In 22 November 1577, Dee set off for Windsor Castle, where the court was in residence. He opted to make the fifteen-mile journey by horse rather than boat, perhaps because of the strange tidal movements he had noted in the Thames two days earlier. In his satchel, he carried the document he had been working on for some time, upon which rested his latest and most ambitious bid to be recognised as the court’s official philosopher and cosmographer.
He arrived at the castle to find a flustered court. It had been an eventful year: Walsingham’s spies had exposed yet another plot to unseat Elizabeth, this one masterminded by Don John of Austria; a bad outbreak of plague during the summer had confined the Queen to Greenwich and prevented her usual progress around her kingdom; and Sir Francis Drake was preparing for his epic voyage around the globe, which Elizabeth herself was backing with one thousand marks. Within the past few days a heavenly portent had intensified the histrionic mood. A comet or ‘blazing star’, Dee observed, had ‘bred great fear and doubt in many of the court.’
In the midst of the hubbub Dee’s eye may well have fallen upon the woman he would marry: Jane Fromonds, lady-in-waiting to Lady Howard of Effingham. Jane came from Cheam, a village six miles south of Mortlake, within sight of the extravagant Tudor turrets and cupolas of Elizabeth’s magnificent summer palace, Nonsuch.
She was to be his third wife. Although his second marriage had been blessed by the Queen herself, his wife, whose name remains unknown, had died in 1575 just a few months after the wedding. Jane was just twenty-two, and Dee fifty. Despite the age difference, they developed a strong bond that endured epic travels and testing times.
Dee finally saw the Queen on 25 November. He does not record what they talked of, but it was likely to be the significance of the comet which he considered to be a sign not of imminent catastrophe, but part of a much greater cosmic realignment.
They met again on 28 November. Catching the mood of adventure sweeping through court with Drake’s preparations, Dee laid before the Queen an astounding proposal. England, he said, should challenge Spain’s imperial claim to the New World.
England was at this time a relatively poor nation, on the political as well as geographical margins of the Continent. The court was riddled with debt, its dazzling displays just a façade over the poverty and fragility of everyday life. Militarily, the country was weak. Following an abortive attempt to seize Le Havre in France, naval policy had been reduced to little more than licensed piracy against Spanish merchant shipping. So Dee’s proposal to challenge Spain’s imperial might must have seemed ambitious, if not ridiculous.
Following Columbus’s discovery of America in 1492, Pope Alexander VI had issued a bull dividing the New World between Portugal and Spain along an imaginary north-south line which ran three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Azores. This gave Portugal control over the established routes to the West Indies, and Spain possession of any discoveries made in North America and South America west of modern Brazil.1 The bull had been formalised by the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, and on this basis the two nations had established their domination not just of America, but of the Atlantic, a position so far barely dented by the English mariners’ ventures.
Dee proposed to the Queen that England should now contest Pope Alexander’s division of the globe. He justified this on the basis that several lands declared under the Treaty of Tordesillas to be possessions of the Iberian nations, such as Frieseland, had already been colonised by the English. Much of the information for this claim came not just from the many books in his library but from a detailed letter Mercator had written him earlier that year, in which the great cartographer related the story of King Arthur’s incursion into the northern ‘indrawing’ seas around the Pole in 530. Mercator cited sources showing that some of the four thousand lost members of the expedition had survived, the proof being that eight of their descendants had appeared at the King of Norway’s court in 1364.2
Dee had been working on this idea for some time, and suggested featuring it in a series of new works aimed at shifting English foreign policy into a new, adventurous, expansionist mode. One of these works was planned as his magnum opus, a four-volume survey of the idea of a ‘Brytish Impire’ entitled General and Rare Memorials Pertaining to the Perfect Art of Navigation. The influence of this extraordinary work is hard to judge, because, despite its subject matter, it has been ignored by most Tudor histories, presumably because Dee’s magical ideas do not fit in with modern conceptions of a scientific basis for discovery. But it was one of the earliest authoritative statements of the idea of a British Empire, and was delivered to the Queen during the period when that Empire was about to make its first appearance on the geopolitical scene.
Memorials was a typical Dee production: practical, political, scholarly and mystical. Its title page combined all these elements in an elaborate allegory that has been called a ‘British hieroglyphic’.3 Elizabeth sits at the helm of the ship of imperial monarchy, watched over by St Michael, and is drawn by the figure of ‘Lady Occasion’ (‘Lady Opportunity’, in more modern terms) to a fortified citadel overlooking conquered lands. Above Elizabeth hang the Sun, Moon, stars and a glowing sphere bearing the tetragammaton, a potent Cabalistic formula, all of which shine down their blessings on the enterprise.
