CHAPTER V.

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.

The period of their residence abroad was a chequered one, and many and extraordinary were their adventures and experiences, alternating between honour and discredit—between luxury and distress. For many months they were hospitably entertained by Count Lasque while engaged in their researches for the Philosopher’s Stone, but finding that they spent more gold than they were able to produce he got tired, and persuaded them to pay a visit to Rudolph, King of Bohemia, who, though a weak and credulous man, soon became conscious of the imposture that was being practised, and passed them on to Stephen, King of Poland, at Cracow, but he declined to have anything to do with them, and the Emperor Rudolph refused to pay their expenses, or further encourage their experiments, though he permitted them to reside at Prague, and occasionally to appear at Court, until they were banished from the country at the instigation of the Pope’s Nuncio, who stigmatised them as “notorious magicians.” Dee lamented the “subtill devises and plotts” laid against him, and pathetically added, “God best knoweth how I was very ungodly dealt withall, when I meant all truth, sincerity, fidelity, and piety towardes God, and my Queene, and country.”

The old man had surrendered himself entirely to Kelly. Under his iniquitous influence he degenerated into a mere necromancer, and was sinking more and more into discredit. On leaving Bohemia the two adventurers found an asylum in the Castle of Trebona, whither the Count of Rosenberg had invited them, and where, for a time, they were maintained in great affluence, owing, as they affirmed, to their discovery of the secret of transmuting the baser metals into gold. Kelly would seem to have learned some secrets from the German chemists which he did not reveal to his employer, but by their possession contrived to increase his influence over him, while he himself had recourse to the worst species of the magic art for the purposes of avarice and fraud. It was while at Trebona that Kelly produced the wonderful elixir, or Philosopher’s Stone, in the form of a powder, which Lilly, in his “Memoirs,” says he obtained from a friar who came to Dee’s door. With this “powder of projection,” or “salt of metals,” as it was variously called, they were enabled to coat the baser metals with silver or gold, and would seem to have hit upon the process which, a century and a half later, Joseph Hancock introduced into Sheffield—that of electro-plating. Among other transmutations they converted a piece of an old iron warming pan, by warming it at the fire, into (or covered it with) silver, and sent it to Queen Elizabeth.[24] Why, when they were about it, they did not “transmute” the whole pan is not stated, but it would seem they were not able to work the discovery easily or quickly enough to make it pay, for heart-burnings, jealousies, and disputations arose, and quarrels became of frequent occurrence. At one time Kelly got such a hold upon his dupe as to persuade him that it was the Divine will that they should have their wives in common; then a rupture occurred between the ladies, who, however, became reconciled to each other, and we have the entries in the Diary—

April 10th (1588).—I writ to Mr. Edward Kelly and to Mistress Kelly ij charitable letters requiring at theyr hands mutual charity.

And—

May 22nd.—Mistris Kelly received the sacrament and to me and my wife gave her hand in charity; and we rushed not from her.

Peace was restored, but it must have been of short duration, for we find a few months later—

July 17th.—Mr. Thomas Southwell of his own courteous nature did labor with Mr. Edmond Cowper, and indirectly with Mistress Kelly, for to furder charity and friendship among us.

[Note 24: Ashmole, in his MS., 1790, fol. 58, says, “Mr. Lilly told me that John Evans informed him that he was acquainted with Kelly’s sister in Worcester, that she showed him some of the gold her brother had transmuted, and that Kelly was first an apothecary at Worcester.”]

True to his sordid and scheming nature, Kelly, who had become a full-blown knight, contrived to possess himself of the greater part of Dee’s treasures—“the powder, the bokes, the glass, and the bone”—and then, having no longer any need of the old man’s co-operation, took himself off to earn elsewhere a success that, however, proved only very short-lived, for it was not long before, being detected in some knavery, he fell into disgrace, and was immured by the Emperor Rudolph in one of the prisons of Prague. Queen Elizabeth hearing of him, sent a messenger—Captain Peter Gwinne—secretly for him to return; but he was doomed to end his days in a foreign land, for in an attempt to escape from one of the windows of the castle he fell to the ground, and was so bruised and shattered that he died in a few hours—his elixir, it would seem, not being sufficient to communicate immortality to its possessor.

Forsaken by his companion, Dee resolved on returning to England. Elizabeth, who had heard of the doings of the two adventurers, and being, moreover, much impressed with the silvered piece of the warming pan, sent the doctor friendly messages desiring his return, with letters of safe conduct, and Lord Rosenberg, who had welcomed the coming, was now no less hearty in speeding his parting guests, an attention that is not surprising when it is remembered that for two years or more he had had quartered upon him two families who maintained somewhat questionable relations, and lived upon anything but friendly terms with each other—two quarrelsome women, a whole bevy of turbulent and unruly children, and a staff of servants that were continually causing disquiet by their “unthankfulnesse” and discontent; to say nothing of a brace of conjurors who crowded his castle, or, at least, were believed to, with imps, hobgoblins, and ghostly visitants of various kinds, and who there practised all sorts of _diablerie_. The count made him magnificent promises, and gave him a present of money; and we can quite believe that he and those about him were not very much overcome when Dee and his household divinities left Trebona Castle and turned their faces homewards. They travelled with great pomp and state, having “three new coaches made purposely for my foresaid journey,” “twelve coach horses,” “two and sometymes three waines,” with “twenty-four soldiers,” and “four Swart-Ruiters,” as a guard of honour; the “total summe of money spent” being £796—well-nigh sufficient for a royal progress. On November 19, 1589, the Dees “toke ship by the Vineyard,” and December 2nd “came into the Tems to Gravesende.” They landed the following day, and on the 19th the doctor was “at Richemond with the Queen’s Majestie,” when, according to Aubrey, who received the information from Lilly, he was very favourably received.

Though Dee and his family “cam into the Tems” on the 2nd December, it was not until Christmas Day that they again entered upon possession of the old home at Mortlake. And a comfortless coming home and a sorrowful Christmas Day must have been that 25th of December, 1589. Courted by “Christian Emperors,” Dee had lived long enough to realise the value of the aphorism which says “Put not your trust in princes!” Feeble with years, broken in health, and overwhelmed by his losses and disappointments, the old man chafed and became fretful; while his comparatively youthful spouse—for Jane Dee was then in the prime of womanhood—was becoming increasingly irritable under the increasing cares of a growing family, and the difficulties she experienced in obtaining even decent food and raiment for them.

