ABSTRACT
The life of John Dee is a tragedy. It offers the spectacle of a wise man courting folly, of a philosopher duped by knaves. A brilliant scholar, and one of the original Fellows of Trinity, 1546, he early found himself a man shunned—a social pariah. Accused of being “a conjuror, a caller of devils, a great doer therein, and so the arche conjuror of this whole kingdom,” Dee retorted that it was “ a damnable slander, utterly untrue, on the whole, and in every word and part thereof, as will appere at the dreadful day.” Elizabeth, during her retirement at Woodstock, had apparently consulted Dee as to the time of Mary’s death, which interview seems to have led to his trial. Dee has recorded that, although his early experiments with the crystal were partially successful, he was unable afterwards to recall anything of the revelations thus made to him.
