NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1 It is now called Addle Hill and only exists as a cul-de-sac. It is possible that another Addle Street, in the northern part of the City is being referred to. The first names of the Joneses are contained in BL MS Sloane 3191, where the names were jotted down in the volume entitled Liber Scientiae Auxili et Victoria Terrestris. The rest of this account comes from BL MS Sloane 3188, ff2v-3. Elias Ashmole, Josten, pp1270-1.

2 Woodall would become surgeon to the King’s Guards, see CSP Domestic 1664-1665, London, 1863, p535.

3 John Dee’s Library Catalogue, Roberts & Watson, p61.

THE FLIGHT OF THE DUNG BEETLE

CHAPTER I

1 There are two copies, one in the BL MS Sloane 1782, f31, another in the Bod MS Ashmole 1788, fl37; what follows is based on the latter, which was probably copied by Elias Ashmole.

2 Bod MS Laud Misc. 674, f74r; see Horoscopes and History, North.

3 The History of London in Maps, Felix Barker and Peter Jackson, London, 1990, p12

4 Bod MS Ashmole 174 ff439-45.

5 John Dee did not acknowledge any brothers or sisters, though it is possible that he had a brother. Francis Dee, Bishop of Peterborough, was the son of either a brother or a cousin of John’s. See John Dee, Calder, Chapter 3 note 5.

6 According to John Aubrey, Dee’s grandson described Roland as being a ‘vintner’, see Brief Lives, p210 and note, but this was probably a reference to Dee’s son, also called Roland. According to Aubrey Ashmole recorded under which ‘sign’, i.e. trading name, Roland traded, but the information is sadly illegible. A ‘Book of Assessment for Light Horses’ identifies Roland Dee as a resident of the Tower Ward in 1548. See CSP Domestic 1547-80, p621. Roland served an apprenticeship under William Strathorne and gained admittance to the Company of Mercers in 1536. See Register: List of Mercers 1347 to 1914, Mercers’ Company, Mercers Hall, London. Survey of London, Stow, p152.

7 Survey of London, Stow, p157.

8 St Dunstan’s was destroyed in the Second World War. There is a view of it in the Agas Map, showing the spire and churchyard. See The A to Z of Elizabethan London, Prockter and Taylor, p25.

9 All the Mercers’ buildings were destroyed in the Great Fire, and again in the Second World War.

10 A century and a half later the first Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed would establish the Royal Observatory at the top of Greenwich Hill and overlooking the palace, casting a horoscope to mark the moment one of the world’s most prestigious scientific institutions was founded.

11 See pedigree drawn up by Dee, BL MS Harleian 5835 f4-6. Sewer has sometimes been mistaken for ‘server’.

12 Catherine had been previously married to Henry’s brother Prince Arthur, and according to Leviticus ch20, vs21, it was ‘unclean’ for a man to ‘take his brother’s wife…they shall be childless.’ When Henry had married Catherine, she had claimed that her union with Arthur had been unconsummated, so the Biblical injunction did not apply. Henry now believed that the injunction must apply, as this would explain the failure of his marriage to Catherine to produce a male heir.

13 For an account of the Felipez episode, see Catherine of Aragon, Mattingly, p185f.

14 Encyclopaedia, William Caxton, quoted in The Elizabethan World Picture, Tillyard, p47. Caxton’s calculations were probably based on Ptolemy’s Almagest, or Campanus of Novara’s thirteenth-century edition of the Almagest. Ptolemy put the distance of Saturn as 19,865 times the earth’s radius. The stars lay ‘at a distance of five myriad [i.e. 10,000] myriad and 6,946 myriad stades and a third of a myriad stades’ beyond that – around 50 million miles. See Measuring the Universe, Ferguson, p41.

15 Bod MS Ashmole 356, Item 5. The tract is unsigned but attributed to Dee because the style of the handwriting matches his own. It carries later annotations, possibly added by Frances Sidney, Sir Philip’s widow, who acquired it after her husband’s death.

16 See John Dee, Calder, ch 10, section 4.

17 Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblios, Ashmand, pp59 and 18. For a more contemporary account of astrological practice, which largely conforms with Ptolemy, I have also referred to Christian Astrology, Lilly, in particular book 1, pp25-93.

CHAPTER II

1 See ‘Erasmians and Mathematicians at Cambridge in the Early Sixteenth Century’, Rose, pp47-55 and A History of the University of Cambridge, Leader, pp294-336.

2 CR, chapter 1.

3 Brief Lives, Aubrey, pxxix. Quoted in ‘The Mistaking of “the Mathematicks” for Magic in Tudor and Stuart England’, Zetterberg, p85.

4 Stars, Minds and Fate, North, pp187-92; ‘The Harmonic Roots of Newtonian Science’, Penelope Gouk and ‘Newton, Matter, and Magic’, John Henry, Let Newton Be!, Fauvel, pp100-25 and 126-45.

5 Praeface, Aiiv.

6 Peace, Aristophanes, 160-75.

7 Dee mentions a work entitled Trochilica inventa mea, written in 1558; it has not survived. CR, ch 6, item 27.

8 ‘The Academic Drama at Cambridge: Extracts from College Records’, G. C. Moore Smith, Malone Society Collections, v2 part 2,1923.

9 CR, chl.

10 Winter’s Tale, V, iii, 85-91

CHAPTER III

1 See Diaries, Fenton, p305 and note. The folio by Ashmole entitled ‘A transcript of some notes Dr Dee had entered in Stoffler’s Ephemerides beginning 1543 and ending 1556’ is at MS Ashmole 423, f294.

2 CR, ch1.

3 Quoted in The Civilization of Europe, Hale, p282.

4 Ascham used Louvain as the benchmark to assess Cheke’s achievements at Cambridge. See The Cambridge Connection, Hudson, p54.

5 Like many Flemish scholars, Frisius had adopted a Latin name. He was born in Friesland as Reiner Gemma.

6 The History of Mathematical Sciences, Ivor Grattan-Guinness, p194.

7 Museum of the History of Science at Oxford, accession no 33-73.

8 Mercator was born Gerard de Cremer or Kremer.

9 This projection did not mean that medieval cartographers believed the world to be flat, as has sometimes been assumed.

10 For example the Beatus and Henry of Mainz world maps. See Medieval Maps, Harvey, pl. 17 and 18.

11 Quoted in John Dee, Sherman, p6. See John Dee on astronomy ‘Propaedeumata aphoristica’, Shumaker.

12 John Dee’s Library Catalogue, Roberts & Watson, #768

13 Dee outlines the principles of the device in CR, ch 7.

14 John Dee, Sherman, p5 and fig 3. An annotated facsimile of the album is held at Pembroke College, Cambridge, MS 2.113.

15 CR ch. 2.

16 See Annals, Strype v2, pt 1, p529.

17 For example, a copy of Petrus Ramus’s Prooemium mathematicam, contains an inscription indicating that Sir William Pickering sent Dee the book from France, see John Dee’s Library Catalogue, Roberts & Watson, p93.

18 CR, ch2.

19 CR, ibid.Though no independent account of Dee’s lecture has survived, he seems to have had various testimonies on the event, as he mentions presenting them to the Commissioners sent by the Queen in 1592.

20 John Dee’s Library Catalogue, Roberts & Watson, p93 and p3.

21 Diaries, October 1547, Fenton p305.

22 CSP Span. v9, pp146 and 222. Quoted in The Later Tudors, Penry Williams, p42.

23 De Caelestis Globi amplissimis commoditatibus (1550) and De Planetarum, Inerrantium stellarum, Nubiumque a centro terrae distantiis: & stellarum omnium veris inveniendis magnitudinibus (1551).

24 Dee notes this in his copy of Cardano’s De supplemento almanach (John Dee’s Library Catalogue, Roberts & Watson #440). A transcription of the notes appears in ‘Books from John Dee’s Library’, Prideaux, pp137-8.

25 Quoted in DNB.

26 Calder, ch 4, note 34.

27 The information about Dee’s connection with Pembroke comes from his copy of Girolamo Cardano’s Libelli quinque. See ‘Books from John Dee’s Library’, Prideaux, pp137-8.

