The Arch Conjuror of England (22 page)

However, comparing the manuscript ‘Memorials’ with the version of Dee's advice printed in the
Memorials
a year later reveals that careful editing transformed the first version's conservative attack on Holland and Zealand. The printed
Memorials
now supported an aggressively Protestant policy to support the provinces militarily. This transformation occurred because Dee's writing became entangled in the great crisis for the ‘Protestant cause’, the disgrace of Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury. As a reward for making these changes, Dee could strike back against Vincent Murphyn and try to restore his reputation.

Elizabeth had reluctantly appointed the zealous Protestant Grindal to Canterbury in January 1576. In early June, when her Privy Councillors were trying to mitigate Elizabeth's orders against the Dutch, she, or someone close to her, retaliated by recalling another example of ‘puritan’ excess where Privy Councillors had evaded her commands. This concerned the ‘exercises’, regular training seminars for unlearned preachers, supervised by bishops or senior clergy. To reassert her authority, Elizabeth would ensure her archbishop obeyed her by suppressing these unauthorised meetings.

Probably those Catholics seeking just then to ‘ruin the Protestants beyond the seas’ played on her frustration. They had a discreet ally in the conservative Hatton, whose clients John Whitgift and John Aylmer would rise to power in the Church by demanding complete conformity to the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559. That envisaged no place for ‘prophesyings’. Critics preferred that name to ‘exercises’ because it supported their ‘spin’ that ‘puritans’ used these ‘popular’ assemblies to agitate for further Church reform, and even scandalously allowed the low-born to ‘prophesy’ from the Scriptures. Elizabeth agreed that the subversion of all authority could only come next.
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When Elizabeth had tried to suppress the prophesyings in 1574, bishops and Privy Councillors had studiously looked the other way. Now she meant business. Leicester, Burghley and Walsingham warned Grindal in early June about approaching storms, and on 12 June Elizabeth flatly ordered him to suppress the exercises. He defended them as firmly under control, but when their reports came in some bishops expressed doubts
that critics could seize on. A few even agreed with Aylmer that ‘prophesyings’ were a Trojan Horse for popular presbyterianism.
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In December 1576 Grindal refused Elizabeth's renewed command to suppress the exercises, insisting that Scripture authorised them. She threw him out, and the stubborn archbishop sealed his fate in a six-thousand-word letter, defending himself by daring to limit the Queen's authority in ecclesiastical matters. After inconclusive negotiations, Elizabeth sequestered him from office and placed him under house arrest in May 1577.
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Grindal's restoration to favour and leadership of the Church became a central objective of the ‘Protestant cause’, because zealous Protestants believed that his downfall immensely encouraged Catholics and their fellow travellers. Hatton's star rose still further, and through his influence Whitgift became Bishop of Worcester and Aylmer became Bishop of London. Both began punishing ‘puritan’ like ‘papist’ disobedience. Elizabeth's treatment of Grindal depended on the fluctuating influence of those urging her to support the Dutch. In October 1577 circumstances inclined her to help them, and there was talk of Grindal's release from house arrest. By late November, however, new developments pulled her back, and she planned to humiliate Grindal before the Star Chamber.
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This pattern would continue until his death in 1583.

Dee's writings became tangled in this web of intrigue. After Bishop Thomas Cooper of Lincoln began proceedings to deprive Dee of Long Leadenham on 27 September 1576, Hatton secured Elizabeth's dispensation for Dee's ecclesiastical pluralism, but Grindal avoided signing it.
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This suggests that at that date Dee had still not rewritten ‘Memorials’ to encourage aggressive support of the Dutch. Dyer probably proposed this revision. The Pacification of Ghent in November 1576, which seemingly confirmed William of Orange's political authority in the Netherlands, made an aggressive policy plausible. Dee's change of advice has left no direct evidence, but we can trace it indirectly through his successful riposte to Murphyn.