On reaching their once pleasant abode on the banks of the Thames, they found it dismantled and in part dilapidated. While abroad, silvering his old warming-pan and dreaming dreams of inexhaustible wealth, Dee had little dreamed of what was going on at home. Scarcely had he and his quondam associate reached the castle of Count Lasque than Nicholas Fromonds, his brother-in-law, who had been left in charge of the old house, and was to occupy it as tenant, “imbezeled,” sold, and “unduly made away” his furniture and “household stuff;” and a noisy rabble, believing that the old man had dealings with the devil, broke in, ransacked the whole place, and destroyed nearly everything that remained. Scarcely anything was left. 4,000 volumes, including the precious manuscripts, that had taken more than 40 years to get together, and had cost him £2,000, an enormous sum if we consider the value of money at that time, were scattered; though, through the efforts of his friends, some of them were afterwards recovered, as he said, “in manner out of a dunghill, in the corner of a church, wherein very many were utterly spoyled by rotting, through the raine continually for many years before falling on them, through the decayed roof of that church, lying desolate and wast at this houre.” The “rare and exquisitely-made instruments mathematicall,” the “strong and faire quadrant of five foote semi-diameter;” the two globes, on one of which “were set down divers comettes, their places and motions;” the sea compasses; the magnet-stone “of great vertue;” the “watch clock,” which measured the “360th part of an hour,” were all purloined, “piecemeal divided,” or “barbarously spoyled and with hammers smit in pieces.” Harland and Wilkinson, in their “Lancashire Folk-Lore,” say that when the house was attacked, “it was with difficulty Dee and his family escaped the fury of the rabble;” but this is a mistake, for, as previously stated, they were at the time beyond the seas, and in blissful ignorance of what was taking place.

Dee’s affairs were now in a deplorable condition. The destruction of his library was a terrible calamity. He was involved in debt, his creditors were becoming clamorous, and, as he laments, “the usury devoureth me, and the score, talley, and booke debts doe dayly put me to shame in many places and with many men.” His old friend and patron, the Queen, who had not yet lost faith in his astrological powers and discoveries, sent him in the year following his return “fiftie poundes to keep Christmas with,” and promised him another “fiftie poundes” out of her “prevy purse.” Many other friends sent him presents, in all about £500; but he was still struggling in poverty, and craving for some lucrative office, that he might free himself from his difficulties. In his distress he memorialised the Queen, through the Countess of Warwick, earnestly requesting that commissioners might be appointed to inquire into and decide upon his claims. His indebtedness then amounted to nearly £4,000, and the story he tells of the shifts he had recourse to, to save his family from “hunger starving,” is truly pathetic. He had been constrained, he says, “now and then to send parcells of furniture and plate to pawne upon usury,” and when these were gone, “after the same manner went my wife’s jewells of gold, rings, braceletts, chaines, and other our rarities, under thraldom of the usurer’s gripes, till _non plus_ was written upon the boxes at home.” Upon the report the Queen “willed the Lady Howard to write some words of comfort to his wife, and send some friendly tokens beside;” she further sent through Mr. Candish (Cavendish) her “warrant by word of mowth to assure him to do what he would in philosophie and alchemie, and none shold chek, controll, or molest him,” and as a mark of her regard, on two occasions, “called for him at his door” as she rode by.

About this time a domestic difficulty of a different nature occurred. Dee’s nurse became “possessed,” and he had to try his skill in exorcising what he believed to be the evil spirit, though, as the result showed, with indifferent success. The incident is thus referred to in his “Diary”:—

Aug. 2nd, 1590.—Nurs her great affliction of mynde.

Aug. 22nd.—Ann my nurse had long byn tempted by a wycked spirit: but this day it was evident how she was possessed of him. God is, hath byn, and shall be her protector and deliverer! Amen.

Aug. 25th.—Anne Frank was sorowful, well comforted, and stayed in God’s mercyes acknowledging.

Aug. 26th.—At night I anoynted (in the name of Jesus) Anne Frank, her brest with the holy oyle.

Aug. 30th.—In the morning she required to be anoynted, and I did very devowtly prepare myself, and pray for vertue and powr, and Christ his blessing of the oyle to the expulsion of the wycked; and then twyse anoynted, the wycked one did resest a while.

Sep. 8th.—Nurse Anne Frank wold have drowned hirself in my well, but by divine Providence I cam to take her up befor she was overcome of the water.

Sep. 29th.—Nurse Anne Frank most miserably did cut her owne throte, afternone abowt four of the clok, pretending to be in prayer before her keeper, and suddenly and very quickly rising from prayer, and going toward her chamber, as the mayden her keeper thowt, but indede straight way down the stayrs into the hall of the other howse, behinde the doore did that horrible act; and the mayden who wayted on her at the stayr fote followed her, and missed to fynd her in three or fowr places, tyll at length she hard her rattle in her owne blud.

Dee tried hard to regain the parsonages and endowments of Upton and Long Leadenham, of which Bonner had many years previously dispossessed him, but he was “utterly put owt of hope for recovering them by the Lord Archbishop and the Lord Threasorer.” Elizabeth had, on one occasion, promised him the deanery of Gloucester, but objection was raised on the ground of his not being in Holy Orders; subsequently he had the promise of some small advowsons in the diocese of St David’s; but the promise which was pleasant to the bear was roken to the hope. Failing these, he applied for reversion of the mastership of the Hospital of St. Cross, at Winchester. The Queen and the Lord Treasurer were favourably disposed, and Mr. J. Eglinton Bailey, in his admirable notes, to which we have before made reference, cites a Latin document which he found among the State Papers, dated May, 1594, being a grant to Wm. Brooke, Lord Cobham, K.G., of the next advowson of the hospital of Holyrood, near Winchester, of the Queen’s gift, by the vacancy of the See, to present John Dee, M.A., on the death or resignation of Dr. Robert Bennett, the then incumbent. Bennett, however, did not die, or did not resign in reasonable time, for Dee never got installed; or it may be that the Archbishop (Whitgift) had interposed, for a month after the “grant” just mentioned, we find in the “Diary” an entry in which he thus gives vent to his feeling of mortification and disappointment, after an interview with the Primate:—

June 29th, 1594.—After I had hard the Archbishop his answers and discourses, and that after he had byn the last Sonday at Tybald’s (Theobald’s) with the Quene and Lord Threaserer, I take myself confounded for all suing or hoping for anything that was. And so adieu to the court and courting tyll God direct me otherwise! The Archbishop gave me a payre of sufferings to drinke. God be my help as he is my refuge! Amen.