28 He was the first man of non-Royal blood to bear the title of duke.

29 In the tribute in his Praeface to Dudley’s eldest son, also called John, Dee was clearly writing as a teacher fondly remembering a student. Discussing the use of mathematics in the military sciences, he lauded ‘the Noble, the Courageous, the loyal, the Courteous John, Earl of Warwick’. He went on to write about how hard young John had worked to understand ‘feats and Arts’ that would be of service to his country, an achievement that no one, other than Dee himself, ‘can so perfectly and truly report’.

30 Index Britanniae scriptorum, Poole.

CHAPTER IV

1 Dee noted this in the margin of a volume, now in the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, which contains a number of mystical texts by authors such as Ficino. Set John Dee’s Library Catalogue, Roberts & Watson, pp9 and 85.

2 Quoted in Children of England, Weir, p153.

3 Acts of the Privy Council, v4, 1552-4, entry for 21 August 1553. The entry reads: ‘A lettre to the Lieutenant of the Tower willing hym to…send hither Thomas Thirlande, John Tomson and Rolan Dye [Dee], to be ordered by the Lords of the Counsaill.’ Thirlande may have been Thomas Thurland, a canon, and John Tomson an auditor of the Royal Exchequer. Dye was a spelling of Dee used for both John and Roland in the Council’s records.

4 Population statistics are unreliable for this period, as there was no official census. The estimates are taken from Population and Metropolis: The Demography of London 1580-1650, R Finlay, Cambridge, 1981 and ‘The Population of London, 1550-1700: A Review of Published Evidence’, The London Journal, 15 (1990), pp111-28.

5 Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic VIII, ed. Gairdner, 1903, v19, pt 1, p371.

6 Original Letters, Ellis, p34.

7 See Children of England, Weir, p262.

8 The Catholic Encyclopaedia, Herbermann, entry on Bonner.

9 The Catholic Encyclopaedia, Herbermann, quotes these lines in its entry on Bonner, which tries to rehabilitate him by pointing out he was in fact reprimanded by the Council for being too slow to prosecute those sent to him for examination.

10 Acts and Monuments, Foxe, v7, p80.

11 Acts and Monuments, Foxe, v7, p82.

THE LORD OF MISRULE

CHAPTER V

1 For Englefeld, CSP Domestic v6 Addenda 1547-1565, p342 and his exile from England, Annals, Strype, v1, pt2, p50.

2 Acts of the Privy Council, v4,1552-4

3 Dee described Christopher Cary as ‘my scholer’ in a marginal note in his copy of Ars Demonstrativa by the Spanish philosopher and mystic Raymond Lully.

4 CR, ch 5.

5 Brief Lives, Aubrey, p167.

6 In 1574, Elizabeth’s chief secretary of state William Cecil intercepted a letter which listed the names of English exiles in Spain who had been given pensions by the King of Spain. Among the names listed are Dee’s old enemy Frances Englefeld and ‘M. Pridieux’. See Annals, Strype, v1, pt 2, pp53-4.

7 See The Diary of Henry Machyn, Nichols, entry for 4 January 1553 and notes.

8 There were several reports circulating at this time about wax effigies of the Queen; another was apparently unearthed at the house of a priest in Islington, who was reputed to be a conjuror, see Annals, Strype, v2, pt2, p206.

9 Under the treaty solemnising Mary’s marriage to Philip, she remained sovereign of England.

10 Acts and Monuments, Foxe, v7, p126.

11 See Necessary Advertisement.

12 Acts of the Privy Council, v4,1552-4.

13 Upton, Hurle, p31.

CHAPTER VI

1 Survey of London, Stow, p312.

2 London Encyclopaedia, p757.

3 Acts and Monuments, Foxe, v7, p605ff.

4 Acts and Monuments, Foxe, v7, p612.

5 Acts and Monuments, Foxe, v7, p613.

6 CR, ch 5.

7 Acts and Monuments, Foxe, v7, p736.

8 Dee noted the date of Bonner’s death at the Marshalsea on 5 September 1569, ironically in the margin of his copy of De Scriptoribus Anglicae, written by the radical Protestant antiquarian and dramatist, John Bale. The book survives in the library of Christchurch College, Oxford (ref W.b.4.8); John Dee’s Catalogue, Roberts and Watson, #274.

9 The book was a mathematical treatise by Andreas Alexander which Dee had bought in 1551. John Dee’s Library Catalogue, Roberts & Watson, p4.

10 On Henry’s theological conservatism, see for example Henry VIII, Scarisbrick pp408-9.

11 Quoted in Elizabeth the Queen, Weir, p54.

12 Catholic Record Society, Miscellanea, v7,1911, pp52-3.

13 Sir Stephen Powle to Francis Walsingham, 8 April 1587, Bodleian MS Tanner 309 ff67b-68.

CHAPTER VII

1 Cambridge Antiquarian Communications, Vol. III, p. 157. Quoted in John Dee, Calder, ch 5 §1.

2 BL MS Cotton Vitell. C.VII., f 310 et seq; printed in Chetham Miscellany I, p46ff. It is possible that the work appeared a year later, as New Year’s Day in England was still officially 25 March. However, Dee often adopted the Continental practice of observing New Year’s Day on 1 January.

3 John Dee’s Library Catalogue, Roberts & Watson, pp19-20.

4 John Dee’s Library Catalogue, Roberts & Watson, p6.

5 Wayne Shumaker published a translation of Propaedeumata Aphoristica in his John Dee on Astronomy, Berkeley, 1978. This volume has a useful introductory essay on Dee’s mathematics and physics and his place in the scientific revolution by J.L. Heilbron. Much of what follows comes from Nicholas Clulee’s discussion of Dee’s natural philosophy in John Dee’s Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion, London, 1988, p40ff.

6 Religion, Thomas, p341.

7 MP, cir. Dee observed that this phenomenon ‘is not by me first noted, but by one John Baptist de Benedictis’.

CHAPTER VIII

1 Chronicles, Holinshed, v6, p492.

2 Arguably Henry I’s daughter Matilda was the first Queen regnant, but she was never crowned.

3 Quoted in Religion, Thomas, p405.

4 Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare, I, 3,101-03,109-10.

5 See Acts and Monuments, Foxe, vol 7, p642.

6 This information is contained in a private letter to Robin Cousins by the Revd B. J. Bennett of Leadenham.

7 Quoted in Elizabeth the Queen, Weir, p31.

8 Elizabeth fashioned herself as a ‘prince’ rather than a princess; the term then applied to the abstract idea of a monarch’s role as much as a king or queen’s male offspring.

9 There is no record relating to Roland Dee’s death. John was admitted to the Company of Mercers by patrimony in 1555, which may indicate that Roland died then or soon after. John’s eldest son Arthur was also admitted by patrimony in 1605, when he was 26, just three years before John died.

10 Annals, Strype, v1, pt2, p44.

CHAPTER IX

1 He did publish a new edition of his Propaedeumata, dedicated to Elizabeth.

2 He wrote a paper entitled ‘Cabbalae Hebraicae compendiosa tabella’ in 1562 which has sadly not survived. See Dee’s list of unpublished works in CR, #29.

3 See Giordano Bruno, Yates, p93. A full discussion of the Cabala is found in Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Scholem.

4 T&FR, Preface, p23.

5 In Religion, Thomas points out that the distinction between a prayer and a spell was still unclear in Dee’s time, being the subject of intense debate among sixteenth-century Protestant theologians, who argued that words had no power in themselves, but only if heard by God, p69.

6 When Dee was in Antwerp on another occasion he directed his friend Abraham Ortelius to direct correspondence via the Birkmanns’ servants in Antwerp. See ‘John Dee and the Secret Societies’, Heisler; Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum, v1, pp157-60 and 787-91.

7 Evangelium regni, Niclaes, pp3-4.

8 See, for example, John Dee’s Library Catalogue, Roberts & Watson pl3; ‘John Dee and the Secret Societies’, Heisler. Hamilton wrote that Dee was ‘the one English scholar who may well have sympathised with Continental Familism,’ The Family of Love, Hamilton, p154.

9 See Renaissance Curiosa, Shumaker, p92ff. Shumaker’s account of Trithemius’s life is based on Klaus Arnold’s biography, published in 1971.

