises that were made him by the Thomas Hearne, ed., Johannis Confratrisis Glastoniensis, Chronica, she historic! rebus Glastoniensis, 2 Vol. (Oxford, 1726). See Vol. 11, pp. 490-580.

289

116 prime nobilitie of the kingdome; without which to anyones thinking, his own merits would undoubtedly have been a patron good enough to have presented him to some noble benefit. But to the great scandal of the English nation, he was neglected and necessitated to the last extremity....' Yet, despite that kinder assessment of Dee, not much was made of it. Any value that Dee's works had was passed over by an age wedded to a new scientific paradigm. Dee's work was collectively lumped in the category of the occult, and Dee's reputation impenetrably sealed by Casaubon's portrayal of him as the deluded eccentric. Any claims that Dee's works had to being heralded as enlightened science were cast aside by the weight of the new methodologies of Bacon and Descartes and the new discoveries of Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Boyle, and others. Dee's grand mystical and religious vision clearly fell outside the parameters of the new scientific age. So regardless of any attempts made to rehabilitate Dee, it was all in vain. What piqued any interest in Dee was his highly colorful adventures and dabbling in the occult. That was precisely the position taken by Kippis in his entry on Dee in the first edition of the Biographia Britannica.291 Andrew Kippis (1725-1795) was a Presbyterian minister and biographer of sorts who edited in his later life the Biograpia Britannica. The work was popular and did much to seal the reception

of Dee's reputation as an eccentric. Kippis began his evaluation of Dee by stating that Dee was famous for his extensive learning, but extremely credulous, extravagantly vain and a most deluded enthusiast.. .he appears (from his own and other writings) to have been a man vain and conceited in the highest degree, of which it will be judged no small proof, that he drew and exhibited to his friends an ample scheme of 2" In I. R. F. Calder, "John Dee Studied as an English Neo-Platonist," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1952, 2 Vol., Vol. I. p. 170; quotation was taken from Leiters Written by Eminent Persons, vol. II, pt I, pp. 91-92, Nov. 15, 1732.

Andrew Kippis, ed., Biograpia Britannica, (London, 1750), vol. III, pp. 1633-1645. Second Edition, 1793, vol. 5, pp. 32-42.

291

117

his pedigree, and which he pretends to deduce from Roderick the Great.' Kippis, as both a minister and a product of the age of reason, was highly critical of Dee's occult dabbling. Kippis went on to show how Dee's endeavors were nothing but a vain and worthless waste of time. Kippis said of Dee's occult practices: ...his talents lay, in great measure, in treating mysterious subjects in so obscure a manner, that his words seem scarcely to convey any meaning, so the rewards that were bestowed on him proved of the like nature.... And as far as Dee learning's was concerned Kippis suggested that "for all Dee's learning, he was certainly one of the most superstitious and credulous men that age produced."' Kippis spent more than half of his commentary on Dee focusing on what he termed "the magical phase of Dee's life." Clearly Kippis was wedded to a paradigm quite foreign from that of Dee, and in such a light passed a harsh judgment on Dee. Kippis's diatribe noted: ...he had not only a boundless curiosity, but likewise a depraved judgment. His ambition to surpass all men in knowledge, carried him, at length, into a desire of knowledge beyond the bounds of human faculties, and, in order thereto, of having recourse to methods equally contrary to the laws of God, and to the rules of right reason. In short, he suffered himself to be deluded into a firm opinion, that, by certain invocations, an intercourse of communication with spirits might be obtained, whence he flattered himself he might gain great insight into those which are styled occult sciences, and which in truth, are no sciences at all. Kippis concluded that "he seemed to have totally deserted his former studies, and to have addicted himself entirely to these specious and delusive arts."' 292

Kippis, ed., p. 32.

293

Kippis, ed., pp. 34, 35.

294

Kippis, ed., p. 37.

118 Kippis ended his account of Dee by holding him "as a man of vain and ambitious spirit; which all his misfortunes could never alter or amend."295 And so there appeared little recompense offered to rectify or rehabilitate Dee in the light of the new and enlightened age. Also worth mentioning are several other commentators who collectively do little to change or alter the appraisal of Dee offered by Smith, Hearne, or Kippis. Treadway Russell Nash, Daniel Lysons, and James Granger all follow the above-mentioned interpretation of Dee. Granger (1725-1776), a biographer and Anglican minister, gave the same evaluation of Dee in his editing of the Biographical History; and Nash and Lysons followed suit in Collections for the History of Worcestershire and Environs of London, respectively.' Nash (17251811), an Anglican minister and Doctor of Divinity, referred to Dee as: ...a man of extensive learning, particularly in mathematics, but vain, credulous, and enthusiastic; a great astrologer and Rosicrusian, and as great a dreamer as any of that fraternity. He appears to be by turns a dupe and a cheat, and was courted by the greatest princes in Europe."' Lysons (1762-1834), also an Anglican minister and a graduate of Oxford University, speculated: ...whether...he [Dee] was himself the dupe of an enthusiastic imagination, or whether he availed himself of his knowledge to dupe others in an age when all rank were given to credulity, may perhaps admit of a question, but confesses he is rather inclined to the latter opinion.'

295

Kippis, ed., p. 42.

See James Granger, ed., Biographical History, Vol. I, (London, 1775), pp. 272-274; Treadway Russell Nash, Collections for the History of Worcestershire, (London, 1781/82), Vol. II, p. 446; and Daniel Lyson, Environs of London, (London, 1792), vol. I, p. 383. 296

297

Nash, Vol. II, p. 446.

298

Cited in Calder, p. 170.

119 Dee had been minimized; his works rejected of merit; and he himself cast as an enthusiast, beyond the pale of rational thought—a man erroneously believing himself to be in possession of special divine insight and verging on prophetic frenzy. Dee stood as a quintessential example of intellectual vanity and delusional aspirations. By the end of the eighteenth century Dee, as an adept in the occult, had long fallen off the radar of rational science. Despite the loss of credibility, however, Dee did not vanish from popular imagination. Perhaps unsurprisingly the mystical elements of Dee's work found new life in the Gothic revival of the second half of the eighteenth century. The Gothic revival as understood here was not just an artistic, architectural revival, but an intellectual and literary movement influenced by Romanticism and heavily colored by the mystical and the macabre. Both Gothic literature and Romanticism in general were based on subjective emotional experiences, often hinging on irrational emotions like fear, terror, horror, or desire. Gothic writing was extremely popular during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries due to the mystery and macabre sensationalism it imbued. Horace Walpole (1717-1797), 4th Earl of Orford, and youngest son of Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, had the distinction of publishing the first Gothic novel in 1764, The Castle of Otranto. In his gothic manor house, or what he termed "his little gothic castle," Strawberry Hill, Walpole displayed a large collection of oddities, relics, and strange knick-knacks. Among those eccentric rarities were several items attributed to Dee, such as a black onyx "shewstone," a cabalistic bracelet, and a marble table that Dee had supposedly used in his conjurations.' All those objects helped to forge in the popular mind the vision of Dee as a magician little connected with what by that point had come to be seen as science. Dee's vision of science, as a means to unlock the hidden secrets of nature and ultimately to achieve a union with the divine, had no place in the See Charles Cooper and Thompson Cooper, Athenae Cantabridgiensis, 3 Vol., (Cambridge. 1858-1913), Vol. II, p.510. Rawlinson MS. C. 989 f. 137 v. Ashmole MS 1790 f. 55 r-v.

299

120

modern scientific paradigm. That new paradigm gained firm and unquestioned acceptance during the eighteenth century, and the place for spiritual, mystical, and supernatural interpretations as science lost their credence. What had, in an earlier age, been seen as science—such studies as astrology and alchemy—was no longer accepted as a part of the new science. Those studies, however, did not simply disappear. Instead they continued to be embraced by a wide array of individuals and groups convinced that the new scientific paradigm told only part of the story. There were, they believed, still mystical, spiritual, supernatural, divine principles and forces at work within the universe, and if the new science was not going to address the ancient and cherished avenues for uncovering those hidden truths then there was a need to continue to foster and develop the older traditions such as astrology, alchemy, and spiritualism. In that new arena Dee's work would find new life and support. Because of that shift in an understanding of what was science and was not, the nineteenth century would do little to alter the view of Dee as a man far removed from anything that resembled science. Dee became a character embraced by those with a proclivity for the arcane and mystical. As the nineteenth century opened, a brief account of Dee can be found in The Gentleman's Magazine.

In that account Dee was portrayed as a man

possessing little in the way of common sense. That he was "weak and wrongheaded" and "that he lived in a sort of continual childhood, and that he was all but an idiot withal, may be easily deduced from the sources.' Alas, any truly scientific genius Dee possessed was outweighed and outpaced by his more flamboyant occult escapades. As the author noted, although "he [Dee] was an honest, inoffensive, and well-meaning sort of man, I dare say; [he] ought to rank high among that species of beings termed Wisemen: of whom every village, in the North of England at least, produces one."' 300

The Gentleman's Magazine, (London, 1814), pp. 207-208.

3°1 The Gentleman's Magazine, (London, 1814), p. 208.

The mainline story of Dm's life and career would follow the now familiar pattern of an extremely intelligent man led as' 'ay by his own ego and vanity--an individual "unfortunately cursed with at

a that nothing could satisfy,"302 as

William Godwin (l7564836) stated

of the Necromancers.

As

Godwin pointed out: The history of Dee is exceedingly interesting, not only on its own account; not only for the eminence of!: .ts and a unents, d ," incredible at 1 of urt ing ..earked hi ,y ill ,. :the ci ulity anc Tiq _ Godwin viewed Dee's scholarship as "scarcely more ingenious than the idle tricks of the most ordinary conjurer.'° 3 Godwin's assess. Lt does not deviate from a now-standard interpretation of Dee begun by C:

tnd continued through

Smith, Hearne, and ICippis. Dee was Oven credit

'Ids learning and erudition,

chastised for his greed, ambition, and duplicity, and ultimately pitied for his credulity. As Godwin surmised: ::ate scientific Had Dee gone no further than this this endeavors], he would undoubtedly have naked among the profoundest scholars and most eminent ge.niuses that adorned the reign of the maiden queen. But he was unfortunately cursed with an ambition that nothing could satisfy; and, having accustomed his mind to the wildest reveries, and wrought himself up to an extravagant pitch of enthusiasm, he pursued a course that involved him in much calamity, and clouded all his later days with misery and ruin. He dreamed y of the philosopher's stone, and was haunted with the belief of intercourse of a supramundane character. It is almost impossible to decide among these things, how much was illusion, and how much was forgery?' Godwin's final estimation of Dee:

32

William Godwin, Lives ,'f the Necromancers, (London, 1834), p. 376

Go4win, p. 396. Godwin, p. 376.

122 Professing himself to be wise he became a fool, walked in vanity of his imagination, and had his understanding under total eclipse. The immoral system of conduct in which he engaged, and the strange and shocking blasphemy that he mixed with it, render him at this time a sort of character that it is painful to contemplate.'" Clearly, Godwin's appraisal in no way rectified Dee as an eminent scholar but rather illuminated his failures. Circulating during the same period as Godwin's account of Dee was an assessment presented by John Roby (1793-1850) in his Traditions of

Lancashire."'

It was Roby who proposed that Dee was an "English Faust."'

Again, the theme remains constant. Dee was viewed as a man of learning, but one who, driven by his vanity and pride, overstepped the bounds of reason. As Roby pointed out: "An enthusiast he undoubtedly was, but not the driveling dotard that some of his biographers imagine." Roby described the intellectual prowess of Dee as: A man of profound learning, distinguished for attainments far beyond the general range of his contemporaries, he, like Faustus, and the wisest human kind, had found out how little he knew; had perceived that the great ocean of truth yet lay unexplored before him. Pursuing his inquiries to the bound and limit, as he thought, of human knowledge, and finding it altogether 'vanity,' he had recourse to forbidden practices, to experiments through which the occult and hidden qualities of nature and spirit should be unveiled and subdued to his own will:" Again Dee's vain pride was seen as the root cause of all his misfortunes in life. Roby's summary view of Dee was: Fancying that he [Dee] was intrusted with a divine mission, he was given up to strong delusions that he should believe a lie. He aimed 305

Godwin, p. 390.

306

John Roby, Traditions of Lancashire, 2 volumes, 4th edition (London, 1882) [1830].

w7 Roby,

vol. 1, p. 169.

308 Roby, vol. 1, P. 169.

123 at universal kite :fledge and exhaustless riches; but he died imbecile and a Perhaps the criticism

r not so much with the idea of

eniversal

knowledge as with the self-seeking greed and delusional self-impor.ee.ee that Dee claimed for himself. Dee was briefly mentioned in George Godfrey Cunningham's

eve rk.

Lives of Eminent and Illustrious Englishmen, published M. 1835.3' Cneeal:

began his appraisal of Dee in a positive light, recognizing him for his leamh.g and scholarship, stating that "few names occur in the early history of English s*.-ee,:e more deserving of notice than that of John

But very quickly CtemiT

amended his assessment, showing how Dee's "ardent temperament led I

to

espouse the wildest theories that were afloat in his age." Cunningham concluded his commentary on Dee by noting how by his death, consigned to poverty and neglect, the world was deprived of "one of its brightest but most useless ornaments.'"' Yet again we see Dee praised with reservation as learned but misdirected in his brand of scholarship. Eee received a slightly kinder representation in Isaac D'Israeli's Amenities olLiirc'i.!:',3.3'3 D'Israeli (1766-M48) was t

r of Prime Minister, Benjamin

Disraeli, aed was himself something of a his' )1 in and literary critic. In the Amenities he goes so far as to suggest that Dee was the model for Shakespeare's

Prospero in the Tempest. As D'Israeli suggested: epeare, in the person of Prospero, had exhibited the prevalent f the judicial astrologer combined with the adept, whose

n.