When Dee ceased to supplicate, his wife took up the parable, and with much more satisfactory results. On the 7th of December, in the same year, we read:—

Jane, my wife, delivered her supplication to the Quene’s Majestie, as she passed out of the privy garden at Somerset House to go to diner to the Savoy, to Syr Thomas Henedge. The Lord Admirall toke it of the Quene. Her Majestie toke the bill agayn, and kept (it) uppon her cushen; and on the 8th day, by the chief motion of the Lord Admirall, and somewhat of the Lord Buckhurst, the Quene’s wish was to the Lord Archbishop presently that I should have Dr. Day his place in Powles (_i.e._, the Chancellorship of St. Paul’s).

Possibly the Queen or the Archbishop, or both, were getting wearied with the constant appeals of their tedious and egotistical suitor, for a month later occurs the entry:—

1595. Jan. 8th.—The Wardenship of Manchester spoken of by the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.

Feb. 5th.—My bill of Manchester offered to the Quene afore dynner by Sir John Wolly to signe, but she deferred it.

April 18th.—My bill for Manchester Wardenship signed by the Quene, Mr. Herbert offring it her.

And so the magician of Mortlake was commissioned to minister among the Lancashire witches, and an exceedingly unpleasant time he had of it, as we shall presently see.

Though the appointment was made, the patent was not yet sealed. Dr. Chadderton did not actually relinquish the wardenship of Manchester until the confirmation of his election to the see of Lincoln, May 24, 1595. Immediately after appears the entry in the “Diary”:—

May 25th, 26th, 27th.—The Signet, Privy Seale, and the Great Seale of the Wardenship.

The old man was evidently too poverty-stricken to pay the fees, for he significantly adds, “£3 12s. 0d. borrowed of my brother Arnold.”

At last the long-hoped-for preferment was secured, and the Warden elect at once began to prepare for removal to his new sphere of duty. Though, as before stated, the building of the College had been acquired by the Earls of Derby, under the Confiscating Act of Edward VI., the Wardens continued to reside there. On the 11th June Dee “wrote to the Erle of Derby his secretary abowt Manchester College;” and on the 21st June he makes the entry:—

The Erle of Derby his letter to Mr. Warren for the Colledge.

Mr. Warren being apparently the agent of the Earl, and the “secretary” previously mentioned. Having thus put matters in train for the occupation of his new home, he set about the letting or disposal of the old one, for we read:—

July 1st.—The two brothers, Master Willemots, of Oxfordshere, cam to talk of my howse-hyring. Master Baynton cam with Mistress Katharyn Hazelwood, wife to Mr. Fuller.

Meantime the Manchester people, and more especially the fellows of the College, were curious to know something about the new Warden, of whom rumour had said so many strange things. On the 12th July he records that “Mr. Goodier, of Manchester, cam to me;” and on the 28th July he received “a letter from Mr. Oliver Carter, Fellow of Manchester College,” of whom we shall have more to say by-and-by. Mr. Goodier, it may be presumed, was not altogether uninfluenced by worldly considerations in thus paying his respects at Mortlake. The worthy burgher was a man of some consequence in his way, and much given, it is said, to the improvement of his temporal estate. He resided at the “Ould Clough House,” a building adjacent to the College, “over anendst the church,” as the Court Rolls of the day describe it, had served as senior constable, and had also filled the more important office of borough-reeve. He had, moreover, farmed the tithes of the Warden and Fellows, and seems to have made a somewhat wide interpretation of his lease, for shortly before he had prosecuted one of the Fellows for withholding the surplice fees, which he claimed to have of right. It is not unlikely, therefore, he had an ulterior object in journeying to London and offering his civilities to Dee. A year or two before, he had married a rich widow, Katharine, the relict of Ralph Sorrocold, and the mother of John Sorrocold, at whose house, the Eagle and Child, opposite Smithy Door, John Taylor, the “water poet,” when on his “Pennyless Pilgrimage,” lodged, and whose wife he immortalised in his homely rhymes—

I lodged at the Eagle and the Child, Whereat my hostess (a good ancient woman) Did entertain me with respect not common.

* * * * *

So Mistress Saracole, hostess kind, And Manchester with thanks I left behind.

On the 31st July, the “very virtuous” Countess of Warwick, who had proved her friendship for Dee by urging his claims upon the consideration of the Queen, did this evening, as he says—

Thank her Matie in my name and for me for her gift of the Wardenship of Manchester. She took it gratiously, and was sorry that it was so far from hers; but that some better thing neer hand shall be ffownd for me; and if opportunitie of tyme wold serve, her Matie wold speak with me herself.

It is significantly added that “the firstfruits were forgiving by her Matie,” which was fortunate, as it saved him the necessity of borrowing money to pay them. Her Majesty, however, never found the “opportunitie of tyme” to speak with her aged _protégé_, and Dee eventually left without the satisfaction of a parting interview.

