The Arch Conjuror of England (37 page)

Dee's cultivation of Cavendish and frequent correspondence with Kelley paid off when Elizabeth sent for him on 27 November 1590. By then she had Dyer's and Kelley's latest letters and knew that Kelley refused to share the philosopher's stone. She and Dee may have started some alchemical experiment, since the latter noted the planetary positions for that day. Cavendish then sent Dee £32 and a hogshead of wine, but more importantly the Queen finally prodded the commissioners into action who had been supposed to restore Dee's library at Mortlake a year earlier.

Elizabeth also promised Dee another £100 to provide Christmas cheer. A few days later at Mortlake she publicly acknowledged Dee's alchemical services and actually sent Cavendish with a down payment of £50. Dee's service may have started Whitgift grumbling, for on 16 December she sent Cavendish with a verbal reassurance that Dee should ‘do what I would in philosophy and alchemy, and none should check, control or
molest me’, though he never saw his other £50. Elizabeth no doubt expected Dee to report her patronage of him to Kelley, suggesting the far greater rewards he could expect in return.
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Elizabeth had built ‘manifold still-houses’ at Hampton Court soon after her accession and kept a distilling assistant in her Privy Chamber. Ralph Rabbards dedicated his edition of Ripley's
Compound of Alchemy … to make the Philosophers Stone
to her the following May, equating her distillation with transmutation. Rabbards informed Elizabeth that only Ripley, Roger Bacon, Thomas Norton ‘and especially Master Doctor Dee in his
Monas hieroglyphica
’ knew ‘the hidden art’. Applying that knowledge in the Queen's distilling houses would undoubtedly produce the philosopher's stone, which had so far eluded her distiller William Huggons. Kelley contributed verses to Rabbards's book praising the stone, and Dee, who would republish the
Monas
in Frankfurt in 1591, added clumsy verses praising Rabbards, who had been his friend since the 1550s.
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However, Elizabeth's offer to protect Dee proved necessary. Whitgift and Hatton had determined to marginalise magic from Church and State and made an example of Dee to emphasise the point. In meetings with Whitgift and Burghley from 21 to 24 January 1591, Dee was ‘utterly put out of hope for recovering the two parsonages’.
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Burghley felt that he could best retain influence with Elizabeth by avoiding any confrontation with Whitgift and Hatton, especially regarding their enforcement of conformity. Kelley now claimed from Prague that Hatton had inspired a whispering campaign against him and also made ‘divers reproachful speeches even afore her majesty’. Hatton and Elizabeth denied the latter accusation, though the former rang true.
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A few months later, Dee encountered disaster. Burghley's correspondence with Kelley had naturally pretended that he merely sought alchemical remedies for his chronic ill-health.
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But on 12 May 1591, alarmed by another reported Spanish invasion fleet, Burghley finally lost patience with Kelley and Dyer. He wrote to Dyer, denying Hatton's campaign against Kelley, but reporting increasing consensus at Court that Kelley's transmutations were fraudulent. If Dyer could not persuade Kelley to
return to England, Burghley would have to accept Court opinion. Dyer could retain his credit either by bringing Kelley home or by obtaining some ‘very small portion of the powder, to make a demonstration, in her majesty's own sight, of the perfection of his knowledge’. Elizabeth still believed in Kelley but needed enough powder ‘to defray her charges for this summer for her navy’.
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Worse still for Dee, Emperor Rudolf had imprisoned Kelley the day before Burghley wrote, and had placed Dyer under house arrest. Officially, the hot-tempered Kelley had killed an imperial official in a duel. A deeper reason, Burghley intimated to Dyer, was that Kelley's transmutation made him a political prize. Catholic forces at Prague could hamstring the English war effort by throwing whatever charges might stick to prevent Kelley leaving. Hence rumours emanating from Prague mentioned many different charges against Kelley, while Rudolf placed all the English there under house arrest.
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Elizabeth and Burghley sent Thomas Webb, who shared in Dee's alchemy, to resolve this diplomatic catastrophe and rescue Dyer if possible. In the process they had to abandon Kelley.
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Consequently, they wrote off Dee, who suddenly resolved to leave the Court. On 27 May he accepted Sir Thomas Jones's offer of his castle, rent free, at Newcastle Emlyn in remote Cardiganshire, and money to support his alchemy.
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Kelley's fall seemingly ended Dee's attempt to regain his position at Court in May 1591. Yet Dee only left Mortlake in February 1596 and then for the apparently prestigious Wardenship of Christ's College, Manchester. This outcome seemed extremely unlikely in May 1591, given Whitgift and Hatton's triumph over their Presbyterian enemies and occult philosophers. Even so, Burghley's successful counter-attack against the ‘little faction’ would rely heavily on Dee's occult learning and soon restore him to a privileged place in Elizabeth's counsels.

