After his return, Elizabeth honoured him with another visit, as appears by the following entry in his “Diary”:—
1580. Sept. 17th.—The Quene’s Majestie came from Rychemond in her coach, the higher way of Mortlak felde, and when she came right against the Church she turned down toward my howse; and when she was against my garden in the felde she stode there a good while, and then came ynto the street at the great gate of the felde, when she espyed me at my doore making obeysciens to her Majestie; she beckend her hand for me; I came to her coach side, she very speedily pulled off her glove and gave me her hand to kiss; and to be short, asked me to resort to her court, and to give her to wete when I cam ther.
In less than a month he received another visit from his patron, when the shadow of death was over his house; for his mother, who shared the house at Mortlake with him, had expired a few hours before the arrival of the Royal party. This time Elizabeth seems to have come less to please herself than to comfort her favourite:—
Oct. 10th.—The Quene’s Majestie, to my great comfort (hora quinta), cam with her trayn from the court, and at my dore graciously calling me to her, on horsbak, exhorted me briefly to take my mother’s death patiently; and withall told me that the Lord Threasorer had gretly commended my doings for her title, which he had to examyn, which title in two rolls, he had browght home two hours before; she remembred allso how at my wive’s death it was her fortune likewise to call uppon me.
The “title” alluded to had reference to the doubts Elizabeth affected to have as to her right to rule over the new countries that were at the time being discovered by her gallant sea captains, when, to ease her scruples, she had desired Dee to give her a full account of the newly-found regions. This he did in a few days, producing two large rolls, which he delivered to the Queen “in the garden at Richmond;” and in which not only the geography, but also the history, of the English colonies throughout the world was given at length. Dee must have made a liberal draught upon his imagination in producing such a work; and Elizabeth, credulous as she was, could hardly have looked upon his account of Virginia or Florida or Newfoundland as trustworthy history. She wished to believe it, however, and therefore signified her gracious approval of Dee’s production, much to the disgust of Burleigh, who in the Queen’s presence openly expressed his disbelief; and when, four days later, Dee attended at the Lord Treasurer’s house, he refused to admit him, and when he came forth, as he says, “did not, or would not, speak to me, I doubt not of some new grief conceyved.” On further examination of the writings, Burleigh’s misgivings may have been removed, or, as is much more likely, deeming it unwise to provoke a quarrel with one whom the Queen delighted to honour, he strove to make amends for his discourtesy, for he sent Dee a haunch of venison three weeks after. Though the breach was healed, the scholar’s fear of the Lord Treasurer was not altogether dispelled, if we may judge from a dream with which he was troubled shortly afterwards, when, as he says—
I dreamed that I was deade; and afterwards my bowels were taken out. I walked and talked with diverse, and among other with the Lord Threasorer, who was come to my house to burn my bones when I was dead, and thought he looked sourely on me.
Mr. Disraeli, in his “Amenities of Literature,” rightly estimated the character of the “Wizard Warden” of Manchester when he remarked that “the imagination of Dee often predominated over his science—while both were mingling in his intellectual habits, each seemed to him to confirm the other. Prone to the mystical lore of what was termed the occult sciences, which in reality are no sciences at all, since whatever remains occult ceases to be science, Dee lost his better genius.” Casaubon maintains that throughout he acted with sincerity, but this may be very well doubted. It is true that until he dabbled in magical arts he gave most of his time and talents to science and literature, but in the later years of his life he laid aside every pursuit that did not aid in his alchemical and magical studies, and rapidly degenerated into the mere necromancer and adventurer. Conjuror or not, he sported with conjuror’s tools; and when in the ardour of his enthusiasm he claimed to hold intercourse with angelic beings whom he could summon to his presence at his will, and boasted the possession of a crystal given him by the Angel Uriel, which enabled him to reveal all secrets, he naturally subjected himself to suspicions which, as he afterwards lamented, “tended to his utter undoing.”
Many of the incidents of his life are recorded in his “Private Diary,” edited for the Camden Society by Mr. J. Orchard Halliwell, and the portion relating to the period of his wardenship of Manchester has since been edited from the autograph MSS. in the Bodleian Library, with copious notes, and the errors of the Camden edition corrected by Mr. J. Eglinton Bailey. This journal gives a curious insight into the private life and real character of the strange yet simple-minded writer, relating, as it does with much circumstantial detail, his family affairs, his labours and rewards, and his trials and tribulations. There are notes of the visits paid to him by great people; of his attendances at Court; entries of those who consulted him as to the casting of their nativities; particulars of moneys borrowed from time to time (for, though he received large fees and presents, he was almost continuously in a state of impecuniosity); and the ordinary small talk of a common-place book. On the 15th June, 1579, his mother surrendered the house at Mortlake to him, with reversion to his wife and his heirs. On the 5th February in the preceding year he had married, as his second wife, a daughter of Mr. Bartholomew Fromonds, of East Cheam, a fellow-worker in alchemical pursuits, the lady being 23 years of age and Dee 51. They do not appear to have had many sympathies in common. She was a strong-minded, shrewd, managing woman, with a somewhat vixenish temper, who exercised considerable influence over her visionary and unpractical husband, and kept him in awe of her, though not sufficiently to restrain his reckless expenditure on books, manuscripts, and scientific instruments. Occasionally he complains of her irritability, but it must be confessed that, with her domestic cares, the worry of her “mayds,” the sickness of her children, and the difficulty she had in getting from her mystical husband sufficient money for the needful expenses of her household, the poor woman had anxieties enough to try the most enduring patience and sour the sweetest temper. On one occasion he writes: “Jane most desperately angry in respect of her maydes;” at another time he puts up a prayer to the angels that she may be cured of some malady that so she may “be of a quieter mind, and not so testy and fretting as she hath been.” And again, “Katharin (a child under eight years) by a blow on the eare given by her mother did bled at the nose very much, which did stay for an howre and more; afterward she did walk into the town with nurse; upon her coming home she bled agayn.”
Though Dee was much noticed and flattered by Elizabeth, the preferment she so often promised him was slow in coming; perhaps it was that the calculating Queen wished to ascertain the full value of his horoscope, which could be only done by the efflux of time, though, if the prosperity of her reign depended upon the day he had chosen for her coronation, she then had abundant proof of his magical skill. Dee was beginning to lose heart, his finances were getting low, he was in the usurer’s hands, and his pecuniary obligations were disquieting him. At this time came the crisis of his life. In 1581 he formed the disastrous friendship with Kelly, whom he took into his service as an assistant in his alchemical and astrological labours.
This individual, whose dealings in the Black Art would fill a volume, was a crafty and unscrupulous schemer—a clever rogue, who, without a tithe of the learning or genius of Dee, contrived to work upon his credulity to such an extent that Dee believed him to have the power of seeing, hearing, and holding “conversations with spirituall creatures” that were invisible and inaudible to Dee himself. Kelly, who was nearly thirty years the junior of Dee, having been born in 1555, “left Oxford,” says Mr. John Eglinton Bailey, in his admirable notes to the reprint of Dee’s “Diary,” “abruptly to ramble in Lancashire,” and for some delinquencies, coining it is said, had his ears cut off at Lancaster. Mr. Bailey says that he had been a lawyer, and Lilly states on the authority of his sister that he had practised as an apothecary at Worcester. Of a restless, roving, and ambitious disposition, he was