Dee’s prospects were now brightening, and, though late in the evening of life, there was again a prospect of sunny weather. Misfortunes, it is proverbially said, seldom come singly—the same rule, it would seem, holds good in regard to prosperity—for scarcely had Dee obtained his preferment when Providence added to his domestic bliss. A daughter was born unto him (he was now in his 69th year), and the christening, as may be supposed, was a great affair, the sponsors, who by the way, all appeared by deputy, being the Lord Keeper—Sir Christopher Hatton, it has been said, but more probably another Cheshire man, Sir Thomas Egerton, afterwards Lord Chancellor, for Hatton had been in his grave four years or more—Lady Mary Russell, Countess of Cumberland, the mother of the stout-hearted Lady Anne Clifford, Dowager Countess of Pembroke and Montgomery, of famous memory; and the Lady Frances Walsingham, widow of Sir Philip Sidney, and the wife of the unfortunate Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, whom Elizabeth, in 1601, beheaded.

The time of the new Warden was now much occupied in visiting and receiving visits. On the 13th, and again on the 22nd of September, he was the guest of the Earl of Derby at Russell House, and on the 9th Oct. he “dyned with Syr Walter Rawlegh, at Durham House,” in the Strand. On the 25th Oct. we find him urging “Mr. Brofelde, Atturny-General, for som land deteyned from the Coll.” (ege). Then come the entries,—

Nov. 8th.—My goods sent by Percival toward Manchester.

Nov. 26th.—My wife and children all by coach toward Coventry.

Coventry was on the road towards Manchester. Finally, we have the great mathematician himself following in their wake—

1595-6. Feb. 15.—I cam to Manchester a meridie nova 5.

The severance from old scenes and old associations must have been a painful one. It could only have been dire necessity that induced the vain and pedantic philosopher to forsake the pleasant vicinity of Richmond; to leave the courtly gallants and the staid and erudite _savants_ who had frequented his modest “mansion” to settle down among the hard-headed, but uncultured and unappreciative people of Manchester—to immure himself in a place that must have been even less attractive then than it was a century or more after when Brummell’s regiment was ordered there, and the Beau sold out rather than submit to the infliction of being quartered in it. Abroad Dee had been welcomed wherever he had gone, and received with all the state and courtly ceremonial due to one of such prodigious learning. At Mortlake he had enjoyed the sunshine of royal favour, had been honoured with the frequent visits of the Queen and her Ministers, and accustomed to the friendship and society of such polished wits as Walsingham and Raleigh, and Cavendish and Sir Philip Sidney—

Sidney, than whom no gentler, braver man His own delightful genius ever feigned,

And whom Spenser, in his “Shepheards’ Calendar,” named—

The President Of noblenesse and chivalree.

At Manchester he had to deal with a rude, boisterous, and uncultivated people, who openly reviled him—a rough metal that all his incantations and alchemical skill could not transform into refined gold; and withal he had to contend with a body of clergy who abhorred the unlawful arts he was supposed to practice, and who treated him in consequence with implacable hatred. Of a truth his position was not an enviable one.

Lancashire was at that time the great scene of religious conflict—the battle-ground of angry polemics and fiercely-contending factions. It was accounted as more given to Romanism than any other county in England, and in the rural districts the Protestant cause seemed rather declining than advancing. Dr. Chadderton, who preceded Dee in the Wardenship, had carried on a vigorous persecution of those who still adhered to the unreformed religion, the more obstinate of whom he imprisoned in the New Fleet, a building adjoining his residence in the College. He had further hit upon an ingenious way of convincing these recusants of the error of their ways—as they would not attend church to hear the sermons preached by the Puritanical Fellows he gave orders to his clergy to read prayers in the apartments where they were confined, especially at meal times, so that they had the pleasant alternative of taking theological nourishment with their food or going without victuals altogether. Chadderton’s Protestantism had been intensified by his exile during the Marian persecutions, and as Dee had been deprived of his rectories of Upton and Long Leadenham, and had suffered imprisonment at the hands of Bonner, it was not unreasonably believed that he would follow in the steps of his predecessor, and be no less zealous in hunting up seminary priests, and punishing those who resorted to their secret masses. But Dee’s church principles were not particularly pronounced. Devoted to mathematical and scientific pursuits, he did not greatly concern himself with either Popish or Puritan theology; preaching was not in his line, and he cared little for those controversial sermons which only provoked strife between the professors of the old and the new faith, and excited bitterness in the minds of all. He was content to leave the Papists to the watchful care of the powerful Earl of Derby and their opponents to do as they pleased, provided they gave him no trouble. His colleagues were greatly angered at his lack of zeal, and interminable quarrels were the consequence.

Saturday, the 20th of February, 1596, was a great day in Manchester, and one to be held in remembrance. The church bells filled the air with their clanging melodies, and the groups of curious onlookers at the church stile and in the grass-grown graveyard denoted that something unusual was astir. And there was, for the great philosopher whose marvellous skill had astonished half the Courts of Europe, and about whom rumour had told so many curious tales, was come to preside over the ancient College, and direct the ecclesiastical affairs of the parish, and on that raw February morning was to be installed in his office. Manchester had never seen such a Warden before, and has not seen such another since. The ceremony, we are told, was gone through with “great pomp and solemnity.” Of those assisting at it were Edmund Prestwich, of Hulme; Richard Massey, the representative of a family of some consequence living “in the Milnegate, neere unto a street comonly called Toad-lane;” George Birch, of Birch, in Rusholme, the brother of Robert Birch, one of the Fellows, and nephew of William Birch, who at one time had been the Warden of the College; Ralph Byrom and Thomas Byrom, wealthy traders of the Kersal stock; Ralph Houghton, another trader; Henry Hardy, and Richard Nugent, who afterwards became a benefactor to the town, but whose bequest, through the negligence of trustees, has long since been lost. Dr. Hibbert mentions these names, though he does not give his authority. Dee, however, was fond of ostentation and display, and we may be sure would omit nothing that would impart dignity and importance to the proceedings. We are not told which of the Fellows were present. Nowell, who was then in his 90th year, would be too old and infirm to undertake the toil of a journey from London; but the bold and outspoken Puritan divine, Oliver Carter, would of a certainty be in his place; and probably with him would be his equally zealous coadjutor, Thomas Williamson; though both must have been greatly exercised in spirit at the thought of God’s heritage being lorded over by one of such questionable antecedents. Humphrey Chetham had not then amassed a fortune, and acquired fame as a reformer of ecclesiastical abuses. He was only in his sixteenth year; but he may have been, and very likely was, among the spectators, and in his young mind may have wondered how and by what mysterious influences so valuable a preferment had fallen to one who, not having obtained ordination, had not even received authority to preach.

