Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012) 449–459

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Studies in History and Philosophy of Science

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John Dee: the patronage of a natural philosopher in Tudor England

Stephen PumfreyDepartment of History, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YG, UK

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Available online 25 April 2012

Keywords:John DeePatronageElizabethanScienceReformation

0039-3681/$ - see front matter � 2011 Elsevier Ltd. Adoi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2011.12.003

E-mail address: s.pumfrey@lancaster.ac.uk

a b s t r a c t

For all of his failures to secure patronage, John Dee was successful compared with his contemporaries. Weknow more about his patronage relations than those of any other natural philosopher in Tudor England.Only by comparing him with other English client practitioners can we understand how unusual and evenproductive were Dee’s relations with his patrons. This article makes those comparisons and offers anoverview of Dee’s patronage, but in the main it explores three of the unusual aspects.

The first is Dee’s good relationship with female patrons and patronage brokers, notably QueenElizabeth. The second is the kind of office that Dee sought. His greatest efforts were aimed at securingthe headship of a collegiate institution such as Eton College or the Hospital of St Cross. Not only did theyfit his aspiration to set up a research institute, but all were offices in the Queen’s direct gift, and so playedto Dee’s strengths. Nevertheless, Dee was frustrated at nearly every turn. It is suggested that a majorcause was the young Dee’s links with both Sir John Cheke’s network of Protestant humanists, whobecame Marian exiles, and with ‘Louvainist’ Catholic exiles opposed to Edward VI and Elizabeth. Wesee how Dee was consistently passed over in favour of other members of these circles. Notwithstandingthis, it is concluded that Dee was relatively successful, given the English court’s refusal to patronise spec-ulative natural philosophy, even that offered by Thomas Digges, William Gilbert or Francis Bacon. Finally,some of Dee’s supposed failings as a client, such as the sparseness of printed works, are shown to havebeen systemic.

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1. Introduction

John Dee (1527–1609) lived his life during a golden age ofpatronage in the courts of Europe. In the field of natural knowledgeit was an age of notable, innovative and richly backed clients, suchas the natural magician Giambattista della Porta (1535?–1615),who entertained Neapolitan and other Italian nobles and who, likeDee, was harassed by the ecclesiastical authorities. The Germancourt of Hesse-Kassel supported a variety of innovators such asthe alchemist Johannes Hartmann (1568–1631). The hugely expen-sive astronomy of Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) depended on thepatronage first of the kings of Denmark and then on Holy RomanEmperor Rudolf II, a well known patron of the occult scienceswhom Dee also cultivated. The zenith was the spectacular careerof Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)—‘court mathematician and courtphilosopher.’ The title was a prestigious one which Galileo

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persuaded Cosimo de Medici to award him in 1610 (Biagioli,1993, pp. 7–10) and which, had he not died the year before, Deemight have coveted. Each of these careers in patronage has beenthe subject of specialist studies (Biagioli, 1993; Eamon, 1994;Findlen, 1994; Moran, 1991; Mosley, 2007; Thoren, 1990). As aresult, the importance of court culture and the opportunities andconstraints of patronage in the development of early modernscience are now widely recognised. However, a consideration ofEnglish work in the context of patronage has only recently begun(Pumfrey & Dawbarn, 2004).

One reason for this late beginning is the lack in England ofostentatious patronage of controversial and flamboyant clients. InJohn Dee we have an exception, even if he had to leave Englandwith the Polish prince Albrecht Łaski in pursuit of it. BenjaminWoolley’s popular biography justifiably styles him ‘the Queen’sconjurer’ (Woolley, 2001), and Glyn Parry’s contribution to this

450 S. Pumfrey / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012) 449–459

volume (2011) shows how intimately connected were Dee’s occultpractices and Tudor politics.

There is still a lack of work which focuses on John Dee’s careerin patronage. Nicholas Clulee opened up the subject, connectingDee’s intellectual development with ‘the vagaries of patronage’(1988, p. 177 and passim). William H. Sherman paid even closerattention in his study of the politics of Dee’s reading and writing.Writing against the categorisation of Dee as a magus, let alone aphilosopher, Sherman read Dee’s huge library as a sign of his manyconnections with academic, commercial and courtly circles. Henoted that this approach to Dee ‘embeds him in a socioprofessionalnetwork of patronage relations’ (Sherman, 1995, p. 24). Shermanwas concerned with how patronage was visible in the texts Deeread and wrote, and not in his career per se.

This article concentrates on Dee’s career in patronage. It ex-plores specific aspects, and makes comparisons with other playersof the patronage game. Comparisons are important because, whilewe seem to know more about the patronage of Dee than of anycomparable Englishman, he was far from typical.

There are few courtly practitioners in England with whom wemight compare Dee. The closest in time is William Cuningham (c.1531–1586), the physician and cosmographer. A very similar figureis Queen Elizabeth I’s royal physician and creator of magnetic phi-losophy, William Gilbert (1544–1603). However, few details havesurvived which illuminate Cuningham’s and Gilbert’s patronagerelations. None suggests foreign patrons. The lives of WilliamHarvey (1578–1657) and especially Francis Bacon (1561–1626)(Jardine & Stewart, 1998; Shackelford, 2003), are better known,but belong to a later era.