309

Roby, vol. 1, p. 169.

31° George Godfrey Cunningham, edited, Lives of Eminent and Illustrious Englishmen from Alfred the Great to the Latest Timers, 2 volumes, (Glasgow, 1835). 311

Cunningham, ed. Lives of Eminent and Illustrious Englishmen, vol. 2, p. 281.

312

Cunningham, vol. 2, p. 283.

313

I, Disraeli, Amenities of Literature, 2 volumes, (New York, 1841), Vol. 2, pp. 295-323.

124 white magic, as distinguished from the black or demonic magic, holds an intercourse with purer spirits. Such a sage was 'transported, and wrapt in secret studies:' that is, in the occult sciences; and he had 'volumes that he prized more than his [1"rospero's] dukedom,' These were alchemical, astrological, and cahafistical treatises. The magical part of 'The Tempest' Warton has observed, 'is founded on that sort of philosophy which was peculiar to John Dee and his associates. ...314 D'Israeli, like others of his generation, fully embraced a Baconian and Newtonian paradigm and saw the science of Dee as a deviation from what was true science. Dee was enamored with astrology as opposed to astronomy, with alchemy as opposed to chemistry; his endeavors were the "illegitimate progeny of science" which was deemed "occult or even magical." D'Israeli clearly saw Dee as a prodigy of that earlier, mystical, brand of enquiry shrouded in secrecy. As he

pointed out: These a.nagog,ical children of revery, [like Dee) straying beyond 'the visible diurnal sphere,' elevated above humanity, found no boundary which they did not pass beyond—no profundity they did not fathom no altitude on which they did not rest. The credulity of enthusiasts was kept alive by the devices of artful deceivers, and allusion closed in imposture.' In the final assessment D'Israeli's criticism of Dee was founded on his own paradigmatic views of what constituted "science." Although he was willing to go as far as to label Dee a "genius," Dee's genius failed him as he penetrated "into the arcane caverns of the cabbalists, and in a state of spiritual elevation fell into a dreamy tance."' Dee's vision of science was radically out of sync with the nineteenth century. As D'Israeli pointed out: The imagination of Dee often predominated over his science; while both were mingling in his intellectual habits, each seemed to him 314

D'Israeli, pp. 295-296.

315

[)'Israeli, p.295.

316

D'Israeli, p. 304.

125 to confirm the other. Prone to the mystical lore of what was termed the occult sciences, which in reality are no sciences at all, since whatever remains occult ceases to be science, Dee lost his better genius.'" Any enterprise of Dee's apparently failed to measure up to the standards of scientific inquiry grounded on a Baconian rationalism--devoid of any ' the hallmark of the true science. supernatural, or occult mysticism—as Yet another work that appeared in the I g40s was titled Romantic r The Age of Elizabeth, edited by William Cooke Taylor.' Here Dee

wa.q rid ft-vied as a man "who won a Boy.-.F000n n%autation by writing sheer nonsense.'"" Clearly Dee's scholarship toot-A.t1 fad little room among the scientifically minded of that age. Instead what "ous suggested was that Dee was either an individual bent on the extravagance of religious fervor as an enthusiast, which would find little sympathy in a more rational age; or, an impostor, deceiving the unwitting with his outlandish propositions, which touched on the criminal; or as an agent for Eliztheth, an earlic;:

n :ncst suggested by Robert

Hooke. As the author suggested: ...his [Dee's] writings are susceptible of an allegorical interpretation, and, under the guise of conversations with spirits, contain all the state-secrets of Europe.'" Not resting content with that speculation of Dee as - sdy, a further charge of "poisoner" was added to the accusations against him.

`,.3, Dee, while in

the service of Leicester, "employed his chemical skill in compounding the subtile poisons which his patron unscrupulously used to remove any obstacles to the

317

D'Israeli, p. 303.

William Cooke Taylor, edited, 2 Volumes, Romantic Biography of. The Age of Elizabeth or, Sketches of Lifefrom the Bye-Ways of History, (London, 1842).

31g

313

Taylor, ed., p. 379.

32° Taylor,

ed., p. 379.

126 indulgence either of his lust or his ambition."" It leaves one wondering if Dee was in any way responsible for the death of Leicester's wife, Amy Robsart!' The author concluded by showing Dee as a man "employed by a dishonourable administration for profligate purposes; but the means of deception which they [Dee and Kelley] employed recoiled upon themselves, and they were led to expend the gains of guilt in the pursuit of folly."' The 1840s witnessed yet another curious twist on appraisals given about Dee. Tt historical novelist, William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882), e into his wildly popular novel Guy Fawkes or The Gunpowder

ineor_

Treason: .. Historical Romance."' This work did much to galvanize Dee as a sinister conjurer in the popular mind. Ainsworth, although going to great historical detail, is not completely historically truthful, or accurate, with many of his assertions. For example, he placed Kelley along side Dee when he was the Warden of Manchester (1596-1604) even though Kelley had died in Prague a year prior to Dee receiving the appointment as Warden. Beyond that minor point there is no indication that Dee ever met or knew Fawkes. It was all wild literary speculation on the part of Ainsworth. Despite that fact, Dee's reputation was further tarnished in the popular mind as a result of Ainsworth's publication. Ainsworth's plot finds Fawkes sighting Dee and Kelley outside Manchester College on their way to a churchyard to exhume a recently buried corpse. When Fawkes noticed Dee and Kelley he asked his companion who the two "venerable personages, having long snowy beards, and wrapped in flowing mantels" were. He was informed: "The foremost is the Warden of Manchester, 311 Taylor,

ed., p. 385.

There was speculation whether Leicester was implicated in his wife's death, but the coroner ruled that the death was the result of an acc idental fall down a flight of stairs which resulted in Amy breaking her neck.

312

323

Taylor, ed., pp. 419-420.

William Hanison Ainsworth, Guy Fawkes or The Gunpowder Treason: An Historical Romance, (London, 1842).

324

127 the famous Doctor Dee,. ..divine, mathematician, a truly, conjurer.'

if report speaks

Fawkes cried out in astonishment. Ft -

.. a followed Dee

and Kelley into the cemetery, where he watched with horror as the two drew forth a female corpse. Shocked by what he had witnessed, Fr

s cried out: "How

now, ye impious violators of the tomb! Ye worse tht.•

• :-stricken wolves,

that rake up the de.' 7 in churchyards!" 25 He continuf.

el. astise Dee, saying:

"You, John Del., your damnable' not one to e

i of Manchester, who

inn at the stake for

rather than hold

you fill...." "' Dee,

... by that accusation,

': "Knowing thus much, you

should know a:h.: more,.. .namely, that I am not o be lightly provoked. You have no glower to quit the churchyard—nay, not so much as to move a limb without my permission."' Fawkes would submit to Dee's power and promised not to divulge what he had seen. Fawkes, rather than departing, was intrigued t..! Fee, and the two men began to converse, Dee revealing that he was already Fawkes's plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament. At this point Fawkes

an

hinting that he would like Dee's assistance via his special power to see into the future. Fawkes was also intrigued and asked to speak to the

of the corpse.

Dee agreed.. Dee then summoned forth the spirit with whom Fawkes began to speak. Fawkes asked: "Spirit...if indeed thou standest before In

sme

demon hath not entered thy frame to delude me,--by all that is holy, .n ,i by the ever blessed saints, I adjure thee to tell me whether the scheme on which I am now engaged for the advantage of the Catholic Church will prosper?" The spirit replied: "Thou art mistaken, Guy Fawkes. Thy scheme is not for the advantage of the Catholic Church." Not satisfied, Fawkes pressed on with his questions,

323

Ainsworth, pp. 49-50

324

Ainzworth, p. 50.

'27 Ainsworth, p. 31. 325

Ainsworth, p. 51.

128

demanding whether or not his enterprise would be successful, to which the spirit responded: "The end will be death." Fawkes then asked whose death—"To the tyrant—or the oppressors?" The spirit answered: "To the conspirators."

The

spirit then vanished. Fawkes said, "My curiosity is excited,--not satisfied.""° Dec responded: "Be warned, my son. You are embarked on a perilous enterprise, and if you pursue it, it will lead you to certain destruction.'' Fawkes, still not satisfied, continued to press Dee for more information: "Before we part, reverend sir,...1 would ask if you know of other means whereby an insight may be obtained into the future?" Dee relied: "Many, my son.. .1 have a magic glass, in which, with due preparation you will behold exact representations of coming events."' At that point they both adjourned to Dee's residence at Manchester College. When at Dee's chamber at Manchester, Dee and Kelley went through an elaborate preparation to summon future sights through Dee's "magic glass." Finally Fawkes got to see his future. The scene was one of terror for Fawkes as he "...beheld a throng of skeletons arranged before him. The bony fingers of the foremost of the grisly assemblage were pointed towards an indistinct object at its feet. As the object gradually became more defined, Guy Fawkes perceived that it was a figure resembling himself, stretched upon the wheel, and writhing in agonies of torture.'"" The images then disappeared. Fawkes departed, ending Dee's contact and involvement with him. What is one to make of this curious talc? Obviously no shred of historical truth lies in that strange encounter between

329.

Ainsworth, p. 55.

33° Ainsworth, p. 55. 331

Ainsworth, p. 55.

332

Ainsworth, p. 56.

333

Ainsworth pp. 61-62.

129

Dee and Fawkes. Yet, in the popular mind, Dee became duplicitous in the Gunpowder Plot and his reputation as a sinister con Among the several works in th-3 1historically significant was James C

galvanized. :"2 "- .-...:3r,_•;3e to Dee, the most at of Dee's diary."'

Flalliwell (1820-1889) was primarily a

_ toiar, although he edited

a number of works concerning the history of nice. In the editing of a large portion of Dee's Diary, based primarily on the Aslunole and Rawiinson manuscripts housed at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Halliwell made no attempt to analyze the diary, or the man. He simply provided the reader with Dee's own words. As Halliwell said in his Preface: "I shall refer the reader to this popular work [D'israeli's Amenities of Literature] instead of attempting an original paper on the subject...," as far as any commentary was concerned."' assessment of Dee was in line with D'Israeli's and he saw Dee's work as having little to do with what could be termed "science." Be that as it may, the work does offer tremendous insight into Dee _e man and all his oddities and eccentricities. The Diary would prove to be in.....

• .31e for all future research done on Dee,

providing easy access to a wealth a: mary material. Another important edition of Dee's writings appeared in 1851 with an edition of Dee's Autobiographical Tracts.'" As with the Diary the Autobiographical Tracts was a compilation of Dee's writings consisting of Dee's Compendious Rehearsal, which was written in 1592 in response to the commissioners sent by Elizabeth to investigate the state of affairs of Dee. The Compendious Rehearsal edited here by Crossley was taken directly from Hearne's Appendix in the 1726 publication Johannis Glastoniensis Chronica. James Orchard Halliwell, The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee, And The Catalogue of His Library Manuscripts, (London: Camden Society, 1842).

334

335

p. viii.

335 James Crossley-, edited, Autobiographical Tracts of Dr. John Dee, Warden of the College qf Manchester, Chatham Society Publications, vol. XXIV, (Manchester, 1851).

30 The second part of the Autobiographical Tract was Dee's Supplication to Queen Mary, which was Dee's appeal for the preservation of manuscripts and the

creation of a National Library. The third part was the Preface from Dee's General and Rare Memorials of 1577, which was not only an appeal for the

establishment of a Royal Navy but also another defense of Dee's reputation. Finally, the fourth section was Dee's letter to Archbishop Whitgift in 1594, ag defending his reputation, titled A Letter containing a most brief Discourse Apolc:?..?tical.

Crossley's work, like that of Halliwell, would prove to be an

isie source for any further research done on Dee.

Aside from academic works attempting to bring Dee's own writings to the public, more popular publications brought Dee and his reputation to a wider audience. One such work was Thomas Wright's Narratives of Sorcery and Magic."

Wright was kinder in his assessment of Dee, not singling him out for his credulity or superstition, but merely viewing him as a product of his age. As Wright pointed out: When we see men of the greatest talents and the most profound learning shutting themselves in their secret studies to push their anxious researches beyond the limits of natural knowledge, and hear them talking soberly of their intercourse with spirits of another world.. .we are almost driven to believe that the world had been suddenly deluged with a host of demons who amused themselves with turning to mockery the intellectual powers of the human race,' Wright placed Dee with the other wise men of that earlier age whose work "gave implicit belief to the science which enabled them to invoke and constrain the spiritual world."' That betty', the case, neither Dee nor his endeavors stood out Thomas Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and Magic From the most Authentic Sources, (London, 1851).

337

333 Wright,

pp. 226-227.

3" Wright,

p. 227.

131 as being particularly unique, nor were they beyond the intellectual pale of his own day. Where Wright focused his criticism on Dee was his credulity. As Wright said of Dee: ...a man like John Dee should be the easy dupe of the first bold and cunning man who undertook to practice on his credulity.'" And clearly, Wright, as with others before and later, saw that "cunning man" as being Edward Kelley. Dee, despite all his intelligence and erudition, could never see the charade being perpetrated on him by Kelley. A curious addition to research into Dee's life was included in a piece titled -Modern

Magic" in Charles Dickens' All the Year Round, in the July 28, 1860

edition.341The article can be read as a skeptical criticism of spiritualism—a topic seen by the author as one that can never get "any nearer to usefulness or universality."' Dee and Kelley were labeled "the first and cleverest spiritualists of the middle ages [sic].'"" Apparently the author's knowledge of Dee was based primarily on a reading of the True and Faithful Relations...,

described as a

"solemn farce."344 The assessment of Dee and his spiritual activities rested on a rational belief that "spiritual communications in general have no more rationality, sequence, or practical good in them, than the muttered utterance of a dreamer.' 345 An appraisal of Dee based solely on his spiritual writings would find little acceptance for him as a herald of modern science within the more rational scientifically minded world of the nineteenth century. 340

Wright, p. 229.

