The Arch Conjuror of England (34 page)

Dee was probably unaware that Edwards had already cornered the Kassel market for such revelations. Edwards traversed Germany in the late summer of 1585, interrogating leading divines about his treatise on Israel's restitution. Like the English bishops, most had fobbed him off.
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Edwards had harangued the Court at Kassel about restoring the Jews to their ‘glorious estate’, ushering in a new world without sin until the Elect were translated to heaven like Enoch and Elijah. Edwards received a cool reception, and since Dee agreed that the Elect would be ‘translated from life to life as Enoch and Elijah were’, probably the Court at Kassel also dismissed him.
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Fortunately for Dee, by 8 August Rozmberk had persuaded Rudolf to allow Dee and Kelley to reside on the Rozmberk estates in southern Bohemia, well away from the Court. They spent most of the next two years at Trebon, one of the Rozmberks’ less important towns, though with good fishing for Kelley in the recently constructed local ponds. Marking their more settled life, from his arrival at Trebon on 14 September 1586, Dee began recording events in a different
ephemerides
, using the Gregorian calendar. Though discreetly removed hundreds of miles from Rudolf's Court and political influence, Dee and Kelley received visits from Rozmberk and Laski.

The angelic actions resumed on 19 September, after the six-month hiatus the angels had commanded. Dee placed the angelical stone in its gold frame on the Holy Table ‘with its appurtenances’, wax seals with mysterious symbols, tin seals with more magic circles inscribed with angelic names, and the Ring of Solomon. But Kelley had lost interest in cosmic revelations about Nature's secrets and the coming Apocalypse. The angels tried to interest Rozmberk in his political prospects. On 14 October they prophesied his triumph in the political turmoil that would hit Bohemia within three years. However, Rozmberk discouraged
such fantasies, and henceforth the angels largely abandoned political prophecy.
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In fact, with one important exception, the angelic conversations rather fizzled out from here. Dee recorded them at long intervals. Those that Kelley found time for largely dealt with alchemy, reflecting Kelley's growing reputation, which increasingly attracted visitors to Trebon. From early October 1586 Dee made many cryptic references to successful alchemical processes, expeditions for alchemical vessels, and Kelley's visits to Rozmberk's laboratories in his palace at Prague.

This accelerated the power shift in their relationship. In December the English Muscovy merchant Edward Garland finally tracked Dee down to present Tsar Feodor's opulent offer of employment. Dee declined, but on 19 December Kelley ‘made a public demonstration of the philosopher's stone’ before Garland and his brother Francis. A grain of the stone transmuted an ounce and a quarter of common mercury to almost an ounce of gold. Dee and Kelley divided the gold and gave Edward Garland the crucible. It was a gift with consequences.
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Dee and Kelley naturally expected Francis Garland to inform Burghley and Walsingham. Francis then became a courier between Dee and Walsingham, and inevitably the latter's informant.
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The months of January to March 1587 passed with Dee and Kelley carrying out alchemical procedures and undertaking mysterious journeys searching for materials. Rozmberk gave increasing rewards to Kelley, who passed a smaller share on to Dee.
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The angelic actions on 4 April chiefly related to using the philosopher's stone to make gold for Rozmberk to purchase weapons for use against rival clans, who had turned Rudolf against Kelley.
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The angels informed Kelley that he remained childless because he had defied their commands in marrying. Suddenly they insisted that Dee and Kelley should ‘participate one with another’. Apparently scandalised by the sexual implications, Kelley withdrew from scrying, demanding that Dee's son Arthur replace him in the pursuit. When Arthur failed to ‘scry’ anything, Kelley resumed scrying, but the sexual topic reappeared.
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On 18 April the angels contrasted God's infinite mercy, which could turn apparent sin into virtue, with man's corrupt judgement. After rambling
somewhat, they declared that obedience to God and resistance to Satan required ‘unity amongst you’. Dee hoped this meant spiritual love, but Kelley believed it meant carnal love and demanded angelic clarification.

To Dee's amazed grief the angels confirmed they meant ‘common and indifferent using of Matrimonial Acts amongst any couple of us four’.
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Initially, Kelley may have invented this as an excuse to get rid of Dee or at least to abandon the angels and concentrate on alchemy. But in a typically unstable outburst, he then claimed a contrary spiritual visitation lasting four hours, one of several crucial occasions when he saw visions outside the show-stones.