10 Renaissance Curiosa, Shumaker, p97, Shumaker’s translation.

11 One suggestion is that the Hungarian was Johannes Sambucus (János Zsámboky in Hungarian), who had connections with the publishing trade in Antwerp, but he was not a nobleman. Another possibility is Count Balthasar Batthyany, a generous patron with an interest in alchemy. I am grateful to the Hungarian Dee scholar Gyorgy Endre Szonyi for his advice on this subject.

12 PRO, State Papers Domestic 12/27, no. 63. It is printed in Notes and Queries, ed J. E. Bailey, series 5, v11, 1879, pp401-2, 422-3.

13 Europe and England in the Sixteenth Century, Morris, p17.

14 Steganographia, Trithemius, p27. This example comes from Jim Reeds’s paper ‘Solved: The Ciphers in Book III of Trithemius’ Steganographia’, Cryptologia v22, no 4 (October, 1998), p2.

15 Renaissance Curiosa, Shumaker, p95, Shumaker’s translation.

16 Steganographia, Trithemius, p95.

17 For example, D. P. Walker, one of the most influential scholars on Renaissance magic, wrote ‘The Third Book, which is unfinished, does not, like the other two, contain any examples of enciphered messages; one is told to say the message over the picture of a planetary angel at the moment determined by complicated astronomical calculations. It seems most unlikely that these could be disguised directions for encipherment or any kind of secret writing.’ Spiritual and Demonic Magic, Walker, p87. Walker heavily influenced Frances Yates, who echoed his assessment of the Steganographia in her Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, p145.

18 He published his results in ‘Schwarzweiβe Magie. Der Schlüssel zum dritten Buch der Steganographia des Trithemius’, Daphnis 25 no. 1,1996.

19 ‘Solved’, Reeds, p14. Reeds discovered that the phrase was a pangram by typing it into an Internet search engine, which brought up a reference to a manuscript held in the library of the Benedictine Abbey in Melk, Austria, catalogued by Christine Glaβner.

20 Cecil was certainly no materialist, and firmly believed in alchemy, as was shown by his repeated attempts to lure Dee’s skryer, Edward Kelley, back from Bohemia when news reached England of his ability to transform base metals into gold at will.

21 John Dee’s Catalogue, Roberts & Watson, pp9 and 76.

22 There is no evidence to link Dee directly with this aspect of government business, but there are some suggestive hints. One is an entry in his diary (in which he mentions a visit by a ‘Mr Bacon. Mr Phillips of the custom house’. The former was probably Francis Bacon, the latter may have been Thomas Phillips or Phelippes, Walsingham’s chief cipher expert. Alan Stewart, co-author of a biography of Bacon and editor of Bacon’s works, believes Phillips was more likely to have been Thomas’s father William or possibly another of William’s children, whose name is unknown.

23 The history of the Voynich MS, named after a collector who found it in 1912, is convoluted. A letter attached to the first page, written by the Prague scientist Johannes Marcus Marci in 1665, states that the MS was sold to Rudolf for 600 ducats, and in October 1586, when Dee is in contact with Rudolf, he records having 630 ducats, a significant sum, particularly during a period when he was generally short of money. Also Arthur Dee reported to Sir Thomas Browne that while in Bohemia his father owned a book ‘containing nothing but Hieroglyphicks’ (see Bod MS Ashmole 1788, ff151-2). Roberts and Watson consider the foliation to be in Dee’s hand (John Dee’s Catalogue, p172) but others have contested this. The volume is now in the Yale Library, ref MS Beinecke 408.

CHAPTER X

1 MH, pp115 and 117.

2 CR, ch 3, section 6.

3 From the preface of General and Rare Memorials, Dee, e.jv.

4 MH, p121.

5 Dee wrote in the Compendious Rehearsal that ‘if I would disclose unto her the secretes of that booke, she would et discere et facere’, ch 4.

6 A Translation of John Dee’s “Monas Hieroglyphica”, Josten, Ambix, p119.

7 See John Dee, Sherman, p144. Others, e.g. ‘John Dee’, Graham Yewbrey, linked Dee’s concept of cosmopolitical with his magical philosophy.

8 CR, ch 3, section 6.

9 ‘The Praise of Dancing’, vs 16.

10 A full account of the episode, enacted at Woodstock, is contained in At the Court of Queen Elizabeth: The Life and Lyrics of Sir Edward Dyer, Ralph M. Sargent, London 1935, pp30-4.

11 CR, ch 4; Diaries 10 Oct, 1580.

12 Astrological Discourse, Harvey, A3r.

13 CR, ch4.

14 CR, ch 4.

15 See the British Library catalogue entry for Grudius’s Constitutiones clarissimi…Ordinis Velleris Aurei: e Gallico in Latinum conversae, written under the auspices of the Order of the Golden Fleece.

16 Richard II, III, 2.

CHAPTER XI

1 The Environs of London, Lysons v1, p364.

2 There are two versions of this story. This one comes from Ashmole, the other, in which Dee is said to have demonstrated the eclipse to a Polish Prince, is in Aubrey. The dating of this event comes from Dee’s diary (entry for 25 February 1598), though he does not mention Faldo. See Elias Ashmole, Josten, pp1298-1300.

3 Mortlake Revisited, Cousins, p109.

4 The earliest surviving reference to Mortlake by Dee is an inscription in a copy of his Monas Hieroglyphica which is dated Mortlake 18 September 1566 (Hunterian collection, Glasgow, ref R 6.15), see John Dee’s Catalogue, Roberts and Watson, p10.

5 Chancery Proceedings, series 2, bundle 49, no 44. See Tudor Geography, Taylor, p107.

6 An eight-page scrawled and incomplete catalogue of his collection drawn up by Dee between 1557 and 1559 lists around 320 books and 32 manuscripts. See John Dee’s Catalogue, Roberts and Watson, p8.

7 John Dee’s Catalogue, Roberts and Watson, pp238-43.

8 John Dee, Sherman, p41

9 Diaries, 9 Feb 1581, 1 Aug 1583, 5 April 1592, 3 June 1583.

10 John Dee, Sherman, p128. The synopsis has never been published. In chapter 6 of his book, Sherman provides the first detailed study of this important document, which has lain more or less untouched since it was presented to the government. It is now in the British Library, MS Cotton Charter XIII, art. 39. It has suffered fire damage along its upper edge.

11 John Dee, Sherman, p160.

12 For drawing up the Queen’s ‘tide royal’ to foreign dominions, ‘I have refused an hundred poundes in money offred by some subjectes of this kingdome,’ CR, chV §8

13 Quoted in John Dee, Calder, ch6, §7.

14 Annals, Strype, v2, pt1, p520.

15 Diaries, 11 May, 1592.

16 Quoted in John Dee, Calder, ch6, §7.

17 CR, ch 4, §6.

18 The letter is now in BL MS Lansdowne 19 art. 38; see also Annals, Strype, v2, pt1, pp523-5.

19 Richard Hakluyt, Parks, pxi.

20 ‘The Conditions of Life for the Masses’, Rowlands, p53.

21 See Religion, Thomas, pp279-80.

22 John Dee’s Library Catalogue, Roberts & Watson, #215 and #459.

23 Dee came to run some mines of his own, leased to him by Sir Lionel Duckett, an MP and lord mayor of London. They were in Devonshire, on land under the control of Dee’s friend Sir Walter Raleigh.

24 See A Collection of Letters, Halliwell, pp15-16.

25 Natural Magick, 1589 edition, book 20, v8 pp405-6. Quoted in Calder, ch 8 n7.

THE UNDISCOVERED LIMIT

CHAPTER XII

1 ‘The Cartographic Lure of the Northwest Passage’, Richard I Ruggles, Meta Incognita, Symons, p181.

2 Tudor Geography, Taylor, p7.

3 Voyages and Discoveries, Hakluyt, p60; CR, ch7.

4 Voyages and Discoveries, pp62-6.

5 See Tudor Geography, Taylor p91 for the links between Dee and Chancellor. She suggests that Chancellor, ‘the first great English pilot’, worked with Dee on astronomy while both were in the household of Sir Henry Sidney, the Duke of Northumberland’s son-in-law.