In August, Murphyn's slanders had provoked Dee into hours of bitter digressions, filling over 10 per cent of ‘Memorials’ with denials that he dealt with any ‘wicked and ungodly Art’. Abandoning his earlier attempt
in the ‘Mathematical Preface’ to blame his stage effects at Trinity College, Dee now acknowledged that his work for Elizabeth in 1555 had earned him the title of ‘The Great Conjuror’. However, he also sought to defuse that charge by rewriting history, insisting that he had not been Bonner's persecuting chaplain but ‘also a prisoner himself: (and bedfellow, with one master Barthlet Green)’.
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Surprisingly, John Foxe personally inserted this fabrication into his 1576
Acts and Monuments
to make Dee look like an innocent victim in 1555.
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In return, by the time it appeared
Memorials
had toned down the manuscript's criticism of Foxe for publishing ‘Devilish and malicious’ lies ‘under the Cloak of good and sound Religion’.
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Acts and Monuments
now recorded that it was not Dee whom Philpot dismissed as learned in ‘other things’, but only an anonymous ‘Doctor’. Foxe's description of the letter to Philpot omits ‘Doctor Dee the great Conjuror’. Foxe printed that letter, which according to Dee was forged by Murphyn, without the reference to Green sharing a chamber with the great conjuror and the invitation to ‘conjecture’ about what that meant.
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Foxe, however, retained Green's comment to Philpot that Dee had been ‘very friendly’. Foxe even added a new marginal comment to support Dee's story that the Privy Council had ordered him to Bonner's household on bail for good behaviour. Thus Dee turned from persecuting Catholic chaplain to sympathetic fellow prisoner, Foxe meekly agreeing with Dee's claims in ‘Memorials’.
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Dee's long, close relationship with John Day, the printer of
Acts and Monuments
, might explain these changes,
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except that John's son Richard controlled the printing of the 1576 edition, while the 1583 edition, which John very closely supervised, included some new criticisms of Dee for ‘conjuring’. It is more likely that someone Foxe respected had a quiet word with him, and that the removal of Dee the ‘Arch-Conjuror’ from the 1576
Acts and Monuments
reflects the way Dee tweaked
Memorials
. As published in 1577 it covertly advocated Leicester's Netherlands policy, on the basis of Elizabeth's rights to European empire.
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Dee's service to a powerful patron gave him temporary political clout. Thus
Memorials
emphasised that Foxe had removed the conjuring accusations from the 1576
Acts and Monuments
because they would make Dee's ‘intended
exploits, of great importance’ seem diabolical, rather than divinely inspired support for a Reforming Empress.
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In mid-January 1577 rumours of aborted negotiations between the Dutch provinces and the new Spanish governor, Don John of Austria, made military intervention seem vitally necessary to Leicester and his followers, including Dyer and Philip Sidney. They revived earlier dreams that Elizabeth would lead Protestant Europe to reform Christendom, beginning by accepting the sovereignty of Holland and Zealand and then assuming the mantle of the Last Reforming Empress. Also that month, alchemists found gold in Frobisher's ore sample from his first voyage, galvanising courtiers into supporting a second one. That excitement took place amidst the struggle over Grindal and the Netherlands. Dee certainly perceived the Frobisher voyages from this cosmic perspective, since he now held that the supernova of 1572 had signalled the gold discovery.
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All this fuelled his apocalyptic vision of restored empire. On 16 January 1577 rumours of the failed negotiations reached Court, and Dee met with Leicester, Sidney and Dyer. Probably they discussed Frobisher's next voyage, but also Sidney's forthcoming embassy to Frankfurt, where the German princes would attempt to resolve divisions amongst Protestants over the Eucharist.
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The same day Dee wrote to his friend the Dutch geographer Abraham Ortelius, asking for confirmation of the northern passages. However, Dee also told Ortelius that geographic knowledge needed reform so that ‘great and unexpected changes in the affairs of all States will be made’, words which echo Postel and Leowitz, ‘and then the last and desired end of human affairs’.
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To Dee, inspired by angelic revelations, events in Europe and Frobisher's explorations seemed to be leading to the ‘Last Empire’.