The Manchester as Dee saw it must have presented a very different aspect to the Manchester of to-day. Leland, who had visited the place sixty years previously, described it, in his “Itinerary,” as “the fairest, best builded, quickest, and most populous town in Lancashire,” which, by the way, was not saying very much, seeing that, as compared with other parts of the kingdom, the county was thinly-peopled and ill-cultivated, and the neighbourhood of the town little else than extensive moors, mosses, and quagmires, where the stranger rarely adventured himself, and so “very wild and dangerous” that Bishop Downham pleaded its inaccessibility as a reason for seldom or never visiting it. The extent of the town proper could have been little more than that of an inconsiderable village of the present day, for though, unfortunately, there is no plan of it as then existing, the enumeration of the streets in the old Court Rolls of the manor enables us to form a tolerably accurate estimate of its limits. Within a few hundred yards of the Church the whole of the business of the place was located, and what was then town was but a congeries of crooked lanes and devious by-ways, with quaint black and white half-timbered dwellings standing on either side in an irregular, in-and-out, haphazard sort of way, and some very much inclined to “stand-at-ease,” yet rendered picturesque by their very irregularity and their innumerable architectural caprices and fantasies, their queer-looking and curiously-carved gables, their oddly-projecting oriels and cunningly-devised recesses, and the varied and broken sky-lines of their roofs, so different to those dull, dreary uniformities of brick the present generation is compelled to gaze upon. Deansgate, Market Sted Lane, and Long Millgate were the principal streets. These stretched irregularly towards the open country, and from them a few narrow intricate lanes branched off in the direction of the Church and the College. On the east and south sides of the churchyard were then, as now, several public-houses, where the bride ales and wedding feasts were held, and to restrain the extravagances of which numerous sumptuary laws had to be enacted. Round the Market Sted were the shops and “stallings” of the principal traders, who, clad in their own fustian, measured out their manufactured wares and sent out their pack-horsemen, with tingling bells, to sell them wherever and whenever they could find a buyer. Here also were located the “booths” in which the Portmotes and the Courts Leet and Baron of the manorial lords were held, and contiguous thereto were the Pillory, the Whipping Post, and the Stocks, where rogues and dishonest and drunk and disorderly townsmen were punished. On the north side of the church—Back o’th’ Church, as it was called—between the churchyard and the College gates, stood the bull oak, where bulls were usually baited. The butts for archery practice, where every man between 16 and 60 had to exercise himself in the use of the good yew bow, were on the outskirts of the town, one being on the south side, where Deansgate merged into Aldport Lane, and the other, at Collyhurst, on the north. The cockpit stood on what was then called the “lord’s waste,” the vacant land in the rear of the Market Sted, which still retains the name of Cockpit Hill. Hanging Ditch was, as its name implied, a ditch, part of the old moat or fosse connecting the Irwell and the Irk, down which the water still flowed at a considerable depth below the footway, Toad Lane and Cateaton Street being but a continuation of it. Over this old and then disused watercourse was a stone bridge, the arch of which may still be seen—the Hanging Bridge, so named from the drawbridge which had preceded it, where officers were stationed to see that horses and cows did not pass over into the churchyard. Near the bridge was the smithy, which gave the name to Smithy Door and Smithy Bank. In Smithy Door, near the entrance to the Market Sted, was the town pump or conduit, fed from a natural spring, near the top of the present Spring Gardens, where the good wives of the town went for their water, and waited their “cale” till they got it, gossiping and quarrelling with each other the while. At the foot of Smithy Bank was Salford Bridge—the only bridge over the Irwell connecting the two towns—a structure of three arches, and so narrow that foot-passengers had occasionally to take refuge in little recesses while vehicles passed along. In the centre of it was the dungeon, which in earlier days had served the purpose of a chapel. Withy Grove was in truth a group of withies, the old “Seven Stars,” and a few other dwellings, being all that existed to give the character of street. At the higher end was Withingreave Hall, the town house of the Hulmes of Reddish, progenitors of William “Hulme the Founder,” with its gardens, orchard, and outbuilding, and beyond a pleasant rural lane led on to Shudehill. Market Sted Lane, a narrow and tortuous thoroughfare, extended no further than the present Brown Street, Mr. Lever’s house, which occupied the site of the White Bear, standing in what was then the open country. The picturesque old black and white houses that bordered each side had their pleasant gardens in rear; and beyond, towards Withy Grove in one direction and Deansgate in the other, were meadows and pasture fields. In one of those fields, on the south side, was the mansion of the Radcliffes, surrounded by a moat that gave the name to Pool Fold, and which was oftentimes the scene of much mob-justice and very much misery, for here was placed the ducking-stool for the punishment of scolds and disorderly women,—

On the long plank hangs o’er the muddy pool, That stool, the dread of ev’ry scolding quean.

From its frequent use we may suppose that in those days the female portion of the community were neither very amiable nor very virtuous. Long Millgate ran parallel with the Irk, an irregular line of houses with little plots of garden behind forming the boundary on each side, and a little way up a rural lane, shaded with hedgerow trees, branched off on the right, known as the Milner’s Lane—the present Miller Street. The Irk, a pure and sparkling stream, was noted for its “luscious eels.” The Masters of the Grammar School had the exclusive fishery rights from Ashley Lane to Hunt’s Bank, and the Warden and Fellows of the College might have envied them their monopoly had they not themselves been able to obtain their Lenten fare from the equally clear and well-stocked waters of the Irwell, which then glided pleasantly by, innocent of dyes and manufacturing refuse. Altogether the place presented more the semi-rural aspect of a country village than an important town, as Leland represented it to be. Picturesque, it is true, yet it possessed many unpleasant features withal. The streets and lanes were ill-paved and full of deep ruts and claypits, for every man who wanted daub to repair his dwelling dug a hole before his door to obtain it. The eye, too, was offended by unsightly cesspools and dunghills that were to be seen against the Church walls, on the bridges, and, in fact, at every turn.

