Dee at length quarrelled with his companion, and returned to England in 1589. He was helped over his financial difficulties by the queen and his friends. In May of 1595 he became warden of Manchester College. In November 1604 he returned to Mortlake, where he died in December 1608, at the age of eighty-one, in the greatest poverty. Aubrey describes him as “of a very fair, clear sanguine complexion, with a long beard as white as milk—a very handsome man—tall and slender. He wore a goune like an artist’s goune with hanging sleeves.” Dee’s Speculum or mirror, a piece of solid pink-tinted glass about the size of an orange, is preserved in the British Museum.
His principal works are—Propaedeumata aphoristica (London, 1558); Monas hieroglyphica (Antwerp, 1564); Epistola ad Fredericum Commandinum (Pesaro, 1570); Preface Mathematical to the English Euclid (1570); Divers Annotations and Inventions added after the tenth book of English Euclid (1570); Epistola praefixa Ephemeridibus Joannis Feldi, a. 1557; Parallaticae commentationis praxeosque nucleus quidam (London, 1573). The catalogue of his printed and published works is to be found in his Compendious Rehearsal, as well as in his letter to Archbishop Whitgift. A manuscript of Dee’s, relating what passed for many years between him and some spirits, was edited by Meric Casaubon and published in 1659. The Private Diary of Dr John Dee, and the Catalogue of his Library of Manuscripts, edited by J. O. Halliwell, was published by the Camden Society in 1842. There is a life of Dee in Thomas Smith’s Vitae illustrium virorum (1707); English translation by W. A. Ayton, the Life of John Dee (1909).
DEE (Welsh, Dyfrdwy; Lat., and in Milton, Deva), a river of Wales and England. It rises in Bala Lake, Merionethshire, which is fed by a number of small streams. Leaving the lake near the town of Bala it follows a north-easterly course to Corwen, turns thence E. by S. past Llangollen to a point near Overton, and then bends nearly north to Chester, and thereafter north-west through a great estuary opening into the Irish Sea. In the Llangollen district the Dee crosses Denbighshire, and thereafter forms the boundary of that county with Shropshire, a detached part of Flint, and Cheshire. From Bala nearly down to Overton, a distance of 35 m., during which the river falls about 330 ft., its course lies through a narrow and beautiful valley, enclosed on the south by the steep lower slopes of the Berwyn Mountains and on the north by a succession of lesser ranges. The portion known as the Vale of Llangollen is especially famous. Here an aqueduct carrying the Pontcysyllte branch of the Shropshire Union canal bestrides the valley; it is a remarkable engineering work completed by Thomas Telford in 1805. The Dee has a total length of about 70 m. and a fall of 530 ft. Below Overton it debouches upon its plain track. Below Chester it follows a straight artificial channel to the estuary, and this is the only navigable portion. The estuary, which is 14 m. long, and 5¼ m. wide at its mouth, between Hilbre Point on the English and Point of Air on the Welsh side, is not a commercial highway like the neighbouring mouth of the Mersey, for though in appearance a fine natural harbour at high tide, it becomes at low tide a vast expanse of sand, through which the river meanders in a narrow channel. The navigation, however, is capable of improvement, and schemes have been set on foot to this end. The tide rushes in with great speed over the sands, and their danger is illustrated in the well-known ballad “The Sands of Dee” by Charles Kingsley. The Dee drains an area of 813 sq. m.
DEE, a river in the south of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, pursuing a generally easterly direction from its source in the extreme west of the county till it reaches the North Sea at the city of Aberdeen. It rises in the Wells of Dee, a spring on Ben Braeriach, one of the Cairngorms, at a height of 4061 ft. above the sea. It descends rapidly from this altitude, and by the time that it receives the Geusachan, on its right bank, about 6 m. from its source, it has fallen 2421 ft. From the mountains flanking its upper reaches it is fed by numerous burns named and unnamed. With its tributaries the river drains an area of 1000 sq. m. Rapid and turbulent during the first half of its course of 90 m., it broadens appreciably below Aboyne and the rate of flow is diminished. The channel towards its mouth was artificially altered in order to provide increased dock accommodation at Aberdeen, but, above, the stream is navigable for only barges and small craft for a few miles. It runs through scenery of transcendent beauty, especially in Braemar. About two miles above Inverey it enters a narrow rocky gorge, 300 yds. long and only a few feet wide at one part, and forms the rapids and cascades of the famous Linn of Dee. One of the finest of Scottish salmon streams, it retains its purity almost to the very end of its run. The principal places on the Dee, apart from private residences, are Castleton of Braemar, Ballater, Aboyne, Kincardine O’Neil, Banchory, Culter and Cults.
DEED (in O. Eng. deâd, from the stem of the verb “to do”), that which is done, an act, doing; particularly, in law, a contract in writing, sealed and delivered by the party bound to the party intended to benefit. Contracts or obligations under seal are called in English law specialties, and down to 1869 they took precedence in payment over simple contracts, whether written or not. Writing, sealing and delivery are all essential to a deed. The signature of the party charged is not material, and the deed is not void for want of a date. Delivery, it is held, may be complete without the actual handing over of the deed; it is sufficient if the act of sealing were accompanied by words or acts signifying that the deed was intended to be presently binding; and delivery to a third person for the use of the party benefited will be sufficient. On the other hand, the deed may be handed over to a third person as an escrow,[1] in which case it will not take effect as a deed until certain conditions are performed. Such conditional delivery may be inferred from the circumstances attending the transaction, although the conditions be not expressed in words. A deed indented, or indenture (so called because written in counterparts on the same sheet of parchment, separated by cutting a wavy line between them so as to be identified by fitting the parts together), is between two or more parties who contract mutually. The actual indentation is not now necessary to an indenture. The deed-poll (with a polled or smooth-cut edge, not indented) is a deed in which one party binds himself without reference to any corresponding obligations undertaken by another party. See [Contract].
[1] An Anglo-French law term meaning a “scroll” or strip of parchment, cognate with the English “shred.” The modern French écroue is used for the entry of a name on a prison register.