The first volume of the Memorials focussed on building and financing a substantial navy, the ‘Master Key’ of the whole scheme, which would provide the security England needed to pursue her imperial ambitions.4 Since the end of Henry VIII’s reign, England had boasted one of the few standing fleets of military ships in Europe. However, the fleet was small, consisting of thirty-four ships when Elizabeth ascended the throne, twelve of which were considered ‘of no continuance and not worth repair’. In comparison, Spain, at the height of her powers, boasted over two hundred ships.5 Dee proposed that this disparity should be corrected by creating a ‘Petty Navy Royal’ of sixty ‘tall ships’ weighing between 160 and 200 tons and twenty smaller barques between 20 and 50 tons ‘very strong and Warlike’, crewed by 6,660 men ‘liberally waged’.6 The money for this would come not from the Queen’s own coffers, but through taxation, on the grounds that it would ultimately be the nation’s wealth not just hers that would benefit from the investment.
The second volume was to be a series of navigational tables giving longitudes and latitudes calculated using Dee’s invention, the ‘Paradoxical Compass’. It was to be bigger than the English Bible, which then set the standard in terms of book size, and printed on large sheets or ‘quires’ of paper. Sadly, it proved too elaborate to publish, and the manuscript is now lost.7 The contents of the third volume were secret – so secret, Dee pledged, that it ‘should be utterly suppressed or delivered to Vulcan’s custody.’ Whether he cast the work into Vulcan’s fires or kept it remains unknown. Like the second volume, it is now lost.
The fourth volume, Of Famous and Rich Discoveries, has survived, though unfortunately it, too, was briefly seized by Vulcan. A badly-burned copy is in the British Library,8 but a list of the contents of the missing parts (the first five chapters) has been summarised by Samuel Purchas.9
Dee was also currently writing a manuscript aimed exclusively at the Queen. It was much smaller, but in many respects more potent. Brytanici Imperii Limites (the limits of the British Empire) summarised Dee’s contention that British claims to foreign lands extended well beyond the borders of the British Isles. As well as the voyages of King Arthur, he cited other legendary mariners such as Madoc, the Welsh prince said to have crossed the Atlantic in 1170, which proved that ‘a great part of the sea coasts of Atlantis (otherwise called America) next unto us, and of all the isles near unto the same, from Florida northerly, and chiefly of all the islands Septentrional [i.e. northerly], great and small, the Title Royal and supreme government is due.’10
Dee left Windsor a week and a half after his arrival, having attended the knighting of Christopher Hatton, to whom General and Rare Memorials was later dedicated. The following August, he reported to the Queen again, this time in Norwich, where she was in the middle of her summer progress around the realm. He showed her the latest version of his Brytanici Imperii Limites, together with a map (now lost), which marked the extent of the domains to which he felt she could lay claim.
News of Dee’s daring proposals spread. Despite the failure of Frobisher’s ore to yield its riches, interest in exploration intensified, and Mortlake quickly became a clearing house for the latest information about new discoveries. The mapmaker Abraham Ortelius, recently made the Spanish Geographer Royal, visited; Alexander Simon ‘the Ninevite’, outlined his plans for an overland journey to Persia; the lawyer Richard Hakluyt, whose cousin and namesake would later write the chronicles of this age of discovery, discussed the claim that King Arthur had conquered Friseland; and Simão Fernandez came with maps made after a trip to Norumbega, the area of America that was to become New York and New England.11
Just as the navigators came with news, so privateers gathered in search of opportunities. The most frequent visitors were Adrian Gilbert and John Davis. They were an odd couple. Dee found them awkward and argumentative and fell out with both of them frequently. John Aubrey described Gilbert as ‘the greatest buffoon in England’, and Dee did not have a much better opinion.12 John Davis was no buffoon, but he was an opportunist: he was later arrested on the orders of the Privy Council for using a mission organised by the Earl of Cumberland to launch an unprovoked attack on a friendly trading vessel owned by Florentine and Venetian merchants.
Nevertheless they were tolerated. Adrian was a key figure in an important seafaring dynasty; his brother was Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the man who started the search for the Northwest Passage, and his half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh. The three men set up the ‘Fellowship of New Navigations Atlanticall and Septentionall [i.e. northerly]’, and in 1583 succeeded in getting royal backing to ‘discover and settle the northerly parts of Atlantis, called Novus Orbis’ – in other words, to colonise North America.
This plan was first mooted on 28 August 1580, when Sir Humphrey Gilbert visited Dee. Two weeks later, their discussions culminated with Gilbert’s agreement that, should he succeed in taking possession of the northern parts of the New World, Dee would get the ‘royalties of discoveries all to the north above the parallel of the 50th degree of latitude’ – in other words, most of Canada and all of Alaska.
