THE MASS FOR THE DEAD - Horror Stories

A MEDIEVAL GHOST HUNTER

 

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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. 


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