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A MEDIEVAL GHOST HUNTER
By Scaife, Hazel Lewis, 1872-1939
The name of Dr. John Dee is scarcely
Known to-day, yet Dr. Dee has some
exceedingly well-defined claims to remem-
brance. He was one of the foremost scien-
tists of the Tudor period in English history.
He was famed as a mathematician, astrono-
mer, and philosopher not only in his native
land but in every European center of learn-
ing. Before he was twenty he penned a re-
markable treatise on logic, and he left behind
him at his death a total of nearly a hundred
works on all manner of recondite subjects.
He was the means of introducing into Eng-
land a number of astronomical instruments
hitherto unused, and even unknown, in that
country. His lectures on geometry were the
delight of all who heard them. In Elizabeth's
reign he was frequently consulted by the
highest ministers of the crown with regard to
affairs of State, and was the confidant of the
queen herself, who more than once employed
him on secret missions. He was interested
in everyday affairs as well as in questions of
theoretical importance. The reformation of
the calendar long engaged his attention. He
charted for Elizabeth her distant colonial
dominions. He preached the doctrine of sea-
power, and, like Hakluyt, advocated the up-
building of a strong navy. He was, in some
sort, a participant in Sir Humphrey Gilbert's
scheme for New World colonization.
In a word, Dr. John Dee was a phenome-
nally many-sided man in an age that was pecu-
liarly productive of many-sided men. Even
yet, the catalogue of his interests and accom-
plishments is by no means exhausted. Indeed,
his chief claim to fame and, para-
doxically enough, the great reason why his
reputation practically died with him lies in
the fact that he was one of the earliest of
psychical researchers. At a time when all
men unhesitatingly entertained a belief in the
overshadowing presence of spirits and their
constant intervention in human affairs, Dr.
Dee resolved to prove, if possible, the actual
existence of these mysterious and unseen
beings. To encourage him in his ghost-
hunting zeal was the hope that the spirits, if
actually located by him, might reward his
enterprise by unfolding a secret that had long
been the despair of all medieval scientists
the secret of the philosopher's stone, of the
precious formula whereby the baser metals
could be transmuted into shining gold. With
the heartiest enthusiasm, therefore, Dr. Dee
went to work, and although the spirits with
whom he ultimately came into constant com-
munication brought him no gold but many
tribulations, he remained an ardent psychical
researcher to the day of his death.
Just when he began his explorations of the
invisible world it is impossible to say. But it
must have been at a very early age, for he was
barely twenty-five when a rumor spread that
he was dabbling in the black arts. Two years
later, in 1554, he was definitely accused of
trying to take the life of Queen Mary by en-
chantments, and on this charge was thrown
into prison. For cellmate he had Barthlet
Green, who parted from him only to meet an
agonizing death in the flames, as an arch-
heretic. Dee himself was threatened with the
stake, and was actually placed on trial for his
life before the dread Court of the Star Cham-
ber. But he seems to have had, throughout
his entire career, a singularly plausible manner,
and a magnetic, winning personality. He
succeeded in convincing his judges both of his
innocence of traitorous designs and his re-
ligious orthodoxy, and was allowed to go scot
free. Elizabeth, on her accession to the
throne, naturally looked on him with favor,
as one who had been persecuted by her sister;
and with the more favor since it was widely
reported that he was on the eve of making
the grand discovery for which other alchemists
had ever labored in vain. A man who might
some day make gold at will was certainly not
to be despised; rather, he should be cultivated.
Nor was her esteem for Dee lessened by the
success with which, by astrological calcula-
tions, he named a favorable day for her
coronation; and, a little later, by solemn dis-
enchantment warded off the ill effects of the
Lincoln's Inn Fields incident, when a puppet
of wax, representing Elizabeth, was found
lying on the ground with a huge pin stuck
through its breast.
As a matter of fact, however, Dee was
making headway neither in his quest for the
philosopher's stone nor in his efforts to prove
the existence of a spiritual world. In vain
he pored over every work of occultism upon
which he could lay his hands, and tried all
known means of incantation. Year after year
passed without result, until at last he hit on
the expedient of crystal-gazing. As every
student of things psychical is aware, if one
takes a crystal, or glass of water, or other
body with a reflecting surface, and gaze at it
steadily, he may possibly perceive, after a
greater or less length of time, shadowy images
of persons or scenes in the substance that fixes
his attention. It was so with Dr. Dee, and
not having any understanding of the laws of
subconscious mental action he soon came to
the conclusion that the shadowy figures he
saw in the crystal were veritable spirits.
