The Arch Conjuror of England (41 page)

Burghley got wind of the affair and began hunting for Webb.
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On 24 December 1593 he committed him to the Marshalsea prison. Webb and his accomplice, the young engraver Abel Fecknam, had alchemically counterfeited £2,000 worth of Elizabeth shillings.
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They smuggled the money to Scotland, from where Burghley feared a Spanish invasion. Other men had been executed for far less.
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Alarmingly for Dee, on 9 January 1594 the Master of the Mint and alderman Richard Martin arrived at his house to seal up ‘Mr Webb's chest, and case of boxes’. In late January, deeply engaged in alchemy, Dee yet found time to visit Webb in the Marshalsea prison.
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This was not merely charity, because Dee could be implicated. When Webb faced a death sentence in mid-March, he panicked Dee into a ‘flight of fear’ by sending for him. Did Dee panic because he had helped the coining, or because he feared that Webb might save himself by branding Dee a traitor?
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He at least had some inkling that Webb's coining had dangerous political connections. The condemned men appealed to influential patrons, some perhaps alerted by Dee. Margaret Clifford's husband, George, Earl of Cumberland, alderman Martin and the famous painter Nicholas Hilliard all quickly intervened with Burghley's son Sir Robert Cecil for Hilliard's skilled workman Fecknam.
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Dee could only relax when Webb's saviour turned out to be Sir Robert Cecil, suggesting Webb had been working undercover for Cecil all along, behind Burghley's back.
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Burghley arranged Webb's pardon but commanded him into exile in the Netherlands. From there, Webb apologetically sent Dee alchemical medical recipes.
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Dee escaped the nasty little scandal unscathed. However, it demonstrates that little separated elite philosophical and practical alchemy from the alchemical counterfeiting usually associated with ‘cunning men’.
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Nor would Whitgift have appreciated Dee's growing reputation as a seer following his predictions about 1592. Thomas Nashe wrote
Christ's Tears over Jerusalem
late in 1593, trying to break with Whitgift by embracing apocalyptic notions. Nashe complained about the ‘superstitious’ who ‘under Master Dees name’ spread rumours of future troubles, when ‘that good reverend old man’ denied ‘such arrogant prescience’.
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Dee's reputation helped to attract alchemical enthusiasts. On 7 February 1594 he received an ‘offer philosophical’ from Walsingham's former client Sir Thomas Wilkes, who had beggared himself in Elizabeth's diplomatic service. Like other Court figures with no previously known interest in alchemy, Wilkes demonstrates how Dee's occult philosophy gathered support, even while it alienated Whitgift. Dee noted no request for Elizabeth's patronage for a year until February 1594, though he pressed his case by unrecorded means. For example, on the day of Wilkes's offer ‘the Archbishop inclined somewhat to the request of dispensation’. This meeting represents the tip of an interesting iceberg that has completely melted away.

Dee meant dispensation for his two livings, for which he would not abandon hope until June 1594. He badly needed a steady income, because windfalls like Francis Nichols's £300 only encouraged his spending, leaving him deeper in debt when the money ran out. On 10 April 1594 he gloomily read over his ‘Compendious Rehearsal’ again, noting that ‘to this hour’ he had not seen a penny from his Welsh rectories. Having redeemed his mortgage to his brother-in-law Nicholas Fromoundes, Dee now had to remortgage his house, raising £400 to pay his most pressing debts. In June 1594 he mortgaged for £30 the neighbouring second house he had bought only the previous September.
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Dee's cash-flow problems made him anxious to demonstrate his spiritual gifts to the Queen. Yet that only enabled Whitgift and Bancroft to portray him as another enthusiastic prophet threatening natural authority. On 3 May 1594, again through the Countess of Warwick's influence, he
‘delivered in writing the heavenly admonition’ to the Queen, which she took ‘thankfully’.
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The admonition possibly came from Kelley, whose latest letter Dee had received in late March, since Elizabeth returned one of Kelley's letters to Dee on 18 May. It certainly recalls the angelic warnings that Dee revealed to Emperor Rudolf II. Years later John Chamberlain claimed that Elizabeth died at Richmond because Dee had warned her to ‘beware of Whitehall’, but whether he was referring to this ‘heavenly admonition’ remains unclear.
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Exploiting Elizabeth's thankful response, on 21 May Sir John Woolley again presented Dee's suit for St Cross. As in February 1593 she would not overrule Whitgift's objections and ‘granted after a sort, but referred all’ to the archbishop. Dee's cousin William Aubrey, now the Queen's Master of Requests, received the same reply four days later. Recognising the stumbling block, Dee met Whitgift on 29 May, but could not move his objections. Sometime between May and November of that year an official drafted a grant enabling Lord Cobham to present Dee to St Cross when Bennett resigned the Mastership, though Elizabeth never signed it.