Gilbert, however, was having difficulties finding the backing he needed to launch the venture, and in a desperate attempt to raise money teamed up with Sir George Peckham and Sir Thomas Gerard, two Catholics whose sympathies had led to their estates being, as the Spanish ambassador put it in an alarmed report to King Philip, ‘ruined’.13 In 1582, Peckham visited Dee to discuss the plan. He was particularly keen to learn Dee’s grounds for challenging the Treaty of Tordesillas. He did not want to embark on a venture that would anger the Pope, and needed to know whether the Treaty applied to the ‘whole world’s discoveries’, including the north. In return for reassurances that it did not, he promised Dee five thousand acres in Norumbega. Dee was promised a further 5,000 acres from Peckham’s partner, Sir Thomas Gerard.14
Dee’s involvement with these schemes helped define the sense of mission, and of national destiny, that drove the adventurers across the Atlantic. ‘It is no small comfort unto an English Gentleman,’ wrote the diplomat Charles Merbery, finding him self in a far country, when he may boldly shew his face, and his forehead unto any foreign Nation: sit side by side with the proudest Spaniard: cheek by cheek with the stoutest German: foot to foot with the forewardest Frenchman: knowing that this most Royal Prince (her Majesty’s highness) is no whit subject, nor inferior unto any of theirs. But that she may also (if she please) challenge the superiority both over some of them, and over many other kings, and Princes more. As master Dee hath very learnedly of late…shewed unto her Majesty, that she may justly call her self LADY, and EMPERESS of all the North Islands.15
Elizabeth became increasingly enthusiastic about Dee’s ideas, and was anxious to be kept informed of their development. Dee, however, was distracted by other matters. In early 1580 he had started a series of alchemical experiments with his assistant, Roger Cook, whose flourishing, somewhat turbulent career would later bring him into the employment of Henry, the ‘Wizard Earl’ of Northumberland and Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor. Evidence also exists that Dee was trying to contact the spirit world at this time, occasionally with Adrian Gilbert. It was perhaps in connection with rumours about these activities that he then found himself the target of a defamatory campaign launched by Vincent Murphyn, the son of a royal cook, who had been forging letters in Dee’s name.16
Such distractions drew Dee away from court. The Queen started to notice his absence, and wanted to know what he was up to. So, on 17 September 1580 she decided she would go to Mortlake and see for herself.
Dee was working in his library as her coach drove up the main road from Richmond. Alerted by a member of his household, he went to the door to find her standing resplendently in the field beyond his garden. ‘She beckoned her hand for me,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘I came to her coach side: she very speedily pulled off her glove and gave me her hand to kiss: and to be short, willed me to resort to her court.’17
He did as commanded, two weeks later delivering to her ‘my two rolls of the Queen’s Majesty’s title’, the finished version of his Brytanici Imperii Limites, as she strolled through her gardens at Richmond Palace. Excited by what she saw, Elizabeth invited him to her Privy Chamber after lunch, where they were joined by William Cecil, Elizabeth’s chief minister. But Cecil, who was by nature conservative, did not approve of Dee’s ideas. He did not want to upset the Spanish, or lay claim to North American lands of doubtful value. Where hotheads such as Robert Dudley and Philip Sidney were seduced by Dee’s vision of a new empire, Cecil was alarmed by it.
Dee stayed on at Richmond for two more days, spending most of the time arguing his case in Cecil’s chambers. Initially their discussions were civil, but Cecil soon became hostile and refused to speak to him. ‘I doubt much of some new grief conceived,’ Dee later recorded in his diary.18 From the frontispiece of General and Rare Memorials, through his maps of ‘Atlantis’ and the opportunities described in the Brytanici Imperii Limites, he had summoned a vision of a new world order that might ultimately reunite Christendom, build a new Jerusalem and at the moment Elizabeth hovered on the brink of embracing it, Cecil had wandered in, raised doubts and swept it all away.
The stars, tabulated next to his diary entries, now began to conspire against Dee. He returned home from court to find his mother seriously ill. She died on 10 October at four in the morning, making a ‘godly end’.19 Later that day the Queen visited, and offered Dee her condolences. She also reassured him that Cecil had not taken against him, and would study his proposals further. Cecil sent Dee a haunch of venison as a peace offering a few days later. But a joint of meat did not denote a change in policy. Dee retained a suspicion and fear of Elizabeth’s indomitable grandee that he could never overcome, and a distance from court that was never to close.
Much he described in the writings he presented to the Queen was to happen in one form or another. The navy would become the ‘master key’ to English military strength; England would challenge the Spanish – as evidenced spectacularly in its 1558 defeat of the Armada; North America would be colonised; a British Empire would emerge, and the expeditions that Dee had in the last few years been helping to plan laid its foundations. But he was to have no part in this future, not even in the adventures of the ‘Fellowship of New Navigations Atlantical and Septentional’. His place in the triumvirate running it was taken by a younger navigator, the man who would soon attempt to found England’s first true colony in the Americas – Sir Walter Raleigh.
The reason Dee withdrew from such geopolitical issues, and ultimately from courtly affairs, may be partly related to Cecil’s rejection. But there was another reason – hinted at in a doodle in the top margin of the page of his diary in which he describes his visit to Windsor in November 1577. There he has drawn the curved trajectory of the celestial phenomenon that had caused such a stir at court and across the country that winter: the arrival of the ‘blazing star’.