6 CSP, East Indies, v2, p56.

7 ‘The voyage to Guinea in the year 1554. The Captain whereof was John Lok’, Voyages and Discoveries, Hakluyt, pp66-8.

8 Both have a common root, ‘Atlas’, the name of the God who, according to Greek legend, supported the world on his shoulders. ‘Atlantic’ was by no means the only name given to the ocean. In various late medieval maps based on Ptolemy, such as that of Henry Martellus drawn in the early 16th century, it is identified as ‘Oceanus Occidental’ (Western Ocean). In earlier maps, it is not defined as a single body of water, but rather as part of the seas that surround the three continents.

9 Discourse, Gilbert, ¶¶.iiijr.

10 ‘John Dee’s Role in Martin Frobisher’s Northwest Enterprise’, William H. Sherman, Meta Incognita, Symons, p288. I am grateful to William Sherman for drawing my attention to this volume. Dee’s copy of Fernando Columbus’s book (under the tide Historie del S. D. Fernando Colombo; nelle quali s’ha particolare, & vera relatione della vita, & de’ fatti dell’Ammiraglio D. Christoforo Colombo) is now at BL 615.d.7.

11 CSP, East Indies, v2, p11. Estimates of the current value of Elizabethan sums of money are very hard to make, but a guide in this instance comes from the rates of pay sailors could expect. The master of a ship of this class could expect to earn just over £12 a year; nowadays a sailor of equivalent rank could obviously expect over a thousand times as much. See The Safeguard of the Sea, Rodger, p500.

12 Tudor Geography, Taylor, pp107-8.

13 ‘Michael Lok’s Account of the Preparation. Written 1577’, document 12, Tudor Geography, Taylor, pp269-70.

14 A full inventory of the navigational charts and instruments bought for the expedition drawn up by Lok survives, see ‘The Navigation of the Frobisher Voyages’, McDermott, Meta Incognita.

15 According to an anonymous tract published at the time, the distances involved in discovering the Northwest Passage meant such a mission would be ‘utterly impossible or not without extreme perils of life and expense of victuals’. See ‘Cathay and the Way Thither: the Navigation of the Frobisher Voyages’, J. McDermott and D. W Waters, Meta Incognita, p360.

16 Quoted in Tudor Geography, Taylor, p97.

17 Diaries, 17 May 1580. The entry reads: ‘At the Muscovy House for the Cathay voyage. I was almost provoked to anger by the haughty words of W B., in the presence of the commissioners.’

18 Tudor Geography, Taylor, document 9 (xi), pp262-3.

19 ‘John Dee’s Role in Martin Frobisher’s Northwest Enterprise’, William H. Sherman, Meta Incognita, Symons, pp292-3.

20 BL MS Cotton Otho E VIIII, f.49. This document, which is damaged by fire, is Lok’s account of the expedition, presumably drawn up after he had debriefed the crew on the Gabriel’s return. The only other account of the voyage is Hall’s log book, which is contained in Principal Navigations, Hakluyt, vol 7, pp204-11. The Hakluyt version, which is mainly concerned with navigational issues, does not even mention the storm or the near-sinking of Hall’s ship.

21 The explorers later named it the Countess of Warwick Island, and it has since come to be called by its Inuit name, Kodlunarn, situated in Countess of Warwick Bay, off Baffin Island.

22 CSP, East Indies, v2, pp55-6.

23 Principal Navigations, Hakluyt, vol 7, p210.

24 CSP, East Indies, v2, p14.

25 CSP, East Indies, v2, p14.

26 A True Discourse, Best, p51.

27 CSP, East Indies, v2, p18.

28 Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney, Pears, pp118-19.

29 Principal Navigations, Hakluyt, vol 7, p211.

30 CSP, East Indies, v2, p20. The issue of taking prisoners was clearly a controversial one, as the plans were subject to continual change. A week before the fleet was due to set sail, the Privy Council announced that ‘no disordered person’ was to be taken, but amended this to allow 8 or 10 ‘prisoners and condemned persons’ to be taken.

31 BL MS Sloane 2442, f23r. Quoted in ‘John Dee’s Role in Martin Frobisher’s Northwest Enterprise’, William H. Sherman, Meta Incognita, Symons, p295.

32 Principal Navigations, Hakluyt, vol 7, p214.

33 Principal Navigations, Hakluyt, vol 7, p218.

34 Shcutz is described as an ‘Almain’ in CSP, East Indies, v2, p34.

35 Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney, Pears, p144.

36 See ‘Martin Frobisher, the Spaniards and a Sixteenth-Century Northern Spy’, Bernard Allaire and Donald Hogarth, Meta Incognita, Symons, pp575-88.

37Allaire and Hogarth suggest the pseudo-sapphire may have been well-crystallised quartz, apatite or white feldspar, and the false ruby red garnet. See ‘Martin Frobisher, the Spaniards and a Sixteenth-Century Northern Spy’ Meta Incognita, Symons, p580.

38 For estimates of royal income during the Elizabethan period, see The Later Tudors, Williams, p147.

39 Samples of the black stone are still visible in an Elizabethan wall lining Vicarage Lane in Dartford, London.

CHAPTER XIII

1 This is the reason that of all Latin American countries, Brazil is the only one with a Portuguese rather than Hispanic heritage.

2 Mercator’s letter to Dee is now in BL MS Cotton Vitel. C. vii, f264v et seq. It has been translated and transcribed by Taylor in her paper ‘A letter dated 1577 from Mercator to John Dee’.

3 See, for example, Gloriana, Roy Strong, p92.

4 General and Rare Memorials, Dee, Aiiijv.

5 See The Safeguard of the Sea, Rodger, pp229 and 248.

6 General and Rare Memorials, Dee, Civ-C.ijr.

7 A sample of it, however, is apparently published in an appendix to A Regiment for the Sea, Taylor.

8 BL MS Cotton Vitellus C. VII, ff26-269.

9 See Purchas his Pilgrims, Purchas, vol 1, pp93-116.

10 BL Add. MSS 59681, f21. The original of the Brytanici Imperii Limites has been lost, but a copy made in c1583 has recently been acquired by the British Library. William Sherman was the first Dee scholar to study this manuscript in detail. See Sherman, pp182-92.

11 Ortelius’s map of 1570 shows Norumbega as an area south of Hudson Bay and north of Virginia. See The Mapping of America, Schwartz & Ehrenberg, pp43 and 83. The word is thought to come from the Abnaki Indian term for quiet water between two rapids.

12 See Diaries, 28 March 1583, pp58 and 62.

13 See Raising Spirits, Wilding, p43.

14 Diaries, 16 July 1582, p46.

15 A Briefe Discourse of Royall Monarchic, Charles Merbury, 1581. Quoted in Sherman, p 150.

16 Diaries, 22nd Sept and 10 Oct 1580. In 1582, a ‘Murfin’ was discovered to have forged documents he used to substantiate claims that he had uncovered a plot in Ireland to overthrow the Queen; it seems possible that it was the same person. See Annals, Strype, v3, pt1, pp202-7.

17 Diaries, 17 September, 1580, Fenton p10.

18 Diaries, 7 October 1580.

19 Diaries, 10 October 1580.

THE FIERY TRIGON

CHAPTER XIV

1 Diaries.

2 In Diaries, Fenton suggests he may have been the Thomas Robinson who, according to Alumni Cantabridgiensis, Venn, matriculated from Caius College, Cambridge in 1581 and wrote a poem about the Philosopher’s Stone.

3 See Athenae Oxoniensis, Wood, v1, p279.

4 Bodleian MS Ashmole 972, a copy of Ashmole’s Theatricum Chemicum, p479.

5 See ‘Revising a Biography’, S. Bassnett.

6 There is a reference to Kelley having a ‘walking staff in a lengthy note Dee wrote in one of his Liber Mysteriorum. See T&FR, p229 and Diaries, p140. Several times Dee refers to Kelley kneeling, though perhaps it was uncomfortable for him.