Dee then tried a direct assault on Elizabeth's tender feelings. On 3 June he arrayed himself, Jane and their seven children before her at Thistleworth, just west of Mortlake. She permitted Jane to kiss her hand but made no commitment when Dee requested that Whitgift should come to assess their destitution. The archbishop ignored the same request three days later.
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In late June Dee made the short ride to Croydon, Whitgift's country residence. The archbishop gave ‘answers and discourses’ that he had already agreed with Elizabeth and Burghley. They finally scotched Dee's ‘hoping for anything’ about his rectories. Therefore, he declared ‘adieu to the Court and courting till God direct me otherwise’. He soon had another catastrophe to deal with. His son Michael fell ill with a virus on 6 July, and Dee cast his horoscope. Dee also sickened but recovered. Michael died at sunrise on 13 July, his father's melancholy sixty-seventh birthday.
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Somehow Dee, like his hopes for St Cross, carried on that summer. English and French alchemists worked in his laboratories. He wrote to
Edward Kelley in September complaining that he rented out rooms but still lacked wood for the coming winter. By the end of October matters had again reached crisis, and Dee asked permission from Elizabeth to declare his poverty before the Privy Council or to go abroad. Elizabeth ignored both requests, and in early December, unable to maintain Bartholomew Hickman, he sent him to Lord Willoughby's service, both as ‘scryer’ and alchemist.
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On 7 December 1594 ecclesiastical politics suddenly shifted the Court planets into alignment for Dee. In a move coordinated by Jane's old patrons, the Howards, to exploit the current round of episcopal musical chairs, Jane delivered another petition to Elizabeth in her Privy Garden at Whitehall. Lord Howard, husband of her former mistress, attended the Queen. He immediately read the petition and strongly supported it, backed up by Lord Buckhurst. Elizabeth turned to Whitgift and commanded that Dee ‘should have Dr Day his place in Paul's’, the chancellorship of the cathedral. Temporarily outmanoeuvred, Whitgift had to bow and pretend that he was ‘willing’. But could he countenance Dee in such a prominent administrative position, in the great medieval cathedral at the heart of London, of England itself?

Whitgift's countermoves can be discerned behind the complicated politics surrounding episcopal appointments in late 1594. William Day, Chancellor of St Paul's, Dean of Windsor and Provost of Eton, enjoyed Burghley's friendship, Elizabeth's goodwill and the admiration of powerful churchmen. Yet he had been waiting for a bishopric since 1570, because courtiers expected nominees to bishoprics to show proper gratitude for their support, by allowing them to plunder their new dioceses financially.

Day had missed several promotions through bargaining for better terms. When Bishop Aylmer of London died on 5 June 1594, Burghley favoured Day to succeed him, but by October the Earl of Essex, supported by Whitgift, had secured London for Richard Fletcher, Bishop of Worcester. Essex and Whitgift wanted Day to succeed Fletcher at Worcester. Both appointments were announced in the Privy Council on 1 December. This cleared the field for Jane's successful petition six days later, and Dee's nomination as Chancellor of St Paul's.
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On 18 December Elizabeth granted Dee £40 to celebrate Christmas, that year a joyous celebration in the Dee household. Further demonstrating her goodwill, she nominated Fletcher as Bishop of London on 26 December, confirming his election remarkably quickly by 4 January. Dee's path to the chancellorship of St Paul's seemed open. But on 5 January 1595 after ‘a friend’ sent Day a survey showing his income would actually fall, Day formally withdrew his acceptance as Bishop of Worcester.
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So Dee was left stranded again.