341 Charles

Dickens, "Modem Magic," All the Year Round, III (1860), pp. 370-374.

Spiritualism was a nineteenth century phrase used to describe a variety of magical endeavors such as witchcraft, demonology, possession, necromancy, and all variety of black and white magic. Dickens, p. 370.

342

343

Dickens, All the Year Round, Ill (1860), p. 370.

344

Dickens, p.371.

345

Dickens, p. 370.

132 In 1880, John Edlington Bailey added another contribution to Dee scholarship with the private printing of some of Dee's diary made when he was Warden of Manchester, 1595-1601." Unlike the earlier editings of Dee's manuscript writings by Halliwell and Crossley, Bailey did add commentary to his work. Bailey began his evaluation of Dee by referring to him as "a restless and ambitious spirit.'" Bailey noted Dee's dual reputation as a man both "known for [his] ripe scholarship.. .and for rare skill in mathematics and astronomy. But, on the other hand, to his name certain obnoxious epithets clung, against which he vainly protested... and it is to be feared that these dark elements of his character outweighed the former."348 Bailey, following in a tradition going back to Casaubon, praised Dee for his erudition, stating how much of Dee scholarship "gave him a place among the greater lights of his era," but how he had abandoned objective scientific enquiry, "having exhausted their study, and had devoted himself to the blighting influence of occult investigation, intermingling with them in credulous simplicity what remained in him of Christian faith."349 In fact, Bailey interpreted Dee's career as a scientist and scholar as ultimately being derailed by his occult pursuits. As Bailey pointed out: The sinister reputation which Dee had acquired [due to those occult pursuits] stood in the way of that advancement which the Queen would gladly have given him.' Dee's career, as interpreted by Bailey, took a turn for the worst after Dee's partnership with Kelley. Dee, having already forsaken rational scholarship, had John Edlington Bailey, edited, Diary, for the years 1595-1601, of Dr. John Dee, Warden of Manchester from 1595-1608, (Privately printed, 1880).

346

"7 Bailey ed., Diary, p. 1. 348

Bailey, ed., Diary, p. 2.

349

Bailey, ed., Diary, p. 2.

35° Bailey,

ed., Diary, p. 8.

133 sunk into an intellectual limbo and in the process had lost touch with reality after his collaboration with Kelley. Kelley "played on the diseased mind of Dee" for his own personal gain, caring little for Dee or his reputation."' The theme of Dee as a dupe, whose works "disgraced common sense," was repeated in F. R. Raines's work on the history of the Wardens of Manchester College.'" Raines followed the by now familiar course of Dee's life as student and scholar--having "sedulously applied himself to the study of abstruse sciences"353--adding that it was the University of Louvain that had awarded Dee a degree as -Doctor in the Mathematics," thus the origin of "Doctor" Dee.' Raines, tempered by the rationalism of his own age, was highly critical of Dee's dubious enterprises. As Raines noted in reference to Dee's and Kelley's activities: Kelley, like the Doctor, had embraced the popular views of astrology and magic, and was under the influence of the grossest delusions. How their superstitions and absurdities could be made by them to agree with the doctrines of Christianity is a marvellous instance of the weakness of human nature and the folly of human learning. It is hard to suppose that these two men were intentionally deceiving each other, but it is very clear that they were themselves deceived. They assumed a knowledge of the occult sciences which they did not possess, and some of their proceedings appear more like gross blasphemies than the acts of learned and virtuous men.'" Raines's final assessment of Dee was of biting disdain as he commented how:

351 Bailey,

ed., Diary, p. 11.

352 Francis R. Raines, The Rectors of Manchester, and the Wardens of the Collegiate Church of that Town. Chethant Society Publications, Vol. 6. (Manchester, 1885), p.105. 353

Raines, p. 103.

354

Raines, p. 102.

355

Raines, p. 104.

134 Dr. Dee was a man who, through a long life, was remarkable for his improvidence, characterized by a total ignorance of the world and possessed of very little common sense.'" That view by Raines can neatly serve as the standard by which Dee was viewed at the turn of the century. A final, rather whimsical and somewhat quixotic, commentary on Dee appeared at the end of the nineteenth century in a silly little book titled The

Predicted Plague.' In this work we find a much more sympathetic assessment of Dee, outlining his life and career as "a learned, laborious, painstaking man, who had fought his way educationally by sheer hard work."'" The work outlined Dee's career as the Queen's astrologer and one of the most learned men of his generation. In fact, the point was stressed how the Queen "frequently" went to visit Dee at Mortlake, and how he was "under her patronage.''" Dee was put forward as "a man of great research and singular learning, as is evident by his various writings, both printed and manuscript, on almost every science."'" After lauding Dee, however, the author backtracks somewhat, commenting: Whether with all his learning he was the dupe of an enthusiastic imagination, or whether he availed himself of his knowledge to dupe others, in an age when all ranks were given to credulity, perhaps admits of question."' The assessment of Dee as an eminent scholar only went as far as that scholarship being useful to those seeking Dee's unique talents and services. Once the talents that Dee offered fell out of fashion, or value, his was discarded. At 356

Raines, p. 108.

357

Hippocrates Junior, pseudonym, The Predicted Plague, (London, 1900).

358

Hippocrates Junior, p. 303.

359

See pp. 305, 308 f.

36°

Hippocrates Junior, p.313.

361 Hippocrates

Junior, p. 313.

135 that point in his career, the author suggested, Dee began his spiritual exercises summoning angels, an enterprise "containing the most unintelligible jargon."362 Apparently Dee's only recourse to maintain himself and his family was to seek spiritual aid. As the author surmised: Dr. Dee carried on his pretended conversations with spirits till just before his death, at which time he seemed to have applied his pretended art to the discovery of hidden treasure and stolen goods—to so low estate had he descended—as the means of procuring present subsistence from those who were silly enough to employ him."' In the end the assessment of Dee is consistent with previous commentary presenting him as a learned man duped by his own imagination and fiscal desperation.

362

Hippocrates Junior, p. 308.

363

Hippocrates Junior, p. 315.

Chapter VIII The Twentieth Century to the Present Day A Reputation Revised

As the twentieth century dawned the reputation of John Dee languished in a world of occultism, spiritualism, and a general misunderstanding as to the nature of his endeavors. His works that could be termed -science" were long since forgotten or marginalized, while those activities labeled as "spiritualism" or the -occult" dominated any understanding of Dee. In the early part of the twentieth century further discussion of Dee seemingly had reached an intellectual and historical dead end. The first twentieth-century work on Dee was William A. Ayton's translation of Thomas Smith's Vita Joannis Dee [1707], published in 1908 as The Life of John Dee."' As noted earlier, Ayton's work added nothing to Smith's interpretation of Dee. The real merit of the work was making available for the first time in English the first full length biography of Dee. This simple fact made Dee more accessible to a wider English—speaking audience, but the evaluation and interpretation of Dee remained unchanged.

Dee, as seen through his

Spiritual Diaries, the primary source used by all commentators on Dee, remained a charlatan, a schemer, and a dupe.

364

Thomas Smith, The Life of John Dee, translated by William A. Ayton, (London, 1908).

138 Shortly after the publication of Ayton's translation, a more important biographical work on Dee appeared. In 1909 Charlotte Fell Smith published John Dee (1527-1608).3" Although Smith's book was the longest single biographical work on Dee until that point-322 pages of text--she offered little in terms of a new interpretation of Dee. Smith, in fact, got the bulk of her material on Dee from the works of Thomas Smith and the Cooper's edition of Athenae Cantabridgiensis, as well as Casaubon's A True And Faithful Relation. Not only did Smith rely on these works (which focused primarily on Dee's later occult and spiritual activities) for her sources but also the layout of her product mirrors that dependence. Smith was intent on rectifying Dee and casting him in a positive light as an important intellectual of the Elizabethan age: There is perhaps no learned author in history who has been so persistently misjudged, nay, even slandered, by his posterity, arid not a voice in all the three centuries uplifted even to claim for him a fair hearing. Surely it is time that the cause of all this universal condemnation should be examined in the light of reason and science; and perhaps it will be found to exist mainly in the fact that he was too far advanced in speculative thought for his own age to understand.'" Smith's work then follows suit as an apology for the life and career of Dee. Smith neatly explains away any criticism of Dee by showing him to be "a remarkable genius in every branch of science [which] carried him so far beyond the dull wit of the people who surrounded him that they could only explain his manifestations by the old cry of 'sorcery and magic'.'"" Dee had found his champion.

365

Charlotte Fell Smith, John Dee (1527-1608), (London: Constable & Company Ltd, 1909).

366

Smith, John Dee, p. I.

367

Smith, John Dee, p. 9.

139 However, upon closer inspection one can see that Smith's John Dee is neither balanced nor judicious in its assessment of Dee. The vast majority of the text deals with Dee's later life and his occult and spiritual escapades. The truly scientific and creative phase of Dee's early career receives only a passing mention. In fact, the first 59 pages of Smith's text, encompassing a mere four chapters, cover Dee's life from 1527 through 1581. This surely skews the picture of Dee as a scientist. Those fifty-four years were Dee's most creative and productive. They established him as a scholar of note; and yet that long and creative period, covering two thirds of Dee's life, receives a scanty 59 pages of text! Dee's scientific career was further marginalized by the fact that Smith then devotes 169 pages, in 13 chapters, to Dee's activities from 1581-1589--a mere eight years. That was the phase in Dee's life that corresponded to his spiritual and angelic activities and his Continental travels. The final section of Smith's work, covering the last nineteen years of Dee's life from 1589 until his death in 1608, is allotted 80 pages in six chapters. Yet little, or nothing, of intellectual value was produced by Dee during that period. As noted, Dee spent those years desperately searching for preferment and fiscal aid, and in frantic attempts to salvage his name and reputation. Smith's greatest contribution was her popularization of Dee and making him more readily accessible to a general audience. Thirteen years passed until the publication of G. M. Hort's Dr. John Dee:

Elizabethan Mystic and Astrologer.' Hort's work is a short piece that provides a general outline of Dee's life but concentrates on the more mystical proclivities of his career. Hort seems to stretch any intellectual merits Dee possessed by emphasizing his mystical enterprises as being more worthy of acclaim than his purely scientific activities. Here, Hort's work certainly betrays her own occult leanings:

368 Gertrude M. Hort, Dr. John Dee: Elizabethan Mystic and Astrologer, (London: William Rider and Son, Ltd., 1922).

140

The man [Dee] was, in truth a hero in his way. He was also an occult student of no mean order; and there is a sense in which we may count his failures in that quest to which he sacrificed his best years and powers, and his fair fame also, as higher and worthier than many an acknowledged success.' Hort is wedded to an occult view of Dee's activities. One could easily argue that Dee's "best years" came long before his acknowledged spiritual or occult activities, and "his fair fame" is a matter of conjecture. Dee certainly was acknowledged as a skilled mathematician eng ed in works on navigation or calendar reform, but by 1581 his activities shifted to a total immersion in the world of the mystical and the occult. Surely, to say that his career from that point onward "was higher and worthier" of acclaim is to iore the standards of a modern scientific paradigm. Hort does admit that in the end Dee was a failure, noting that "he so often fell short of his lofty aims that it is easy to forget how lofty those aims in truth were, and how his very failures were, in part, the failures of one whose vision was beyond that of his age.''' Yet, Dee's world view was not beyond that of his le. Rather, it was a product of that age. What his visions were beyond were those of a rational scientific

e—an

e in which Dee neither participated nor

foreshadowed. Hort' s conclusions highlight her own occult twist: In an age at once superstitiously credulous and superstitiously skeptical, he [Dee] upheld the great tradition that human nature itself contains the germs of supernormal faculties which, rightly understood and developed, may establish a real communication with the spiritual world."' The conclusion is unnaistakable—Dee's work in the occult, spiritual, or supernatural, was clearly not science.

359

Hart, Dr. John Dee, p. 10.

373

Hart, Dr. John Dee, p. 71.

371

Hart, Dr, John Dee, p. 72.

141 A modem scientific paradigm, heralded by Newton, had swept away the spiritual, occult, and metaphysical principles that had impeded earlier attempts to unlock the nature of man and the universe. Dee is a clear case in point of a scholar immersed in and wedded to an earlier arcane understanding of science, thus, intellectually preventing him from truly seeing the modern course of scientific enquiry. But Dee's arcane studies were soon to find new advocates as scholars began to reevaluate the nature of the Scientific Revolution and its relationship to the occult. In 1924 an important work was published that called for a radical reassessment of the origins of modem science.

Edwin A. Burtt's The

Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science brought a new shelf life to Dee's brand of science.'" Burtt led the way in attempting to understand the relationship between science and the occult. His thesis held that, at the dawn of modem science, science itself was directly founded upon more arcane and occult studies. Burtt argued that the mathematical aspects of seventeenth-century physical science were the direct outgrowth of the platonic conceptions of mathematics that had been rediscovered and amplified in the course of Renaissance neoplatonism. By mid-century a group of scholars, headed by Frances Yates of the Warberg Institute at the University of London, would build upon that idea of science having mystical and metaphysical origins, and they would look towards John Dee as a test case for that hypothesis. Dee's fame and reputation as a legitimate scientist was rehabilitated beginning in the 1930s and proceeding through the 1950s in a number of books by E. G. R. Taylor dealing with Tudor geography, navigation, and mathematics.'