7 In a record of an action undertaken with Kelley on 4 May 1582, Dee wrote that Kelley (still under the assumed name of Talbot) refused to ‘put off his hat’, which indicates on previous occasion he had done so, which in turn suggests that even if he wore a cowl, he did not always do so in Dee’s company.

8 This description appears in a letter from Christopher Parkins to Sir Robert Cecil, son of William Cecil, PRO SP 81/7, ff140 and 143-4. The letter is quoted in Edward Kelley, Wilding, p17.

9 The story appears in Histoire de la Philosophic Hermétique, Paris 1742, v1, p306-7. See Edward Kelley, Wilding, p2.

10 Ancient Funerall Monuments, Weever, pp45-6. The account is quoted in T&FR, postscript, [page 55 of unpaginated preface]. Weever’s lurid account is unconfirmed by other sources, however it seems he was knowledgeable about Kelley, as in the same book he reveals that Kelley used the alias ‘Talbot’. No other writer would make this identification until the publication of The Private Diaries of Dr John Dee, ed. James Orchard Halliwell, Camden Society, 1842. The accounts of Dee’s séances with Kelley in T&FR do not use the name Talbot.

11 See The Shakespeare Conspiracy, Phillips & Keatman, p151. There appears to be no evidence to support the link between Kelley and Langton.

12 Bod MS Ashmole 1790, ff.60-1; see also Ashmole, Josten.

13 Diaries, p46 and note, 16th July 1582.

14 It is possible Dee had heard of Kelley working under the name ‘Talbot’ for Thomas Allen, the fellow scientist whose name was coupled with Dee’s in a political pamphlet, as both were suspected of ‘figuring and conjuring’ for Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. The link between Kelley-Talbot and Thomas Allen is mentioned in only one source, Athenae Oxoniensis, Wood, v1, p639. The link between Dee and Allen is in Leicester’s Commonwealth, 1641 ed., p. 71, from the expanded tract of 1585, Discours de la Vie Abominable…(de) my Lorde de Lecestre Machaveliste. Allen and Dee certainly knew each other, as Allen was appointed receiver for the Cathay Company once Lok was declared bankrupt.

15 Religion, Thomas, pp294-5.

CHAPTER XV

1 Brahe wrote about what he saw in De Nova Stella, published in 1573. What follows is mainly taken from Tycho Brahe, Dreyer, pp38-69.

2 ‘The Influence of Thomas Digges’, Johnson, pp390-410.

3 Opus Majus, Bacon, v2, p582.

4 The apparition in Cassiopeia would now be recognised as a supernova, an exploding star, an astronomical event which is still regarded as a noteworthy rarity.

5 Tycho Brahe, Dreyer, pp38-71; The Comet of 1577, Hellman p117.

6 ‘For the cosmos, [as] also the sun, is…the cause…without which nothing can be or come to be,’ Hermetica, p30. Ironically, at around the same time as Copernicanism was confirmed, the status of Trismegistus as a contemporary of Moses was refuted by Isaac Casaubon, father of the editor of Dee’s mystical diaries, Meric.

7 Quoted in ‘Thomas Digges, the Copernican System’, Johnson & Larkey, p111.

8 Ephemeris anni 1557… Dee.

9 The treatise was called ‘A Perfit Description of the Caelestiall Orbes according to the most aunciente doctrine of the Pythagoreans’, and was published as an appendix to a new edition of his father’s work Prognostication Everlasting. Digges’s contribution to modern astronomy, which was undoubtedly great and has been neglected, is discussed in ‘The Influence of Thomas Digges’, Johnson, pp390-410.

10 Polimanteia, Covell, H3r. The Puritan Covell described astrologers as having ‘made themselves ridiculous to the whole world’ through their prognostications concerning the new star and subsequent conjunctions.

11 The John Harvey quote appears in ‘The Fiery Trigon’, Aston, p170. The conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter following that of 1583 would occur in 1603 in Aries. This was the year Elizabeth died and James VI of Scotland succeeded to the English throne.

12 Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblios, pp43-52.

13 An Astrological Discourse, Harvey, p8. See ‘The Fiery Trigon’, Aston, p167.

14 See Brahe, Dreyer, pp 193-7.

15 De Coniunctionibus magnis insignioribus superiorum planetarum, Cyprian Leowitz, London 1573, L3r, quoted in ‘The Fiery Trigon’, Aston, p166. The phrase almost exactly matches one delivered to Dee on 24 March 1583 by the spirit Medicina Dei.

16 Translation from the Latin quoted in Catastrophe Mundi, Holwell, pp86-9.

17 Annals, Strype, v2, pt2, p152.

18 Annals, Strype, v2, pt2, p152.

19 CR, ch5, §3.

20 The Comet of 1577, Hellman, pp194-5.

21 The method they used was parallax, the subject of Dee’s paper on the new star of 1572. Parallax works on the principle that the distance of a single point can be measured by noting the angle between the lines of sight of the point as seen from two separate observation points. If the object is close, the lines of sight will converge. If it is infinitely distant, or too far away to be measured, the lines of sight will be parallel. This is what Brahe, Dee and Digges noted with both the new star and the comet of 1577.

22 See The Elizabethan World Picture, Tillyard, p47.

23 Comets, Genuth, p47.

24 Tomas Twyne’s Discourse on the Earthquake, Twyne; A Chronological and Historical Account of the Most Memorable Earthquakes, Zachary Grey, Cambridge, 1750.

25 Quoted in Elizabeth the Queen, Weir, p222.

26 Diaries, 11 February 1583, p53. Biothanatos usually denotes death by suicide, ‘self-murder’, however in a copy of a work by Julius Firmicus Maternus, Dee added notes on the term, which is defined in the text as referring to those who die a violent death. See Roberts & Watson #251, p85.

27 The Astronomica is bound together with a collection of Roman astrological texts, including Matheseos libri by the Julius Firmicus Maternus. See John Dee’s Library Catalogue, Roberts and Watson, #251 and p85.

28 General and Rare Memorials, Dee, e.*iiijr.

CHAPTER XVI

1 ‘1552 Natus Johannes davis die 3 Maij 1552…per magiam eliciebatur W. Em. 1568 Maiij 22. in aedibus meis’, Stöffler’s Ephemerides, Bod MS Ashmole 423, f295.

2 BL Add MSS 36674: ‘Vision’ dated 24 Feb 1567, seen by ‘H. G.’ and his ‘skrier’ John Davis. ‘Certaine Strang visions or apparitions of memorable note. Anno 1567. Lately imparted unto mee for secrets of match importance. A notable journal of an experimental magitian.’

3 General and Rare Memorials, Dee, Dij-E*iiij.

4 Diaries, p18.

5 See Dee’s letter to Walsingham, 14 May 1586, T&FR, p423. Dee writes of God making of ‘Saul (E. K.) a Paul’. The reference to Kelley as E. K. and to Kelley’s irreligiousness shows that Walsingham must have been familiar with Kelley’s role in Dee’s household.

6 Necessary Advertisement, Dee, §6.

7 MP, A.iiiiv.

8 Diaries, 8 and 9 October 1581.

9 See Mysteriorum Liber Primus, BL MS Sloane 3188.

10 Diaries, pp21-2.

11 The other is Gabriel. Michael appears in Jude 9 and Revelations 12. An unnamed angel also appears to Daniel ‘like beryl, his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze’ to report the rising of ‘Michael, the great prince’ (Daniel 10,12). There are many other angels identified in the ‘non-canonical’ parts of the Bible, such as the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha.

12 There were a number of ways of spelling the angel’s name, all equivalent according to cabalistic principles: Haniel = Anael = Anfiel = Aniyel = Anafiel = Onoel = Ariel = Simiel. See A Dictionary of Angels, Davidson, pxv.

13 The passage in the diary is barely legible and hard to interpret, being scattered with ambiguous pronouns. Fenton has ‘I would so flatter his friend the learned man [Talbot] that I would bereave him [Clerkson] of him [Talbot]’, see Diaries, p24.

14 Diaries, 9 March 1582, p24.

15 This entry has been crossed over, and is very hard to read. Fenton’s transliteration (Diaries, p25) seems to be as accurate as is possible.

