Chapter V (1)

THE COLLEGE AND THE “WIZARD WARDEN” OF MANCHESTER.

Of those who make up the mighty tide of human life that daily sweeps along the great highway of traffic between the Manchester Exchange and the Victoria Railway Station, how few there are who ever give even a passing thought to the quaint mediæval relic that stands within a few yards of them—almost the only relic of bygone days that Manchester now possesses—the College. Pass through the arched portal into the great quadrangle, the College Yard as it is called, and what a striking contrast is presented. Without, all is noise and hurry and bustle; within, quietude and seclusion prevail. The old place is almost the only link that connects the Manchester of the present with the Manchester of yore; and surely it is something to feel that within this eager, striving, money-getting Babylon there is a little Zoar where you may escape from the turmoil, and the whirl, and the worry of the busy city, and, forgetting your own chronology, allow the memory to wander along the dim grass-grown aisles of antiquity, recalling the scenes and episodes and half-forgotten incidents that illustrate the changes society has undergone, and show how the past may be made a guide for the present and the future.

A wealth of interest gathers round this old time-worn memorial, and its history is entwined with that of the town itself. That lively and imaginative antiquary, Whitaker, has striven to prove that upon its site the subjects of the Cæsars erected their summer camp, but the story, it must be confessed, rests on but a slender foundation. There is little doubt, however, that the Saxon thegn fixed his abode here, and dispensed justice according to the rude fashion of the times—which means that he did what seemed right in his own eyes, and hanged those who ventured to question the propriety of his proceedings. The Norman barons who succeeded him, the Gresleys and the La Warres, the men who bore themselves well and bravely at Crecy, Agincourt, and Poictiers, held their court here for generations, until good old Thomas La Warre, the last of the line, the priest-lord as he has been called—for he held the rectory as well as the barony of Manchester—gave up his ancestral home as a permanent residence for the warden and fellows of the ancient parish church which he caused to be collegiated. But the splendid provision he bequeathed was not long enjoyed by the ecclesiastics for whom it was intended. In 1547, when the minor religious houses were suppressed, the college was dissolved, and the lands, with the building of the College House, reverted to Edward VI., who granted them to Edward Earl of Derby, subject to the payment by him of some small pensions and other charges. On Queen Mary’s accession the Church was re-collegiated, and the deeds of alienation in part recalled. But the College House and the lands pertaining to it were never recovered, though some of the wardens were considerately allowed by the Stanleys to occupy part of the premises that had belonged of right to their predecessors.

In the eventful times which followed, the building experienced many and various vicissitudes. At the time the fierce struggle between Charles I. and the Parliament began a part was used as a magazine for powder and arms, for we read that when the Commission of Array was issued Sir Alexander Radcliffe, of Ordsall, and his neighbour Mr. Prestwich, of Hulme, two of the commissioners nominated in the King’s proclamation, attended by the under sheriff, went to Manchester “to seize ten barrels of powder and several bundles of match which were stowed in a room of the College.” During the troublous times of the Commonwealth the building was in the hands of the official sequestrators, as part of the forfeited possessions of the Royalist Earl of Derby; and at that time the monthly meetings of the Presbyterian Classis, the “X’sian consciensious people” as they were called, were held within the refectory. A part of the building was transformed into a prison, and another portion was occupied as private dwellings. In 1650, as appears by a complaint lodged in the Duchy Court of Lancaster, “a common brewhouse” was set up on the premises, the brewers claiming exemption from grinding their malt at the School Mills, to which by custom the toll belonged, on the plea that the brewhouse was within the College, the old baronial residence, and therefore did not owe such suit and service to the mills.

About the same time a portion of the College barn (between the prison and the College gatehouse) was converted into a workhouse, the first in Manchester, having been acquired by the churchwardens and overseers in order that it might be “made in readiness to set the poor people on work to prevent their begging.” Another part was used for the purposes of an Independent church, the first of the kind in the town, and which would appear to have been set up without “waiting for a civil sanction.” The minister was John Wigan, who at the outset of his career had been episcopally ordained to Gorton, which place he left in 1646, and fixed his abode at Birch, where, we are told, “he set up Congregationalism.” This brought him in collision with the “Classis.” Subsequently he left Birch, entered the army, became a captain, and afterwards a major. The church which he founded in the College barn is alluded to by Hollinworth. How it came to be established here would be inexplicable but for the explanation Adam Martindale gives of the matter. He says:—

The Colledge lands being sold, and the Colledge itself, to Mr.
Wigan, who now being turned Antipædobaptist, and I know not what
more, made a barne there into a chappell, where he and many of
his perswasion preached doctrine diametrically opposite to the
(Presbyterian) ministers’ perswasion under their very nose.

Wigan had contrived to attract the notice of Cromwell, and “received some maintenance out of the sequestrations.” Whether with this and from pillage and plunder while with the Republican army he obtained money enough to purchase the lease of the College is not clear, but his conduct during the later years of his life does not present him in a very favourable light. During his time a survey of the College property was made, and it then comprised:—

Ye large building called ye College in Manchester, consisting of
many rooms, with twoe barnes, one gatehouse, verie much decayd,
one parcell of ground, formerly an orchard, and one garden, now in
ye possession of Joseph Werden, gent., whose pay for ye same for
ye use of ye Commonwealth—tenn pounds yearly. There is likewise
one other room in ye said College Reserved and now made use of
for publique meetings of X’sian consciensious people (_i.e._, the
Classis).