It may seem unlikely that Whitgift was that ‘friend’, who encouraged Day's withdrawal simply to prevent Dee replacing him. Day subsequently had to brave Elizabeth's anger, though within months she appointed him Bishop of Winchester without a hitch. However, despite his apparent agreement to Dee's appointment as chancellor, Whitgift first mentioned the Wardenship of Manchester Collegiate Church to Dee on 3 January, two days before Day withdrew, suggesting he already knew about Day's forthcoming decision. Manchester would be a less prominent appointment for a ‘conjuror’ than St Paul's.
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Indeed, Dee blamed Whitgift's opposition to his ‘philosophical studies’ for the reversal and made the only possible response. Bad news travels fast. Within hours of Day's withdrawal, through the evening of 5 January and all the next day, Dee ‘very speedily’ wrote a long letter to Whitgift, defending the legality and Christianity of his studies. He published it in 1599 and 1604, when his public reputation again came under fire, as
A Letter, containing a most brief Discourse Apologetical
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The preface to Whitgift reiterated Dee's request made the previous 28 October, that, to support his ‘most needful suits’, he should be allowed to explain his ‘studious exercises’ to Elizabeth, Whitgift and other Privy Councillors. This explanation would then be published both to suppress the ‘wicked reports, and fables’ about his philosophy and to satisfy impartial Christian readers that his work led upwards to the celestial tabernacle. Dee obviously believed that Whitgift was the source of gossip about his magic.

Dee claimed once more that from his youth he had sought by God's favour to know His truth and by carefully weighing, numbering and
measuring the world to glorify its Creator. To demonstrate his long course of studies he included in his letter the sixth chapter of his ‘Compendious Rehearsal’, listing all his printed and manuscript writings.
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By 6 January Dee had abandoned any hope for the chancellorship of St Paul's, so he resurrected his scheme for St Cross. He included the ‘Compendious Rehearsal’ passage describing how St Cross would rescue and print ancient authors. He complained again about the despoliation of his library at Mortlake, though the conjuring slanders spreading throughout the realm grieved him more. He protested on his soul's salvation that he used only ‘divinely prescribed means’ to attain legitimate knowledge, advance God's glory and benefit the kingdom.

Recalling his ‘cosmopolitan’ allegiance, he 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. He prayed for Christ's imminent return, because the worldly wise scorned Dee's religion of ‘Evangelical simplicity’. He concluded by asking Whitgift to defend him against slanderers, reassure charitable Christians about his orthodoxy, and warn him whenever he spoke or wrote otherwise than became a Christian.
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Whitgift's interference displeased Elizabeth. When Sir John Woolley asked her to sign Dee's ‘bill of Manchester’ on 3 February, she deferred it. The appointment entailed finding the current warden, William Chaderton, also Bishop of Chester, another bishopric. Only on 28 March did she nominate Chaderton to Lincoln, enabling her to sign Dee's bill on 18 April. Dee's patent received the Great Seal on 27 May. When the Countess of Warwick tendered Dee's thanks on 31 July, the Queen replied that she ‘was sorry that it was so far from hence: but that some better thing near at hand shall be found for me’.
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To mark his elevation to the Wardenship, Dee had his portrait painted. It survives in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. He dressed formally for it, in a heavy black scholar's gown and black skullcap. His expensive, fashionably elaborate starched ruff sets off his surprisingly unlined, handsome and fresh complexion, above his carefully trimmed white drooping moustache and long, pointed beard. It is the deeply set, dark brown eyes, however, that
hold the viewer, looking out cautiously, even suspiciously, on the world. As well they might, given his recent experience of Courtly machinations.

Elizabeth had never been further north than Nottingham. What to her, and perhaps Whitgift, seemed a remote exile was nothing of the kind. Manchester had excellent communications with London. A town of about two thousand people, as the regional hub for Lancashire cloth production it exported most of its cloth through London, where many local men made fortunes in trade and the law. It must, however, have stunk to high heaven in the summer. The manorial court spent most of its time ineffectually trying to prevent privies overflowing onto the streets and to ensure that people dumping their night-soil into the River Irwell did so from the middle of the bridge, not the riverbank.
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Partly because of the relative ease of travel, during his Wardenship Dee spent long periods at Mortlake, where he attended the Manor Court in December 1596 and observed a solar eclipse on 7 March 1598, or in London, including the entire two years from July 1598, and the summers of 1602 and 1604. He also kept up scholarly connections, sending his old friend William Camden a Roman inscription found at Manchester.
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In September 1602 the Catholic peer Viscount Montague gave Dee a devotional work at Cowdray in Sussex.
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In November 1604 Dee returned to London for most of that winter. He apparently left Manchester permanently sometime after the virulent outbreak of plague in early 1605.