Edwin A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, (Atlantic Highlands, NJ.: Humanities Press, 1924). Burtt's work did not go without its critics. Twelve years later Edward W. Strong's Procedures and Metaphysics: A Study in the Philosophy of Mathematical-Physical Science in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, (Merrick, N.Y.: Richwood Publishing Co., 1936), would take issue with Burtt's thesis. 372

E. G. R. Taylor, Tudor Geography 1485-1583, (London: Methuen and Co., 1930); Late Tudor and Early Stuart Geography 1583-1650, (London: Methuen and Co, Ltd, 1934); The

373

142 Although Taylor, and later Francis Johnson, would not subscribe to Burtt's thesis, their writings attempted to rehabilitate Dee as a scientist of the first order. Taylor, in the course of twenty-five years, attempted to restore Dee's reputation as a scientist. She accomplished that by simply overlooking Dee's occult proclivities, focusing on him as "that notable English mathematician and keen student of geography."' She noted how "his [Dee's] efforts for calendar reform have won him an honourable place in the History of Mathematics... [and] his unceasing efforts for the instruction of mariners and for the unveiling of the hidden corners of the Earth, entitle John Dee to an honourable place in the History of Geography."' Yet, despite that high acclaim to which she believed Dee was entitled, Taylor fell short in stating precisely how Dee warranted such acclaim. Instead, what Taylor provided was a list of the renowned geographers under whom he studied while at Louvain: In claiming for the mathematician John Dee an important place in the history of sixteenth century English Geography, it is sufficient to state that he numbered among his teachers and consultants the five greatest of his geographical contemporaries: Pedro Nunez, Gemma Phrysius, Gerard Mercator, Abraham Ortelius, and Oronti us Finaeus." In this argument Dee warrants fame by association. Even when Taylor discussed Dee as an influential teacher for a generation of navigators and explorers, she relied on a laundry list of names. In trying to place Dee as an influential instructor in geography and navigational skills, Taylor merely provided lists of those whom Dee supposedly instructed. As Taylor wrote:

Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954; and, The Haven Finding Art: A History of Navigation from Odysseus to Captain Cook, (London: Hollis and Carter, 1956). Taylor, Late Tudor and Early Stuart Geography 1583-1650, p. 2.

374

375

Taylor, Tudor Geography 1485-1583, p. 139.

376

Taylor, Tudor Geography 1485-1583, p. 76.

143 To establish the fact of Dee's influence in England it is sufficient to state that he was the technical instructor and adviser of Richard Chancellor, Stephen Borough, William Borough, Anthony Jenkinson, Martin Frobisher, Christopher Hall, Charles Jackman, Arthur Pet, Humphrey Gilbert, Adrian Gilbert, John Davis, Walter Raleigh (and probably Francis Drake).' Taylor then listed the names of learned men who sought Dee's services and related how members of the court and Privy Council made up Dee's "intimate domestic circle."' All that was merely conjecture on Taylor's part in an attempt to demonstrate that Dee was highly regarded among seamen and court figures. In Taylor's final appraisal of Dee, she described a man possessing intellectual honesty and genuine patriotism, and one whose works in geography and navigation deserved greater examination.'" When one judged Dee, Taylor maintained, one should not allow his more occult practices to overshadow his sound and important contributions to science. Taylor had neatly recreated Dee's life and career into two separate halves. The first was the legitimate career of the scientist, working in navigation and geography. When that career was spent, by 1583, Dee embarked on the second illegitimate phase of his life as astrologer, alchemist, and converser with angels. That was clearly more a reflection of Taylor's own concept of science and what was deemed as valid for Dee, placed equal weight on all his studies. To take such a view as Taylor advocates puts much less emphasis and value on Dee's angelic conversations and occult activities than did Dee himself. In 1937 Francis Johnson published Astronomical Thought in Renaissance England, also praising Dee as an astronomer and mathematician.3" Johnson's 377

Taylor, Tudor Geography 1485-1583, p. 76.

378

Taylor, Tudor Geography 1485-1583, p. 76; see Taylor, Mathematical Practitioners, p. 18.

379

Taylor, Tudor Geography 1485-1583, p. 77.

38° Francis R. Johnson, Astronomical Thought in Renaissance England: A Study of the English Scientific Writings from 1500-1645, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1937).

144 thesis stated that Renaissance science in England had a particularly practical and experimental nature, where "men like Dee.. .had a clear vision of the practical utility of science for the relief of man's estate.""' For Johnson Dee fit nicely into his picture of English science, and viewing Dee strictly from the perspective of an applied mathematician, Johnson could claim Dee as the guiding spirit for English mathematicians in the third quarter of the sixteenth century.'" Despite that recognition Johnson backtracked his praise somewhat by saying that "Dee certainly was less important than [Robert] Recorde so far as the vernacular tradition was concerned"; and "as a writer he was inferior to [Thomas] Digges."3" Johnson also showed Dee's mathematical work as being of an experimental nature that paved the way for seventeenth-century experimental science. Dee, according to Johnson, had a clear vision of the practical and utilitarian side of science.'" Concerning Dee's more arcane and occult endeavors, Johnson, like Taylor, pointed out that it was only in Dee's later career, when he was attempting his angelic conversations, that his merits as a scientist were obscured,'" Both Taylor and Johnson attested to Dee's scientific merits in a variety of fields and simply brushed aside his occult practices as being either the product of other authors trying to capitalize on the sensationalism of Dee's angelic conversations or merely the frustrated hopes of an old man who had failed to receive the rewards to which he believed himself entitled. Frances Yates, and her students, starting in the 1950s, attempted to expand upon Burtt's thesis, finding the origins of modern science shrouded in an ancient 381 Johnson,

Astronomical Thought, p. 173.

382

Johnson, Astronomical Thought, p. 135.

383

Johnson, Astronomical Thought, p. 135.

3" Johnson, 385

Astronomical Thought, p. 173.

Johnson, Astronomical Thought, pp. 135-136.

145 ei

al tradition. For them Dee would be one of ._:te crucial test cases for

it thesis."' The main thesis for Yates and her t

its was the belief that

neoplatonic and occult philosophy were essentially -omposeci in a hermetic language that involeeel the wet of operative magic and could le_ ; unlocked, via a-

- • nes.' Yates argued that it was precist. '. ,

;ted, or . trr .etic

occultism that lay at tie root of Dee's philosophy specificallz philosophy generally.'" Thus Dee, as one who arcane, and to him profound, spheres of km

t fit

Yates's

conception of that age. With that understanding cis ecience beezei in a hermetic tradition Yates easily was able to show how Dee through his role as a magus [wise-man] functioned as both scientist and sage tapping into those more hidden stores of knowledge beyond the mere operation of the physical world. What the modem world would separate as two quite distinct fields of study Dee blended into a single all inclusive quest for ultimate divine wisdom. Yates's thesis further asserted that not only was occultism the fundamental root to Renaissance science but also that .science so conceived paved the way for the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. I. R. F. Calder was the first student under Yates's direction to apply her thesis to a study of Dee. Calder viewed Dee's scientific enterprises as a product of a neoplatonic form of reasoning, thus linking the formation of Dee's science with a neoplatonic, mystical method of reasoning. Calder maintained that Dee, as a devotee of Renaissance neoplatonism promoted a new approach to the See Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1964; "The Hermetic Tradition in Renaissance Science," in Charles S. Singleton, ed., Art, Science, and History in the Renaissance, (Rpliimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968); The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age„ (1-)); for Yates' principle students we 1. R. F. Calder, "John Dee Studied as an English Neop'....inist," 2 vols. Ph.D. The Warburg institute, University of London, 1952; and Peter Y. French, John Dee: The an Elizabethan Magus, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972). 385

387

Yates, Occult Philosophy, pp. 18-24. Yates, Occult Philosophy, p. 75.

146 philosophical and metaphysical study of nature—an approach that inevitably paved the way to the experimental method of modem physical science, which culminated in the seventeenth century in the works of men such as Bacon, Galileo, and Newton. According to Calder, Dee's importance for the growth of modern physical science was "due chiefly to the fact that he became one of the principal propagandists in England for an approach to nature which proved of immense value in the hands of later experimentalists and laid the foundations for the methods of modem physical science."'" Calder softened the occult practices of Dee by commenting that "many of the apparent eccentricities of Dee's thought, the intricate and unprofitable mazes of cabala and occultism in which he inextricably involved himself, were no more than rigorously derived consequences of the general philosophy [neoplatonic-hermeticism] he so heartily embraced; and through this, in other hands, provided the framework for the ordered world of Newton."' One cannot help wondering the extent to which Yates and Calder are stretching the definition of science. Yates and her disciples clearly and logically saw mathematics as the key to understanding science and thus unlocking nature's mysteries. Unfortunately their view of mathematics was not pragmatic, like the one fostered by men like Galileo and Newton. Instead Yates and Calder saw mathematics through Dee's eyes as a tool helping to unlock the neoplatonic, hermetic, cabalistic mysteries of nature. These modern scholars unabashedly embraced a mystical Renaissance view of the natural world. By doing that Dee can easily fit as a logical progression in their conception of the development of modern science. If that was, in fact, a valid understanding of Dee and his science, then a question to be asked of Calder is: How does he [Calder] address the problem of Dee's more seedy undertakings as a magician conjuring angels and searching for

389 I. R. F. Calder, John Dee Studied as an English Neoplatonist," vol. I, p. 10. 3" Calder, vol. 1, P. 2.

147 hidden treasures? Giving the widest latitude in Calder's interpretation of science, and recognizing that within Dee's own lifetime there was no clear separation between various branches of knowledge, Dee was, nonetheless, continually attacked, in his own lifetime, for delving into forbidden arts. Dee's critics consistently charged that Dee's studies went beyond the realm of the acceptable. Despite the vast amount of space Calder devoted to trying to place Dee as a "legitimate" scientist, even he was forced to recognize that Dee's later work had little to do with anything that could be termed "science." Calder maintained that Dee had abandoned the exact sciences simply because he had exhausted their study. As Calder put it: "rather than admit to the wasting of such a large portion of the little time now left him in which to acquire wisdom on earth, he clung to his faith in angels, and the further revelation they would make sometime to him, with something akin to desperation.' 391 In the end Dee's former fame was obscured by the dark rumors attached to his later enterprises, and thus we can witness the sad demise of an eminent scholar who had outlived his usefulness.'" Despite all the space Calder devoted to defending Dee's mystical hermetic band of science, he fails to see Dee's later angelic conversations and search for universal wisdom as a logical continuation of that program. Yates in an important article, "The Hermetic Tradition in Renaissance Science," further elaborated on that concept of modern science developing out of a mystical hermetic tradition—a tradition, as we have seen, in which Dee was firmly enmeshed.'" Yates viewed a magus, like Dee, -as the individual, who utilizing neoplatonism and hermeticism, was the necessary preliminary to the rise of modem science.' And, "the Renaissance magus was the immediate ancestor 391

Calder, vol. 1, p. 777.

392

Calder, vol. 1, p. 858.

393

Frances A. Yates "The Hermetic Tradition in Renaissance Science," in Art, Science, and

394

Yates, "The Hermetic Tradition in Renaissance Science," p. 255.

History in the Renaissance, ed. Charles S. Singleton. (Baltimore, 1968).

148 of the seventeenth century scientist."395 The problem with which we are confronted is that, in the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries, a parallel view as to the nature of the world developed. On the one hand there was the mystical, occultist approach well grounded in traditions going back into a distant past. On the other hand was the new development by the end of the sixteenth century stressing a mechanical view and procedure in unlocking nature's secrets. Yates, Calder, and French, among others, were of the belief that the one (mystical hermetic neoplatonism) led to the other (the mechanical philosophy of Galileo and Newton). But in all likelihood, those were truly two parallel developments, which could not intersect. In the midst of the development of a Yatesian interpretation on Dee a curious work appeared in 1968 that suggested that Dee was a secret agent for Queen Elizabeth I. Richard Deacon (a.k.a. Donald McCormick) was a mystery writer who had hooked on to Robert Hooke's seventeenth century suggestion that Dee acted as a secret agent for the Queen.' Deacon not only suggested that Dee was a secret agent for the Queen but also suggested that Dee was a founder "of extrasensory perception and a serious student of telepathy."397 Deacon's work is sensationalistic in its portrayal of Dee as a roving agent for the Queen who used his scientific skills to advance a pro-English imperial agenda. A point that Deacon suggested was that Dee "employed ciphers to give certain information [to the Queen] and that there was the underlying implication that secret intelligences could be communicated by the Monas.' Deacon saw Dee's ultimate goal through his studies to "thwart Spanish plans for an American Empire and to

385

Yates, "The Hermetic Tradition in Renaissance Science," p. 258.

388 Richard Deacon, John Dee: Scientist, Geographer, Astrologer and Secret Agent to Elizabeth!, (London: Frederick Muller, Ltd., 1968). 387

398

Deacon, John Dee, p. ix. Deacon, John Dee, p. 61.