From this it was an easy step to imagine that
they really talked to him and sought to convey
to him a knowledge of the great secrets of this
world and the next.
The only difficulty was that he could not
understand what they said or, rather, what
he fancied they said. The obvious thing to
do was to find a crystal-gazer with the gift of
the spirit language, and induce him to inter-
pret for Dr. Dee's benefit the revelations of
the images in the glass. Such a crystal-gazer
was ready at hand in the person of a young
man named Edward Kelley. Among the
common people, as Dee well knew, Kelley had
the reputation of being a bold and wicked
wizard. He had been born in Worcester, and
trained in the apothecary's business, but,
tempted by the prospect of securing great
wealth at a minimum of trouble, he had turned
alchemist and magician. It was rumored
that on at least one occasion he had disinterred
a freshly buried corpse, and by his incanta-
tions had compelled the spirit of the dead
man to speak to him. There was more truth
in the report that the reason he always wore
a close-fitting skull-cap was to conceal the
loss of his ears, which had been forfeited to
the Government of England on his conviction
for forgery. Of this last unpleasant incident
Dr. Dee seems to have known nothing. At
any rate, with child-like confidence, he sent
for Kelley, told him of the properties of his
magic crystal which the now thoroughly
infatuated doctor represented as having been
bestowed on him by the angel Uriel and
asked Kelley if he would interpret for him
the wonderful words of the spirits.
Kelley, as shrewd and unscrupulous a man
as any in the annals of imposture, readily
consented, but on pretty hard terms. He was
to be taken in as a member of Dr. Dee's family,
retained on a contract, and paid an annual
stipend of fifty pounds, quite a large sum in
those times. On this understanding he went
to work, and day after day, for years, regaled
the credulous Dee with monologues purport-
ing to be delivered by the spirits in the crystal.
Everything Kelley told him, Dr. Dee faithfully
noted down, and many years later, long after
both Dee and Kelley had been carried to their
graves, these manuscript notes of the seances
were published. The volume containing them
a massive, closely printed folio entitled "A
True and Faithful Relation of What Passed
for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and
Some Spirits" is one of the great curiosi-
ties of literature. A copy of the original edi-
tion is before me as I write, and I will quote
from it just enough to show the character of
the "revelations" vouchsafed to Dee through
the mediumship of the cunning Kelley.
"Wednesday, 19 Junii, I made a prayer to
God and there appeared one, having two gar-
ments in his hands, who answered, *A good
praise, with a wavering mind.'
"God made my mind stable, and to be
seasoned with the intellectual leaven, free of
all sensible mutability.
"E. K. [said] 'One of these two garments is
pure white: the other is speckled of divers
colors; he layeth them down before him, he
layeth also a speckled cap down before him
at his feet; he hath no cap on his head: his
hair is long and yellow, but his face cannot
be seen. . . . Now he putteth on his pied
coat and his pied cap, he casteth one side of
his gown over his shoulder and he danceth,
and saith, "There is a God, let us be merry!"
"E. K. 'He danceth still.'
"'There is a heaven, let us be merry.
" ' Doth this doctrine teach you to know
God, or to be skilful in the heavens ?
" ' Note it.'
"E. K. 'Now he putteth off his clothes
again: now he kneeleth down, and washeth
his head and his neck and his face, and
shaketh his clothes, and plucketh off the
uttermost sole of his shoes, and falleth
prostrate on the ground, and saith, "Vouch-
safe, oh God, to take away the weariness of
my body and to cleanse the filthiness of this
dust, that I may be apt for this pureness."
"E. K. 'Now he taketh the white gar-
ment, and putteth it on him. . . . Now he
sitteth down on the desk-top and looketh
toward me. ... He seemeth now to be
turned to a woman, and the very same which
we call Galvah.'"
Side by side with the esoteric and trans-
cendental utterances which Kelley credited
to the spirits, he cleverly introduced sufficient
in the way of references to the elixir of life and
the transmutation of metals, to keep alive in
Dee's breast the hope of ultimately solving
the crucial problems of medieval science. All
the money Dee could procure was spent on
ingredients for magical formulas, and to such
lengths did his enthusiasm carry him that
before long he was reduced to poverty. He
became so poor, in fact, that when, in the
summer of 1583, the Earl of Leicester an-
nounced his intention of bringing a notable
foreign visitor, Count Albert Lasky of Bo-
hemia, to dine with Dee, the unhappy doctor
was compelled to send word that he could
not provide a proper dinner. Leicester,
moved to pity, reported his plight to the
queen, who at once belied her reputation for
niggardliness by bestowing a liberal gift on
the Sage of Mortlake, as Dee was now styled
at the Court. The dinner accordingly took
place, and was a tremendous success in more
ways than one.