Though some of the more remote parts of the parish were barren and uncultivated, the immediate environments of the town were characterised by much that was exceedingly beautiful, with a wilder sort of loveliness, increased by the natural irregularities of the surface, and the great masses of foliage, part of the old forest of Arden, that extended far away. On the north, Strangeways Park, with its umbraged heights, its sunny glades, and shady dingles, stretched away towards Broughton, Cheetham, and Red Bank. Near thereto was Collyhurst Park, with the common, on which the townsmen had the right to pasture their pigs, and where the town swine-herd daily attended to his porcine charge; and the deep sequestered clough through which the Irk wound its sinuous course, its surface chequered by the shadows of the overhanging hazels and brushwood; and beyond, the extensive chase of Blackley, with its deer leaps, and its aërie of eagles, of herons, and of hawks. On the south was the stately old mansion of Aldport, standing in a park of 95 acres, occupying the site of Campfield and Castlefield, and reaching down to the banks of the Irwell, with the great parks of Ordsal and Hulme on the one side and those of Garratt and Ancoats on the other.

It can hardly be said that among the inhabitants a very high state of civilisation prevailed. If thrifty and industrious, they were certainly not very refined, nor blessed with “pregnant wits,” as good Hugh Oldham affirmed, nor yet remarkable for their moral excellence. Boisterous and laughter-loving, they delighted in outdoor games and uproarious sports,—the wild merriment of the day being oftentimes followed by the wilder merriment of the evening. Bull-baiting, wrestling, and cock-fighting were the leading diversions, “unlawful gaming” and “lewdness” were frequently complained of, and the ale-houses, to which the more dissolute resorted, were the scenes of riots and feuds that not only caused annoyance and scandal to the more well-disposed, but endangered the public peace to a greater degree than we can now easily conceive. Under such circumstances it is hardly surprising that they should have entertained little reverence for their spiritual pastors, many of whom, by the way, were only a degree less ignorant and disorderly than themselves, for in those days the curate of Stretford kept an ale-house, the rector of Chorlton eked out a scanty subsistence by doing a little private pawnbroking, while the parson of Blackley was “passing rich” on a stipend of £2 3s. 4d. a year.

Such was the Manchester of which Dee had become the ecclesiastical head. However apathetic he may have been as to the spiritual affairs of the parishioners committed to his care, he was by no means wanting in energy when his own temporal interests were concerned. Scarcely had he taken up his abode at the College than we find him entertaining at dinner two influential tenants—Sir John Byron, of Clayton, and his son, and bargaining with them about the price of hay before the grass was actually grown. A month later he records the “possession taking in Salford,” and he quickly found himself in litigation with the College tenants of some of the lands there. The tenants were a source of trouble, and oftentimes disturbed the even tenor of his way, while the collecting of his tithes was not unfrequently a cause of anxiety also. He complains of being “occupied with low controversies, as with Holden of Salford, and the tenants of Sir John Biron, of Faylsworth,” of “much disquietnes and controversy about the tythe-corn of Hulme,” of the “Cromsall corne-tyth” being “dowted of and half denyed,” and then “utterly denyed,” and of his riding to Sir John Byron “for a quietnes,” and “to talk with him abowt the controversy between the Colledg and his tenants.” Notwithstanding these unhappy disputations he had some pleasant days. Thus, on the 26th June (1596), as he tells us—

The Erle of Derby, with the Lady Gerard, Sir (Richard) Molynox and his lady, dawghter to the Lady Gerard, Master Hawghton, and others, cam suddenly uppon (me), after three of the clok. I made them a skoler’s collation, and it was taken in good part. I browght his honor and the ladyes to Ardwyk grene toward Lyme, as Mr. Legh his howse, 12 myles of, &c.

Dee was eager for sympathy and approval of his favourite schemes and pursuits, and, being a man of the world, he knew the value of such friendships. As he was, moreover, given to hospitality, there is little doubt the “skoler’s collation” would be as sumptuous as the College larder would afford. A few days later (July 5) he was visited by Mr. Harry Savill, the antiquary, and Mr. Christopher Saxton, the eminent chorographer, who had come to make a survey of the town; and on the following day, Dee, with Saxton and some others, rode over to Hough Hall, in Withington, the mansion of Sir Nicholas Mosley, who had in the same year become the purchaser of the manor of Manchester. The survey was completed on the 10th July, and on the 14th Saxton “rode away.” It is much to be regretted that no copy of Saxton’s work, so far as is known, has been preserved; for an authentic plan of the town in Elizabeth’s reign would be a valuable addition to the topographical records of Manchester, and would enable us to see exactly what progress was made in the extension of the town between that time and the Commonwealth period, when another survey—the earliest reliable one extant—was taken.

Before the close of the first year of his Wardenship, Dee was invited to exercise the power he was commonly believed to possess of casting out devils; but he prudently declined. About two years previously five members of the household of Mr. Nicholas Starkey, of Cleworth, in Leigh parish, became demoniacally possessed, through the influence, as was said, of a conjuror named Hartley. Margaret Byrom, of Salford, who happened to be on a visit at Cleworth, became infected with the malady. This occurred on the 9th January, 1596-7; and at the end of the month she returned to her friends at Salford, when Dee was importuned to deliver her from the evil spirit which tormented her. The Warden, however, refused, telling her friends he would practise no such unlawful arts as they desired; but, instead, advised they should “call for some godlye preachers, with whom he should consult concerning a public or private fast,” and at the same time he sharply rebuked Hartley for following his contraband calling. Possibly the failure of his previous attempt to exorcise the spirit in the case of “Nurse Anne Frank” had induced a wholesome prudence on his part, though his refusal made him unpopular with his parishioners, who were offended at his withholding the relief they believed it was in his power to give, and his Puritan colleagues took advantage of his unpopularity to make his life miserable. Oliver Carter, who had held his fellowship for more than a quarter of a century, and had become the recognised head of the Presbyterian faction in the district, was chief among the malcontents, and a sore thorn in the side the doctor found him. Carter disliked alchemical philosophers as much as he hated Popish recusants, and denounced the Warden’s intercourse with the spirit world as a scandal upon the Church. The Presbyterian Fellow had little respect for lawfully-constituted authority, and his open resistance in matters of ceremony had aforetime brought him in collision even with the cautious and temperate Bishop Chadderton, who had found it necessary to enforce some little submission to ecclesiastical law. It is not surprising, therefore, that he should have shown little regard for the authority of the new comer, whom he looked upon as a Court spy, and detested accordingly. He was a continuous source of annoyance, and his contumacious demeanour, his “impudent and evident disobedience in the Church,” and persistent obstructiveness are frequently complained of, thus—

Jan. 22, 1579.—Olyver Carter’s thret to sue me with proces from London, &c., was this Satterday in the church declared to Robert Cleg.