149 establish English influence along a great expanse of the American coast."399 Deacon also suggested that although the Queen personally favored Dee she was too much the political pragmatist to recognize or elevate him publicly due to his reputation as a magician.' There was nothing particularly new or innovative with Deacon's thesis, but what his work does do is to punctuate the ongoing extremes in interpretations of Dee and his role in English intellectual development. The Yates-Calder thesis set the tone for Dee scholarship through the 1970s. In 1972 Peter French, who had worked under Yates's supervision and followed in that strain of Dee scholarship set out by her, wrote that Dee operated in the tradition of the hermetic-cabalistic magus; and following Calder's lead, French asserted that was the operative philosophy of the Elizabethan Age."' For French, Dee was the pinnacle of the "scientist-magician," the devotee of a type of scholarship "half magical and half scientific.'"" Furthermore, it was through the work of men like Dee that the modern view of science was developed."' As far as Dee's conversations with the spiritual world were concerned, French easily tied them in with the hermetic model. In other words, Dee did not confine the quest for knowledge to the physical realm alone, but allowed for the metaphysical to be tapped into as well. Simply put, Dee was a Gnostic, ascending in a spiritual transformation to touch the majesty of God.' For French, John Dee

3" Deacon, John Dee, p. 107. 44)° Deacon,

John Dee, p. 51.

4°1 Peter

J. French, John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972).

4°2

French, John Dee, p. 1.

403 French,

John Dee, p. 2.

4" French, John Dee, p. 77.

150 was the all inclusive man who, through his various and interwoven endeavors, was able to form a universal vision for the spiritual advancement of mankind."' One can easily see that the Yatesian camp viewed the occult studies undertaken by Dee as meritorious, helping to pave the way towards modem science. One can easily notice how the Yatesian view stands diametrically opposed to both Casaubon's and Smith's views of Dee as a misguided and duped conjuror, as well as overlooking both Taylor's and Johnson's views of Dee that totally negate his occult activities in favor of his "legitimate" science. The question really hinges on what is meant by the term "science." The three camps that emerge are those who see Dee's "scientific" activities as being connected with demonic pursuits an older view that is in the present day generally dismissed. The second group (Yates's followers) see Dee's occult activities— specifically in the work in neoplatonic hermeticism— connected to his science and a necessary prerequisite to the development of modern science. The final group sees Dee's science as having some merit—primarily in the fields of navigation and practical mathematics—but negating Dee's spiritual (hermetic, cabalistic) endeavors as having nothing to do with the development of modem physical science. In the 1970s and 1980s a number of important books and articles tested the Yatesian thesis. A year after the publication of French's book, Nicholas Clulee completed a doctoral thesis at the University of Chicago on Dee studying "the relationship of Renaissance intellectual development and the mathematical implications of Renaissance neoplatonism and pythagorianism to the emergence of mathematical natural science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries." By studying Dee's mathematics, Clulee hoped to arrive at a closer understanding of

405

French, John Dee, p. 125.

406 Nicholas H. Clulee, "The Glas of Creation: Renaissance Mathematicism and Natural Philosophy in the work of John Dee," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1973, p.

151 its place in Renaissance natural philosophy. The problem with using the term "neoplatonism" to describe philosophy underlying the advent of modem experimental science is that Renaissance neoplatonism was highly pluralistic and drew its ideas and models from a wide variety of sources."' Through Clulee's study of Dee's Praeface to Euclid's Elements of Geometry and the Propaedeumata Aphoristica he hoped to clarify the connection that Yates and Calder and French made between Dee's science and his occultism. In Clulee's study, Dee is depicted as a scholar seeking to find the metaphysical causes and arcane principles of nature. Clearly that was a far cry from the seventeenth century's concept of natural science, which held that the goal of science was the establishment of laws that described the relationship between phenomena.' In other words, Dee's concept of nature and the cosmos was not to be equated with the seventeenth century's paradigm of a mechanical universe uncovered and analyzed through precise mathematical laws and critical observation. Instead, what Dee actually sought was spiritual ascent and the attainment of heavenly wisdom; and through his conception of mathematics Dee believed that he had the means to achieve that goal.' Thus, in Clulee's judgment, the so-called mechanistic aspects of Dee's works were in reality only a concern for those occult forces that made possible his own personal quest for wisdom

clearly a far cry

from seventeenth century mechanics carried out by such men as Galileo or Newton. 4' As for Dee's later life, when his spiritual wanderings became more pronounced, Clulee had no trouble in showing how Dee, guided by his own occult concepts of nature and his own personal desire for spiritual enlightenment, abandoned his more practical endeavors for a more esoteric and spiritual path.

4°7

Clulee "The Glas of Creation...," p. 3.

408

Clulee, "The Glas of Creation...," p.242.

4°9 Clulee,

"The Glas of Creation...," p. 59.

41° Clulee,

"The Glas of Creation...," p. 72.

152 Such practices, whether termed neoplatonic or hermetic, did not in any way aid in the advancement of modem physical science. Such practices only served in darkening Dee's reputation for posterity, and were detrimental for his reputation as a scientist. Unfortunately, Clulee's work only had limited accessibility as a dissertation. Fifteen years passed before Clulee's work finally was published as a book—arguably the most complete work on Dee available in print. Clulee's work on Dee had been directed by his adviser at the University of Chicago, the renowned historian of science Allen G. Debus. Debus, in his editing of Dee's Praeface, had also suggested that Dee's research in mathematics should not be viewed as a precursor to modem experimental science.41' That theme is elaborated in Clulee's book. Before continuing discussion on Clulee's landmark work on Dee, mention has to be given to an important editing of Dee's Propaedumata Aphoristica by Wayne Shumaker and the important introduction by J. L. Heilbron.412 Heilbron played down the belief that the magician's frame of mind was the necessary preliminary for the rise of modem science.'"

Thus, Dee's role as a

mathematician, although not completely void of merit, was clearly not seen as leading to modem concepts of mathematics. As Heilbron pointed out: "...there is no doubt that Dee was an important and knowledgeable mathematician and that he played an important part in making the mathematics of the continental Renaissance known in England." He wrote also that "several of the mathematical masters active in London at the end of the sixteenth century learned their art either directly from Dee or from others inspired by him. All this gives a modest place in Allen G. Debus, The Mathematicall Praeface to the Elements of Geometrie of Euclide of Megara (1570) (New York: Science History Publications, 1975), p. 8.

411

412 Wayne Shumaker and J. L. Heilbron, edited, John Dee on Astronomy, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). 413

Heilbron's "Introduction" to Shumaker's ed. John Dee on Astronomy, p. 35.

153 the intellectual history of Tudor England."414 However, Heilbron questions Dee's place as a prime mover or necessary forerunner of the scientific revolution— where Yates, Calder, and French had placed Dee so prominently. Heilbron contended that Dee's studies on magic and hermeticism, rather than leading to modern physical science, in fact, led to his ultimate decline.' In actuality Dee's whole outlook was, by modern usage, completely non-scientific. Dee's use and application of mathematics, therefore, never rested on the use of mathematics to secure results that could be weighted and measured; rather Dee sought to use mathematics as a means of manipulating divine or supernatural powers in the hope of gaining revelation in the secrets of God's divine plan. For Heilbron, the work of men such as Galileo or Newton, based on experimentation, was not seen as developing from hermeticism, but rather as something quite separate and unique from that earlier mystical tradition. Ultimately Heilbron saw Dee's angelic conversations as the last hope of a desperate man.' Dee did not actually achieve illumination through his devotion to hermetic philosophy or cabalistic lore; rather he became an anomaly. As Heilbron put it: He [Dee] presently lost his compass which perhaps was never tightly secured and wandered through Europe without reason or direction asking recalcitrant angels for revelation that never came."' Heilbron's essay did much to clarify the science of John Dee and to place that science within historical context. Credit was given for Dee's minor achievements as a mathematician and geographer, while just criticism was placed on Dee's esoteric pursuits. Heilbron all the while rigorously denied that such activities as hermeticism or cabala were science or in any way paved the way for

414

Heilbron's "Introduction" to Shumaker's ed. John Dee on Astronomy, p. 34.

415

Heilbron's "Introduction" to Shumaker's ed. John Dee on Astronomy, p. 12.

416

Heilbron's "Introduction" to Shumaker's ed. John Dee on Astronomy, p. 15.

417

Heilbron's "Introduction" to Shumaker's ed. John Dee on Astronomy, p. 43.

154 modem science. In such a context Dee can be seen vividly as an individual who simply sought his own aggrandizement claiming that his unique, particular, and peculiar studies served as the basis for such acclaim. Wayne Shumaker later expanded on Heilbron's essay in a work addressing the topic of Dee's spiritual diaries and angelic conversations. Shumaker maintained that it is a mistake to suppose that Dee's relations with spirits in any way turned him sharply away from his earlier interests—a theme later expanded by Deborah Harkness.'" Shumaker stressed that Dee always functioned within an occult frame of mind. Such angelic conversations were a mere extrapolation of beliefs that Dee had held throughout his career as a magus.419 In other words, Heilbron and Shumaker viewed Dee's occultism as a continuous aspect of his career, arguing that such a mind set in the end hindered Dee from making any true or lasting scientific achievements. For Shumaker and Heilbron Dee's science was mediocre at best, and both maintained that Dee's occult interests acted as the driving force in all his studies. Two important dissertations on Dee were completed in 1981--Christopher Whitby's "John Dee's Action with Spirits: 22 December 1581 to 23 May 1583," and Graham Yewbrey's "John Dee and the 'Sidney Group': Cosmopolitics and Protestant 'Activism' in the 1570s. 4" Yewbrey's work, to a large extent is built upon the Yatesian thesis and draws a great deal from the work of Peter French. Yewbrey is especially interested in connecting Dee with certain court figures, especially those associated in the so-called "Sidney group." It is on that point that Yewbrey developed his Wayne Shumaker, Renaissance Curiosa: John Dee's conversations with angels, Girolamo Cardano's horoscope of Christ, Johannes Trithemizts and cryptography, George Dalgrano's Universal Language (Binghamton, NY: SUNY Press, 1982), p. 70

419

419

Shumaker, Renaissance Curiosa, p. 20.

Christopher Whitby, "John Dee's Actions With Spirits: 22 December 1681 to 23 May 1583." Ph.D. Dissertation, 2 vol., University of Birmingham, 1981; published in 1988 by Garland Press. Graham Yewbrey, "John Dee and the 'Sidney' Group: Cosmopolitics and Protestant 'Activism' in the 1570s." Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Hull, 1981.

420

155 thesis of Dee, who through his works on navigation, and themes of British imperialism, encouraged through the -protestant activism" of the "Sidney group," sought to create a harmonious world order based on the hermetic tradition. One is left to wonder, to some degree, as to how much of a harmonious world order could be built on exclusionary -protestant activism"? Or how much that "activism" had to do with a hermetic tradition. What Yewbrey does do, however, despite his repackaging of Yates's thesis, is to utilize a number of the manuscript sources by Dee

especially his

writings on British imperial designs. What Yewbrey accomplished was not a new radical thesis concerning Dee's activities but a more thorough look at the sources in an attempt to add new weight to older arguments. Whitby's work, like Yewbrey's, is also an attempt to shed new light on Dee by looking at relatively untouched manuscripts. Whitby's work is focused exclusively on the Sloane Manuscript 3188, which contains Dee's -Actions with Spirits." Whitby shifts sharply from a Yatesian interpretation of Dee's angelic conversations as being connected to a hermetic tradition. As Whitby pointed out, the art of summoning spirits "...was not based upon any tradition of natural magic nor upon any mathematical conception of the universe." Indeed "It was the magic of the vagrant and the charlatan rather than the magic of Ficino and Pico della Mirandola."42' What was emphasized by Dee in those angelic conversations was an attempt at harmony and world order to which the angels would direct him. As Whitby pointed out, it was through those angelic conversations that Dee envisioned the dawn of a new age of universal religious harmony. The second volume of Whitby's work is simply a transcription of the Sloane Manuscript. That in itself was a useful exercise for a four-hundred-yearold manuscript showing signs of decay. In addition, the manuscript became 421 Whitby,

p. 74.

156 accessible to a wider audience. Whitby's work is a useful first step for those interested in Dee's angelic actions, which if taken out of the context of premodern thought are easily dismissed or misunderstood. Arguably the single most important work on Dee to appear in the twentieth century was Nicholas Clulee's 1988 John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion."'

Stephen Clucas went as far as to refer to

Clulee's work as "...a watershed for the study of Dee's natural philosophy."' Possessing a deep and thorough understanding of early modern intellectual trends and utilizing a complete mastery of Dee's writings, Clulee's work sets the standard for Dee scholarship to date. A principle theme in Clulee's work was to liberate Dee from the hermetic mold in which he had been placed by Yates, Calder, French, and Yewbrey. As Clulee pointed out: -Despite variations in specific interpretation, what is common to all these works [Yates et al.] is that all approach Dee as a problem of finding the correct intellectual tradition into which he appears to fit... '7424 For Yates and her followers, that intellectual tradition was neoplatonic hermeticism. Clulee gives credit to those works for having "...highlighted and illuminated important features of Dee's career"; but ultimately such work clouded a true picture of Dee and his work.'" Clulee, disagreeing with the concept of Dee as the product of Renaissance hermeticism and neoplatonic metaphysics, broke from the intellectual straightjacket in which Dee had been wrapped for forty years. Clulee, instead, sought to investigate the corpus of Dee's natural philosophy, not through a preconceived, hermetic or neoplatonic model, but 422 Nicholas Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion, (London and New York: Routledge, 1988). 423 Stephen Clucas, ed., John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in English Renaissance Thought, (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2006), p. 7. 424

Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy, p. 3.

425

Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy, p. 9.