16 See Diaries, p26.

BRIGHT SQUADRONS

CHAPTER XVII

1 T&FR, p18.

2 Diaries, 18 April, 1583.

3 ‘“The Devil’s Looking Glass”’, Hugh Tait, pp195-212.

4 Vita Adae et Evae ch48 vs4; Book of Enoch, ch10, vs1, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, RH. Charles, Oxford, 1913.

5 Genesis ch5 vs19; Jude vs14.

6 John Dee’s Natural Philosophy, Clulee, p208.

7 John Dee’s Library Catalogue, Roberts & Watson, p94.

8 Diaries, 17 January 1582. The entry reads ‘Libri Soyga fumig’. In his edition of the diaries, Fenton was not sure how to interpret ‘fumig’. Another Dee scholar, John Henry Jones, suggested to Fenton that it referred to fumigation.

9 At the Bodleian, MS Bodley 908, at the British Library, MS Sloane 8.

10 Diaries, pp28-9.

11 A cabalistic word made up of the initials of the Hebrew phrase, ‘Athah gabor leolam, Adonai’, ‘Thou art powerful and eternal, Lord.’ See An Encyclopaedia of Occultism, Spence.

CHAPTER XVIII

1 Bod MS Ashmole 1790, f39. The list of instructions appears among a transcription of a number of actions, possibly made by Elias Ashmole.

2 BL MS Sloane 3188, f14.

3 Bod MS Ashmole 1788, f143.

4 Giordano Bruno, Bossy, p5.

5 Diaries, 15 June 1583; 4 April, 1583.

6 Diaries, 6 May 1582.

7 Diaries, 29 May 1582. This entry, like most relating to Talbot’s behaviour, has been mutilated and is hard to read.

CHAPTER XIX

1 Diaries, 19 July 1582; the chests of books are mentioned in a diary entry dated 8 October 1581.

2 T&FR, p28.

3 T&FR, p153.

4 T&FR, p91.

5 Diaries, p51.

6 Diaries, 22nd November 1582, p51.

7 Diaries, 24 November 1582, pp51/2.

8 Diaries, 18 April 1583, p69.

9 T&FR 10 July 1607, p*34.

10 Theatrum Chemicum, Elias Ashmole, 1:481. See MSS Smith 95.

11 Histoire de Philosophic Hermétique, Nicolas Lenglet du Fresnoy, Paris 1742, v1, pp307-310. The story is reproduced in Edward Kelley, Kelley, ppxvii-xix. See John Dee, Smith, p47.

12 Dee identifies Raphael with Medicina Dei in a diagram showing the relationship of Anael to the angels Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel, see MS Sloane 3188, f1.

13 Bod MS Ashmole 1789 ff1-62

14 MP, biiiv.

15 John Dee, Calder, ch 8, §8.

16 Annals, Strype, v2, pt1, p526.

17 A full discussion of Dee’s calendar reform proposals can be found in ‘John Dee and the English Calendar’, Poole. The paper forms part of his Time’s Alteration, London, 1998.

18 Time in History, Whitrow, p119; The Calendar, Duncan, p307.

19 CR, ch 4, §10.

20 Diaries, p59.

21 See ‘John Dee and the Secret Societies’, Heisler.

22 Diaries, p66.

23 Diaries, p67.

24 T&FR, 4 July 1583. p31.

25 Diaries, p98.

26 Diaries, 22/23 January 1582, p23.

27 See ‘Revising a Biography’, Bassnett, pp1-8.

28 Diaries, 28 April 1583, p75.

29 See Diaries, p84.

30 Diaries, 8 and 9 May, 1583 pp80 and 82.

THE PRINCE AND THE JUGGLER

CHAPTER XX

1 Diaries, 15 June 1583, p92.

2 See The Family of Love, Hamilton, pp32-4.

3 Quoted in Raising Spirits, Wilding, p87.

4 Chronicles of England, Holinshed, v6, p507.

5 Giordano Bruno, Yates, p190.

6 ‘Bruno at Oxford’, McNulty, pp300-5.

7 Quoted in Giordano Bruno, Yates, p207.

8 Giordano Bruno, Yates, p26.

9 Diaries, 23 May 1583.

10 Diaries, 28 May 1583. This is the first action featured in True & Faithful Relation, pp1-3.

11 Diaries, 3 June 1583 (T&FR gives the date as Monday, 2 June.)

12 Diaries, 5 June 1583.

13 T&FR, p6.

14 Dee described Young as ‘my brother’ (Diaries, 21 November 1587) and in a letter to Walsingham (17 July 1587, CSP, Domestic, Elizabeth and James I, Addenda 1580-1625) which may have meant he was a brother-in-law by one of his earlier marriages.

15 T&FR, pp9-10.

CHAPTER XXI

1 In a letter sent from Bohemia to Richard Hesketh on 9 September 1593, Abraham Faulkon wrote that Kelley, just released from prison, ‘did fish a pond, and gave me good store of fish home with me.’

2 See The Reckoning, Nicholl, p113 and p234ff.

3 Diaries, 15 June 1583, p93.

4 Diaries, 18 June 1583, p93; T&FR pp18-20.

5 T&FR, pp18-20.

6 See John, 20:24.

7 Diaries, 9 June, 1583.

8 See Raising Spirits, Wilding, p119.

9 Defensative, Henry Howard, London 1583. See Giordano Bruno, Bossy, pp99-100.

10 The records for the actions do not survive, though Dee mentions the appearance of Laski’s guardian angel, Jubanladaech. See Diaries, p100.

11 Diaries, p100

CHAPTER XXII

1 Sidney to Hubert Languet, 11 February 1574, The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney, Pears, p35. The phrase Sidney used was ‘ignotum Deum nostrum’, a pun on Dee’s name. He is clearly referring to Dee, as he refers to Dee’s Welsh origins and of him ‘brandishing’ his ‘hieroglyphic monad’.

2 Elizabethan Critical Essays, Smith, v1, p89. The earliest surviving entry in Dee’s private diary, dated 16 January 1577, mentions a meeting between Dee, Sidney and Dyer with Sidney’s patron, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. See also At the Court of Queen Elizabeth, Sargent, p59.

3 See, for example, Philip Sidney, Alan Stewart, p224. Stewart argues that Harvey was claiming an intimacy with Sidney and Dyer’s literary activities to enhance his own standing.

4 The Faerie Queen, Spenser, Book II, Canto IX, 53-4.

5 The Faerie Queen, Spenser, Book II, introduction, 3.

6 Dee does not identify ‘Mr Stanley’. He may have been a member of the Lancashire dynasty associated with a number of Catholic plots. Dee knew several members of the family.

7 For example, in a marginal note in his record of an action of 19 June, 1583, Dee notes ‘A. L. poverty’. Laski’s financial difficulties were apparently well known and widely discussed; Charles de l’Ecluse wrote to Sir Philip Sidney of the Polish prince having ‘reached the bottom of his purse’. See Young Philip Sidney, James M. Osborn, London 1972.

8 For example, in his 1590 Discourse Apologetical to the Archbishop of Canterbury he claimed that the voyage was ‘undertaken by her Majesty’s good favour and licence’.

9 In a letter to Walsingham sent 17 July, 1587 he wrote ‘I trust more will be glad of our coming home than were sorry of our going abroad’ (CSP, Domestic, Elizabeth and James I, Addenda 1580-1625, p104). Sir Stephen Powel, while visiting the landgrave of Hesse Kassel at the same time that Dee was there, was told by a member of the landgrave’s council that Dee had left England on account of the ‘hatred of nobles’ (Bodleian MS Tanner 309, ff 67b, 68).

10 General and Rare Memorials, Dee, Dij-E*iiij.

11 Roberts and Watson suggest this, on the basis of the way Dee marked the 1583 catalogue of his library, which he updated with a series of marks following his return from the Continent.

12 See action for 26 October, 1583, T&FR p42.

13 In 1582, Lord Emden and Cecil had exchanged letters indicating they were quite close which included a reference to a large sum of money owed to Cecil. See Annals, Strype, v3, pt1, pp207-8.