The closest in intellectual interests is Dee’s protégé and ‘mathe-matical son’, Thomas Digges (c. 1546–1595). A very pertinent simi-larity is that both men’s fathers, Leonard Digges and Rowland Dee,were prominent Protestants who were arrested and had their estatesconfiscated under Mary. Whilst Leonard survived into Elizabeth’sreign and regained his wealth, Rowland Dee died in 1555 withouthaving done so. John was therefore less able than Thomas to be, ashe had hoped, a gentleman scholar. He needed patronage.

That we know so much more about Dee and his patrons is be-cause he himself recorded a large amount of information, muchof which is in manuscripts that have since been edited and printed.There is a lot of relevant material in his diaries (Dee, 1998). A sec-ond source is the formal Compendious rehearsal of his professionallife, compiled in 1592 and first published in 1726, with which hehoped to persuade Elizabeth I that he was worthy of substantialpatronage (Dee, 1726). This was a very selective account, and inthis volume Parry (2011) shows for the first time the political cir-cumstances which led to its compilation.

The combination of Dee’s own evidence and the work which hasfollowed Clulee’s and Sherman’s studies of 1988 and 1995 meansthat we already have considerable knowledge of Dee’s contactswith patrons. A review of this knowledge suggests that Dee’s lifein patronage can be divided into seven stages, which I outline inthe footnote below.1 Nevertheless, important aspects of Dee’s lifein patronage have not received sufficient attention. In this article Idevelop three of them. The first is how Dee’s career was unusuallydependent upon his relationships with women—women as patrons,

1 This review of Dee’s life in patronage is not exhaustive. It adds little to our understancentral Europe from 1583 to 1589. Accordingly, it may help the reader to keep in mind thwith Sir John Cheke as his major patron, Dee has success in the Reformed state of HenryMarian England. With his Edwardian patrons executed or in exile, Dee finds favour withRebuilding his credibility (c. 1558–1570): a tainted Dee attempts to rebuild and exploit his cclient (c. 1570–1583): he becomes a sought-after client with expertise in the practical maambitions, but it does not satisfy his grand aspirations. 5. Refashioning himself as an interphilosophy’ (Clulee, 1988, pp. 203–230), an emboldened Dee joins Albrecht Łaski’s entourfavour (1589–1595): back in England, a modest Dee becomes desperate to secure some offiCollege, Dee reconciles himself to this royally gifted but irksome and unrewarding office.

or as brokers of female patronage—especially Elizabeth I. The second,closely related aspect is that Dee concentrated his petitioning onoffices which were in the Queen’s gift. The third aspect concernsthe patronage networks Dee was involved in before Elizabeth’saccession, from his arrival at St John’s College, Cambridge in 1546to the death of Queen Mary in 1558. These were complex, and tiedDee to prominent figures in both Protestant and Catholic circles.We will see how Dee’s connections with specific individuals in bothcamps hampered his attempts to secure the well remunerated officewhich his aspirations and self-image as a gentleman philosopher re-quired. In conclusion, I will present Dee as an anomaly in Tudorpatronage, singularly unsuccessful in his pursuit of it, yet stillachieving better results than any of his contemporary philosophersof nature.

2. Dee and Elizabeth: the importance of female patrons andbrokers

I begin this analysis with an aspect of Dee’s patronage networkwhich has not received sufficient attention since it was pointed outone hundred years ago (Fell Smith, 1909, pp. 26–27). Dee’s work asa natural philosopher was unusually dependent upon his relation-ships with women. This included his patronage relations.

By the late sixteenth century, a number of natural philosophersfound themselves excluded (or excluded themselves) by reason ofmarriage or religion from universities or monasteries, the tradi-tional sites of knowledge. As Deborah Harkness has observed, workmoved into the household and into the domestic and femalesphere. She brilliantly explored the role of Dee’s wife Jane andthe gender relations in their Mortlake household (Harkness,1997, pp. 251–258). Indeed, we probably know more about theserelations for Dee than for any English natural philosopher beforeRobert Boyle. William Gilbert and Francis Bacon were bachelorswithout, as far as we know, intimate female friends. William Har-vey’s wife was childless and ‘all that we know of her from Harvey’sown words was that she kept a parrot’ (French, 2004). We knowfrom Cuningham’s will only that he had a wife called Joyce, andwe are not sure whether Thomas Digges’ wife was called Anne orAgnes. By contrast, Dee’s diaries overflow with evidence of a familyman who was at ease with women, and whom women liked, asElizabeth I clearly did.

To be sure, Dee was frequently the recipient of informal patron-age from Tudor noblemen and, in the conventional way, the rela-tionship was facilitated by a male patronage broker. Cheke andCecil secured him the patronage of the Earl of Northumberland.Sir Edward Dyer, the godfather of Dee’s son Arthur, frequentlymediated between privy councillors and Dee (and through Dee toEdward Kelley). On occasion, men petitioned Elizabeth on his be-half. Especially noteworthy were the efforts of the Leicester clientRichard Cavendish, uncle of the celebrated circumnavigatorThomas Cavendish. Dee’s Diary records numerous contacts in1590, in which Cavendish pressed Dee’s suit for the Provostshipof Eton before Elizabeth and gave him several gifts (Diary, pp.248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 256).