157 through Dee's own published works on natural philosophy. Those works were principally the Propaedeumata aphoristica, the Monas hieroglyphica, and the Mathematical! Praeface, as well as the angelic conversations. Clulee, like Whitby, understood Dee's natural philosophy fundamentally to be a quest towards religious enlightenment. As he pointed out: "His [Dee's] objective was to discover divinity as revealed in the hidden springs of nature and the ultimate reason behind the processes and the very existence of the cosmos, guided by the conviction that mathematical principles and procedures offered important aid in understanding creation."' In terms of unlocking nature's secrets Dee, as put forward by Clulee, was not wedded to hermeticism, neoplatonism, cabala, or any other single philosophical model. Rather Clulee's Dee -...worked in no clearly defined philosophical or intellectual tradition. His thinking was rather in a constant state of flux through the continuous assimilation of new material and the modulation of his earlier ideas."427 If Dee did follow in a single philosophical tradition one could look more profitably to medieval Aristotelianism as the core of Dee's philosophical leanings. In the final analysis Clulee not only laid bare the shortcoming of the Yatesian Dee, minimizing a connection between Renaissance hermeticism and the scientific revolution, but also in the process marginalized Dee as a towering intellectual figure in that supposed movement. As Dee scholarship entered the last decade of the twentieth century, a number of important works added still further depth to our understanding of Dee and the eclectic nature of his various studies. The first of these works was an important editing, with commentary, of Dee's library catalogue. Julian Roberts's and Andrew Watson's editing of John Dee's Library Catalogue is a critical

426

Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy, p. 15.

427

Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy, g. 232.

158 addition to Dee scholarship.'" Dee's library has long been considered one of the foremost private collections of books and manuscripts of the Elizabethan age. As Roberts and Watson have pointed out: "...Dee's library was far more universal in scope than any other collection in England. There were larger libraries in Europe, but few can have surpassed his in scientific provision.'"" Dee's library collection not only provides us with a glimpse of his intellectual interests in terms of the books he owned, but also through extensive marginal notation we can gain insight into Dee's own thought on a wide variety of topics. Roberts and Watson provide an indispensable guide for research on Dee, his interests and studies, as well as a deeper glimpse into the intellectual and cultural underpinnings of the English Renaissance. One final piece of information about Dee, ascertained through Roberts's and Watson's thorough research into the manuscripts, was to show that Dee most likely had died in March 1609 rather than the previously accepted date of December 1608. In a marginal notation by John Pontois in a manuscript of Dee's he had purchased, he noted that Dee had passed away on March 26, 1609.41° Roberts's and Watson's work on Dee's library helped open a new channel for those researching Dee. From 1990 onward all scholars studying Dee needed to pay closer attention to his library collection and to his various marginal notations within that collection. Two important dissertations, that were quickly published, make note of the central importance of Dee's library collection and marginal notations. William H. Sherman's seminal work John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance and Deborah E. Harkness's

Roberts and Andrew Watson, John Dee's Library Catalogue, (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1990).

428.1ulian

429

Roberts and Watson, ed., John Dee's Library Catalogue, p. 41.

43° Roberts

and Watson, ed., John Dee's Library Catalogue, p. 60.

159 John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature both added new light and depth to Dee studies."' Sherman's work not only challenged the Yatesian tradition but also looked deeply into the utilization of Dee's library by other scholars and interested parties and placed greater importance on Dee's unpublished manuscripts as a key to unlocking the core of Dee's intellectual interests. Sherman's work is broken into three arguments. The first challenges the Yatesian tradition of Dee as an adherent of hermetic thought, and presents an argument against what Yates meant by Hermeticism. As Sherman pointed out: Perhaps Frances Yates was right to point to Dee's Hermetic leanings—she just stressed the wrong Hermes, or the wrong Hermetic attributes. Dee's career was not fashioned in the model of Hermes Trismegistus: the Hermetic corpus occupied, at most, a prominent corner of his arsenal of universal learning. Rather, Dee resembles the Hermes who, in the classical world, stood on the edge of the market and the city, marking space and guiding communication, commerce, and travel."' Far from being the mystical and secretive figure in a Yatesian version of Hermeticism, Dee, as portrayed by Sherman, was a far more open individual constantly engaging in dialogue and interchange with a wide and diverse host of individuals. The second portion of his work, titled "Readings," Sherman devoted to a textual critique of Dee's library with a particular emphasis on the marginalia. Here Sherman built upon the thesis already outlined by Roberts and Watson. As Sherman pointed out: "Dee wanted his notes to be recognized, to become part of the author's text, and to be one stage in the accretion of reader's responses—in other words, to actively participate in the creation of new, and ever-changing, William H. Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance, (Amherst, MA.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995). Deborah E. Harkness, John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

431

432

Sherman, John Dee, p. xiv.

160 text."' Again Sherman's Dee is an accessible figure through his library and his notes which were meant to be read and digested—a far cry from the more mystical and hidden Dee. The final portion of Sherman's work is concerned with Dee's "Writings." This is actually a theme that more specifically deals with Dee's political writings and images of a -British Republic." Here again Sherman focused on a number of Dee's unpublished manuscripts as the source for his thesis. A main issue that concerned Sherman was to refute Yewbrey, and to a certain extent Whitby, with their claims that Dee's political writings were fundamentally religious, mystical, and aimed at the establishment of a new world order. Sherman was especially fortunate to have uncovered a heretofore missing manuscript, the "Brytannicae Reipublicae Synopsis," to show a much more pragmatic interpretation for Dee's empire-building programs and schemes. Sherman's work is clearly a revisionist interpretation of the Yatesian Dee. His demystifying of Dee as the Hermetic Magus, and placing him squarely within a more pragmatic tradition, substantiated through painstaking research of the sources, has made Sherman's Dee every bit as compelling as the Yatesian Dee and grounded on a sturdier academic footing. If any criticism can be leveled at Sherman, perhaps it is that he never challenged Dee's own appraisal of himself. Sherman unhesitatingly accepted Dee's own self-aggrandizing and did not question critically whether Dee really did have a commanding position as a Court figure or as a personal adviser to Elizabeth I. Although Dee did have his adherents, more likely he was a rather peripheral figure in the wider Elizabethan intellectual world. This is clearly an area in which

more research needs to be

conducted. Deborah E. Harkness, in her important work on Dee's angelic conversations, is the first modern scholar to take on a theme in Dee's career that most modern scholars avoided. Scholars traditionally have overlooked or 433

Sherman, John Dee, p. 89.

161 marginalized Dee's angelic conversations as an aspect of Dee's career that is best left untouched. Even the Yatesian camp, who, were willing to give wide latitude to Dee's more esoteric and mystical proclivities, felt a certain uneasiness concerning the angelic conversations. Harkness, however, placed the angelic conversations as being central to Dee's intellectual pursuits. According to Harkness, "Dee began to seek a means to bridge the immense gap between the human and the divine through conversations with angels.'"" Those conversations, according to Harkness, were no abrupt departure from Dee's earlier, more "scientific" endeavors, but rather a continuation of them as Dee sought to unlock nature's divine language."' For Harkness the angelic conversations were an attempt by Dee to unlock and harness spiritual forces and thereby gain a deeper understanding of nature's hidden mysteries. The angelic conversations were Dee's attempt to "address the difficulties associated with practicing natural philosophy at a time when the natural world seemed unreliable and mutable."' Harkness accepted the angelic conversations at face value as an integral part of any early modem understanding of the cosmos. Yet, her approach to the angelic conversations as part of an intellectual framework of early modem thought fails to dig deeper into what was actually being said and discussed within the context of those conversations. In other words, scholars need to focus greater concentration on precisely what Dee was trying to gain through his contact with angels. What Harkness has helped to do is open new avenues for research on the more occult side of Dee's activities, giving those activities a more legitimate place within our understanding of early modem thought. Whether or not we believe that Dee actually conversed with spirits is somewhat irrelevant. The fact

434

Harkness, John Dee's Conversations with Angels, p. 59.

435

Harkness, John Dee's Conversations with Angels, p. 64.

436

Harkness, John Dee's Conversations with Angels, p. 116.

162 that Dee, and the vast majority of his contemporaries, believed those spirits to be real has to be taken seriously by any modern scholar trying to grapple with the medieval and early modern paradigm in which Dee functioned. Two additional works, although not academically as rigorous as either Sherman or Harkness, have certain merits. The first, published in 1998, is an updated edition of Dee's diaries, edited by Edward Fenton, that surpasses the nineteenth-century works of Halliwell and Bailey and is the new standard for Dee's diary writings."' The second, Raising Spirits, Making Gold and Swapping Wives: The True Adventures of Dr. John Dee and Sir Edward Kelly, was a work concerning Dee's exploits with Kelley presented in the form of a novel."' The book, although weighty (almost 500 pages), offers no new thesis. Michael Wilding's work comes across more as an adventure story following Dee's and Kelley's exploits across the continent. Obviously, as the title implies, Wilding was concerned with Dee's alchemical and summoning activities to the exclusion of all else. The work also is limited to those years when Dee and Kelley were in partnership, especially while on the continent. The work provides an in-depth look at of Dee's and Kelley's more exotic activities and can be read as a simplified introduction into the occult side of those activities. At the dawn of a new millennium, the twenty-first century shows few signs of the interest in Dee waning. Dee not only continues his hold on academic audiences but also his name is seeping into more mainstream publications. That fact is nowhere more apparent than in the publication, in 2001, of the first fulllength popular biography of Dee since Charlotte Fell Smith's 1909 work. Benjamin Woolley's The Queen's Conjurer is a surprisingly balanced and well-

437

Edward Fenton, ed., The Diaries of John Dee, (Charlbury, Oxfordshire: Day Books, 1998).

Michael Wilding, Raising Spirits, Making Gold and Swapping Wives: The True Adventures of Dr. John Dee and Sir Edward Kelly, (Beeston, Nottingham: Shoestring Press, 1999).

438

163 written popular biography of Dee.'" Woolley's work, although historically sound, offers no new thesis or interpretation of Dee and his place in the intellectual landscape of early modem Europe. Although his work is far more balanced than Smith's, Woolley also places a great deal of emphasis on Dee's later activities with Kelley and communicating with spirits. In this regard his work is more reminiscent of Yates and French, with their emphasis on Dee as the "magus," rather than the more recent and academically balanced works of Clulee, Sherman, and Harkness. Woolley also makes extensive use of Dee's diary writings as edited by Fenton, which might help explain his emphasis on Dee's more mystical activities. Although Woolley's work is no replacement for the more in-depth scholarship of Clulee, Woolley's work is more easily readable for a popular audience. In the end his work makes Dee more visible and thus invites additional research on this enigmatic figure. A second book on Dee published in 2001 grew out of a dissertation written by Hakan Hakansson titled Seeing the Word: John Dee and Renaissance Occultism."' Hakansson's work is a far more scholarly tome of exegesis in which he attempts to systematically trace Dee's use of language as the connecting link between his diverse works. Hakansson's thesis followed closely both Whitby and especially Harkness in looking at Dee's spiritual endeavors as being central to his overall view of science and the functioning of the natural world. As Hakansson pointed out, "Dee's career as natural philosopher can perhaps best be described as a continuous striving towards a complete restoration of the wisdom of the ancients, a restoration which ultimately would lead him to the very origin of Truth—the Word."

Hakansson, for the remainder of his work, elaborates on

43° Benjamin

Woolley, The Queen's Conjurer: The Science and Magic of Dr. John Dee, Adviser to Queen Elizabeth 1, (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001). Haan Hakansson, Seeing the Word: John Dee and Renaissance Occultism, (Lund, Sweden: Ugglan Minervaserien 2, 2001).

44°

441 Hakansson,

Seeing the WorcZ p. 72.

164 this thesis of Dee consistently striving to unlock God's hidden mysteries of the universe. Hakansson stresses the point that when reading Dee modern students must not make too severe a distinction between notions of what is meant by "science" and what is meant by "occult." Those terms used in an early modern paradigm can be seen as having a far greater affinity. Of course, by viewing Dee's work in that light, his angelic dabblings are made reasonable and respectable and thus more easily fit into a rational and coherent world view. Although Hfikansson offers a compelling thesis, much of what he says can be glimpsed in earlier works, like Whitby, Clulee, and most recently and especially Harkness. With that said Hakansson provides a solid addition to the corpus of works on Dee. Although it appears to be a trend that much of the recent work being done on Dee is concentrating on the mystical and somewhat arcane spiritual writings he produced, some authors are delving into other areas of his career. One such example is the work of Ken MacMillan. Over the last several years in a dissertation, several articles, and an edited work, MacMillan has tapped into Dee's connection with British Imperial designs."' His principal work, the editing of Dee's Blytanici Imperil Limiter (translated as The Limits of the British Empire), is the most significant and builds upon Sherman's earlier discovery and commentary on the manuscript. MacMillan clearly maintains that the manuscript is "...of much more than antiquarian interest to scholars in a wide variety of disciplines."' For MacMillan, echoing Sherman's earlier work, Dee's imperial designs were more than a mere propaganda tool, but rather, a systematic and somewhat legalistic outline for British claims on the New World. As MacMillan 442 Ken MacMillan, "Expressions of Sovereignty: Law and Authority in the Making of the Overseas British Empire, 1576-1640," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, McMaster University, 2002; and Ken MacMillan, ed., John Dee: The Limits of the British Empire, (Westport, CT and London: Praeger, 2004).

443

MacMillan, ed., John Dee: The Limits of the British Empire, p. ix.