A spirit called ‘Ben’ warned them that unless they obeyed the sexual injunction immediately, the powder of transmutation would become useless. Kelley became increasingly disturbed. He rambled wildly until 2 a.m., telling Dee he did evil to demand proof of this doctrine and would be led prisoner to Rome, that Elizabeth and Philip II would be destroyed from Heaven, that the Pope would die and his successor be the last for some years. Furthermore, a Habsburg would conquer England until ejected by a native king; parts of the Book of Enoch were false; Antichrist would appear soon; Elijah and Enoch would return from Paradise; St John the Evangelist still lived, invisibly, and had killed Julian the Apostate; and at Rome they would meet four others who received angelic revelation.

The only lucid revelation identified Francis Garland as Burghley's spy and warned that when sent for from England, they should refuse. Dee remained sceptical because of Kelley's previous lying. Yet, he told a distressed Jane Dee, he accepted that their ‘cross-matching’ must be done for God's secret purposes. Meric Casaubon's printed text of 1659 discreetly omitted Jane's condition, still in the manuscript, for yielding to God's command: that they share one chamber ‘that I might not be far from her’. Casaubon also omitted prurient angelic questioning about sexual details after the event.
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Kelley finally convinced Dee on 20 April, through the angel Raphael's revelation of the spiritual cipher hidden within the Tables of Enoch. Raphael demanded they obey or receive God's plague. Dee now submitted to God's unfathomable will. The next day he drew up a covenant stressing
that they obeyed as did Abraham when he sacrificed his son Isaac. Kelley's version minimised his role in the actions, stressed his doubts about the doctrine, and blamed Dee for the pact. Dee's zeal, he claimed, had overcome his reluctance, though he refused their wives’ request for fresh angelic confirmation.

On 1 May Kelley prompted Dee to see the Archangel Michael, thus again confirming the new doctrine. On 3 May Dee, Kelley, Jane Dee and Joan Kelley signed the covenant, which was confirmed by the angels on the 6th.
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After further angelic confirmation and some legerdemain with the crystal by Kelley, on 21 May they swapped wives. After a month of Kelley's manipulation, Dee uncritically accepted all Kelley's visions.
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Dee kept detailed records of the actions for a while longer. On 23 May the angels reiterated that only God could judge sin and that He ‘will shortly visit the earth’. Dee and Kelley were ‘the chosen of this last days’. The apocalyptic timetable would unfold within a hundred days, giving them complete understanding of all the angelic revelations and humbling critics who called them ‘sorcerers’ and ‘vagabonds’. In a week the use of the powder would be explained. In ten months Muscovy and Tartary would unite, then fall upon Poland, Bohemia, Germany and Italy. Within two years Rome would be destroyed. Antichrist would arise in the north, ‘and vengeance shall be on all the earth’.
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Dee's manuscript of the angelic conversations ends with questions from Rozmberk. Perhaps impressed by Kelley's alchemy and its associated apocalyptic prophecies, he eventually wanted to know the political future in Poland after Stephen Bathory died, and how he should advise Rudolf on imperial affairs and relations with the papacy. Kelley asked the angels about the philosopher's stone and whether Joan Kelley could conceive. Dee added a question on his wife Jane's health. More poignantly, he asked about the condition of England and Elizabeth.
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For though his ‘Diary’ referred to later angelic actions, and even to repeated performances of the ‘holy pact’, they are lost to us.
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For the next two years Dee recorded only the burgeoning interest of the powerful in Kelley the master alchemist, and their complete disinterest in Dee's insights into the hidden structures of Nature. Elizabeth,
Burghley and Walsingham began trying to entice Kelley back to England to make gold for the Queen, who was now facing the overwhelming forces of Spain. If Dee expected to resurrect his career in England, it could now only be as Kelley's assistant. Would Kelley return with him?

This seemed unlikely as Dee became more dependent on Kelley's alchemical abilities. Kelley's increasing authority exacerbated tensions in the household. That in turn compounded the emotional turmoil created by the intermittent sexual ‘cross-matching’, or wife-swapping, until 1587. The associated stress further destabilised Kelley's already uncertain psychological state. Dee's cryptic ‘Diary’ shows Kelley guiding Dee in their alchemical experiments but easing him out of Rozmberk's favour, until a household emerged that was now led by Kelley.