Cavendish’s mediation with Elizabeth reminds us that she was apowerful patron of Dee, and why Dee’s relations with women were

ding of Dee’s career in Marian England, and none concerning the period he spent ine following seven stage chronological overview. 1. Building his networks (1542–1553):VIII and Edward VI. 2. Shifting his allegiances (1553–1558): Dee adapts to residence in

Catholic scholars and churchmen, including Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London. 3.onnections with Elizabeth I and her leading advisors. 4. Fashioning himself as a useful

thematics and imperial ideology which underpin Elizabethan England’s expansionistnational magus (1583–1589): rejecting practical for ‘mystical and supermetaphysicalage in a doomed pursuit of grand patrons in the Holy Roman Empire. 6. Falling out ofce under Elizabeth I. 7. Declining in Manchester (1595–1609): as warden of Manchester

S. Pumfrey / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012) 449–459 451

important and uniquely helpful. England’s elite had to adapt to thenew situation in which a woman ruled the court and country. To besure, power remained with male nobles, courtiers and churchmen,but the operation of patronage changed. One consequence was thatElizabeth devolved more patronage to her advisors than did kings.Conversely, much access to the monarch herself was now in thehands of women. The gentlemen of the bedchamber were nowgentlewomen, and ladies-in-waiting became an important routeto the Queen’s attention. An equally difficult gender reversal tookplace on the accession of King James I.2

Elizabeth seems to have been well disposed towards Dee evenbefore her accession. He advised her on the astrological circum-stances of her accession and, according to his Compendious rehear-sal, she,

very graciously took me to her service, before her Coronation,being to her Majestie commended by the right honourable[Henry Herbert] Earle of Pembroke, Lord Robert [Dudley].(Dee, 1726, p. 509. Hereafter CR)

We learn from Dee’s diaries how the position of his house nearthe river at Mortlake allowed Elizabeth to take detours fromHampton Court for informal visits, for shows of her favour, andeven for consoling Dee on the death of his mother-in-law. She alsopersonally accepted and honoured a petition from Jane Dee (Dee,1998, pp. 10, 11, 268. Hereafter Diary). However, Elizabeth’s manypromises of offices over a thirty year period had still come to noth-ing by 1595. Indeed, in December 1590,

the Queen Ma[jes]ty called for me at my door as she passed by,and I met her at East Sheen Gate: where she graciously puttingdown her mask, did say with merry cheer: ‘‘I thank thee, Dee.There was never promise made, but it was broken or kept.’’ Iunderstood her Maj[es]ty to mean on the 100 angels she prom-ised to have me sent this day. (Diary, p. 251)

Dee’s unusually personal relationship with the Queen was prin-cipally mediated and sustained by three powerful female courtiersassociated with the Dudley family, which patronised Dee in severalways. These women, more patronage brokers for Dee than patronsper se, were also friends of his family. The importance of these la-dies-in-waiting was first recognised by Charlotte Fell Smith, herselfa redoubtable woman, but deserves revisiting.3

The three women were Anne Dudley, countess of Warwick(1548/9–1604); Blanche Parry (c. 1508–1590); and MaryScudamore (c. 1550–1603). Dee’s Welsh relative Rowland Vaughandescribed them as a ‘trinity of Ladies able to work Mira-cles. . . . [who] in little Lay-matters would steal opportunity to servesome friends’ turns’ (Roberts, 2004).

The most powerful was Anne. In Elizabeth’s service from 1559 ifnot before, she was married to Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick in1565. She exerted her influence even more strongly after the earldied in 1590. These circumstances help to explain the favour shetowards Dee. Her recent biographer (Adams, 2004) notes that,

thanks to her intimacy with Elizabeth her influence wasbelieved to be extensive and much solicited. . . .The prevailingimpression is of a very effective advocate and medium for

2 The argument for the parsimony of Elizabeth’s direct patronage is made in Rosenberg (1review with specific reference to Elizabeth’s patronage, see Wood (2008). For James I, see

3 She was the most prolific woman contributor to the original Dictionary of national biobook-length study, Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick (1625–1678): her family and friends. It mabiography of Dee. See Mitchell (2004).

4 Fell Smith (1909), p. 34, states that before her marriage Dee’s wife was ‘a lady-in-waitinof Dee’s patrons. If so then it may have been Jane to whom Dee owed his three female pa

5 Diary, p. 268. There may have been at least a fifth lady-in-waiting who supported Johndaughter in March 1590. Dee’s diary records in the same entry, for 29 and 30 May 1590, butof Eton College for Dee, and that the ‘Lady Cobham sent to my wife sugar and pepper &c.’ SAdams (2006). An anonymous referee states that she was indeed helping Dee’s suit for Et

submitting petitions and letters, as, for example, John Deefound. (Ibid)

Thus in 1592 it was the ‘honourable and very vertuous Countessof Warwick’ who put Dee’s plea to the Queen and who conveyedthe reply that she had agreed ‘to grant unto me, upon the nextavoydance, the Mastership of St. Crosse’s by Winchester.’ Dee alsopersuaded the countess to present his request to be examined bycommissioners Gorges and Wolley, for which examination he pre-pared his Compendious rehearsal. And, once he had gained a littlefinancial relief, it was the countess who conveyed his elaborate La-tin sentence of thanks in 1593 (CR, p. 551). Finally, it was she who,in July 1595, ‘did this evening thank her Ma[jes]tie in my name,and for me, for her gift of the Wardenship of Manchester’ (Diary,p. 275).