Neither the sequestrators nor Mr. Wigan were at much pains to preserve the fabric of the College while it was in their hands. The building and outhousing fell into decay, and became ruinous; and there is little doubt this interesting relic would have disappeared altogether but for the timely interposition of one of Manchester’s most worthy sons. Humphrey Chetham, a wealthy trader, who had amassed a considerable fortune, conceived the idea of founding an hospital for the maintenance and education of poor boys, and also the establishing of a public library in his native town. He entered into negotiations with the sequestrators for the purchase of the College, then, as we have seen, in a sadly dilapidated condition, for the purpose. Owing to some dispute, the project remained for a time in abeyance, but it was never entirely abandoned; and in his will Chetham directed that his executors should make the purchase, if it could be accomplished. After his death this was done, the building was repaired, and from that time to the present, a period of more than two hundred years, it has continued to be occupied in accordance with the founder’s benevolent intentions. Thus has been preserved to Manchester one of its oldest and most interesting memorials.

Many and strange vicissitudes of fate
Those time-worn walls have seen. The dwelling once
Of servants of the Lord; in stormy days,
The home of Cromwell’s stern and armèd band,
A barracks and a prison! Now it stands
A lasting monument of Chetham’s fame,
Unto posterity a boon most rich—
A refuge for the child of poverty,
A still secluded haunt for studious men,
The college of a merchant.

Though a mighty change has been wrought in the surroundings, the ancient pile looks pretty much the same as it must have done three centuries ago, when Warden Dee, who then occupied it, was casting horoscopes and practising alchemy, and when Drayton saw it, and in his “Polyolbion” made the Irwell sing—

First Roche, a dainty rill....
And Irk add to my store.
And Medlock to their much by lending somewhat more;
At Manchester they meet, all kneeling to my state,
Where brave I show myself.

The Irwell and the Irk still mingle their waters round the base of the rocky precipice on which the College stands, but alas for the daintiness or bravery of either!

As you enter the spacious courtyard a long, low, monastic-looking pile with two projecting wings meets the eye, presenting all that quaintness and picturesque irregularity of outline so characteristic of buildings of the mediæval period, with scarcely a feature to suggest the busy life that is going on without its walls. On the right is the great arched gateway giving admission from the Long Mill Gate, and which in old times constituted the main entrance. At the opposite or north-western angle is the principal entrance to the building itself. As you pass through the low portal you notice on the right the great kitchen, large and lofty and open to the roof, with its fireplace capacious enough to roast an ox; adjoining is the pantry, and close by that most important adjunct the buttery. On the other side of the vestibule, and separated from it by a ponderous oaken screen, panelled and ornamented, and black with age, is the ancient refectory or dining hall, where the recipients of Chetham’s bounty assemble daily for their meals and chant their “_Non nobis_.” It is a spacious apartment, with a lofty arched roof and wide yawning fireplace, preserving not merely the original form and appearance but the identical arrangement of the old baronial and conventual halls. In pre-Reformation times this was the chief entertaining room, and its appearance suggests the idea that in those remote days the ecclesiastics of Manchester loved good cheer, and were by no means sparing in their hospitalities. At the further end, opposite the screen, may still be seen the ancient daīs, raised a few inches above the general level of the floor, on which, in accordance with custom, was placed the “hie board,” or table dormant, at which sat the warden, his principal guests and the chief ecclesiastics ranged according to their rank above the salt, whilst the inferior clergy and others were accommodated at the side tables—the poor wandering mendicant who, by chance, found himself at the door, and being admitted to a humble share of the feast, taking his position near the screen, and thankfully fed, like Lazarus, with the crumbs that fell from the great man’s table.

At the further end of the vestibule you come upon the cloisters surrounding a small court, and note the crumbling grey walls and vaulted passages of this the most perfect and most characteristic portion of the original building.

Just before reaching the cloisters, you ascend by a stone staircase, guarded by massive oak balusters, that leads up to the library, where, as “Alick” Wilson sings—

Booath far and woide,
Theer’s yards o’books at every stroide,
From top to bothum, eend and soide.

They are disposed in wall cases extending the length of the corridors, and branching off into a series of mysterious-looking little recesses, stored with material relics of the past, old manuscripts, and treasures of antiquity and art of various kinds, each recess being protected from the encroachments of the profane by its own lattice gate. Here

The dim windows shed a solemn light,

that is quite in keeping with the character of the place, and as you pass along you marvel at the plenteous store of ponderous folios and goodly quartos, in their plain sober bindings, that are ranged on either side, and you reflect upon the world of thought and the profundity of learning gathered together, until the mind becomes impressed with a feeling of reverence for the mighty spirits whose noblest works are here enshrined.

Until late years this gloomy corridor was at once a library and museum. High up on the ceiling, on the tops of the bookcases and in the window recesses, were displayed a formidable array of sights and monsters, as varied and grotesque as those which appalled the heart of the Trojan prince in his descent to hell—skeletons, snakes, alligators, to say nothing of the “hairy man,” and such minor marvels as Queen Elizabeth’s shoe, Oliver Cromwell’s sword,

An th’ clog fair crackt by thunner-bowt,
An th’ woman noather lawmt nor nowt.

