He was sent ambassador for Queen Elizabeth (shee thinkes) into Poland.
Memorandum:—his regayning of the plate for ...'s butler, who comeing from London by water with a basket of plate, mistooke another basket that was like his. Mr. J. Dee bid them goe by water such a day, and looke about, and he should see the man that had his basket, and he did so; but he would not gett the lost horses, though he was offered severall angells. He told a woman (his neighbour) that she laboured under the evill tongue of an ill neighbour (another woman), which came to her howse, who he sayd was a witch.
In J. David Rhesus' British Grammar, p. 60:—'Juxta Crucis amnem (Nant y groes), in agro Maessyuetiano, apud Cambro-brytannos, erat olim illustris quaedam Nigrorum familia, unde Joan Du, id est, Johannes ille cognomento Niger, Londinensis, sui generis ortum traxit: vir certe ornatissimus et doctissimus, et omnium hac nostra aetate tum Philosophorum tum Mathematicorum facile princeps: monadis illius Hieroglyphicae et Propaedeumatum aphoristicorum de praestantioribus quibusdam Naturae virtutibus, aliorumque non paucorum operum insignium autor eximius. Vir praeterea ob tam multam experientiam frequenti sua in tot transmarinas regiones peregrinatione comparatam, rerum quamplurimarum et abditarum peritissimus.'
Notes.
[DO] In MS. Aubr. 6, fol. 36, Aubrey gives the horoscope, with astrological notes, e.g. that there is 'a reception between Saturn and Luna,' that 'Jupiter is in his exaltation and lord of the ascendant,' etc.
[DP] In MS. Aubr. 7, fol. 6, Aubrey notes:—'vide the new additions in John Dee's life.' This perhaps refers to MS. Aubr. 6, foll. 36-38, as being additional to the paper which he here says he left with Ashmole.
[DQ] In MS. Aubr. 6, fol. 37, Aubrey gives in colours the coat, 'gules, a lion rampant within a bordure indented or,' adding the note:—'Memorandum in the scutcheon at the beginning of his preface the bordure is engrailed: I believe that is the truest, for 'twas donne with care—sed quaere.'
In MS. Aubr. 6, fol. 36v, he gives in trick the coat for Dee's match '1578, Febr. 5,' with Jane Fromundz, viz.:—'in the 1 and 6, gules, a lion rampant within a bordure engrailed or [Dee]; in the 2, or, a lion rampant gules [...]; in the 3, ..., a lion rampant crowned sable [ ...]; in the 4, azure, a lion rampant ... [Dun]; in the 5, argent, on 2 bends gules 6 cross crosslets or [ ...],' as the coat of John Dee; impaling 'per chevron ermines and gules, a chevron between 3 fleur de lys or' [Fromundz], for Jane Fromundz. The motto is 'A Domino factum est istud.'
[DR] Aubrey's conversation with 'goodwife Faldo,' written down at the time (Oct. 22, 1672), is found in a letter to Anthony Wood, in MS. Wood F. 39, fol. 192.