Blanche Parry nursed Elizabeth as an infant and became herchief gentlewoman in 1565. She was entrusted by Elizabeth withher jewels and, more notably, her library (Roberts, 2004). Shewas able to gain crown offices for her Welsh kinsmen such asVaughan, and Dee referred to her, no doubt loosely, as his ‘cousin’(Diary, p. 6). She also represented Dudley family interests ‘in theprivy chamber.’ Parry mediated with the Queen in the 1570s to ob-tain the extraordinary offer to Dee of ‘whatsoever Ecclesiasticaldignity within her Kingdom’ (CR, p. 510). Dee also reported that‘Mistris Blanche à Parry and Mistris Skydamore, now the LadySkydamore, had obtained her Majestie’s grant to me’ (CR, p. 515).On 28 October 1594, Dee,

writ and sent a letter to the Lady Skydmor in my wife’s name, tomove her majesty that. . . . I might declare my case to the body ofthe council. (Diary, p. 267)

Parry and Scudamore may not have wielded all the power of theCountess of Warwick, but they were clearly enduring supporters ofDee and his family. The Scudamores were family friends: in June1580 they stayed at Dee’s house, and Jane accompanied MaryScudamore to court the next day. In 1581, Mary, ‘of the PrivyChamber, and cousin to the Queen’, became godmother to Katha-rine Dee. Parry was already Arthur’s godmother (Diary, pp. 6, 9,13).4

Jane probably cemented support for her husband from a fourthwoman, Lady Katherine Howard, the Queen’s closest friend and thewife of Charles Howard, Lord High Admiral. Jane Fromond becameDee’s second wife early in 1578. If Dee had been socially superiorto his first wife, he was arguably Jane’s inferior, for she had beenKatharine Howard’s lady-in-waiting. Although Lady Howard ‘doesnot appear to have been as active a patronage broker as some ofher colleagues’ (Adams, 2004), in 1594 she and her husband lob-bied Elizabeth to give the chancellorship of St Paul’s cathedral toDee.5

In sum, Dee’s enviable access to the Queen depended to a con-siderable extent upon his position as a husband with a likeablewife who was mother to his children, a position which enabledhim to number Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting among his ownfriends and acquaintances. And his family was a card he was pre-pared to play, describing in 1592 the desperation he had ‘of provi-sion-making to preserve my selfe, my wife, our children, and

976). An argument that her gender mattered less is made in Doran (1996). For a recentCuddy (1987).

graphy, writing mainly on East Anglian subjects. As a result, in 1901 she published ay be coincidence that she also discusses another powerful Countess of Warwick in her

g at the Court to Lady Howard of Effingham’, wife of Charles, Lord Admiral and anothertrons. I cannot find evidence to support Fell Smith’s interesting statement.and Jane Dee: Frances Brooke, Lady Cobham (d. 1592), who became godmother of hiswith no explicit connection, the efforts of Richard Cavendish to obtain the provostshiphe was well connected with both Leicester and Burghley. See Diary, pp. 247–248, andon.

452 S. Pumfrey / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012) 449–459

family from hunger-starving and nakednes’ (CR, p. 541). In such re-spects, no other philosopher in early modern England matchesDee’s access to royal favour.

Dee’s ability to petition Elizabeth was very important. It pro-vided protection against the many enemies who distrusted him be-cause of his reputation as a conjuror, and as someone suspect in hisreligious beliefs. A particular problem for Dee in this regard wasthe installation of John Whitgift as Archbishop of Canterbury in1583. Dee’s diary shows him trying and failing to overcome Whit-gift’s opposition to his solicitation of various offices. By the 1590s,the office Dee most wanted was the mastership of the Hospital ofSt Cross in Winchester.6 In 1592, arguably he read too much intoWhitgift’s carefully chosen words:

this L[ord] Archbishop of Canterbury, his good Grace, very oftentimes, and to diverse hath affirmed, and still doth affirm, thatthis Mastership of S. Crosse’s is a living most fitt for me; and Ifitt for it.

However, in June 1594, Dee,

went to the Archbishop at Croydon. After I had heard the Arch-bishop his answers and discourses: and that after he had beenthe last Sunday at Tybalds with the Queen and Lord Treasurer,I take myself confounded for all suing or hoping for anythingthat was. And so, adieu to the Court and courting till God directme otherwise. (Diary, p. 266)

In this volume, Glyn Parry presents new evidence of Whitgift’sopposition to Dee’s occult philosophy, and of his blocking of Deeduring 1594.7 Yet Elizabeth continued to act like a protective patron,and Dee recorded on 8 December 1594,

by the chief motion of the Lord Admiral [Howard], and some-what of the L. Buckhurst [Robert Sackville], the Queen’s wishto the L. Archbishop presently, that I should have Dr. Day hisplace in Paul’s. (Diary, pp. 286, 268)

Dee followed up this hope of an opening with his Discourse apol-ogeticall, ‘very speedily written’ for Whitgift, which maintained hisorthodoxy. Dee sent the manuscript to Whitgift in January 1594/5,and had it printed in 1599.8

Practitioners dependent upon patronage had difficult decisionsto make. One was whether to seek the patronage of a single pres-tigious patron or of several more minor ones. Exclusive patronagebrought greater status, but left the client exposed to the patron’schanging fortunes or policies. This was the fate of Galileo when, de-spite his friends’ advice, he moved from the Venetian Republic tothe court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, gaining the title of courtphilosopher but simultaneously and fatally placing himself withinthe reach of the Roman Inquisition.