Perhaps even stranger to us, Dee believed that his ‘Petty Navy Royal’ would hasten ‘unexpected changes’ by dramatically restoring Elizabeth's European empire. In early 1577 this proposal now dovetailed neatly with the Leicester group's agitation for Elizabeth to support the Dutch with an army. Sidney met William of Orange on his return journey from Frankfurt. They planned to exploit the power vacuum left by the Spanish withdrawal from the Netherlands.
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On his return in late May, Sidney wrote a paper,
perhaps with help from Dee, emphasising how the combined navies of England, Holland and Zealand could enforce Elizabeth's sovereignty over the Narrow Seas.
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This supported Orange's June offer to Elizabeth of a naval union for mutual defence against Spain. In this new political context Dee's ‘Petty Navy Royal’, because its relatively small ships suited Dutch coastal conditions, could clear a path across the Narrow Seas for Leicester's Protestant army to aid the Netherlands. Though Elizabeth refused Orange's offer, it remained Leicester's objective.
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Dee's new political clout impressed Foxe but failed to silence Murphyn. In fact, Dee's closer association with Leicester's ‘forward’ Protestant policy provoked Murphyn's renewed attacks. In late May and mid-June 1577, Dee learned of Murphyn's ‘abominable misusing me behind my back’.
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These attacks probably originated amongst the Catholic courtiers opposing Leicester, who from exile would attack Dee as the Earl's ‘conjuror’ in
Leicester's Commonwealth
(1584). Therefore, before ‘Memorials’ went to print in August, Dee completely changed its strategic arguments by removing Flanders, Holland and Zealand from his list of ‘false friends’, and by adding new complaints, echoing Sidney and Orange, about supplies smuggled to ‘our Secret Mortal Foes, or unassured Friends’, the French and the Catholic Flemings.
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These and other changes to the printed
Memorials
confirm Dee's statement that he did not write in intellectual isolation, but at ‘the earnest request of my countrymen’, as a member of the ‘commonwealth’ within the Elizabethan monarchy.
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A long section of
Memorials
, hitherto overlooked because it focuses on domestic issues, shows how the City of London, aware of Dee's rising influence through Leicester's patronage, used his writing to persuade the Queen to solve ‘commonwealth’ problems. Dee's ‘Diary’ noted that on 26 May 1577, while rewriting ‘Memorials’, he met the City's water bailiff, responsible for Thames navigation and fishing. The section of
Memorials
that emerged from their discussion would influence royal policy more than all the rest of the book.

Dee's rambling house at Mortlake stood right beside the Thames. So every day his celebrated library, his alchemical laboratories, his private rooms for angel magic, his gardens and outhouses that sustained a large
household, his many visitors and students, were permeated by the miasmic smell of the Thames shore ‘vilely stinking, at the Ebb’. Therefore, he was easily persuaded by the water bailiff to add ‘a little digression’ of eight pages, fully 10 per cent of
Memorials
. This attacked the destruction of the Thames and its fishing by ‘Trinker-men’ whose fixed nets on ‘Trink-boats’ caught enormous quantities of immature fish, only to be wasted as pig food and fertiliser.

Dee lamented the incredible ‘Public loss’ to England's economy. Fixed ‘Timber-nets’ and over a hundred artificial weirs blocked river traffic and destroyed enormous numbers of fry. This un-Christian pursuit of self-interest abused God's gifts and ignored the law. ‘Costly Suits’ failed to stop official corruption. Therefore, Dee dutifully trusted that the Queen and Privy Council, once ‘they understand the causes’, would enforce justice against ‘Trink-Net-Men’, because ‘the PROFIT-PUBLIC’ must prevail over ‘Private Gain’.
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Dee would find official responses more complicated.

Events also forced Dee to revise ‘Memorials’ further to support intervention in the Netherlands. Don John provoked renewed hostilities in July. Convinced that he lacked men, munitions and especially money, Leicester and Walsingham pressured Elizabeth into committing Leicester with an army, thus exploiting Burghley's prolonged absence from Court.
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To highlight the threat from Catholic subversion they played up the case of Cuthbert Mayne, a Catholic priest arrested with a papal bull in Cornwall in June. On 4 August the Privy Council decided to consider Mayne the tip of a very large iceberg, and began surveying Catholic recusant numbers in mid-October.
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They needed this ‘proof’, not just to push for Edmund Grindal's restoration as Archbishop. As the Spanish reconquered Flanders that summer, hemming in Holland and Zealand, Orange again offered Elizabeth the sovereignty of Holland and Zealand.

Hatton had scotched this proposal in 1576, but Dee had grounds by August 1577 for changing the dedication of
Memorials
from Dyer to the far more influential Hatton. Leicester and Walsingham used the Mayne case to raise the bogeyman of a full-blown Catholic conspiracy, helped by the Earl of Oxford's foolish dallying with the idea of revolt that summer. Anti-Catholicism thus became their ‘wedge-issue’ to redefine loyalty,
splitting Hatton from the Catholics at Court and pushing him into supporting Leicester's ‘forward’ policy. Hatton also had personal reasons for switching, having lost a fortune in goods when Spanish troops sacked Antwerp in November 1576.
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