Formerly, at Easter and other festivals, crowds of gaping holiday folk thronged the College, and gazed with vacant wonderment at the incongruous collection, while the blue-coated cicerones, to the discomfort of the readers, in sonorous tones bawled out the names of the trophies displayed, concluding their catalogue with an account of the wondrous wooden cock that is said (and truly) to crow when it smells roast beef. But the quietude is no longer broken by these inharmonious chantings—the strange collection has been transferred to a more fitting home, and the scholar may now store his mind with “the physic of the soul” and hold pleasant intercourse with antiquity without being rudely recalled to the consciousness of the present by such startling incongruities.

At the end of the corridor a heavy oaken door admits you to the reading-room, a large square antique chamber, with arched ceiling and panelled walls, and a deeply-recessed oriel opposite the door, that by the very cosiness of its appearance lures you to stay and drink “at the pure well of English undefiled.” In the window lighting this pleasant secluded nook is a shield on which the arms of the benevolent Chetham are depicted in coloured glass—arms that gave him much trouble to obtain, and the cost of which led him to facetiously remark that they were not depicted in such good metal as that in which payment for them was made, to which Lightbowne, his attorney, assented, sagely observing, “there is soe much difference betwixt Paynter’s Gould and Current Coyne,” a conclusion the correctness of which we will not stay to dispute. No doubt it was the thought that he had “paid for his whistle” that led the careful old merchant to adopt the suggestive motto, “_Quod tuum tene_.” The furniture corresponds with the ancient character of the room. In one corner is a carved oak buffet of ancient date, with a raised inscription, setting forth that it was the gift of Humphrey Chetham. There are ponderous chairs, with leather-padded backs, studded with brass nails; and still more ponderous tables, one of which we are gravely assured contains as many pieces as there are days in the year. Over the fireplace, surmounted by his coat of arms, is a portrait of the grave-visaged but large-hearted founder, with pillars on each side, resting on books, and crowned with antique lamps, suggestive of the founder’s desire to diffuse wisdom and happiness by the light of knowledge; and, flanking them, on one side is a pelican feeding its young with its own blood, and on the other the veritable wooden cock already mentioned; antique mirrors are affixed to the panelling; and dingy-looking portraits of Lancashire worthies gaze at you from the walls—Nowell and Whitaker, and Bolton and Bradford, with men who have reflected lustre upon the county in more recent times, not the least interesting being the two portraits lately added of the venerable president of the Chetham Society, and that indefatigable bibliopole, the late librarian, Mr. Jones.

On the ground floor, beneath the reading-room, is an apartment of corresponding dimensions, which at present more especially claims our attention. It is commonly known as the Feoffees’ room; but in bygone days it was appropriated to the use of the wardens of the College. It is a large, square, sombre-looking chamber, with a projecting oriel at one end, and small pointed windows, with deep sills and latticed panes, that, if they do not altogether “exclude the light,” are yet sufficiently dim to “make a noonday night.” As you cross the threshold your footsteps echo on the hard oak floor—all else is still and silent. A staid cloistered gloom, and a quiet, half monastic air pervades the place that carries your fancies back to mediæval times. The walls for a considerable height are covered with black oak wainscotting, surrounded by a plaster frieze enriched with arabesque work. The ceiling is divided into compartments by deeply-moulded beams and rafters that cross and recross each other in a variety of ways, all curiously wrought, and ornamented at the intersections with carvings of fabulous creatures and grotesque faces. On one of the bosses is a grim-visaged head, depicted as in the act of devouring a child, which tradition affirms is none other than that of the giant Tarquin, who held threescore and four of King Arthur’s knights in thraldom in his castle at Knot Mill, and was afterwards himself there slain by the valorous Sir Lancelot of the Lake, who cut off his head and set the captives free; all which forms a very pretty story, though we are more inclined to believe that the mediæval sculptor, thinking little and caring less for Tarquin or the Arthurian knights, merely copied the model of some pagan mason, and reproduced the burlesque figure of Saturn eating one of his own children.[22] On one side of the room is a broad fireplace, with the armorial ensigns of one of the Tudor sovereigns behind, and those of the benevolent Chetham on the frieze above. The whole of the furniture is in character with the place—quaint, old-fashioned, and substantial. Shining tall-backed chairs are disposed around the room, and in the centre is a broad table of such massiveness as almost to defy the efforts of muscular power to remove it.

[Note 22: In the church of Mont Mijour there is a bracket on which is carved a head devouring a child, closely resembling the one in the warden’s room of the College, and supposed to be intended for a caricature of Saturn.]

A special interest attaches to this sombre-looking chamber from the circumstance that tradition has associated it with the name of Dr. Dee, the “Wizard Warden” of Manchester, and that here Roby has laid the scene of one of his most entertaining Lancashire Legends. In this “vaulted room of gramarye,” it is said, our English “Faust” had his

Mystic implements of magic might,

practised the occult sciences, cast his nativities, transmuted the baser metals to gold, and, as the common people believed, held familiar intercourse with the Evil One, and did other uncanny things. But of Dee and his doings we purpose to speak anon.

The wardenship of Dr. Dee forms a curious chapter in the ecclesiastical history of Manchester, and at the same time presents us with a humiliating picture of the condition of society in the golden days of the Virgin Queen. It has been said that witchcraft came in with the Stuarts and went out with them; but this is surely an injustice to the memory of Elizabeth’s sapient successor, for the belief in sorcery, witchcraft, enchantment, demonology, and practices of a kindred nature were widely prevalent long ere that monarch ascended the English throne. Henry VIII., in 1531, granted a formal licence to “two learned clerks” “to practise sorcery and to build churches,” a curious combination of evil and its antidote; and ten years later he, with his accustomed inconsistency, issued a decree making “witchcraft and sorcery felony, without benefit of clergy.”