Throughout his career, Dee offered to various patrons a varietyof services, such as mathematical tuition, advice to navigators,astrological consultation, practical alchemy, political-cum-histori-cal research, and communications from angels. He performed var-ious small services for William Cecil, Lord Burghley over manyyears. He seems to have advised him in 1572 on the significanceof the ‘new star’ of that year (Pumfrey, 2011), and Burghley wasstill supporting him in 1591–92, when Dee made an astrologicalprediction that Spain would mount an invasion (Parry, 2011).

6 I discuss his pursuit of this office in more depth below. See also Clulee (2011) in this7 In Naples, della Porta suffered similarly in the 1570s and 1580s from the campaign ag8 Dee (1599), sig. C2r. It was printed by Peter Short, known for printing books on science

next year he printed William Gilbert’s De magnete (London, 1600).9 Arguably an exception, albeit ill-fated, was the royally approved ‘Society for the New

promoted and backed financially in 1579. The Elizabethan court showed considerable interto have been much more utilitarian and financial than philosophical. See Pumfrey & Daw

10 According to Dee, this was the initiative of the Marquess of Northampton. As Clulee notethey involved the care of souls: CR, pp. 509–510; Clulee (1988) p. 193.

Whilst other clients were satisfied by such limited commis-sions, Dee had the grand aspiration of setting and heading up a sci-entific ‘research institute’, as Clulee calls it (2011, passim). Such aplan required a very high level of patronage and resources. Wellinto the seventeenth century, the only realisation of such an insti-tute had been Tycho Brahe’s Uraniborg, and in his analysis of Dee’splans, Clulee shows how similar they were to Uraniborg (2011). Ty-cho’s community depended upon lavish funding from the king ofDenmark, and when it was withdrawn he relocated to Pragueand the extravagant patronage of Emperor Rudolf II (Thoren,1990, p. 209). Although some English nobles offered small-scalepatronage to individual practitioners, there was no tradition inEngland of anything like this level of support for scientific researchconducted outside the universities, or indeed within them.9

3. Dee and Elizabeth: offices in the Queen’s gift

As Dee’s situation became desperate in 1592, he made a list ofthe kind of institutions and offices that might meet his needsand rectify his finances. He proposed as a ‘general, very easy, andspeedy remedy’ for his plight,

the Mastership of St. Crosse’s, or of the Wardenship of Winches-ter, or Provostship of Eaton, or Mastership of Sherborn, or suchlike, being speedily performed and assured unto me, and of meenjoyed. (CR, p. 543)

These were offices he had been pursuing for most of Eliza-beth’s reign, together with the mastership of St Katharine bythe Tower (of London), which he had discussed with her even be-fore her accession in 1558. Indeed, the only other offices forwhich we know him to have been put forward were the Deaneryof Gloucester Cathedral10 and the chancellorship of St Paul’s Cathe-dral. We will see that he was frustrated there too, and ultimatelyhad to settle for the second-rate wardenship of Christ’s College,Manchester. We will consider the main offices, in chronological or-der of Dee’s pursuit of them. When we do so, a common factoremerges: they were offices over which Queen Elizabeth was ableto exert considerable personal influence. Thus, even when he wasopposed by archbishops or privy councillors, Dee could appeal di-rectly to his royal patron.

We begin with the mastership of the Royal Hospital and Colle-giate Church of St Katharine by the Tower. Elizabeth raised thispossibility in 1558, even before she had been crowned (CR, p.509). A medieval foundation-cum-liberty, it had grown by the six-teenth century to become a large community, with hundreds ofinhabitants living outside the control of the city of London. Follow-ing Edward VI’s Act for the Dissolution of Collegiate Churches andChantries of 1547, the mastership was given to a layman and thefruits of the office seen as a reward for a servant of the crown. Itwas valuable, and under Edward it was first occupied by ThomasSeymour, brother of the Lord Protector (Page, 1909, pp. 525–530). On her accession, Mary gave it to one of her favourite divines,Francis Mallett (d. 1570). Mallett readily accepted the return toProtestantism under Elizabeth and was allowed to keep the office,only to resign it in 1561 following a legal dispute (Knighton,2004b).

volume.ainst occultism by the Roman Inquisition. See Eamon (1994) Ch. 6.

, music and reformed religion, including a lavish edition of Foxe’s Book of martyrs. The

art of making Copper and Quicksilver by Way of Transmutation’ which Lord Burghleyest in transmutation and alchemists, especially in the 1570s, but this interest appearsbarn (2004, p. 159–160).s concerning such ecclesiastical livings, Dee would not or could not take them because

S. Pumfrey / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012) 449–459 453

With Mallett in possession of St Katharine’s, Dee switched hisattentions to the Provostship of Eton College. Eton was foundedin 1441 by Henry VI, along with King’s College, Cambridge, towhich Eton boys were expected to progress. Like King’s, it was aroyally endowed and grand institution. The statutes, still in forcetoday, made clear that the provost was to be appointed by thecrown like headships of various colleges in Oxford and Cambridge.In Dee’s time, the provosts included distinguished and learned lay-men such as Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Henry Savile and Sir Henry Wot-ton. Dee wanted the office in the period between Smith’s andSavile’s tenure, when it was occupied by William Day, at that timestill a layman. Day was unremarkable but, unfortunately for Dee,also long-lived (Usher, 2004).

