At 11.15am on Saturday 10 March 1582, Edward ‘Talbot’ reappeared at Dee’s door. The evening before, he and Mr Clerkson had stayed to dinner. Joined by Jane, Dee’s wife now of four years, Kelley had the first opportunity to study at close quarters the woman who was to become an object of obsessive interest in years to come.
Their conversation turned to Barnabas Saul. Barnabas, a former priest, had been part of Dee’s household for at least five months, but had disappeared the previous day, just as Mr Clerkson had come to Mortlake to introduce Kelley to Dee.
Now the reason for his disappearance became clear. These two knew Saul, and that he was not to be trusted. He had been telling tales about Dee behind his back, Kelley and Clerkson chimed; and he had ‘cosened’ (duped or deceived) his master. For Dee, such revelations were unwelcome but probably not that surprising. For Saul had a particularly sensitive role in his household. He had been Dee’s skryer.
There is no record of when Dee started using skryers or spirit mediums, but there are hints that he was engaged in spiritual activities of some kind as far back as 1568, and probably earlier. In the margin of a table of star positions, he scribbled a note, dated 22 May 1568, that he had learned the exact time and date of John Davies’s birth ‘by magic’ at Mortlake with the help of William Emery.1
Davies, the adventurer and pirate, was himself experimenting with magical practices around this time. A manuscript written by Dr John Caius, the founder of Caius College, Cambridge, details a series of attempts to contact the spirit world undertaken in 1567 involving Davies and one ‘H. G.’, probably the explorer Humphrey Gilbert.2
Other than these inklings, there is no direct evidence of Dee’s involvement in any such practices until 1579. However, the growing background noise of rumours and ‘slanders’ linking him to magical activity show that, from the outside at least, Mortlake was seen as a centre for magical activity, a reputation that would only have been stoked up by the constant traffic of mysterious foreigners and furtive itinerants. Such rumours rarely coalesced into outright accusations or indictable slanders. The case already mentioned of Vincent Murphyn, who had forged letters in Dee’s name, was a very rare example of a source of such rumours being flushed out, allowing Dee time in court and public vindication. Usually he was wrestling with whispers. He found this so frustrating that in 1577 he published a ‘Necessary Advertisement’ against the ‘divers untrue and infamous reports’ that accused him of being a ‘Conjurer, or caller of divels: but a great doer therein, yea, the great conjurer: and so, (as some would say) the arche conjurer, of this whole kingdom.’3
Despite such protestations, Dee was undoubtedly dabbling in magic, but of a sort he considered fundamentally different to the activity caricatured by those who accused him of being an ‘arch conjuror’. The first explicit (if disguised) reference in Dee’s diary is in the entry for 22 June 1579. It records the arrival at Mortlake of, among others, Richard Hickman and his nephew Bartholomew. They had come recommended by Sir Christopher Hatton, the powerful courtier and favourite of Queen Elizabeth. The entry ends with a line of Greek, which translates as ‘The crystal-gazers did their work.’4
The fact that these men were sent to Dee by Hatton shows that interest in spiritual communication went right to the top of government. This aspect of Elizabethan political life still remains largely undocumented and unexamined. Like Dee’s Greek diary entry, any references to spiritualism in contemporary historical records are heavily disguised, or used to discredit those associated with it. Nevertheless, the list of names associated with such activities is impressive. Besides Christopher Hatton, it apparently includes the Earls of Leicester (Robert Dudley), Pembroke (Henry Herbert) and Northumberland (Henry Percy). A letter Dee later wrote to Sir Francis Walsingham shows that even he, Elizabeth’s most practical politician, probably knew of the spiritual activities that Dee had undertaken and seemed comfortable with them.5
No courtier would publicly admit to such interests, not because it would make him seem gullible – the existence of spirits was as clear as the existence of God – but because it would suggest that he was trying to tap into a reservoir of power not his to control. It is hardly surprising then, that Dee was so discreet about his own spiritual activities, and those of his powerful friends.
Dee drew a very clear distinction between what he and what the common ‘Conjurer, or caller of divels’ did.6 He was engaged in the ‘other (as it were) OPTICAL Science’, as he circumspectly called it.7 This ‘other’ science was the chief form of ‘Archemastry’ – Dee’s term for experimental observation. Thus, for him, crystal gazing, properly and devoutly conducted, had the same validity as star gazing. It was a way of beholding the universe in all its glory, and understanding its manifold and mysterious workings.