The belief in these abominations was not confined to any one class of the people, or to the professors of any one form of faith. On the contrary, Churchmen, Romanists, and Puritans were alike the dupes of the loathsome impostors who roamed the country, though each in turn was ready to upbraid the others with being believers in the generally prevailing error, and not unfrequently with being participators in the frauds that were practised. The great and munificent Edward, Earl of Derby, “kept a conjuror in his house secretly;” and his daughter-in-law, Margaret Clifford, Countess of Derby, lost the favour of Queen Elizabeth for a womanish curiosity in “consulting with wizards or cunning men.” The bishops gave authority and a form of licence to the clergy to cast out devils; Romish ecclesiastics claimed to have a monopoly of the power; and the Puritan ministers, not to be behind them, tried their hands at the imposture.

Education had then made little progress, and the men of Lancashire, though the merriest of Englishmen, were as ignorant and superstitious as they were merry. Nowhere was the belief in supernatural agency more rife than in the Palatinate. The shaping power of the imagination had clothed every secluded clough and dingle with the weird drapery of superstition, and made every ruined or solitary tenement the abode of unhallowed beings, who were supposed to hold their diabolical revelries within it. The doctrines of necromancy and witchcraft were in common belief, and it is doubtful if there was a single man in the county who did not place the most implicit faith in both. Hence, Queen Elizabeth, if it was not that she wished to get rid of a troublesome suitor, may have thought there was a fitness of things in preferring a professor of the Black Art to the wardenship of Manchester; believing, possibly, that one given to astrology, and such like practices, could not find a more congenial home than in a county specially prone, as Lancashire then was, to indulge in _diablerie_ and the practice of alchemy and enchantment.

A brief reference to the earlier career of Dr. Dee may not be altogether uninteresting. According to the genealogy drawn up by himself, he belonged to the line of Roderick the Great, Prince of Wales. His father, Rowland Dee, who was descended from a family settled in Radnorshire, carried on the business of a vintner in London; and there, or rather at Mortlake, within a few miles of the city, on the 13th July, 1527, the future warden first saw the light. After receiving a preliminary education at one or two of the city schools, and subsequently at the Grammar School of Chelmsford, he entered St. John’s College, Cambridge, being then only fifteen years of age; and during the five years he remained there he maintained, with unflinching strictness, the rule “only to sleepe four houres every night; to allow to meate and drink (and some refreshing after), two houres every day; and,” he adds, “of the other eighteen houres, all (except the tyme of going to and being at divine service) was spent in my studies and learning.” On leaving the University he passed some time in the Low Countries, his object being “to speake and conferr with some learned men, and chiefly mathematicians.” He made the acquaintance of Frisius, Mercator, Antonius Gogara, and other celebrated Flemings; and on his return to England he was chosen to be a Fellow of King Henry’s newly-erected College of Trinity, and made under-reader of the Greek tongue. His reputation stood very high, and his mathematical and astronomical pursuits, in which he was assisted by some rare and curious instruments—among them, as we are told, an “astronomer’s staff of brass, that was made of Gemma Frisius’ divising; the two great globes of Gerardus Mercator’s making; and the astronomer’s ring of brass, as Gemma Frisius had newly framed it,” which he had brought from Flanders—drew upon him among the common people the suspicion of being a conjuror, an opinion that was strengthened by his getting up at Cambridge a Greek play, the comedy of “Aristophanes,” in which, according to his own account, he introduced “the Scarabeus his flying up to Jupiter’s pallace, with a man and his basket of victualls on her back; whereat was great wondring, and many vaine reportes spread abroad of the meanes how that was affected.” Though causing “great wondring,” and seeming at that time too marvellous to be accomplished by human agency, it was in all probability only a clumsy performance, and much inferior to the ordinary transformation scene of a modern pantomime. The “vaine reportes,” however, led to Dee’s being accused of magical practices, and he found it expedient to leave the University, having first obtained his degree of Master of Arts. In 1548 he went abroad and entered as a student at Louvain, where his philosophical and mathematical skill brought him under the notice of some of the continental _savants_. Apart from his intellectual power, he must in his earlier years have possessed considerable charms both of person and manner, for he contrived to gain friends and win admiration wherever he went. He was consulted by men of the highest rank and station from all parts of Europe, and before he left Louvain he had the degree of Doctor of Laws conferred upon him.

On quitting that University, in 1550, he proceeded to Paris, where he turned the heads of the French people, who became almost frenzied in their admiration of him. He read lectures on Euclid’s Elements—“a thing,” as he says, “never done publiquely in any University of Christendome,” and his lectures were so fully attended that the mathematical school could not hold all his auditors, who clambered up at the windows and listened at the doors as best they could. A mathematical lectureship, with a yearly stipend of 200 crowns, and several other honourable offices were also offered him from “five Christian Emperors,” among them being an invitation from the Muscovite Emperor to visit Moscow, where he was promised an income at the Imperial hands of £2,000 a year, his diet free out of the Emperor’s kitchen, and to be in dignity and authority among the highest of the nobility; but he preferred to reside in his native country, and, foregoing these inducements, he returned to England in 1551.