165 stated: -...Dee summarized certain historical, legal, and geographical precedents that demonstrated that the English crown had sovereign authority over the North Atlantic and parts of North America...," in an important attempt to gain a foothold in the New World.444 MacMillan first pointed out that Dee's geographical knowledge placed him in a unique position as possibly the most learned geographer in Europe, and thus his arguments give weight and legitimacy to the claims that were made. The fact that Dee was involved in every major British overseas expedition since the 1550s attested to his value in those designs. MacMillan then showed how Dee also presented legal arguments for those claims, arguments based on Dee's own studies of British antiquity. The Btytanici Imperil Limites was, in MacMillan's words, "Dee's imperial tour de force," a document that was "at once elegant, erudite, and effusive.1,445 MacMillan also argued that "Dee's Limits of the British Empire, like so many of his other works, confirms the polymathic abilities of one of the most remarkable figures in the English renaissance."' Clearly, MacMillan's works are important additions for a complete and holistic understanding of Dee's career within the English intellectual world of the sixteenth century. Yet another author active in the study of Renaissance occultism and Dee is Hungarian scholar Gyargy E. Szanyi. Since the late 1970s Szonyi has published a number of articles and books dealing with Renaissance occultism. His most recent work specifically dealing with the occultism of Dee appeared in 2004 with the publication of John Dee's Occultism: Magical Exaltation through Powelful

444

MacMillan, ed., John Dee: The Limits of the British Empire, p. 3.

445

MacMillan, ed., John Dee: The Limits of the British Empire, pp. 19, 20.

446

MacMillan, ed., John Dee: The Limits of the British Empire, p. 29.

166 Signs."' In this work, Sz5nyi attempts to resurrect the Yatesian thesis of Dee as magus and the hermetic elements at work in Dee's activities. As Szonyi stated: "I am going to examine the paradoxical relationship of literature, culture, science, and the occult, concentrating on the epoch of the Renaissance, which witnessed the crystallization of esoteric philosophy; parallel to the birth of Cartesian logic and modern experimentation."' Like French, Szonyi used Dee as the model test case to support his thesis, implying that occult philosophy and hermetic magic did, in fact, contribute to the development of the experimental science of the seventeenth century. Although Szonyi's research is thorough and far more rigorously supported than French's, his conclusions are similar. As he stated in his conclusion: I hope to have convincingly shown that cultural symbolization inextricably intertwined with the occult philosophy not only until the time of the Scientific Revolution but that it still keeps on to being active.., magically-minded individuals like John Dee were examined from the perspective of science history, today we should rather be inclined to assess them in their own right, as representatives of an integral and alternative system of thought.' Dee certainly was a representative of an alternative method of thought. But it was a method that, some scholars' conclusions to the contrary, did not herald or in any way contribute to the experimental sciences of the seventeenth century. If Szonyi's work shows us anything, it is that this debate has not yet been laid to rest. The most recent book to appear in the compendium of Dee scholarship is an edited work by Stephen Clucas, titled John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in English Renaissance Thought. 45' Clucas is a professor of English Renaissance 447 Gy6rgy E. Szonyi, John Dee's Occultism: Magical Exaltation through Powerful Signs, (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2004.) 448

Szonyi, John Dee's Occultism, p. 17.

449

Sz6nyi, John Dee's Occultism, p. 299.

450 Stephen Clucas, ed., John Dee: Interdisciplincny Studies in English Renaissance Thought, (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Spinger, 2006).

167 Literature at the University of London and has written a number of articles dealing with Renaissance magic and natural philosophy. This book brings together some of the most eminent scholars on Dee and early modern science and occultism, adding yet another chapter and dimension to the ever-growing corpus of material on D. Clulee, Sherman, l-larknes Loberts, Szonyi, and Clucas are several of tneThuton who have aire

.ficrntly added to the study of

John Dee and fic-; ..,:tirnt in which he

The articles cover all ccts of

Dee studies, from naviLyfiien raid matitaatics to the angelic Gan

..a lad

ccult sciences, r well as an entire section devoted to Dee's r■ ...:oni I:adiey. This work clearly dramatizes how Dee and his world hi a _en thrust into the forefront of any scholarly attempts to make sense of the nature of that world. Current academic trends have again found Dee and hi to be respectable and worthy of our attention, both for their own sake as well as for ours in gaining a firmer grasp on the mentalite of early modern man— notwithstanding the fact that often the working of that mind was a far cry from modem experimental paradigm.

Conclusion Dee's Place in llstory

This work strives to serve as an introduction into the world of a singularly unique Elizabethan scholar. I have outlined the main trends and themes within Dee's life and have mapped out the main currents in Dee scholarship conducted over the past four-hundred years. Even as I am writing these concluding thoughts research continues on Dee. Aside from the more scholarly works on Dee, a host of fictional works has appeared using Dee as a character. That phenomenon actually could have had its beginnings with earlier authors. Dee, or Dee-like characteristics, have been noted in the character of Shakespeare's Prospero in The Tempest, in Faust in Marlow's Doctor Faust, and in the title character of Ben Jonson's The Alchemist. In more recent times, Dee is conjured up as a model figure for the mystical eccentricities of an earlier age. The appearance of John Dee in modern works of fiction and fantasy has further popularized a marginal individual. In these recent trends Dee becomes even more misunderstood, and the nature of his activities stand as a far cry from anything resembling modern science. Peter Acicroyd's novel The House of Doctor Dee is a story that jumps between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, as the current [fictional] owner of Dee's home, Matthew Palmer, finds it haunted by the spirit of the dear doctor."' Dee's life and career are clearly gaining shelf life in the hands of some modem, 451 Peter

Ackroyd, The House of Doctor Dee, (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1993).

170 rather creative authors. Even in the popular work Foucault 's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco, Dee is a central character in the overall plot of the work.' Dee is also tied to visions of New Age Philosophy in a series of four books by John Crowley, titled 'Egypt, published between 1987 and 2007.4" Each of the books is divided into three of the twelve astrological houses, and all are steeped in gnostic and hermetic lore. The protagonist, a professor named Pierce Moffett, becomes obsessed with Egyptian themes connected with the legends of Hermes Trismegistus. It is in that context that Dee, as a proponent of Renaissance hermeticism, is introduced into Crowley's tale. Here again is a case of legend becoming truer than reality. Armin Shimerman, the actor who played the Ferengi, Quark, in the Star Wars Next Generation series, wrote a two volume fictional work, The Merchant Prince, in which Dee is a central character who, meeting space aliens in his own age, is placed in suspended animation until 2100, at which point he, along with his comrade, Kelly Edwards, helps save the earth from zombies.' Surely this takes any work that Dee ever did, including talking with angels, to even more bizarre realms of interpretation. In a string of fantasy novels set in Elizabethan England by authors Robin Jarvis in Deathscent, Lisa Goldstein in The Alchemist's Door, and Michael Scott Rohan in Maxie 's Demon, Dee is further sensationalized as the wise man who can

Umberto Eco Foucault 's Pendulum, Translated by William Weaver. (London: Secker and Warburg, 1989)

452

453 John Crowley, /Egypt: The Solitude, (New York: Bantam Books, 1987); iEkypt: Love and Sleep, (New York: Bantam Books, 1994); !Egypt: Daemonomania, (New York: Bantam Books, 2000); and 'Egypt: Endless Things,(New York: Small Beer Press, 2007).

Armin Shimerman, The Merchant Prince, (New York: Pocket Books, 2000); The Merchant Prince Volume 2: Outrageous Fortune, (New York: Simon And Schuster, 2002).

454

171 connect with the spirit world."' Again the image of Dee as a mystic and occultist has found new shelf life in the present day. To give readers a glimpse at the extent to which Dee has been used by modem authors one only need look at the popular Ham, Potter series. Here it has been suggested that Albus Dumbledore, the head wizard at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, is modeled after John Dee."' Dee has entered the mainstream of popular modem media. Even movies on Queen Elizabeth, from the BBC series staring Glenda Jackson in the 1970s, to the latest Cate Blanchett film, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, make passing reference to Elizabeth's court consultant and astrologer John Dee. Aside from the comical, absurd, and non-historical Dee being portrayed in the popular press, an outpouring of scholarly works on Dee continues. Since the 1990s a number of doctoral dissertations have been, or are in the process of being, completed on aspects of Dee's life and career. In 1995 two dissertations came out of McGill University dealing with Dee's angelic conversations and natural philosophy—Yvan Pier Cazabon's "Theseus Re-Membered: A Faithful Relation of What Passed for Some Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits tending to the events of Recent Times" and Brent M. Wagler's "Stars, Stones, and Architecture: An Episode in John Dee's Natural Philosophy." In addition Jennifer T. Abeles's 2006 dissertation from the City University of New York, titled -An Edition of John Dee's 'Brytanici Imperii Limites' (1578) edited with an introduction and notes (King Arthur)," all attests to an ongoing fascination with Dee.

455 Robin, Deathscent, (London: Collins Voyager, 2002); Lisa Goldstein, The Alchemist's Door, (New York: A Tor Book, 2002); Michael Scott Rohan, Maxie 's Demon, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1997). 45'5

Roger Highfield, The Science of Harry Potter, (New York: Penguin, 2002), pp. 218-221.

172 In more recent times a series of articles had appeared in the journal Ambix, dealing especially with Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica.457 These articles attempt to come to terms with Dee's arcane studies, the operation of those studies in Dee's own world view, and to ground those studies in solid modem scholarship. In the final analysis Dee, although possessing intellectual talents, was no colossal figure in the history of scientific development. His works point to the mystical and supernatural rather than to the experimental and rational. As Clulee has shown, Dee's magic was of a religiously inspired spiritual orientation and had little to do with what could be termed science.' The usefulness of any mathematical or scientific undertakings by Dee was always tempered and measured by the spiritual dimensions those studies could unlock. It was the occult rather than the rational that permeated Dee's world view. In fact, many of the more recent articles on Dee are concerned with the occult, mystical, and angelic aspects of Dee's thought. Take, for example, Clucas's interdisciplinary edition on Dee. Of the sixteen articles, nine are concerned with the alchemical, spiritual, occult, and angelic aspects of Dee's career.' Reflecting on the long and colorful life of John Dee one is dazzled by the breath of his undertakings and his command over numerous fields of study. Scholars are still trying to group those varied studies under a single world view. By the mid-twentieth century Renaissance hermeticism seemed the intellectual heading under which to list Dee's various studies. The theme of Renaissance hermeticism still seduces many scholars as the operative heading under which to place Dee's studies. A more convincing argument, I believe, has been suggested Peter Forshavv, "The Early Alchemical Reception of John Dee's MOMS Hieroglyphica," Ambix, 52:3 (2005): 247-269; 271-284; HiIde Norrgren, "Interpretation and the Hieroglyphical Monad of John Dee: Reading of Pantheus's Voarchedumia," Ambix, 52:3 (2005): 217-245; and Nicholas Clulee, "The Monas Hieroglypica and the Alchemical Thread of John Dee's Career," Ambix, 52:3 (2005):197-215. 457

458

Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy, p. 237.

459

See Clucas, ed., John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in English Renaissance Thought.

173 by Nicholas Clulee, which holds that much of Dee's world view was based on medieval Aristotealianism. Dee certainly was a learned man. But his knowledge was tied to the past; his works did little to pave the way towards the modern understanding of the world in general and of science in particular. Dee intellectually operated within a medieval world view, and his varied works did little to break from that paradigm. Johann Kepler, for example, was a product of a neoplatonic vision of a cosmic world order. Yet, when it came to his science, Kepler slowly, broke from the earlier paradigm and radically proposed a new astronomical paradigm based on mathematical laws. Dee, by contrast, was never able to dislodge himself from the mystical superstitions of his age. If we systematically look through the course of Dee's life and break that life down into his activities, we see a man with many intellectual merits that led nowhere. In the final analysis, Dee made no lasting contributions to mankind. In his early career we do see an individual with talent, but a talent of a technical nature related to the building of mechanical devices and scientific instruments, none of which survived into the modern age. He also engaged in the casting of horoscopes. That was a common enough practice, and did require a proficiency in mathematics and astronomy, but not the type of mathematics or astronomy that led to a deeper understanding of the universe. Although today there are many who still fall under the spell of astrological star gazing and the casting of horoscopes, such practices are no longer part of a scientific paradigm, and no legitimate scientist would be swayed by such predictions. Some scholars argue that the most lucrative phase of Dee's career was his work connected with navigation and overseas exploration. Yet, here again we see Dee's contributions as minimal at best. All of his boisterous assertions for British claims to the New World came to naught. None of his instruments to aid in navigation is remembered, and hopes for a north-east or north-west passage to the Orient never materialized. When it came to navigation and overseas exploration

174 Dee was groping in the dark, and nothing of lasting merit or material gains ever came from those activities. Another claim for a prominent place for Dee in history was that he was connected with the English Court; but again when we look closer, that was probably not true. Certainly, Dee was consulted on occasion beginning in the reign of Edward VI and continuing through that of Elizabeth I, but never on a regular basis. His brief stint as tutor to the children of the Duke of Northumberland, coupled with a few consultations with Elizabeth I and certain courtiers, are all that we can glimpse of Dee's connection with the English Court. Despite his best efforts, he certainly did not hold any commanding position at the English Court; and more often his appeals for recognition and preferment fell on deaf ears. Even Dee's major published works, his Monas Hieroglypica and Propaedeumata Aphoristica, held no lasting value for the history of science. They were arcane works shrouded in mystical jargon. Some modem scholars argue that these books can be tied to concepts of optics, but more likely they are connected to Dee's own mystical brand of astrology. One of Dee's last activities in what could be termed science was his work in the early 1580s on calendar reforms. Again, Dee made no lasting contribution, and that was not so much due to his ideas of reforming the calendar being rejected by the English Bishops as to the fact that his plan was simply wrong. In his calculations for reforming the Julian Calendar, which had been reformed in Catholic Europe by the Gregorian Calendar, Dee proposed the elimination of eleven rather than ten days as catholic Europe had done. His reasoning for that additional day was based on his own astrological calculations of the birth of Christ. In 1757, when the British finally adopted the Gregorian Calendar in place of the Julian Calendar and eliminated eleven days, many saw that as a vindication of Dee, little realizing that the two centuries between Dee and the actual change

175 by the British had led to the addition of one more day needing to be removed from the Julian Calendar. Alas, even on the calendar reforms, Dee was wrong. As far as the angelic conversations, to which Dee became singularly occupied in the last twenty years of his life, nothing of lasting value came of those activities. Certainly the world view of the sixteenth century not only allowed for the existence of spirits but also allowed that spiritual world as a given, and for modern scholars to understand Dee they need to understand his spiritual activities in that light. The lasting importance of Dee's spiritual diaries, aside from their novelty and curiosity, is the glimpse they provide for modern readers into the cultural world of the early modern age. As far as Dee's angelic activities were concerned, he met once more with failure and disappointment. And whether or not those activities were connected with his other studies in a grand intellectual scheme does nothing in resurrecting Dee as intellectually important. Talking with angels, or believing in those mystical powers in a spiritual world, has nothing to do with modern science. The modern scientific paradigm severs itself completely from the superstitious, spiritual, or mystical; Dee, on the other hand, embraced those qualities as central and fundamental to his scientific world view. If there is one conclusion that can be reached on Dee, it must be that his works as well as his world view in no way foreshadowed the age of experimental science. He was a man deeply shrouded in the thought process of a more mystical past.