Sept. 25.—Mr. Olyver Carter his impudent and evident disobedience in the church.

Sept. 26.—He repented, and some pacification was made.

Nov. 14.—The fellows would not grant me the £5 for my howse-rent, as the Archbishop had graunted; and our foundation commandeth an howse.

July 17, 1600.—I willed the fellows to com to me by nine the next day.

July 18.—They cam. It is to be noted of the great pacification unexpected of man which happened this Friday; for in the forenone (betwene nine and ten), when the fellows were greatly in doubt of my heavy displeasure, by reason of their manifold misusing of themselves against me, I did with all lenity enterteyn them, and shewed the most part of the things that I had browght to pass at London for the colledg good, and told Mr. Carter (going away) that I must speak with him alone. Robert Leghe (one of the four clerks) and Charles Legh (the brother of Robert, and receiver) were by. Secondly, the great sute betwene Redich (Redditch) men and me was stayed, and Mr. Richard Holland his wisdom. Thirdly, the organs uppon condition were admitted. And, fourthly, Mr. Williamson’s resignation granted for a preacher to be gotten from Cambridge.

Reconciliation was thus effected, but it was not long before there was a renewal of hostilities, for, under date Sept. 11, we find—

Mr. Holland, of Denton, Mr. Gerard, of Stopford (Stockport), Mr. Langley, &c., commissioners from the Bishop of Chester, authorised by the Bishop of Chester, did call me before them in the Church abowt thre of the clok, after none, and did deliver to me certayne petitions put up by the fellows against me to answer before the 18th of this month. I answered them all codem tempore, and yet they gave me leave to write at leiser.

Amid these harassing anxieties and unseemly disputations with the unruly Fellows, Dee’s alchemical studies were not neglected. He had secured another medium in the place of Kelly—Bartholomew Hickman, who turned out to be nearly as great a knave, though not nearly half so clever as his predecessor, and, losing confidence, Dee discharged him and burnt all the records of what he had seen and heard in the wonderful show-stone. The next day Roger Kooke, who had previously been in the service of the philosopher, and to whom he had revealed “the great secret of the elixir of the salt of metals,” offered “the best of his skill and powre, in the practises chymicall.” He was quickly set to work, but young Arthur Dee finding by chance among his papers what seemed a plot against the father, he was charged with the conspiracy, when Dee cried, “_O Deus libera nos a malo!_ All was mistaken, and we are reconcyled godly;” and he again dreamed of his “working the philosopher’s stone.” He would appear, however, to have subsequently parted with Kooke, for before his death Hickman had been restored to favour.

Though devoted to scientific pursuits, it must not be supposed that the Warden neglected his official duties, or that he was by any means unmindful of the secular interests of the Collegiate body. His business exactitude and active zeal in this direction, however, did not always meet with the approval of his neighbours, or at least of such of them as happened to be tithe-farmers or College tenants. In May of the year following his induction we find him with his curate, Sir Robert Barber (clerics commonly affected the prefix of “Sir” in those days), Robert Tilsey, the parish clerk, and “diverse of the town of diverse ages,” making a careful perambulation of the bounds of the parish with the view of determining its exact limits, a procedure that somewhat alarmed Mr. Langley, the rector of the adjoining parish of Prestwich, who smelt litigation in Dee’s anxiety “for avoiding of undue encroaching of any neighbourly parish, one on the other.” On another occasion he was careful to note that—

At midnight (January 22, 1599), the College gate toward Hunt’s Hall did fall, and some parte of the wall going downe the lane—

the “lane” being the narrow passage that led from the north side of the church, by the venerable tree where bulls were baited, and past the prison to Irk Bridge, then known as Hunt’s Bank, a name it retained until modern times, when it was superseded by the present Victoria Street. The gate-house, which, as before stated, was at one time used as a workhouse, stood on this, the westerly side of the great quadrangle, the gates opening into Hunt’s Bank. Though they have long since disappeared, the evidences of their former existence may still be traced in the wall.

After an absence in London he paid an official visit to the Grammar School, where he “fownd great imperfection in all and every of the scholers, to his great grief,” a record that must be taken as reflecting on Dr. Cogan, the head master, whose time appears to have been divided between the teaching of youth and the practice of physic. In August, 1597, the “Erle and Cowntess of Derby” having taken up their abode at Aldport Lodge, Dee entertained them at “a banket at my lodging at the Colledge hora 4½.” There are many other entries of visits from distinguished personages, among them Sir Urian Legh, of Adlington, the reputed hero of the ballad of “The Spanish Lady;” Sir George Booth, sheriff of Cheshire; Mr. Wortley, of Wortley. Probably, also, Camden, the historian, for it is recorded that when that distinguished antiquary visited the town, Dee pointed out to him the inscription of some Roman remains at Castle Field, attributable to the Frisian cohort, which occupied the station there. While dispensing his hospitalities the poor old man was suffering from lack of money, his financial difficulties being as great as ever, and we find him raising loans on the security of his diminished stock of plate, &c.—

Feb. 17, 1597.—Delivered to Charles Legh the elder (the receiver of College before referred to), my silver tankard with the cover, all dubble gilt, of the Cowntess of Herford’s gift to Francis her goddaughter, waying 22oz., great waight, to lay to pawne in his own name to Robert Welshman, for iiijli tyll within two dayes after May-day next. My dowghter Katherin and John Crocker and I myself were at the delivery of it and waying of it in my dyning chamber—it was wrapped in a new handkercher cloth.