Lasky turned out to be an exceedingly
excitable and impressionable man, and his
curiosity was so aroused by the occult dis-
course of his host that he begged to be ad-
mitted to the seances. Always alert to the
main chance, Kelley, after a few preliminary
sittings of unusual picturesqueness, inspired
the spirits to predict that Lasky would one
day be elected King of Poland. It needed
nothing more to induce the happy and
hopeful count to invite both Dee and Kelley
to return with him to Bohemia. He would,
he promised, protect and provide for them;
they should live with him in his many tur-
reted castle, and want for nothing. Here,
indeed, was a pleasant way out of their
present poverty, and Dee and Kelley readily
gave consent. Nor did they leave Eng-
land a moment too soon. Scarcely had
they taken ship before a mob, roused to fury
by superstitious fears, broke into the phi-
losopher's house at Mortlake and destroyed
almost everything that they did not steal
furniture, books, manuscripts, and costly sci-
entific apparatus.
Of this, though, Dee for the moment happily
knew nothing. Nor, for all his long inter-
course with the spirits, was he able to foresee
that he was now embarking on a career of
tragic adventure that falls to the lot of few
scientists. At first, however, all went well
enough. Lasky entertained his learned guests
in lavish fashion, and, assuming their garb of
long, flowing gown, joined heartily with them
in the ceremonies of the seance room. But as
time passed and their incantations redounded
in no way to his advantage, he gradually lost
patience, and broadly hinted that they might
better transfer their services to another patron.
Whereupon, closely followed by the irrepress-
ible Kelley, Dee removed to the court of the
emperor, Rudolph II, at Prague. He had
dedicated one of his scientific treatises to the
emperor's father, and in his simplicity firmly
believed that this would insure him a warm
and lasting welcome. But Rudolph, from
the outset, showed himself far from well-dis-
posed to Dee, Kelley, and their attendant
retinue of invisible spirits. When Dee gran-
diloquently introduced himself, in a Latin
oration, as a messenger from the unseen
world, the emperor curtly checked him with
the remark that he did not understand Latin.
And the next day a hint was given him that,
at the request of the papal nuncio, he and
Kelley were to be arrested and sent to Rome
for trial as necromancers. Before night-fall
they were in full flight, to remain homeless
wanderers until another Bohemian count,
hearing of their presence in his dominions,
took them under his protection on the proviso
that they were to replenish his exchequer by
converting humble pewter into silver and
gold.
In this, of course, they signally failed, and
the next few years of their lives were years of
the greatest misery. This, at any rate, so far
as Dee was concerned. Kelley, with pitiless
insistence, drew his pay regularly, and when
funds were not forthcoming, refused to act as
crystal-gazer and spirit interpreter. On one
of these occasions Dee tried to replace him by
training his son, Arthur Dee, as a crystal-
gazer; but, try as he might, the boy said he
could see in the crystal nothing but meaning-
less clouds and specks. Had Dee not been
thoroughly infatuated this might have disillu-
sioned him, and convinced him that Kelley
had simply been preying on his credulity.
But the old man he was now well advanced
in years saw in his son's failure only proof
of Kelley's superior gifts, and by dint of great
sacrifices contrived to find the money necessary
to persuade him to return to his post. At last
a day came when money could no longer be
found, and then Kelley definitely determined
to break the partnership. According to one
account, he informed Dee that, for the sake
of his immortal soul, he could no longer have
dealings with the spirits; that they were
spirits not of good but of evil, and Mephis-
topheles was their master; and that, did he
continue to traffic with them, Mephistopheles
would soon have him, body and soul. An-
other version given by the astrologer,
William Lilly, who is said to have been con-
sulted by the friends of King Charles I. as to
the best time for that unhappy monarch to
attempt to escape from prison says that
one fine morning Kelley took French leave of
Dee, running away with an alchemically
inclined friar who had promised him a good
income. Whatever the facts of his final rup-
ture with his long-suffering master, it is cer-
tain that, after a romantic career, in which he
gained a German baronetcy, Kelley was
clapped into prison on a charge of fraud, and
broke his neck while trying to escape.