In the late 1560s and 1570s, Dee began to be sought after byElizabeth’s courtiers as an adviser to voyages of exploration andother imperialist projects. He became impatient with ‘the Ingrate-full and Thankles’ patrons who were interested in nothing granderthan his practical mathematical expertise.11

By now, Dee believed that the Apocalypse was approaching andhe ‘turned, in what he thought were his last years, from the realmof secular experiment and discovery to that of spiritual explorationand experience.’12 Unsurprisingly, he accepted the patronage ofCount Albrecht Łaski in order to make contact with European princeswho had more interest in his metaphysical and spiritual activities.

Leaving this period of foreign travel and patronage aside, thereis little evidence of Dee seeking office in England until he returnedfrom Prague in 1589, low on money and reputation, with the Apoc-alypse yet to happen. Parry states that what credit he had at courtflowed not from him but from Edward Kelley, still in favour in Pra-gue as a magus capable of making alchemical gold. When Kelleyfell, so did Dee, who then resorted to the strategy of compilingthe Compendious rehearsal (Parry, 2011).

It is here that we learn of Dee’s interest in the mastership of StCross, more ‘than any other living, see or dignity of like value’ (CR,p. 544). Its full title was the Hospital of St Cross and Almshouse ofNoble Poverty in Winchester. The oldest and largest institution ofits kind in England, it was well endowed and built like an Oxbridgecollege (Page, 1912, pp. 525–530). It is easy to see why Dee thoughthe could turn it into Clulee’s ‘research institute.’

Failing St Cross, Dee declared himself happy with the adjacentliving of the ‘Wardenship of Winchester, or Provostship of Eaton,or Mastership of Sherborn, or such like’ (CR, p. 543). St Mary’sCollege near Winchester (now Winchester College) was foundedin 1394 by William of Wykeham in conjunction with New College,Oxford, and as such was a model for Eton College, founded sixtyyears later. ‘Sherborn’ was the Hospital of Saints Lazarus, Marthaand Mary. Founded in 1181 as a secular foundation, it survivedthe Reformation, albeit in a state of some chaos. An act of 1585renamed it ‘Christ’s Hospital in Sherborne near Durham’, andstipulated that the master should preach but have no other cureof souls, a condition which, as we will see below, was importantto Dee (Page, 1907, pp. 115–117). Nothing specific is known ofany suits by Dee for this position.

We come at last to the one office which Dee finally and belat-edly received from Elizabeth, the wardenship of Christ’s College,Manchester. Unlike Winchester or Durham, let alone London,Manchester was not an established centre of learned culture. This

11 We can see the frustration in Dee’s anonymous ‘Necessary Advertisement’ of 1577, wheconstant and assistant Christian Alexander, Brytan should not have been now destitute of

12 Whitby (1981), p. 157. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for drawing this point13 Fell Smith (1909), p. 118, wrote that he did, but seems to have mistranscribed Manch14 An anonymous referee informs me that much of the tithe income had been leased for £

attractive.15 Other examples include St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle and Westminster Abbey.

considered, Parry (2011) notes that ‘Elizabeth had a free hand in St David’s because the p

wardenship was a post Dee did not seek13 and did not enjoy,although it did provide him with some security in his final years.Dee recorded Elizabeth’s opinion that she ‘was sorry it was so farfrom hence: but that something better near hand be found for me.’He received no further offers (Diary, p. 275).

St Mary’s Church at Manchester was made collegiate in 1421.Like many such foundations, it was dissolved in Edward VI’s reign,but refounded by Mary and again in 1578 by Elizabeth herself, whochanged the name from St Mary’s to Christ’s College. As warden,Dee was entitled to a rent-free house and 4 s. for each day hewas resident; he and four foundation fellows appointed chaplainsto perform the divine services. In 1650 the annual income was£46 in rent, plus fines, and £550 in tithe income (Farrer and Brown-hill, 1911, pp. 192–204), although considerably less in Dee’s time.14

What is striking about these offices is that they all lay in the giftof the crown. Some, like St Mary’s College, Winchester and EtonCollege, were collegiate churches which, like Oxford and Cam-bridge colleges, had survived the Reformation and Edward VI’s1547 Act for the Dissolution of Collegiate Churches and Chantries.In the case of Manchester, the Collegiate Church of Our Lady hadindeed been dissolved under the Act, but had been directlyrefounded by Elizabeth herself. All existed outside the Church ofEngland’s diocesan structure. Finally, St Katharine’s by the Towerwas a ‘Royal Peculiar.’ Royal Peculiars also fell outside the jurisdic-tion of a bishop, and directly under that of the monarch.15

Moreover, these peculiar institutions suited Dee. Given his rep-utation, personal inclinations and Whitgift’s opposition, Dee wouldnever achieve the level of patronage needed to secure an ecclesias-tical post. By contrast, because these positions were distributed bythe monarch primarily as rewards for political service, the masters,wardens or provosts were generally laymen. Any care of souls wascarried out by minor clergy. Dee was not prepared to do it, so whenBlanche Parry conveyed the Queen’s remarkable offer of any avail-able ‘Ecclesiastical dignity within her Kingdom’, Dee responded:‘cura animarum annexa did terrifie me to deal with them’ (CR, 510).