14 Diaries, 6 Nov 1583.

15 Diaries, 13 Oct 1583.

16 Diaries, 15 Nov 1583.

17 Diaries, 18 Feb 1584. It was during this period that Dee started to date his diary entries using both the old Julian and the new Gregorian calendars, and so gives the date of this action 18 Feb ‘stilo veteri’ (old style) and 28 Feb ‘stilo novo’ (new style). All following dates are given new style, unless otherwise specified.

18 T&FR, 10 April 1584, p76.

19 T&FR, 10 April 1584, pp73-5. Kelley’s more explicit explanation concerning the two types of vision he beheld is set out in the action of T&FR 14 April, p88. The angels, he told Dee, he sees ‘with my external eye, not within my imagination’.

20 Diaries, 17 and 19 April 1584.

21 T&FR, 7 and 14 May 1584, pp 117 and 138.

22 Diaries, 28 May 1584.

23 In Raising Spirits, Wilding quotes a letter written from Arthur Champernowne to Walsingham reporting Zoborowski’s arrest and execution, and Dee’s connection with Laski, which had, he added, led the philsopher to quit ‘a certain estate for an uncertain hope. It is to be feared that he will repent of it at leisure.’ See p172.

24 Diaries, 13 March 1584; 25 April 1584.

25 Diaries, 21 May 1584.

CAESAR’S COURT

CHAPTER XXIII

1 The term ‘robot’ was coined by the Czech writer Karel Čapek in his play R. U.R. (1920), derived from the Czech word for work.

2 The first map of Europe even to attempt to draw state boundaries was not published until 1602. See ‘War, Religion, and the State’, Gunn, pp102-3.

3 Rudolf II, Evans, p3. The tactic of dispensing with oppressive officials by throwing them out of windows has a long tradition in Czech politics, there being two prior to the defenestration of 1618, in 1419 and 1493. Jerome K Jerome commented that ‘Prague could avoid half of her problems if the windows were smaller and less tempting’ (see Prague Castle, Dudák, p101).

4 The Complete Works of Philip Sidney, Feuillerat, v3, pp109-14.

5 Magic Prague, Ripellino, p103.

6 Both Hajek’s house and the original Bethlehem Chapel have been demolished. The chapel was rebuilt after the Second World War. Hajek’s house was numbered 252 on the square in the land registry. The following account of its history comes from A Basic Description of the Geography of old Prague, vol 1, part 2, section XIIa-XXX, Prague, 1915.

7 Zaklady stareho mistopisu Prazskeho, Teige, v2, XIIa-XXX.

8 See Diaries, pp 134-5. The text was originally in Latin (see T&FR, p212) and has been translated with the help of Barbara Prichard and Robin Cousins.

9 The Comet of 1577, Hellman, p184ff.

10 T&FR, pp215-7.

11 I Corinthians, 1:13 and 20.

12 The account of Dee’s audience with Rudolf is contained in T&FR, pp230-1.

13 Magic Prague, Ripellino, p69.

14 See Rudolf II and Prague, Fucikova.

15 See ‘Giuseppe Arcimboldo’, Kaufmann, pp169-76.

16 Rudolf II and Prague, Fucikova and Rudolf II, Wurm, p46.

17 T&FR, pp230-1, Fenton pp142-3. The ‘Great Turk’ was Murad III, the sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

CHAPTER XXIV

1 T&FR, 5 September 1584, p233.

2 T&FR, 12 September 1584, p237.

3 Rudolf II, Evans, p120; Tycho Brake, Dreyer, p300.

4 Diaries, 6 October 1584.

5 Circulis horologi Lunaris, Václav Budovec, Hanau 1616, p245, quoted in Rudolf II, Evans, p224. Budovec was a Czech noble who had worked as Court Master at the Imperial Embassy in Constantinople and written a history of Turkey attacking the Islamic faith. He knew Dee personally. See Rudolf II, Vurm, p104

6 ‘An Unknown Chapter’, Josten, pp223-57

CHAPTER XXV

1 John Dee, Fell-Smith, p88.

2 Forma, dated 1581, is an anonymous work, and was first attributed to Pucci by the Italian historian in 1937. The attribution was confirmed by Luigi Firpo. See ‘Secret Societies’, Eliav-Feldon, p141.

3 The street it now part of Betlémská or Bethlehem Street, which runs down from Bethlehem Square. It is shown in a German map of Prague by J. Jüttner dated 1811-1815 as Salz Strasse. I am indebted to Robin Cousins for this information.

4 Diaries, 21 March 1585.

5 Diaries, 12 April 1585.

6 The reference to a Jesuit confession appears in ‘An Unknown Chapter’, Josten, p231.

7 Dee added a comment to an astrological note regarding the Polish wife of a Florentine that it had been sent by Pucci on July 12 1585, the earliest date linking Pucci with Dee. See Raising Spirits, Wilding, p296-7.

8 For the following account of Dee’s encounter with Malaspina, and the burning of his books, see ‘An Unknown Chapter’, Josten. This document, discovered by Josten among Ashmole’s papers in the 1960s, appears to a deposition written in Latin, perhaps for presentation by Dee to one of his supporters in Prague.

9 1 John, 4:1-2

10 The evidence concerning Dee’s residence during this period is indefinite. Dee identifies the vineyard as belonging to ‘John Carpio’, probably Jan Kapr, who came from a prosperous Prague family and owned property in the Old Town. There is no known connection between Kapr and the Faust House itself. Kelley is known to have occupied the property, though only after Dee’s departure from Bohemia in 1588. However, the description of the surroundings in Dee’s account of the burning and recovery of the books (see below) fits well with contemporary drawings. See Kouzelník z Londýna, Sviták, p63.

11 This reinforces identifying the venue for the book burning as the Faust House. A monastical college (since rebuilt) was on the same square.

12 T&FR, pp418-19.

13 These are the books of mysteries now held by the BL MS Sloane 3189 and 3191.

14 SP 81/6 f65. Quoted in Raising Spirits, Wilding, p339.

15 See T&FR, p424.

CHAPTER XXVI

1 Letter from Pucci to Dee, transcribed in T&FR, p439; Pucci refers to Dee having to tolerate lodgings that were ‘sordido & angusto’.

2 11 July, 1586. This is part of a series of memoranda written by Dee about his relations with Pucci, see T&FR p430.

3 See ‘The Alchemical World of the German Court’, Moran, and The Comet of 1577, Hellman, p115.

4 According to Sviták, Vilem enjoyed the income from more than 10,000 estates scattered across Bohemia; Kouzelník z Londýna, Sviták, p110.

5 Rudolf II, Evans, pp65-7.

6 The round tower at Ceský Krumlov is still vividly painted, but no longer in the original colours, and the alchemical allusions have been lost.

7 See Extraordinary Popular Delusions, Mackay, pp98-256.

8 See ‘Transmutation: the Roots of the Dream’, Karpenko, pp383-5.

9 See John Dee’s Conversations with Angels, Harkness, p200.

10 T&FR, 11 February 1584 and 14 January 1585, pp62-5 and 355-61.

11 For example, see entries for dates between 27 December 1586 and 29 January 1587, Diaries, pp204-5, and 5 and 14 July 1587, Fenton p229.

12 Now Zloty Stok, on the Czech-Polish border.

13 Dee’s son Arthur would take up a similar if less lavish offer, being appointed physician to the Emperor of Russia in 1627, on the recommendation of Charles I.

14 Dee’s record of the recovery of the burnt books does not mention the powder. However, there is a reference to ‘the powder’ in an action dated 4 April 1587.

15 Kouzelník z Londýna, Sviták, p144.

16 Diaries, 24 November 1587, p231. Dee refers to Krčín in his diaries as ‘Captain Critzin’.

17 These legends are scattered through the manuscript records of Ashmole, and elsewhere, for example Bod MS Smith 95.

18 Diaries, 8 Feb 1588, p233.

19 Now Jindrichuv Hradec, just north-east of Třeboň.

20 Diaries, 21 May 1589, p239.

21 Diaries, 16 September 1589.

22 For example, see Diaries, 3 July 1580; 15 July 1582; 31 July 1591.

23 Quoted in ‘Paracelsian Medicine in John Dee’s Alchemical Diaries’, Szulakowska, p28.

24 The meaning of this symbol was first recognised by Edward Fenton. See Diaries p310 for his interpretation of this and other symbols used by Dee.