The fame of his marvellous acquirements had preceded him, and on his arrival he was presented by Secretary Cecil to the young King, Edward VI., who granted him a pension of 100 crowns a year, which was soon “bettered,” as he says, by his “bestowing on me (as it were by exchange) the rectory of Upton-upon-Seaverne,” in Worcestershire, and to this was added the rectory of Long Leadenham, in Lincolnshire. Though holding these two benefices, it is somewhat remarkable that Dee does not appear to have ever been admitted to Holy Orders. There is no very clear evidence that he at any time occupied his Worcestershire parsonage, but he must have been resident for a while at Long Leadenham, for at that place a stone has been found inscribed with his name and sundry cabalistic figures, indicating that he had at some time lived in the parish. If he ever resided at Upton-upon-Severn he must have found an uncongenial neighbour in Bishop Bonner, who then held the living of Ripple—for the one was visionary, sensitive, and unpractical, and the other stern, cruel, and unscrupulous, while on religious and political questions their views were as wide apart as the poles.

On the 6th of July, 1553, Edward VI. finished his “short but saintly course,” and the solemn sound then heard from the bell-towers of England, while it announced the fact of his decease, crushed the hopes of Dee, for a time at least, and in a proportionate degree raised the expectations of Bonner. Mary had not been many months upon the throne before Dee was accused of carrying on a correspondence with Princess Elizabeth’s servants and of compassing the Queen’s death by means of enchantments. He was cast into prison and tried upon the charge of high treason, but acquitted; after which he was turned over to Bonner to see if heresy might not be proved against him. Christian martyrdom, however, was not in Mr. Dee’s vocation, and so, after six months’ detention, on giving satisfaction to the Queen’s Privy Council, and entering into recognisances “for ready appearing and good abearing for four months longer,” he was set at liberty August 19, 1555, to find that during his incarceration his rectory had been bestowed upon the Dean of Worcester, Bonner having detained him in captivity in order that he might have the disposal of his preferment. The following characteristic letter, written about this time, and addressed from the Continent (endorsed “fro Callice to Bruxells”), has been recently unearthed from among the Marian State papers by that painstaking antiquary, Mr. J. Eglinton Bailey, F.S.A., and printed in Mr. Earwaker’s “Local Gleanings:”

My dutye premysed unto youre good L’rdshype as hyt apperteynethe.
This daye abowt iiij of the clocke at after noone my L.
Chawncelare (Gardyner) taketh his Jorneye toward England havynge
rather made a meane to a peace to be hereafter condyscendyd unto,
than a peace at thys tyme yn any pointe determyned. In England
all ys quyete. Souch as wrote trayterouse l’res (letters) ynto
Germany be apprehendyd as lykewyse oothers yt dyd calculate ye
kynge and quene and my Lady Elizabeth natyvytee, wherof on Dee and
Cary and butler, and on ooyr of my Lady Elezabeths ... ar accused
and yt they should have a famylyare sp(irit) wch ys ye moore
susp’ted, for yt fferys on of ther a(ccu)sers-hadd ymedyatly upon
thaccusatys bothe hys chyldr(en) strooken, the on wth put deathe,
thother wth blyndnes. Thys trustynge shortly to doe youe yn an
ooyr place bettre servyce I bed yowr good Lordshype most hartily
to farewell. Wryte ffro Cales ye viijth of June.

Yowr Lordshyps most asured
THO. MARTYN.

Happily for Dee, Mary’s reign was not of long duration, and on the accession of Elizabeth he was at once restored to the sunshine of Royal favour and courted by the wealthy and the great. He was consulted by Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester, by the Queen’s desire, respecting “a propitious day” for her coronation, and he says,—

I wrote at large and delivered it for Her Majesty’s use, by the
commandment of the Lord Robert, what in my judgment the ancient
astrologers would determine on the election day of such a time as
was appointed for Her Majesty to be crowned in.

At the same time he was presented to the Queen, who made him great promises, not always fulfilled—amongst others, that where her brother Edward “had given him a crown she would give him a noble.”

Dee was a great favourite with Elizabeth, who could well appreciate his intellectual power, coupled as it was with some personal graces. She frequently visited him at his house to confer with him and to have peeps at futurity; and nothing perhaps better illustrates the faith the “Virgin Queen” had in his astrological powers than the circumstance of her consulting him, as other virgins in less exalted stations consult “wise men,” upon the subject of her matrimonial projects, and also that she had her nativity cast in order to ascertain if she could marry with advantage to the nation. The credulous Queen placed the most implicit confidence in Dee’s predictions. She was full of hope that the genius and learning which had already worked such wonders would accomplish yet more, and that he would eventually succeed in penetrating the two great mysteries—the Elixir Vitæ and the Philosopher’s Stone—those secrets which would endue her with perpetual youth and fill her treasury with inexhaustible wealth.

The fame of the English seer became more and more widely spread. Invitations poured in upon him from foreign courts, and his visits to the Continent became frequent. In 1563 he was at Venice; the same year, or the one following, he was at Antwerp, superintending the printing of his “Monas Hyeroglyphica.” An original copy of this work is preserved in the Manchester Free Library. Casauban acknowledges that, though it was a little book, he could extract no reason or sense out of it. Possibly he was one of those who, as Dee says, “dispraised it because they understood it not.” Let us hope Dee’s patron was more fortunate, for she had the advantage of reading it under the guidance of its author, in her palace at Greenwich, after his return from beyond seas. The book is dedicated to the Emperor Maximilian, to whom Dee presented it in person, being at the time, as there is some reason to believe, on a secret mission, for Lilly says, “he was the Queen’s intelligencer, and had a salary for his maintenance from the Secretaries of State.”