Dr. Dee, in the meantime, a sadder if not a
really wiser man, had found his way back to
England, where he essayed the difficult task
of retrieving his ruined fortunes. Elizabeth
smiled on him as graciously as ever, and at
Christmas time sent to him a royal gift of two
hundred angels in gold. But he needed more
than an occasional bounty; he needed the
assurance of a steady income, and the chance
to pursue again his scientific studies undis-
turbed by the phantoms of gnawing want.
So, in a memorial, "written with tears of
blood," as he himself put it, Dee begged the
queen to appoint a commission to investigate
his case and review the evidence he would
produce to prove that his services to the nation
warranted a reward. Promptly the commis-
sion was appointed, and as promptly began
its labors. This led to what Isaac Disraeli,
perhaps Dee's best biographer, has described
as a " literary scene of singular novelty."
Let me depict it in Disraeli's little known
words: "Dee, sitting in his library," says
Disraeli, "received the royal commissioners.
Two tables were arranged; on one lay all the
books he had published, with his unfinished
manuscripts; the most extraordinary one was
an elaborate narrative of the transactions of
his whole life. This manuscript his secretary
read, and, as it proceeded, from the other
table Dee presented the commissioners with
every testimonial. These vouchers consisted
of royal letters from the Queen, and from
princes, ambassadors, and the most illustrious
persons of England and of Europe; passports
which traced his routes, and journals which
noted his arrivals and departures; grants and
appointments and other remarkable evidences ;
and when these were wanting, he appealed
to living witnesses.
"Among the employments which he had
filled, he particularly alluded to a 'painful
journey in the winter season, of more than
fifteen hundred miles, to confer with learned
physicians on the Continent, about her maj-
esty's health.' He showed the offers of
many princes to the English philosopher, to
retire to their courts, and the princely estab-
lishment at Moscow proffered by the czar;
but he had never faltered in his devotion to
his sovereign. ... He complained that his
house at Mortlake was too public for his
studies, and incommodious for receiving the
numerous foreign literati who resorted to him.
Of all the promised preferments, he would
have chosen the mastership of St. Cross for
its seclusion. Here is a great man making
great demands, but reposing with dignity on
his claims; his wants were urgent, but the
penury was not in his spirit. The commis-
sioners, as they listened to his autobiography,
must often have raised their eyes in wonder,
on the venerable and dignified author before
them."
Their report was terse, direct, and wholly
favorable, inspiring the queen to declare that
Dee should have the mastership of St. Cross,
and that immediately. But days passed into
months, and months into years, and Eliza-
beth's "immediately" still belonged to the
future. For some reason she soon lost
all interest in the returned Sage of Mortlake.
Again and again he memorialized her,
once with a letter vindicating himself from
the accusation of practising sorcery. Her sole
reply was to grant him finally the uncongenial
post of warden of Manchester College, from
which he retired after some mortifying ex-
periences with the minor officials. Nor did
he fare better at the hands of Elizabeth's
successor. Steadily he sank lower in the scale
of society, until at last he was forced to sell
his books, one by one, to buy bread. And
still, for all his poverty, he pressed constantly
forward in his adventurings into the invisible
world. If his friends deserted him, he would
at least have the companionship of "angels."
As his hallucinations grew, his youthful buoy-
ancy returned. He would leave England,
would fare across to the Continent, and there
seek out men of a mind like unto his own.
Joyfully, he made ready for the journey; but,
even while he packed and planned, the call
came for another and a longer voyage. In
the eighty-first year of his age, 1608, the aged
dreamer became in very fact a dweller in the
spirit world.
Of his place in the history of mankind, it is
not easy to write with any degree of finality.
There can be no doubt that he was utterly
swept off his feet by the domination of a fixed
idea. And it is not possible to point to any
specific contributions which he made to the
advancement of learning, worldly or otherwise.
Still, it is equally certain that he was anything
but a negative quantity in an age resplendent
for its positive men. He played his part,
however mistakenly, in the intellectual awak-
ening that has shed such luster on the times
of Elizabeth ; and, if only for his overpowering
curiosity, and his intense and unfailing ardor
to get at the truth of all things, natural or
supernatural, he merits respect as a forerunner
of the scientific spirit which in his day was but
feebly striving to loose itself from the bondage
of bigotry and intolerance.
Finish