25 Diaries, 9 December 1579.

26 Luke 1:5-32.

27 Diaries, 2 October 1584.

CHAPTER XXVII

1 Luke 14:26.

2 15 April 1583.

3 T&FR, 22 April 1587, pp17-18.

CHAPTER XXVIII

1 Diaries, 23 May 1587.

2 Others apparently took place. For example, on 5 March 1588, Dee noted in his diary ‘Sacrae Actionis finis 1.9’, ‘the sacred action finished’. See Diaries, p233.

3 Diaries, 26 May 1588. Dee uses the Latin for threats, ‘Minæ’.

4 Diaries, 24 August 1588 and 12 Sept, 1588, p236.

5 Diaries, 7 December 1588, p237.

6 Diaries, 20 January 1589, p238.

7 ‘Bohemian Nobility’, Karpenko, p14.

8 Rudolf II, Evans, p226.

9 Burghley to Sir Henry Palavicino: ‘I pray you learn what you can, how Sir Edwd. Kelley’s profession may be credited,’ SP 81/6 ff7-8, Wilding, p11. For Burghley’s letters to Kelley, see for example BL MS Landsdowne 103, item 73 f211.

10 SP 81/6, ff56-7,65.

11 5P 82/3, f134.

12 Works, Bacon, vol 1, p406.

13 For Roydon, see The Reckoning, Nicholl, p257ff.

14 BL MS Lansdowne 103, item 72. Michael Wilding suggested that Cecil’s gout might be code, see ‘Edward Kelley: A Life’, p13. If it is a code word, it is suggestive that he also used it in a letter to the Earl of Emden; see Annals, Strype, v3, pt1, p207. He refers to it being his ‘chronical distemper… his familiar disease’.

15 Annals, Strype, v3, pt2, p617-20.

16 The account is contained in MS Lansdowne 68, item 85, ff192-5 and Annals, Strype, v3, pt2,1824, pp621-5. The report appears in a letter sent from Frankfurt to Edward Wotton. Wilding (‘Edward Kelley: A Life’, p14) shows that the author was probably Edward’s half-brother Henry.

17 Thomas Webbe to Burghley, 26 June 1591, BL MS Lansdowne 68, item 93, ff210-211; Fugger Newsletters, pp221-2.

18 All these theories were reported in the letter sent to Edward Wotton.

19 SP81/7, ffl40,143-1. See ‘Edward Kelley: A Life’, Wilding, p17.

20 Abraham Faulkon to Richard Hesketh, 9 September 1593; quoted in ‘Edward Kelley: A Life’, Wilding, p17.

21 See The Shakespeare Conspiracy, Phillips & Keatman, London 1994.

22 SP88/1, f221.

23 Edward Kelley, Kelley, p5.

24 See ‘John Dee and Edward Kelley’, Ivan Sviták, Kosmas, vol 5 (1986), p137.

25 Rudolf II, Evans, p227. This seems to have been erroneous, as Elizabeth Jane Weston, Kelley’s stepdaughter, dated her father’s death to 1597. See ‘Revising a Biography’, Bassnett, p4.

THE LONG JOURNEY

CHAPTER XXIX

1 It was 25 December, Christmas Day, new style. On his return to England, Dee reverted to using the old style Julian calendar.

2 CR, ch 9. On 31 January 1589, Dee’s servant Edmund Hilton was sent to Prague with ‘300 dollars’ to buy ‘ten or twelve coach horses, and saddle horses’. On 12 February, Hilton returned with ‘nine Hungarish horses’. He acquired the remainder from elsewhere. See Fenton p238.

3 Dee called Bremen ‘Breme’.

4 Sherman believes that the ‘great bladder’ may have been an Inuit gift brought back from the second of Frobisher’s expeditions. See his paper ‘John Dee’s Role in Martin Frobisher’s Northwest Enterprise’, Meta Incognita, Symons, p294.

5 CR, ch 7.

6 This account of the library’s destruction is contained in, among other sources, Lists of Manuscripts, James, p4. The mud was more likely a result of the manuscripts having been buried.

7 Diaries, 30 March 1592.

8 John Dee’s Library Catalogue, Roberts and Watson, p50.

9 CR, ch 7.

10 See The Reckoning, Nicholl, p221.

11 Gallathea was published in 1591, but entered into the Stationers’ Register on 1 April 1585.

12 Works, Thomas Nashe, ed R. B. McKerrow, v1, p367. Quoted in At the Court of Queen Elizabeth, Sargent, p106.

13 Bodleian, MS Smith 95. Lopez was examined in the Tower and executed in the autumn of 1593. See Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Thomas Birch, London 1754, p38.

14 An Advertisement written to a Secretary of My L. Treasurer, Antwerp, 1592, p18.

15 Acts of the Privy Council, vol 5, 1554-6, 5 June, 1555. See ‘John Dee as Ralegh’s “Conjuror”,’ Strathmann, pp365-72.

16 To the Kings most excellent Maiestie, Dee.

17 ‘O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,/The hue of dungeons, and the school of night’, Love’s Labour’s Lost, William Shakespeare, 4:3:250-1. In the opening lines of the play, the King mentions ‘a little academe’, but whether or not Shakespeare was alluding to Raleigh’s set in the play is disputed. See ‘The Textual Evidence for “The School of Night”’, Ernest A. Strathmann, Modern Language Notes, 56 (1941).

18 Diaries, 9 October 1595.

19 A copy of De orbe novo decades octo by Petrus Martyr and of El viaje que hizo Antonio de Espeio en el anno de ochenta y tres, by Antonio de Espejo in Dee’s collection was given to him by Harriot, ‘amici mei’ 24 January, 1590. They are catalogued in John Dee’s Library Catalogue, Roberts & Watson as items D1 and D8, see pp155-6.

20 Quoted in The Reckoning, Nicholls, p257.

21 BL MS Lansdowne 103, item 72.

22 CR, ch8.

23 Private communication between Revd. B. J. Bennett and Robin Cousins.

24 Diaries, 14 and 20 December 1591.

25 See Diaries, p264 and note 31. Dee spelled Cavendish ‘Candish’.

26 Diaries, 5 August 1590; 22 September 1591; 27 June 1591.

27 Diaries, 20 and 21 February 1594; 9 January 1592.

28 Diaries, 11 September 1593.

29 Diaries, 22 July-29 August 1590.

30 See Bod MS Ashmole 423, f295. Dee notes Hesketh’s birth on 24 or 25 July 1552 between one and four in the afternoon at ‘Ayghton in Lancashire’.

31 Hatton died in 1591.

32 For the Hesketh conspiracy, see The Reckoning, Nicholls, pp248-9.

33 See Diaries, 24 December 1593; 26 January 1594; 10 March 1594.

34 Diaries, 3 June 1594; 28 October 1594; 7 December 1594.

35 Diaries, 21 May 1594.

CHAPTER XXX

1 For example, see Diaries, 19 May 1588.

2 Diaries, 31 January-5 February 1601.

3 See John Dee’s Library Catalogue, Roberts and Watson, p60.

4 Bod MS Smith 95.

5 Diaries, 2 August 1589; 6 August 1597.

6 Brief Lives, Aubrey, p210.

EPILOGUE

1 T&FR, Preface, p44, also Bodleian MS Ashmole 1788, letter from N. Bernard, f65.

2 T&FR, Preface, p1.

3 Hudibras, Canto 3, II, 238-8.

4 John Dee, Calder, ch 2, §3.

5 The Life of Dr. John Dee … Containing an account of his studieshis travels… his various prophecies, among which may be noticed an earthquake to destroy London in the year 1842, London, 1842; The Predicted Plague… Queen Elizabeth in Richmond. Her Majesty’s Book of Astrology and the Diary of her astrologer, Dr. Dee …By Hippocrates Junior, London 1899.

6 Giordano Bruno, Yates, p150.

7 John Dee, Sherman pxiii.

8 Diaries, 26 March 1583, p56.

9 HP, *.iv

10 MP, *.ir.

11 The Elizabethan World Picture, Tillyard, p61.