The Queen’s Conjuror: The Life and Magic of Dr. Dee - Benjamin Woolley

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observation that two bodies of unequal weight fall to the ground at the same speed.7 The acceptance that this could be the case, even though it flew in the face of common sense and accepted theories of motion, is usually attributed to Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), and cited as proof of the great Italian astronomer’s pioneering role in making observation the keystone of scientific enquiry. However, Dee knew of it (and pointed out that others did before him).

      But the Propaedeumata Aphoristica was no proto-Principia Mathematica: for at its heart lay a force that was magical as much as physical. This is revealed by the book’s title page, which shows the qualities of heat and humidity, the Sun and the Moon, the elements of earth and water all connected to the mystical symbol which dominates the centre of the image: the monad.

      The monad was an astrological sign Dee invented. He regarded it as the key to a true understanding of the unity of the cosmos. Its appearance on the title page of the rationalist Propaedeumata Aphoristica indicates that Dee’s idea of physics strayed far beyond the limits of physical reality.

      Dee’s belief that ‘rays’ emanating from physical objects could affect the human soul as well as body makes the Propaedeumata essentially an astrological work. For this was why astrologers, by applying principles abstracted from centuries of practice, could divine something about a person from the configuration of the heavens at the moment of his or her birth, and why, with a scientific understanding of such bodies and the rays, so much more could be achieved. Dee also suggested that the tools used to manipulate light could also be used to manipulate these emanations. Lenses and mirrors might be able to concentrate, reflect or refract these rays. Such instruments might even make them visible. Perhaps (though he was circumspect on the matter, because of its connotations of conjuration), a fortune-teller’s crystal ball works as a sort of lens, its material being of such quality that it is able to capture and focus the invisible rays in its immediate vicinity.

      Thus, at the heart of Dee’s science lay what has come to be called ‘natural’ (as opposed to supernatural) magic. When God created the universe, itself an act that Dee accepted to be beyond scientific understanding, He let loose a divine force which causes the planets to turn, the Sun to rise and the Moon to wax and wane. Magic, as Dee saw it, is the human ability to tap this force. The better our understanding of the way it drives the universe, the more powerful the magic becomes. In other words, magic is technology.

      Dee planned the Propaedeumata to be his magnum opus, but managed to complete only a hastily written summary. During the final years of Mary’s reign, England suffered a series of disasters: bad harvests and famines at home, diplomatic failures and military blunders abroad. Meanwhile, two devastating epidemics of influenza (which got its name from the belief that it was caused by malign astrological influences) swept the country in 1557 and 1558. Falling seriously ill, Dee thought his days were numbered. He set his affairs in order, and arranged for a draft of Propaedeumata to be published, handing over the rest of his literary affairs to Pedro Nuñez.

      Queen Mary was also in decline. At the end of 1557, six months after Philip’s departure for Spain, she announced once again that she was pregnant. In February 1558, in anticipation of the birth, she withdrew to her chamber. As before, the baby failed to materialise, though Mary was still waiting at the end of March. She finally gave up hope in May, and fell into a depression from which she never recovered – dying on 17 November 1558. Anyone associated with her regime and religion was now dangerously exposed, chief among them Bishop Bonner and his chaplain, John Dee.

       VIII

      After all the stormy, tempestuous and blustery windy weather of Queen Mary was overblown, the darksome clouds of discomfort dispersed, the palpable fogs and mists of most intolerable misery consumed, and the dashing showers of persecution overpast, it pleased God to send England a calm and quiet season, a clear and lovely sunshine, a quietus from former broils, and a world of blessings by good Queen Elizabeth.1

      Thus wrote the chronicler Raphael Holinshed in the 1570s. He could hardly have been further from the truth.

      Legend records that she received the news of her accession while sitting alone beneath an oak at Hatfield House reading the New Testament in Greek, a scene that sublimely combines the Protestant virtues of humanism, piety and humility. One of the two nobles sent to make the announcement was the Earl of Pembroke, who, having switched allegiance from Northumberland to Mary, managed with equal agility to switch back again: he was rewarded with a position in Elizabeth’s council but never with her affection or admiration.

      Entering London less than a week after her half-sister’s death, Elizabeth was received with rapture. Bonner stood in line at the walls of the City to welcome her. She offered her hand to the Mayor and aldermen to be kissed, but when Bonner approached and knelt before her she withdrew her hand and walked on. The message was obvious – here was a woman who was going to make a clean break with the past, theologically and politically.

      Another sign of her intentions was her decision to appoint Robert Dudley, a radical Protestant and son of the disgraced Earl of Northumberland, as chief organiser of her coronation. Dudley enthusiastically accepted the role, and decided he needed the help of a scholar to set the date, someone who could draw on the most ancient and respected astrological and historical authorities to determine the best day. His appointment was a surprising one. He did not choose from among the ranks of persecuted exiles tentatively returning to the country. Instead he selected a man who, at least according to Foxe, reeked of the smoke from Bonner’s bonfires: John Dee.

      Choosing the date of the coronation was far from a matter of scheduling. It was a highly sensitive decision. Her reign was by no means regarded with the unbridled enthusiasm that, following the triumph of the Armada, later Protestant chroniclers would retrospectively assume. England had just endured two troubled experiments in monarchy with Edward, the first sovereign anointed by a Protestant church, and Mary, the first Queen regnant.2 The idea of a third that combined both apparently disastrous innovations aroused deep apprehension.

      As daughter of Anne Boleyn and offspring of Henry’s assault on the unity of the Church, Elizabeth’s inheritance of the divine right of sovereignty represented a challenge to the political, even cosmic order. Her half-sister Mary had found the idea of Elizabeth being Henry’s child literally inconceivable and assumed her father must have really been Boleyn’s lute player, Mark Smeaton. Making Elizabeth queen meant that England would be committed to a course of Protestant reformation from which it would be very hard to return.

      Elizabeth’s sex amplified the uncertainty. The combination of femininity with majesty was still regarded as highly combustible. Mary had been the first English queen to rule her subjects, rather than act as a king’s consort. Some speculated that it was her gender as much as religion that had made her reign such a difficult one. John Knox issued his famous First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Raiment of Women in 1558, the final year of Mary’s reign. For him the idea of female government was so outrageous it demanded a new term – ‘monstriferous’. John Calvin, the Protestant theologian, wrote to William Cecil that Elizabeth’s coronation ‘was a deviation from the primitive and established order of nature, it ought to be held as a judgement on man for his dereliction of his rights.’ The prognostications of the French prophet Nostradamus for 1559, the first full year of Elizabeth’s reign, seemed to confirm this view. Translated into English, they were widely read, foretelling ‘divers calamities, weepings and mournings’ and ‘civil sedition’ that would make the ‘lowest’ rise up against the ‘highest’.3

      Thus, the selection of the date that inaugurated this experiment was crucial. It needed to muster all the favourable auspices that ancient authorities could offer, and show that God would bless such an ordination.

      O, when degree is shak’d

      Which is the ladder

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