After his return, he was sent for on one occasion, “to prevent the mischief which divers of Her Majesty’s Privy Council suspected to be intended against Her Majesty, by means of a certain image of wax, with a great pin stuck into it, about the breast of it, found in Lincoln’s Inn Fields,” and this, we are told, he did “in a godly and artificial manner.” In 1571 he again went abroad, and while returning became dangerously ill at Lorraine, where the Queen despatched two English physicians “with great speed from Hampton Court,” to attend him, “sent him divers rareties to eat, and the Honourable Lady Sydney to attend on him, and comfort him with divers speeches from Her Majesty, _pithy_ and _gracious_.” On his return he settled in the house which had belonged to his father, at Mortlake, in Surrey, a building on the banks of the Thames, a little westward of the church. Here for some time he led a life of privacy and study, collecting books and manuscripts, beryls and magic crystals, talismans, &c., his library, it is said, consisting of more than 4,000 volumes, the fourth part of which were MSS., the whole being valued at the time at more than £2,000.

In his “Compendious Rehearsall” there is a curious account of a visit which Elizabeth, attended by many of her Court, made to his house at Mortlake:—

1575 10 Martii.—The Queens Majestie, with her Most honourable
Privy Councell, and other her lords and nobility, came purposely
to have visited my library; but finding that my wife was within
four houres before buried out of the house, her Majestie refused
to come in; but willed me to fetch my glass so famous, and to shew
unto her some of the properties of it, which I did; her Majestie
being taken downe from her horse (by the Earle of Leicester,
Master of the horse, by the Church wall of Mortlak), did see
some of the properties of that glass, to her Majestie’s great
contentment and delight, and so in most gracious manner did thank
me, &c.

The glass is supposed to have been of a convex form, and so managed as to show the reflection of different figures and faces.

On the 8th October, 1578, the Queen had a conference with Dee, at Richmond, and on the 16th of the same month she sent her physician, Dr. Bayly, to confer with him “about her Majestie’s grievous pangs and paines by reason of toothake and the rheum, &c.;” and before the close of the year he was sent a journey of over 1,500 miles by sea and land, “to consult with the learned physitions and philosophers (_i.e._ astrologers) beyond the seas for her Majestie’s health recovering and preserving; having by the right honourable Earle of Leicester and Mr. Secretary Walsingham but one hundred days allowed to go and come in.”

After his return, Elizabeth honoured him with another visit, as appears by the following entry in his “Diary”:—

1580. Sept. 17th.—The Quene’s Majestie came from Rychemond in her
coach, the higher way of Mortlak felde, and when she came right
against the Church she turned down toward my howse; and when she
was against my garden in the felde she stode there a good while,
and then came ynto the street at the great gate of the felde,
when she espyed me at my doore making obeysciens to her Majestie;
she beckend her hand for me; I came to her coach side, she very
speedily pulled off her glove and gave me her hand to kiss; and to
be short, asked me to resort to her court, and to give her to wete
when I cam ther.

In less than a month he received another visit from his patron, when the shadow of death was over his house; for his mother, who shared the house at Mortlake with him, had expired a few hours before the arrival of the Royal party. This time Elizabeth seems to have come less to please herself than to comfort her favourite:—

Oct. 10th.—The Quene’s Majestie, to my great comfort (_hora
quinta_), cam with her trayn from the court, and at my dore
graciously calling me to her, on horsbak, exhorted me briefly to
take my mother’s death patiently; and withall told me that the
Lord Threasorer had gretly commended my doings for her title,
which he had to examyn, which title in two rolls, he had browght
home two hours before; she remembred allso how at my wive’s death
it was her fortune likewise to call uppon me.

The “title” alluded to had reference to the doubts Elizabeth affected to have as to her right to rule over the new countries that were at the time being discovered by her gallant sea captains, when, to ease her scruples, she had desired Dee to give her a full account of the newly-found regions. This he did in a few days, producing two large rolls, which he delivered to the Queen “in the garden at Richmond;” and in which not only the geography, but also the history, of the English colonies throughout the world was given at length. Dee must have made a liberal draught upon his imagination in producing such a work; and Elizabeth, credulous as she was, could hardly have looked upon his account of Virginia or Florida or Newfoundland as trustworthy history. She wished to believe it, however, and therefore signified her gracious approval of Dee’s production, much to the disgust of Burleigh, who in the Queen’s presence openly expressed his disbelief; and when, four days later, Dee attended at the Lord Treasurer’s house, he refused to admit him, and when he came forth, as he says, “did not, or would not, speak to me, I doubt not of some new grief conceyved.” On further examination of the writings, Burleigh’s misgivings may have been removed, or, as is much more likely, deeming it unwise to provoke a quarrel with one whom the Queen delighted to honour, he strove to make amends for his discourtesy, for he sent Dee a haunch of venison three weeks after. Though the breach was healed, the scholar’s fear of the Lord Treasurer was not altogether dispelled, if we may judge from a dream with which he was troubled shortly afterwards, when, as he says—

I dreamed that I was deade; and afterwards my bowels were taken
out. I walked and talked with diverse, and among other with the
Lord Threasorer, who was come to my house to burn my bones when I
was dead, and thought he looked sourely on me.

