The Arch Conjuror of England (46 page)

In the last analysis, when Dee lost political patronage he lost the power to defend the purity of his prophetic calling against enemies who smeared him as a ‘conjuror’. At the end of his life such attacks smoothed the way for the conservative counter-attack on magic as the engine of subversion, which drove it to the margins of the early modern political world. To this very day the attack on magic colours our understanding of John Dee and his times.

Dee's Writings

Readers who are interested in reading more of Dee's writings can find his
Propaedeumata aphoristica
published in English as
John Dee on Astronomy: Propaedeumata aphoristica (1558 and 1568) Latin and English
, ed. and trans. W. Shumaker (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1975); his ‘Mathematical Preface’, republished with an introduction by Allen G. Debus as
John Dee: The Mathematical Praeface to the Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara (1570)
(New York, 1975); and his
Monas hieroglyphica
in C.H. Josten, ‘A Translation of John Dee's
Monas hieroglyphica
with an Introduction and Annotations’,
Ambix
12 (1964), pp. 84–221. The text of Dee's conversations with angels from December 1581 to May 1583 in BL MS Sloane 3188, edited by Christopher Whitby as his 1981 Birmingham Ph.D. thesis, is available for free download from the British Library database EThOS (Electronic Theses Online Service). Meric Casaubon published the continuation of the conversations from 1583 as
A true & faithful relation of what passed for many yeers between Dr. John Dee … and some spirits
(London, 1659). This, and Dee's published writings, including
General and rare memorials pertayning to the perfect arte of navigation
(London, 1577) and
Letter Apologetical
(1599, 1604), are now widely available through the Early English Books Online database, subscribed to by many libraries.

Used with care, Joseph Peterson's edition of
John Dee's Five Books of Mystery: Original Sourcebook of Enochian Magic: From the Collected Works known as Mysteriorum libri quinque
(Boston, MA, 2003) has important material on the conversations. Even more caution is required with Donald C. Laycock,
The Complete Enochian Dictionary
(Boston, MA, York Beach, ME, 2001). Dee's crucial text in BL MS Add. 59681, ‘Brytanici Imperii Limites’, has been edited by Ken MacMillan with Jennifer Abeles, as
John Dee: The Limits of the British Empire
(Westport, CT, and London, 2004). There is valuable material by and about Dee at The Alchemy Website (
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/
) and the John Dee Publication Project (
www.john-dee.org
).

Major Studies on Dee

The fundamental study of Dee's collection of books and manuscripts is Julian Roberts and Andrew G. Watson,
John Dee's Library Catalogue
(London, 1990). My book also owes much to Nicholas
Clulee's deep analysis of Dee's response to contemporary natural philosophy,
John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion
(London, New York, 1988), supplemented by Clulee ‘The
Monas hieroglyphica
and the Alchemical Thread of John Dee's Career’,
Ambix
, 52, 3 (November 2005), pp. 197–215. William H. Sherman's elegant study of Dee as an ‘intelligencer’ writing advice for the Court,
John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance
(Amherst, MA, 1995), places less emphasis on Dee's occult philosophy. Deborah Harkness has published the most detailed study of
John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature
(Cambridge, 1999), though following Clulee she distinguishes Dee's occult philosophy from that of ordinary ‘cunning men’ more than I have done.

There has not been space to discuss all aspects of Dee's thought in this book. We lack a comprehensive study of his ‘Mathematical Preface’, but there is still much of value on his historical research, particularly about his study of Arthurian sources, in Peter J. French,
John Dee
(London, 1972). However, influenced by Frances Yates, French discussed Dee's occult philosophy mainly to demonstrate his indebtedness to Hermeticism. With that caution Yates's own study,
The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age
(London, 1979), is a useful introduction to other aspects of Dee's milieu. Much of Yates's interpretation of Dee has been corrected, and the field of Dee studies greatly expanded, in Stephen Clucas, ed.,
John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in English Renaissance Thought
(Dordrecht, 2006), soon to be further augmented by the collection of essays in ‘John Dee and the Sciences: Early Modern Networks of Knowledge’, a special issue of
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part A
, ed. Jennifer M. Rampling (forthcoming, 2012).

The Broader Background

On the broader background to Dee's early studies, see Mordechai Feingold,
The Mathematicians’ Apprenticeship: Science, Universities and Society in England 1560–1640
(Cambridge, 1984), and Feingold, ‘The Occult Tradition in the English Universities of the Renaissance: A Reassessment’, in
Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance
, ed. B. Vickers (Cambridge, 1984). Christopher I. Lehrich,
The Language of Demons and Angels: Cornelius Agrippa's Occult Philosophy
(Leiden, 2003), and the classic study by Marjorie Reeves,
The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism
(Oxford, 1969), as well as her
Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future
(Stroud, 1999), provide some context for Dee's developing ideas. Nicholas Crane's
Mercator: The Man who Mapped the Planet
(London, 2002) is a readable introduction to the Louvain mathematicians.

Dee and the Tudors

Apart from Rudolf II, on whom see the seminal study by R.J.W. Evans,
Rudolf II and His World
(Oxford, 1973), Dee served three Tudor monarchs. Jennifer Loach,
Edward VI
, ed. G. Bernard and P. Williams (New Haven and London, 1999), offers many new insights into the first, complementing Stephen Alford,
Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI
(Cambridge, 2002). David Loades has published numerous thoroughly researched books on Mary I and the Tudor Court generally. There are simply too many biographies of Elizabeth I to choose from, though none to my knowledge discusses her occult philosophy. The most accessible and least star-struck is Patrick Collinson's little gem,
Elizabeth I
(Oxford, 2007), published from the
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
, which is available as an online database through subscribing libraries. The Tudor biographies amongst the fifty-seven thousand lives in the
ODNB
provide an essential introduction to many of the famous and forgotten individuals mentioned here. Each biography includes a bibliography to guide further reading.

Chapter 1: A World Full of Magic

1.
Eamon Duffy,
The Stripping of the Altars
, 2nd ed. (New Haven and London, 2005), pp. 280–1.

2.
BLO MS Ashmole 487.

3.
Duffy,
Stripping of the Altars
, pp. 266–72.

4.
Ibid., pp. 73–4;
The Commonplace Book of Robert Reynes of Acle
, ed. C. Louis (New York, 1980), pp. 167, 169–70, 247–8.

5.
Duffy,
Stripping of the Altars
, pp. 279, 524–63.

6.
Ibid., p. 16.

7.
Ibid., pp. 23–6, 136, 279.

8.
Ibid., pp. 93–4, 98–100, 110, 119–20; Keith Thomas,
Religion and the Decline of Magic
(London, 1971), pp. 33–5, 44.

9.
Michael Lapidge, ‘Dunstan [St Dunstan] (
d
. 988)’,
ODNB
, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, [
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8288]
.

10.
Duffy,
Stripping of the Altars
, pp. 53, 59, 112–14, 157–61; R.C.D. Baldwin, ‘Thorne, Robert, the elder (
c
.1460–1519)’,
ODNB
, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, January 2008 [
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27347]
; TNA E117/4/1; GL MS 4887, pp. 145, 150.

11.
BL MS Cotton Charters XIII and XIV.I; Society of Antiquaries of London, MS 728/3, fos. 7v–8v; Society of Antiquaries MS 378, fo. 575, in
Miscellanea Genalogica et Heraldica
, 5th ser., 8 (1932–4), pp. 263–4;
MH
, Dedication;
LP
, xvi, no. 1391.11; TNA SP 1/229, fo. 1, in
LP
i, (I), no. 20.