Dee's growing fears about being marginalised can be seen in the increasingly complicated code he used to disguise sensitive ‘Diary’ entries. From writing English in Greek letters, he changed to writing English backwards in Greek letters, and finally to writing in Latin using Greek letters. Above all, by late 1587 Dee found himself uneasily poised between contrasting loyalties. Kelley increasingly sought Rozmberk and Rudolf's patronage. They ignored Dee, who wanted to return to England but realised that appearing there without Kelley's alchemical skills would be pointless. He had never been able to control Kelley, who no longer needed him. Therefore, when Kelley finally eased him out in early 1589 by excluding him from their shared alchemy, he could only procrastinate en route to England, hoping that Kelley would join him.

In the summer of 1587 Kelley began working with mercury in Rozmberk's mansion at Trebon. Dee initially shared the distillation and made the astrological observations to concentrate beneficial influences.
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Dee and Kelley divided the ‘mercury animal’ they created. However, household relations were fraught. In July 1587 Jane Dee and Joan Kelley, and Edward and John, grudgingly reconciled, but as on previous occasions Kelley reverted within weeks to ‘most terrible threats’.
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After having ignored Dee's letters for two years, the first sign of English interest in Kelley appeared in late August 1587. An English spy, Edward Whitlock, using the cover name John Basset, appeared in Trebon. He
taught Dee's son Arthur for a year before absconding.
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In late October Rozmberk built additional furnaces. For a while Dee and Kelley followed a traditional alchemical regime based on Kelley's writings and Dee's two books on the philosopher's stone, one translated from French by Dee at angelic command, the other extracted by Kelley from the ‘Book of Dunstan’, Dee's alchemical patron saint.
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Yet Kelley chafed at having to collaborate with Dee and began turning the household against him. After the regular six-monthly angelic action in late October, Kelley, backed up by Joan, told their servants that Dee dealt with the Devil. Jane was now pregnant, but whether by Dee or Kelley they could not know. At his birth on 28 February 1588 they named the child Theodore, ‘Gift of God’.
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In late November 1587 Francis Garland brought letters from Edward Dyer and Richard Young, enclosing Elizabeth's command to return to England.
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Facing an imminent Spanish invasion, Elizabeth and Burghley had convinced themselves that they must harness Kelley's ability to make gold. Sending a royal letter would attract unwanted attention, so Elizabeth used Dyer and Young as cover. A month later other couriers arrived at Trebon, ‘thinking we were ready to come into England upon the Queen's letters sent for us’.
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In February 1588 Kelley showed Dee how he distilled antimony, following George Ripley's ‘Bosom Book’, which Dee read aloud during their procedures.
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Dee may have been anxious to return to England, but only now, after Theodore's birth, did he and Kelley reply to Elizabeth via Dyer and Young. More messages were sent back to England in April, because Kelley temporised about returning, as his demonstrations of transmutation became bravura displays of alchemical expertise, beyond Dee's knowledge and skill. Relations deteriorated further, and Dee had to ask the Kelleys for ‘mutual charity’, so that he and Jane could receive Easter Communion, a request that harked back to Dee's childhood religion.

Dee finally understood that Kelley would abandon him for Rozmberk's patronage. Yet in May Kelley revealed ‘the great secret’ to Dee, ‘God be thanked’. This brought Edward Dyer out to visit them in July, the first of his several attempts to persuade Kelley to return to England. That he
travelled in the midst of frantic preparations against the Armada testifies to how seriously Elizabeth and Burghley took Kelley's alchemy.

When Dyer arrived he immediately snubbed Dee and focused on Kelley. Though the two men then reconciled, Dee had now had a clear demonstration that his future at Elizabeth's Court would depend on Kelley. Dyer left in August, convinced that Kelley could perform transmutation, through ‘the divine water’ Dee saw in late August, thanks to ‘the magnificent master and my incomparable friend Mr Edward Kelly’, thus revealing a significant elevation in Kelley's status. That continued in September when something mysterious, possibly transmutation, was delivered by ‘the gift of God and Master E. K. ‘ . Yet days later Dee finally perceived ‘the rancour and dissimulation’ when Kelley excluded him from his alchemical work. ‘God deliver me’, he added, because this left him completely isolated and far from home.
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