Mr. Disraeli, in his “Amenities of Literature,” rightly estimated the character of the “Wizard Warden” of Manchester when he remarked that “the imagination of Dee often predominated over his science—while both were mingling in his intellectual habits, each seemed to him to confirm the other. Prone to the mystical lore of what was termed the occult sciences, which in reality are no sciences at all, since whatever remains occult ceases to be science, Dee lost his better genius.” Casaubon maintains that throughout he acted with sincerity, but this may be very well doubted. It is true that until he dabbled in magical arts he gave most of his time and talents to science and literature, but in the later years of his life he laid aside every pursuit that did not aid in his alchemical and magical studies, and rapidly degenerated into the mere necromancer and adventurer. Conjuror or not, he sported with conjuror’s tools; and when in the ardour of his enthusiasm he claimed to hold intercourse with angelic beings whom he could summon to his presence at his will, and boasted the possession of a crystal given him by the Angel Uriel, which enabled him to reveal all secrets, he naturally subjected himself to suspicions which, as he afterwards lamented, “tended to his utter undoing.”

Many of the incidents of his life are recorded in his “Private Diary,” edited for the Camden Society by Mr. J. Orchard Halliwell, and the portion relating to the period of his wardenship of Manchester has since been edited from the autograph MSS. in the Bodleian Library, with copious notes, and the errors of the Camden edition corrected by Mr. J. Eglinton Bailey. This journal gives a curious insight into the private life and real character of the strange yet simple-minded writer, relating, as it does with much circumstantial detail, his family affairs, his labours and rewards, and his trials and tribulations. There are notes of the visits paid to him by great people; of his attendances at Court; entries of those who consulted him as to the casting of their nativities; particulars of moneys borrowed from time to time (for, though he received large fees and presents, he was almost continuously in a state of impecuniosity); and the ordinary small talk of a common-place book. On the 15th June, 1579, his mother surrendered the house at Mortlake to him, with reversion to his wife and his heirs. On the 5th February in the preceding year he had married, as his second wife, a daughter of Mr. Bartholomew Fromonds, of East Cheam, a fellow-worker in alchemical pursuits, the lady being 23 years of age and Dee 51. They do not appear to have had many sympathies in common. She was a strong-minded, shrewd, managing woman, with a somewhat vixenish temper, who exercised considerable influence over her visionary and unpractical husband, and kept him in awe of her, though not sufficiently to restrain his reckless expenditure on books, manuscripts, and scientific instruments. Occasionally he complains of her irritability, but it must be confessed that, with her domestic cares, the worry of her “mayds,” the sickness of her children, and the difficulty she had in getting from her mystical husband sufficient money for the needful expenses of her household, the poor woman had anxieties enough to try the most enduring patience and sour the sweetest temper. On one occasion he writes: “Jane most desperately angry in respect of her maydes;” at another time he puts up a prayer to the angels that she may be cured of some malady that so she may “be of a quieter mind, and not so testy and fretting as she hath been.” And again, “Katharin (a child under eight years) by a blow on the eare given by her mother did bled at the nose very much, which did stay for an howre and more; afterward she did walk into the town with nurse; upon her coming home she bled agayn.”

Though Dee was much noticed and flattered by Elizabeth, the preferment she so often promised him was slow in coming; perhaps it was that the calculating Queen wished to ascertain the full value of his horoscope, which could be only done by the efflux of time, though, if the prosperity of her reign depended upon the day he had chosen for her coronation, she then had abundant proof of his magical skill. Dee was beginning to lose heart, his finances were getting low, he was in the usurer’s hands, and his pecuniary obligations were disquieting him. At this time came the crisis of his life. In 1581 he formed the disastrous friendship with Kelly, whom he took into his service as an assistant in his alchemical and astrological labours.

This individual, whose dealings in the Black Art would fill a volume, was a crafty and unscrupulous schemer—a clever rogue, who, without a tithe of the learning or genius of Dee, contrived to work upon his credulity to such an extent that Dee believed him to have the power of seeing, hearing, and holding “conversations with spirituall creatures” that were invisible and inaudible to Dee himself. Kelly, who was nearly thirty years the junior of Dee, having been born in 1555, “left Oxford,” says Mr. John Eglinton Bailey, in his admirable notes to the reprint of Dee’s “Diary,” “abruptly to ramble in Lancashire,” and for some delinquencies, coining it is said, had his ears cut off at Lancaster. Mr. Bailey says that he had been a lawyer, and Lilly states on the authority of his sister that he had practised as an apothecary at Worcester. Of a restless, roving, and ambitious disposition, he was

Everything by turns, and nothing long.

It was his practice to raise the dead by incantations, and to consult the corpse for the purpose of obtaining a knowledge, as he pretended, of the fate of the living. Weever, in his “Ancient Funeral Monuments” (p. 45), says that upon a certain night in the park of Walton-le-Dale, near Preston, with one Paul Wareing, of Clayton Brook, he invoked one of the infernal regiment to know certain passages in the life, as also what might be known of the devil’s foresight of the manner and time of the death, of a young nobleman in Wareing’s wardship. The ceremony being ended, Kelly and his companion repaired to the church of Walton, where they dug up the body of a man recently interred, and whom, by their incantations, they made to deliver strange predictions concerning the same gentleman, who was probably present and anxious to read a page in the book of futurity. This feat, which was no doubt performed by a kind of ventriloquism, is also mentioned by Casaubon. It is not said when the circumstance occurred, but a local historian, anxious to supply the omission, gives the date August 12, 1560, and says that Dee was present. This, however, must be an error, for Kelly could then have been only five years of age, and Dee did not make his acquaintance until long afterwards.