T
O EXPLAIN
Dee's improved fortunes we must jump forward to 5 June 1604, when he published a printed petition to James I. Panicked by the draconian Bill ‘Against Conjuration, Witchcraft, and dealing with evil and wicked spirits’ then passing through Parliament, Dee once again denied slanders that he was ‘a Conjuror … or Invocator of Devils’. The Act that emerged ordained death for conjuring any evil spirit.
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Dee's petition criticised an unnamed ‘English traitor’, a Catholic exile who ‘in Print (Anno 1592, 7 January)’ accused Dee of being ‘the Conjuror belonging to’ Elizabeth's Privy Council.
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Identifying this slanderer uncovers a forgotten chapter in Dee's biography. It clarifies his connection with the notorious ‘School of Night’, a group of courtiers and intellectuals associated with Sir Walter Raleigh, whom Catholics stigmatised as ‘atheists’. It also explains why Dee's Court career collapsed in November 1592, forcing him to write the ‘Compendious Rehearsal’ of his life – which despite its title was a carefully selective autobiography – to justify his appeal to Elizabeth's patronage.

It all began when Burghley's need to divert Whitgift and Hatton's increasing attacks on the Presbyterians in 1591 met Dee's need to resurrect his Court career. The Catholic exile's accusation that Dee conjured for Elizabeth's Privy Council reflects Burghley's remarkable turnaround in Church politics in the intervening few months. In late 1591 he used Dee's
occult abilities to force this sea change, which led to the imprisonment, torture and execution of Catholic priests and laymen, justifying the traitor's bitter accusation about Dee's ‘conjuring’.

By the time Dee was preparing to abandon the Court for Sir Thomas Jones's castle in Cardiganshire in late May 1591, Whitgift and Hatton's vendetta had brought the Presbyterians to a Star Chamber trial for seditious conspiracy. Burghley tried indirectly to slow the process. In mid-May, Elizabeth visited his country house, Theobalds. Burghley, still ignorant of Kelley's arrest, asked Dyer to send some of Kelley's philosopher's stone to defray the staggering expenses of entertaining the Queen. Burghley used pageants to draw Elizabeth's attention to his indispensability, suggesting he needed to retire from the crippling burdens of administration.
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This indirectly signalled his displeasure at the persecution of the Presbyterians and that he was seeking to deflect their punishment.

Burghley next repeated a familiar tactic by emphasising the threat from English Catholics supporting Spain. He possibly saw how to use Dee's occult learning for this campaign, because Dee did not actually leave Mortlake. Four days after Dee had accepted Jones's offer of his castle, Bartholomew Hickman returned to ‘scry’ for him. On 19 June Dee noted an interview that he had had with Elizabeth. By then she knew that Kelley had been arrested and Dyer put under house arrest. Considering how Burghley would later use Dee's abilities, Dee may have predicted Spanish plans.

For in contrast to the last eighteen months, when occasional news that Kelley would not return to England had lowered Dee's Court status, his stock now rose appreciably. About 22 July the Countess of Warwick, last of the Dudleys in Elizabeth's Privy Chamber, secured for him the Queen's promise of the Mastership of St Cross Hospital at Winchester, if ‘a living fit for me’. This living offered Dee even greater income than his lost rectories, and the hospital could easily house his library and alchemical laboratories.