The institutions were all colleges, suitably designed for a com-munity of learned men (and some women). Finally, as institutionswhich often approached cathedrals in terms of size and wealth, butwhich were independent of any diocese, they could generate in-come of hundreds of pounds for the lay office holder.

As we have seen, by the 1590s Dee was paying the price ofdepending upon one grand patron, Elizabeth. Although she finallygranted him the Manchester wardenship, it was a disappointingend to a disappointing career for England’s most ambitious clientphilosopher. Had he played the patronage game more ably, the re-wards could have been great.

Sherman has asked us to stop pigeonholing Dee as either a phi-losopher or a magus. I maintain that ‘philosopher of nature’ cap-tures much of what Dee thought about his role. Nevertheless, wecan take up Sherman’s challenge by comparing Dee with some ofhis ‘all rounder’ humanist competitors who did not become naturalphilosophers. From the evidence considered in this article, one can-didate for comparison stands out. This is Thomas Wilson (1523/4–1581), a humanist scholar who rose to become one of Elizabeth’sprivy councillors.

To develop a comparison between Dee and Wilson, we mustreturn to the promising beginning of Dee’s career when he, like

re he wrote of himself that, ‘yf in the foresaid whole course of his tyme, he had found aa Christian Aristotle’, Dee (1577), sigs. D4y, e⁄1v.

to my attention.ester for Winchester.86 p.a. to Elizabeth, who granted it to a favourite. Clearly, this left the office even less

Concerning the five rectories in the Welsh diocese of St David’s, for which Dee washenomenally corrupt bishop had been suspended.’

454 S. Pumfrey / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012) 449–459

Wilson, was a protégé of John Cheke at Cambridge University. BothDee and Wilson made important contacts and friendships in Che-ke’s circle, which included Cheke’s brother-in-law William Cecil,Roger Ascham, Thomas Smith and one William Pickering (Clulee,1988, pp. 30–31; Doran & Woolfson, 2004).

4. John Dee’s early networks: Protestant or Catholic?

4.1. Cheke and the Athenians

In 1988, Nicholas Clulee plausibly suggested that Dee’s suc-cess as a client suffered from his ‘history of rather flexible reli-gious convictions’ (1988, p. 193). I am in no position toadvance our understanding of Dee’s religious beliefs, but thereare lessons to be learned from the associations that Dee madein the two turbulent decades following his matriculation at StJohn’s College, Cambridge in 1542. Recent scholarship allows usto know much more about the networks of importance to Dee’scareer, and how they advanced or impeded his success later inElizabeth’s reign. I consider first the Athenian circle of JohnCheke, and then a contrasting group of Catholic intellectuals,many of whom sought refuge in the university city of Louvain.We will see how Dee’s navigation through these networks didnot leave him well placed.

The vital role of John Cheke as Dee’s first major patron is wellknown. It is a model of how a patron could advance his client.When Dee entered St John’s, Cheke had just become the first regiusprofessor of Greek, tutoring Dee and Thomas Wilson, and pioneer-ing its Erasmian study, to the annoyance of conservatives. He alsoled the Athenians, the ‘Cambridge Connection’ of Protestanthumanists destined for political careers under Edward VI and, forthose able to resume them, under Elizabeth.

In 1549, John Dudley, First Earl of Northumberland overthrewthe prince’s Protector, Edward Seymour, First Duke of Somerset.Although Somerset had also patronised the Athenians, Chekenow gained considerably more power. Already tutor to EdwardVI, he was now at the heart of government. Cheke was probablyinstrumental in securing for Dee his position as an under-readerin Greek. This was in 1546, when Dee also became a foundation fel-low of Trinity College, where the moderate Anglican John Redmanwas the first master (Collinson, 2003, p. 61).

On his death in 1551, Redman was succeeded by William Bill,another of Cheke’s creatures. Bill had been unable to afford thefee payable to become a fellow of St John’s, but Cheke intercededfor him. Indeed, Bill was elected master of St John’s before he be-came master of Trinity. On Mary’s accession he was ejected in fa-vour of the Catholic scholar John Christopherson (d. 1558). BothBill and Christopherson would have parts to play in shaping Dee’scareer.

It was in 1551 that Cheke and William Cecil commended Dee toEdward VI, his case apparently supported by a manuscript treatise,‘De usu Globi Coelestis’, which Dee had composed for the king (Cal-der, 1952, Ch. 4.I). Cheke obtained for Dee a royal pension of 100crowns. This was to be the only settled income Dee received formany years, and Dee regretted later commuting it into two recto-ries. Dee should have been able to make use of his connection withCecil in Elizabeth’s administration, but although Cecil used his ser-vices from time to time, he was never a settled Cecil client. As al-ready noted, he was well connected with the Dudleys, followinghis introduction at Edward’s court to the Earl of Northumberland.There is good evidence that he tutored the earl’s eldest son, JohnDudley, Second Earl of Warwick. As such, he would have again

16 They do not appear in Clulee’s exhaustive catalogue of Dee’s dated and undated writ(1599).

encountered Thomas Wilson, who was also engaged as a tutor,and in very similar subjects.

