The Arch Conjuror of England (2 page)

4 Nicholas Hilliard, The Phoenix portrait of Elizabeth I (
c
. 1575). ‘The red phoenix represented the red powder or elixir, the last of the four colour changes during the Great Work to create the philosopher's stone’ (p. 73).

5 Nicholas Hilliard, The Pelican portrait of Elizabeth I (
c
. 1575). The Pelican was an alchemical vessel. The Queen ‘was pleased with the philosopher's stone’, reported Sir Thomas Stanhope (p. 72).

6 Title page of John Dee's
General and Rare Memorials Pertaining to the Perfect Art of Navigation
, 1577. In this work, Dee said, ‘the method … covertly proceedeth (occasion so served)’, and ‘more is hid, than uttered’ (p. 105).

7 The dark, heavy lidded eyes of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, stare out with cold hauteur. He betrayed no emotion when witnessing the torture of John Prestall in the Tower (p. 135).

8 Sir Francis Walsingham believed in transmutation but not in every adept, and consulted Dee about two London alchemists alleged to have made the philosopher's stone (p. 206).

9 The Seal of Aemeth, two smaller seals, Dee's obsidian disc, his crystal ball, and a golden talisman – all part of the elaborate paraphernalia required by Kelley to contact the angels.

10 The Seal of Aemeth was a means of generating the names of angels, based on the medieval conjuring treatise attributed to Honorius of Thebes (p. 106).

11 Emperor Rudolf II's spiritual uncertainty led him to pursue divine certainty through occult philosophy, especially alchemy (p. 180).

12 ‘Kelley claimed from Prague that Hatton had inspired a whispering campaign against him and also made “divers reproachful speeches even afore her majesty"’ (p. 215).

13 Dee went to John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, and ‘talked with him boldly of my right to the parsonages, and of the truth of Sir Edward Kelley his Alchemy’ (p. 212).

14 Title page of John Dee's
A Letter, Containing a most briefe Discourse Apologeticall
, 1599. Dee assured Whitgift that he studied only as part of ‘that holy and mystical body, Catholicly extended’ over the globe, under the ‘illumination’ of the Holy Trinity (p. 245).

I
N
1642, as civil war broke out between Parliament and Charles I, a large, elegant cedar chest appeared for sale at the corner of a busy London street. Amidst a display of new and second-hand furniture, its refined joinery and high-quality lock and hinges attracted the attention of a newly married couple, Mr and Mrs Jones. The couple bought the chest and for the next twenty years it sat undisturbed in their home. During this period Parliament triumphed in the Civil War and executed Charles I, Oliver Cromwell ruled briefly as Lord Protector, and the monarchy was restored in the person of Charles II. Then in 1662 Mr and Mrs Jones decided to move the chest. As they struggled with it they heard something rattle in one of its corners. Mr Jones inserted a piece of iron into a tiny crevice. There was a click, and a secret compartment slid open. It contained several handwritten books in an incomprehensible language, and a small box. Inside the box lay an olive-wood rosary and crucifix. The chest, it turned out, had once belonged to John Dee, a famous and distinctive Renaissance figure, whether as astrologer, alchemist, polymath intellectual, or sometime adviser to Elizabeth I and her Court.

This book aims to unlock the secret compartments of Dee's life. While there have been many previous books about Dee, this new study will show that he was not an austere magician, remote, shunned and feared. Instead it reveals that he was immersed in Tudor society precisely because
of his occult philosophy. Properly understood, the story of Dee's life opens a doorway into a forgotten Tudor landscape, not so much a world that we have lost but more a strange, unfamiliar place that few modern readers can imagine. In that almost alien universe Queen Elizabeth I devotes hours to poring over her alchemical manuscripts and then applies their methods in her laboratory, seeking incessantly for the philosopher's stone that will purify decaying bodies and society alike. In that world the Queen's most influential adviser, Lord Burghley, pleads for a fragment of the stone to help build a navy against the Spanish Armada, and the Queen's favourite, Lord Robert Dudley, believes that Christians can legitimately conjure angels to reveal the political future. It is where experienced politicians wonder what the appearance of comets signals for the future of war in the Netherlands, and where ancient prophecies are applied to Elizabeth as the Last World Empress before Christ's imminent Second Coming.