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Index A

Abeles, Jennifer T., 171 Ackroyd, Peter, 169 Ainsworth, William Harrison, 126 Alchemy, 39, 56, 58, 68, 79, 97, 120, 124, 159 Angels, 63, 74, 104, 159 Aristophanes, 8 Aristotelianism, 157 Ashmole, Elias, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 112, 129, 181 Astrology, 6, 16, 18, 32, 33, 34, 39, 55, 97, 98, 120, 124, 133, 174 Astronomy, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 45, 124, 132, 173 Aubrey, John, 100, 102 Ayton, William A., 137

Bacon, Francis, 96, 116, 146 Bailey, John E., 132, 162 Bailey, John Edlington, 132 Ballard, George, 115 Bennett, Dr. Robert, 87 Billingsley, Sir Henry, 46, 47, 102 Bohemia, 56, 57, 75, 78, 79, 99 Bonner, Edmund, archbishop of London, 18, 19, 20, 22,24, 25, 28, 32, 83 Borough, Stephen, 13, 143 Borough, William, 43, 143 Bourne, Stephen, 39 Bourne, William, 45 Boyle, Robert, 116 Brahe, Tycho, 45, 69 British Empire, 3,40, 70, 91, 164, 165 Brooke, Lord Chief Justice, 18 Burtt, Edwin A., 141, 142, 144

Cabala, 146, 153, 157 Calder, I. R. F., 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 153, 156 Calendar reform, 51 Cambridge, 5, 6, 7, 11, 61, 101, 112 Casaubon, Isaac, 105, 106, 112, 114, 116, 138, 150 Casaubon, Meric, 100, 103, 104, 105, 115, 121, 132 Cazabon, Yvan Pier, 171 Cecil, William, Lord Burghley, 11, 52, 56, 60, 78, 81, 85 Chadsey, Dr., 23, 25 Chancellor, Richard, 13, 143 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, 7 Cheke, Sir John, 11 Clucas, Stephen, 156, 166 Clulee, Nicholas H., 107, 108, 150, 151, 152, 156, 157, 163, 164, 167, 172, 173 Conjuring, 16, 17, 18, 24, 52, 67, 84, 102, 108, 146 Cotton, Robert, 100 Cotton, Sir John, 111 Cotton, Sir Thomas, 100 Cotton, Thomas, 103 Court of Common Pleas, 17,18 Cracow, 71, 73 Cranmer, Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, 19 Crowley, John, 170 Cunningham, George Godfrey, 123 Curtius, Dr., 72, 73

D'Israeli, Isaac, 123, 124, 129 Davis, John, 42, 43, 44, 143 Deacon, Richard, 106, 148

188 Debus, Allen G., 97, 152 Dee, Arthur, 40, 43, 77, 78, 100, 107, 143 Dee, Bedo, 4 Dee, Frances, 82, 141, 159 Dee, John ancestry, 3-5 calendar reform, 174-75 library, viii, 32, 100, 129, 130, 157, 158, 180, 181, 183 Warden of Manchester College, 30, 59, 88, 89, 91, 126, 132, 133 works Autobiographical Tracts, 3, 12, 17, 37, 53, 58, 59, 70, 82, 85, 86, 129, 177 Compendious Rehearsal, 6, 59, 86, 129 Diary, 53, 55, 56, 82, 86, 88, 89, 129, 177, 180 General and Rare Memorials, 26, 40, 70, 130, 177 Mathematical Preface, 26, 45 Monas Hieroglyphica, 25, 39, 54, 72, 113, 172, 177, 182 Propaedeumata Aphoristica, 25, 28, 32, 33, 34, 37, 39, 151, 157, 174, 178, 183 Dee, Katherine, 92 Dee, Madinia, 82, 91 Dee, Margaret, 82, 91 Dee, Michael, 82, 88, 170 Dee, Rowland, 4 Dee, Theodore, 82 Descartes, Rene, 96, 116 Dickens, Charles, 131 Digges, Leonard, 45 Digges, Thomas, 45, 51 Dudley, Anne, countess of Warwick, 85 Dudley, Gilford, 12 Dudley, John, Duke of Northumberland, 11, 12, 13, 52, 85, 174

Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester, 37, 52, 53, 65, 81, 125, 126 Dyer, Edward, 55, 56, 78

Eco, Umberto, 170 Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, 18 Edward VI, 11, 12, 18, 19, 25, 52, 174 Elizabeth I, Queen, 6, 16, 25, 34, 37, 40, 50, 52, 55, 56, 58, 59, 70, 80, 86, 88, 90, 106, 125, 129, 148, 160, 171, 174 Elizabethan Court, 37, 38, 52 England, 4, 7, 11, 14, 18, 25, 29, 30, 37, 42, 56, 57, 66, 71, 75, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 100, 103, 120, 143, 146, 152, 158, 170 Englefield, Sir Francis, 15, 16 Euclid, 45, 102, 151 Evans, R. J. W., 57

Fawkes, Guy, 126, 127, 128, 129 Fenton, Edward, 162 Ferrys, George, 16, 17 Ficino, Marsilio, 6, 155 Foxe, John, 19, 22, 23, 25, 29 France, 10 French, Peter J., 52, 53, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 154, 156, 163, 166 Frisius, Gemma, 7, 8,9, 11, 13 Frobisher, Martin, 41, 42, 143 Fromond, Jane, 61 Fromond, Nicholas, 80

Galileo, 116, 146, 148, 151, 153 Geography, 8,9, 141, 142, 143 Gilbert, Adrian, 43, 44, 143 Godwin, William, 121, 122 Goldstein, Lisa, 170

189 Gorge, Sir Thomas, 86 Granger, James, 118 Gregorian Calendar, 174 Gregory XIII, pope, 51 Grene, Bartlet, 24 Grenville, Fulk, 54 Grey, Lady Jane, 12

Halansson, Hakan, 163, 164 Hall, Christopher, 41, 42, 143 Halliwell, James Orchard, 129, 130, 132, 162 Hampton Court, 17 Harkness, Deborah E., 105, 108, 154, 158, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 167 Hatton, Sir Christopher, 52, 81 Hearne, Thomas, 115 Heilbron, J. L., 152, 153, 154 Henry VIII, King, 4, 18, 19 Hermes Trismegistus, 159, 170 Hermeticism, 146, 147, 150, 153, 156, 157, 159, 170, 172 Holmyard, J., 68 Hooke, Robert, 105, 106, 107, 125, 148 Hooper, John, bishop of Gloucester, 19 Horoscopes, 8, 16, 38, 66, 173 Hort, a M., 139, 140 Hugh Latimer, bishop of Worcester, 19 Hunter, Michael, 96 Hyller, Thomas, 45

Jackman, Charles, 43, 44, 143 James I, King, 31, 90, 118, 129 James, M. R., 80 Jarvis, Robin, 170 Johnson, Ben, 102

Johnson, Francis R., 142, 143, 144, 150 Judicial Astrology, 16 Julian Calendar, 174

Kelley, Edward, 56, 57, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 85, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 108, 114, 126, 127, 128, 131, 132, 133, 162, 163, 167 Kepler, Johannes, 116, 173 Kippis, Andrew, 116, 117, 118, 121

Laski, Count Albert, 57, 66 Liberal Arts, 5 Lilly, William, 100, 101 Lok, Michael, 42 London, 3, 15, 20, 71, 79, 84, 85, 88, 89,91,118,141,152,167,180 Longleadenham, 11, 12, 82 Louvain, 9, 11, 13, 142 Lysons, Daniel, 118

MacMillan, Ken, 164, 165 Madoc, 40 Magic, 15, 16, 97, 107, 108, 124, 128, 133, 138, 145, 153, 155, 166, 167, 172 Magus, 64, 145, 147, 149, 154, 163, 166 Manchester, 30, 59, 86, 88, 90, 91, 126, 128, 132, 133 Marian persecutions, 19 Mary I, Queen. 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 25, 32, 34, 37, 48, 83, 130 Mathematics, x, 7, 8, 9, 38, 39, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 53, 63, 96, 98, 118, 132, 141, 145, 146, 150, 151, 152, 153, 167, 173 Mercator, Gerard, 7, 9, 11, 14, 142

190 Mirandola, Pico della, 6, 155 Moffett, Thomas, 54, 55 Mortlake, 4, 53, 57, 65, 80, 84, 86, 88, 91, 92, 95, 100, 102, 134 Muscovy Company, 11, 13, 15, 38, 43

Nash, Treadway Russell, 118 Neoplatonism, 141, 145, 147, 148, 150, 151, 157 Newton, Isaac, 105, 116, 141, 146, 148, 151, 153 North-east passage, 13, 39,44 North-west passage, 14, 41, 43, 44, 173 0 Occult, ix, x, 6, 38, 57, 61, 63, 65, 71, 75, 80, 95, 108, 116, 117, 119, 120, 122, 124, 125, 132, 133, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 150, 151, 154, 161, 162, 164, 166, 167, 172 Offhuysius, Joannes, 28 Osborn, J. M., 54 Oxford, ix, 12, 61, 73, 100, 107, 111, 112, 115, 118, 129

Pember, Mr., 7 Pet, Arthur, 43, 44, 143 Philosophers' Stone, 68, 72, 73, 75, 79 Philpot, John, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 Pontois, John, 158 Prague, 71, 73, 74, 76, 79, 126 Prideaux, Mr., 17 Privy Council, 15, 17, 18, 55, 86, 143 Pucci, Francesco, 73, 74, 101 Pykering, Sir William, 9 Pythagorianism, 150

Raines, F. R., 133, 134 Recorde, Robert, 46, 47, 48, 144 Renaissance, 5, 6, 141, 143, 145, 146, 147, 150, 152, 156, 157, 158, 163, 165, 166, 170, 172 Ridley, Nicholas, bishop of London, 19 Roberts, Julian, 157 Roby, John, 122 Roderick the Great, 4, 117 Rohan, Michael Scott, 170 Rosenberg, William, 75 Rosenburg, Eleanor, 52 Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, 56, 57, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 74, 75, 78, 79, 101 Russia, 14, 39, 43, 76

Sargent, R. M., 55 Savelle, Sir Thomas, 45 Saville, Henry, 51 Sherman, William H., 40, 55, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 164, 167 Shimerman, Armin, 170 Shumaker, Wayne, 152, 154 Sidney, Philip, 53, 54, 55, 60, 154, 155 Smith, Charlotte Fell, 138, 139, 162 Smith, Thomas, 137 Smith, Thomas Dr., 111 Sorcery, 16, 17, 130, 138 St. Cyprian, 21 St. John's College, Cambridge, 4 Star Chamber, 17 Szonyi, Gyorgy E., 165

Taylor, E. G. R., 141, 142, 143, 144, 150 Taylor, William Cooke, 125 The Gentleman's Magazine, 120

191 Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, 19 Thomas, Keith, 16, 45, 59, 67, 85, 111, 138 Trinity College, Cambridge, 7 Tudors, 3,4, 16, 40, 141, 153, 184

University of Louvain, 7, 9, 133 Upton-upon-Severn, 11

Wagler, Brent M., 171 Wales, 3, 59, 85 Walpole, Horace, 119 Walsingham, Sir Francis, 52, 74, 75, 81 Watson, Andrew, 157 Whitby, Christopher, 70, 154, 155, 156, 157, 160, 163, 164

Whitgift, John, archbishop of Canterbury, 87 Wild, Johanna, 4 Wilding, Michael, 162 Williams, Gwyn, 41 Willoughby, Hugh, 13 Willoughby-Chancellor expedition, 14, 39 Witchcraft, 16, 60, 171 Wolley, Sir John, 86 Wood, Anthony, 52, 57, 58, 107 Woolley, Benjamin, 162, 163 Worsop, Edward, 45 Wright, Thomas, 130, 131

Yates, Frances A., 141, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 155, 156, 159, 163 Yewbrey, Graham, 154, 155, 156, 160

Robert W. Barone Dr. Robert W. Barone is Associate Professor of History at the University of Montevallo in Montevallo, Alabama. Dr. Barone completed his Ph.D. at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.