Many similar transactions are recorded—indeed, he appears to have been continually borrowing money from his friends, and almost as frequently lending his books to them. Dee was certainly not one of those who believe that “imparted knowledge doth diminish learning’s store,” for he was ever ready to place his literary treasures at the service of others, and frequent entries occur of his lending rare and valuable works to those he thought capable of understanding and appreciating them.

It was some little relief to him when, on the 2nd December, 1600, his son Arthur had a grant of the chapter clerkship, though before he could pay £6 for the patent he

Borrowed of Mr. Edmund Chetham, the schoolmaster (the uncle of Humphrey, the founder) £10 for one yere uppon plate, two bowles, two cupps with handles, all silver, waying all 32oz. Item, two potts with cover and handells, double gilt within and without, waying 16oz.

The Warden’s pecuniary embarrassments kept him in discredit with his parishioners, who naturally looked with disfavour upon an ecclesiastic that did not pay his debts, especially when, as they believed, it required only a very little closer intimacy with the evil one to enable him to do so. The fellows maintained their hostility, his neighbours became more and more unfriendly, the urgency of his creditors was oppressive, and on every hand he was assailed with suspicions of sorcery. The nine years he was in Manchester was the most wretched portion of his life. Unable to bear the odium attaching to him, he petitioned King James that he might be brought to trial, “and by a judicial sentence be freed from the revolting imputations” his astrological and other inquiries had brought upon him; but Elizabeth’s wary successor, who detested his mysteries, would have nothing to say to him. Weary with the struggle, he quitted Manchester in November, 1604, and once more sought shelter in the house at Mortlake. Of the closing years of his chequered life little is known, but that little is sad enough. The friends of former years had died or forgotten him, and the new generation of Court favourites left him to pass his few remaining days in poverty, sickness, and desolation. After all his tricks and conjurations the once haughty philosopher was reduced to such miserable straits that he oftentimes had to sell some of his books before he could obtain the means wherewith to purchase a meal. The prediction of the Earl of Salisbury that he “would shortly go mad” was nearly being realised, for in the midst of his poverty, and while on the very verge of the grave, he resumed his occult practices, in which he was aided by the formerly discarded Bartholomew Hickman. At last, in poverty and neglect, wearied and worn out, the miserable wreck of an ill-spent life, he, in 1608, passed away at the advanced age of 81, and was buried in the chancel of the church at Mortlake without any tombstone or other memorial to preserve his name.

Of the numerous family that had once gathered round his hearth few remained at the time of his dissolution, death or estrangement having removed nearly all. His son Michael had died in infancy. His busy, shrewish wife died on the 23rd March, 1605. Of the other seven children Katherine was the only one who clung to him to the last. Rowland, on completing his studies at the Manchester Grammar School, obtained an exhibition at Oxford, but of his subsequent career nothing is known, nor, with the exception of Arthur, can we trace anything of the after-history of the others. Arthur, his first-born, resided in Manchester for some time, and subsequently practised as a physician. He married Isabella, one of the daughters of Edmund Prestwich, of Hulme Hall, and afterwards was chosen physician to Michael III., the first Czar of Russia, and for many years he resided in that country, where his wife died, July 6, 1634, after having borne him 12 children. Returning to England, he was sworn physician to Charles I., and located himself at Norwich, where he continued to reside until his death, September, 1651. Anthony à Wood, in his _Athenæ_, mentions that Arthur Dee, when an old man, spoke in full confidence of his father’s goodness and sincerity, and affirmed that in his youth, when he had initiated him in some of his mystical pursuits, he had seen enough to satisfy him that he had discovered many marvellous secrets, and only lacked the means to make them available. The son may not have been altogether an impartial witness, but it would be unfair to judge the father by the standard of the present day.

Dee lived in an age when everybody believed in the occult sciences, and in the power of summoning visitants from the world of shadows by incantations and other mysterious means. Half a century before his death he had been pre-eminent for his learning, his eloquence, and his scientific attainments, and he was undoubtedly one of the great lights of his era. Camden styled him _nobilis mathematicus_, and he may fairly be accounted the prophet of the arts which Bacon and Newton were afterwards to reveal. A ripe scholar, well skilled in chemistry, mathematics, and mechanics, and the master of the whole circle of the liberal arts as then understood—

He sought and gathered for our use the true.

He was one of the first who accepted the theory of Copernicus, and he successfully performed the labour of correcting the Gregorian calendar. He was, moreover, a good linguist, an earnest antiquary, and a diligent searcher of those records which tend to elucidate the history of the country, and to him is due the credit of first suggesting the formation of a “National Library,” for the preservation of those ancient writings in which lie “the treasures of all antiquity, and the everlasting seeds of continual excellency.” Paradoxical as it may seem, there was with the splendour and universality of his genius much childlike simplicity; and his credulous confiding nature often exposed him to the iniquitous arts of those about him; while his reckless extravagance, his love of ostentatious display, his debts, and his carelessness of the method which brought relief, kept him in continuous disquiet. He was part of the age in which he lived in that he was fond of alchemy, a believer in the divining-rod, and a devout practitioner of the astral science; but it is to be feared that his straitened circumstances sometimes prompted him to have recourse to tricks and artifices that his better judgment condemned. He was a strange mixture of pride and gentleness, of goodness and credulity. He discoursed learnedly with foreign philosophers, tended his little folks in their sicknesses, and soothed them in their childish griefs and sorrows; gazed into the glittering depths of his magic mirror and smiled good temperedly at his shrewish wife’s scoldings; dispensed his hospitalities and gossiped freely with the aristocratic personages who sought his society, and pawned his property to pay for their entertainment; contended with an archbishop and sought peace with the irrepressible Carter and his unruly associates; but we willingly forget the weaknesses and the foibles of the man when we remember the genius and the learning of the philosopher. With all his failings Dee possessed much kindness of heart, and though Manchester may not have been greatly advantaged by the ecclesiastical supervision of the “Wizard Warden,” he was yet, in many respects, much to be preferred to the needy Scotch courtier whom King James appointed as his successor.