When a chastened Dyer returned from Prague in early July, he acknowledged Dee's improving courtly reputation by sending him money via Thomas Webb. They solemnly reconciled on 28 July. That day Hickman returned to ‘scry’ for several sessions, and on 2 August Dee noted
‘Mr William Digges his philosophical courtesy: all day’, though this ‘Diary’ entry is too cryptic to be certain whether Dee was referring to alchemy, or casting horoscopes about the political future.
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In July 1590 Whitgift had assured Dee that Kelley faked his alchemical transmutations, and Whitgift and Hatton had orchestrated a whispering campaign against Kelley in early 1591. When Dyer now dined with Whitgift and described Kelley's transmutation, he received a frosty reception. Dyer claimed to have watched Kelley put base metal in a crucible, heat it, and put in ‘a very small quantity of the medicine’ to make ‘perfect gold’. Whitgift's response took a leaf from Reginald Scot, linking such gullibility with infidelity, and he warned Dyer to ‘take heed what you say’.
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Even worse for Burghley and Dee, Whitgift's drive against the Presbyterians provoked extreme responses in the religious underworld. On 19 July 1591, in Cheapside, London, Edmund Coppinger, a minor servant in the Queen's household, and a Yorkshire gentleman, Henry Arthington, both fervent believers in Presbyterianism, proclaimed William Hacket, an illiterate malt-maker from Northamptonshire, God's ‘Prophet of Judgement’ and ‘King of Europe’. They believed Hacket had received ‘an Angelical spirit’ to remove Whitgift and Hatton, overthrow the established order, release the imprisoned Presbyterians, and usher in the millennium. Unless the ‘Discipline of the Lord’ was installed, they predicted, England would that year suffer grievous ‘famine, pestilence and war’.

Whitgift's propagandists exploited the paper trail connecting the deluded trio with leading Presbyterians. Conformists denounced Hacket's claims to command both black and white magical powers. They compared this imposture with Presbyterian claims to an inspired ecclesiastical polity. Hacket, executed on the day Dee and Dyer reconciled, claimed to converse directly with God, to summon angels into a crystal ball and to exorcise demons through prayer.
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The scandal gave Whitgift's cultural counter-revolution fresh impetus, by exposing the political threats in magic that closely resembled Dee's angelic practices.

In September Whitgift's protégé Richard Cosin explained how ‘Anabaptistical wizards and fanatical sectaries’ like Hacket did Satan's
work, leading enthusiasts to the ‘overthrow of states’.
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According to Cosin, Hacket declared himself ‘a Prophet of God's vengeance’, though Hacket's landlord simply thought him ‘a conjuror’. A mere yeoman, Hacket could be dismissed, but Coppinger had had Dudley connections and shared Dee's notions. Coppinger's belief that ‘he had been very strangely and extraordinarily moved by God to go to her Majesty’ and tell her ‘the Lords pleasure’ – that she ‘reform her self, her family, the Common-wealth, and the Church’ – recalls Dee's interview with Rudolph II. They both believed ‘a secret mystery’ would transform the world.
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Fortunately for Dee, he avoided Coppinger's threats against the establishment. Cosin alleged the Cheapside prophets planned to depose Elizabeth, purge Whitgift and Hatton from the Privy Council, and then establish Presbyterianism with Hacket as Emperor of Europe.
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Only his reverent presentation of angelic revelations distinguished Dee from men depicted as subversive terrorists. Other similarities could be unsettling.

Hacket and Coppinger warned a Privy Councillor of a plot against Elizabeth revealed by occult means, just like Dee.
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Hacket foretold the future by conjuring, including identifying foreign threats to England. Like Dee, Hacket believed that guardian angels watched over him. His revelations required diligent preparation, including the prayer and fasting that Dee used before angelic actions.
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Like Dee, he prophesied an imminent new world that required casting out devils.
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These comparisons matter because Cosin emphasised that self-proclaimed prophets with their ‘extraordinary callings, ravishings in spirit, carryings into Heaven’ inevitably threatened the natural political order. Just at the edge of Cosin's field of vision stood the nervous figure of John Dee, no doubt relieved that whereas Hacket used ‘sympathetic’ magic against Elizabeth by stabbing her portrait through the heart, Dee had defended her against the impaled wax images.
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