Kelly was a notorious alchemist and necromancer long before Dee became associated with him, and after the unfortunate intimacy commenced he acted as his amanuensis, and performed for him the office of “seer,” by looking into the doctor’s magic crystal,[23] a faculty he himself did not possess, and hence he was obliged to have recourse to Kelly for the revelations from the spirit world. It would seem, therefore, that “mediums” are by no means a modern invention. Dee says he was brought into unison with him by the mediation of the Angel Uriel, and their dealings and daily conferences with the spirits are fully recorded in Casaubon’s work, entitled, “A True and Faithful Relation of what passed for many years between Dr. John Dee and some Spirits.” They had a black spectrum or crystal—a piece of polished cannel coal, in which Kelly affirmed the Angels Gabriel and Raphael, and the whole Rosicrucian hierarchy, appeared at their invocation—and hence the author of “Hudibras” says,—

Kelly did all his feats upon
The devil’s looking-glass—a stone;
Where playing with him at bo-peep
He solved all problems ne’er so deep.

[Note 23: Dee’s magic crystal, or show stone, was preserved at Strawberry Hill until that famous collection was dispersed. A correspondent in _Notes and Queries_ (2nd S., No. 201) says that John Varley, the painter, well known to have been attached to astrology, used to relate a tradition that the Gunpowder Plot was discovered by Dr. Dee with his magic mirror; and he urged the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of interpreting Lord Mounteagle’s letter without some other clue or information than hitherto gained. In a Common Prayer Book, printed by Baskett in 1737, is an engraving of the following scene: In the centre is a circular mirror on a stand, in which is the reflection of the Houses of Parliament by night, and a person entering carrying a dark lantern. Next, on the left side are two men in the costume of James’s time, looking into the mirror—one evidently the King, the other evidently, from his secular habit, not the doctor (Dee), but probably Sir Kenelm Digby. On the right side, at the top, is the eye of Providence darting a ray on the mirror; and below are some legs and hoofs, as if evil spirits were flying out of the picture. The plate is inserted before the service for the 5th November, and would seem to represent the method by which, under Providence (as is evidenced by the eye), the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot was at that time seriously believed to have been effected. The tradition must have been generally and seriously believed, or it never could have found its way into a Prayer Book printed by the King’s printer.]

When an incantation was to take place, “The sacred crystal was placed on a sort of altar before a crucifix, with lighted candles on either side, and an open Psalter before it,” and prayers and ejaculations of the most fervid description were intermingled with the account taken down at Kelly’s dictation of the dress and hair, as well as the sayings and movements, of the angels. Dee was infatuated with his new acquaintance, and every experiment he suggested was tried, at whatever cost, and hence it was not long before Kelly’s weak and credulous dupe found himself in straitened circumstances. It was at this time that the Earl of Leicester, the Queen’s favourite, proposed dining with him at Mortlake and bringing Albert Lasque, the Palatine of Sieradz, who was then in England, with him, when Dee had to explain that he could not give them a suitable dinner without selling some of his plate or pewter to procure it. Leicester mentioned the circumstance to the Queen, who speedily helped her old favourite out of the difficulty by sending him “forty angells of gold.” He thus relates the circumstance:—

Her Majestie (A. 1583 Julii ultimo) being informed by the right
honourable Earle of Leicester, that whereas the same day in the
morning he had told me, that his Honour and Lord Laskey would dyne
with me within two daies after, I confessed sincerely unto him,
that I was not able to prepaire them a convenient dinner, unless
I should presently sell some of my plate or some of my pewter for
it. Whereupon her Majestie sent unto me very royally, within one
hour after, forty angells of gold, from Syon, whither her Majestie
was new come by water from Greenewich.

At the same time he makes the following entry in his “Diary”:—

Mr. Rawlegh his letter unto me of hir Majestie’s good disposition
unto me.

the writer being Sir Walter Raleigh, who was then in great favour with Elizabeth, and himself a patron of Dee’s.

The visit of Count Lasque was an important event in Dee’s career. The Polish noble was accounted of great learning, and fond of “occult studies.” He paid frequent visits to the house at Mortlake, where he was admitted to the _séances_ of the English magician, and became much impressed with his learning and professed knowledge of the mystical world. When the time came for Lasque to return he suggested that Dee should go out with him to Poland, with his wife and children, accompanied by Kelly and his wife and brother, and their servants. When in his castle at Sieradz they could make their experiments in undisturbed seclusion. Seeing no prospect of the fulfilment of the promises made to him at home, and being hampered with debt, Dee, who was then in his 57th year, was nothing loth to try his fortune abroad once more. They left in September, and it was six years before any of them again set foot on English soil. The departure is thus recorded in the “Diary”:—

Sept. 21st (1583).—We went from Mortlake, and so to the Lord
Albert Lasky, I, Mr. E. Kelly, our wives, my children and familie,
we went toward our two ships attending for us, seven or eight myle
below Gravessende.