There were differences between looking at the heavens directly and through a glass. Dee could not himself see visions in crystals. This could only be done through a medium or skryer. Barnabas Saul was a typical skryer – typical in, among other things, having obscure origins. In Dee’s diary he appears out of nowhere, claiming to have discovered two chests of books at Oundle in Northamptonshire. Although Dee did not believe him, he felt that he had some sort of occult sensitivity and retained him. Saul was given a bedroom over the main hall in the house, where he reported being ‘strangely troubled by a spiritual creature’.8
The first recorded séance or – to use Dee’s preferred term – ‘action’ with Saul took place on 22 December 1581, when Dee asked him to look into a ‘great crystalline globe’. Saul reported seeing a spirit who he identified as Anael. According to various sources, Anael was one of the seven angels of creation described by Dee as ‘the Angel or Intelligence now ruling over the whole world’.9 Dee was sceptical and asked Saul to confirm that the spirit was who he said he was, whereupon another spirit appeared, ‘very beautiful with apparel yellow, glittering, like gold’. His head emitted ‘beams like star beams, blazing, and spreading from it: his eyes fiery’.10 This spirit, who Dee identified as the real Anael, wrote a series of Hebrew letters upon the crystal in ‘transparent gold’, whereupon there appeared a ‘bright star’ that ascended and descended, which was followed by ‘a great number of dead men’s skulls’ and a ‘white dog with a long head’.
Dee, who had several crystals for skrying, set another, his ‘stone in the frame’, beside the one Anael had appeared in, and asked him: ‘Is any angel assigned to this stone?’ Anael said that there was – Michael. This answer excited Dee, as Michael was one of the two angels identified by name in the main body of the Scriptures.11 But Anael told Dee that Michael would not appear until after Christmas. ‘Then thou must prepare thyself to prayer and fasting,’ Anael told Dee. ‘In the name of God, be secret.’ The angel then left, after announcing himself to be ‘ANNAEL’, spelling his name out through Saul. This puzzled Dee. He considered the names of angels to be extremely significant, as the combination of letters had cabalistic power – Anael was spelt with one ‘n’.12
This could well have aroused questions in Dee’s mind about Saul’s honesty as a skryer. Such doubts were only reinforced in the New Year when Saul was charged with a crime. The nature of the offence is not recorded: when the case was heard at Westminster Hall on 12 February 1582, Saul was acquitted due to the lack of evidence. However, on 6 March, Saul admitted to Dee that he ‘neither heard or saw any spiritual creature any more’. When Edward ‘Talbot’ first arrived two days later, Saul disappeared.
And here now were ‘Talbot’ and Clerkson, sitting at the dinner table, confirming Dee’s worst fears about his previous skryer. Saul had engaged in ‘naughty dealing’ against Dee. He claimed to be weary of his master and accused Dee of trying to steal Talbot from Clerkson.13 Talbot-Kelley ‘told me (before my wife and Mr Clerkson) that a spiritual creature told him that Barnabas had cosened both Mr Clerkson and me &c. The injuries which this Barnabas had done me divers ways were very great,’ Dee noted in his diary.14
After supper, Kelley had another, private word with Dee. He would, he confided, ‘do what he could to further my knowledge in magic…with fairies’.15 Dee was appalled: he did not want to communicate with such pagan entities as ‘fairies’. The very suggestion was ‘a monstrous and horrible lie’, he wrote.
It is a measure of how quickly Kelley managed to insinuate himself into Dee’s household that, within only a few months, he had somehow got hold of Dee’s diary and scribbled out these comments, adding ‘You that read this underwritten assure yourself that it is a shameful lie, for “Talbot” neither studied for any such thing: nor showed himself dishonest in anything.’ When Dee found these annotations, he added his own: ‘This is Mr Talbot, or that learned man, his own writing in my book, very unduly as he came by it.’16
‘Talbot’ and Clerkson left that evening, and ‘Talbot’ returned alone the following morning. He was ‘willing and desirous to see or show something in spiritual practice,’ he announced. Dee warned the precocious twenty-six-year-old that he was not interested in ‘vulgarly accounted magic…but confessed myself long time to have been desirous to have help in my philosophical studies through the company and information of the blessed angels of God.’ In other words, he was engaged not in circus magic but a momentous philosophical enterprise.
‘Talbot’ reassured him that he understood the seriousness of the venture, and upon this frail understanding, Dee agreed to try out his skrying skills. He led ‘Talbot’ through to his study and placed upon the desk the ‘stone in the frame’ in which Saul had promised the archangel Michael would appear. ‘Talbot’ fell to his knees (apparently not at this moment suffering from the lameness said to prevent him doing so), and began to pray for the power to see into the glinting crystal before him.
Dee withdrew into his adjoining ‘oratory’, a small private chapel. He too now began to pray, as he did before every angelic action, making ‘motions’ to God and asking that his ‘good creatures’ appear ‘for the furthering of this Action’. Within a quarter of an hour he heard a voice. It came from the study.