Here we reach an important divergence in their paths. In 1551,Wilson published the first of his several books, The rule of reason,conteinynge the arte of logique, set forth in Englishe. A product ofhis teaching, it was dedicated to Edward VI and honoured his debtto ‘Sir Jhon Cheke and Sir Antony Cooke, your maiesties teachersand Scholemasters’ (Wilson, 1551, dedication). His Arte of rhetori-que. . . .sette forth in English followed in 1553/4, was dedicated tohis pupil the Earl of Warwick (Wilson, 1553). Like John, he alsotaught Robert Dudley. His concern to replace ‘inkhorn’ terms withvernacular ones was typical of the protestant humanism inspiredby Cheke, and his Arte of Rhetorique was a very popular work (Dor-an & and Woolfson, 2004).

Doran and Woolfson (2004) write that Wilson’s Rule of reasonwas ‘the first logical treatise in English.’ Whilst it was the first tobe printed, Dee would later claim to have composed an ‘unprinted’work, ‘The Arte of Logicke, in English—anno—1547’, and ‘The 13.Sophisticall Fallacias, with their Discoveries, written in English me-ter—anno—1548’ (Dee, 1599, sig. A4v). Dee included these unprint-ed treatises in his 1594 list but not in his first list of 1592 (CR, pp.525–528), and they have not survived.16

If it is true, Dee had been extremely precocious in his Chekeanadoption of the vernacular. He is famous for starting many worksbut finishing few, and bringing even fewer to the press. Had heprinted more of them, his later claims to a useful productivitymay have carried more weight. However, we must note that inDee’s lifetime it was common for authors to circulate works inmanuscript. This was especially true if, like works of mathematicswith diagrams and tables, they had a limited audience and wereexpensive to print. Both Cuningham and Digges included lists ofadditional works in their printed books, many of which have notsurvived, and only one manuscript copy of William Gilbert’s ‘Demundo’ is extant (Cuningham, 1559, sig. a2v; Digges & Digges,1579, sig. A4; Pumfrey, 2011).

Both Dee and Wilson benefited from the Dudleys’ patronage. InDee’s case, he was introduced to Ambrose Dudley and, in duecourse, to Ambrose’s wife Anne Russell, future Countess of War-wick and the associate of Blanche Parry and Mary Scudamorewho would become Dee’s longstanding promoter. He would alsohave met Sir Henry Pickering, another Athenian and Dudley clientwho became a patron of Dee’s in 1549 and 1550. Wilson wouldneed Dudley’s support when he returned from exile on the deathof Queen Mary.

The death of Edward VI in July 1553 and the failure of theirefforts to prevent Mary’s accession were disasters for Cheke’sAthenians. Such a shift exemplifies the uncertainty of patronage.At court Dee had been associating with, as Calder put it, ‘theextreme religious reform party’ (Calder, 1952, Ch. 4.II), and hewas further identified with the reform of learning. Under Mary,these were disadvantageous, even dangerous associations. Mostof the prominent politicians, divines and scholars associatedwith Edward’s reign fled abroad during Mary’s reign. ChristineGarrett identified 472 men who did so (1938, p. 32). Of partic-ular interest concerning Dee is the group which chose to residein Venice, of which Cheke and other Athenians were prominentmembers. Bartlett describes this group as ‘essentially politi-cal . . .a relatively coherent body of fifty-seven well-born, well-educated laymen of reformed beliefs.’ As well as Cheke, menassociated with Dee included Sir Philip Hoby, Francis Walsing-ham, Sir William Pickering, and, significantly, Thomas Wilson(Bartlett, 1981, p. 224).

ings: Clulee (1988, pp. 302–309)). For Dee’s 1594 list, see the printed version in Dee

S. Pumfrey / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012) 449–459 455

Wilson had a particularly eventful period of exile. He joined upwith Cheke at the University of Padua, where he studied law.Refusing requests to return to England, he foolishly decided to pur-sue a legal case in Rome, where he was denounced as a heretic byCardinal Pole and imprisoned by the Inquisition, ostensibly be-cause of Protestant sentiments in his Arte of rhetorique. After ninemonths, he escaped when crowds sacked the prison upon thedeath of Pope Paul IV on 18 August 1559 (Doran & Woolfson,2004).

It is not surprising that when he returned to England Wilson‘enjoyed a series of promotions through the patronage of MatthewParker, Archbishop of Canterbury, Sir William Cecil, and Sir RobertDudley’ (ibid.). These men could or should have become Dee’s stea-dy patrons, but they did not. Instead, Dee was avoided, evenshunned, because of his associations with English Catholics.

4.2. Dee and the Louvainists

Dee chose to stay in England. He was a spectator as the wave ofMarian exiles left, to return in 1558 as an opposing wave of EnglishCatholics fled from Elizabeth’s regime. It is well known that Deecooperated with the Catholic regime, not least because of financialpressures resulting from the confiscation of his and his family’swealth. However, what have received little if any attention areDee’s suspicious associations with ‘Catholic’ intellectuals from1547, when he made his first visit to Louvain.

Dee was neither a leading politician nor a religious controver-sialist, and as such had less reason to fear his identification withEdward VI’s regime. However, he became over-identified withMary’s regime. When he was arrested in 1555 on suspicion ofcalculating royal nativities, he was released into the custody ofEdmund Bonner, the hardline Bishop of London. In early editionsof his Acts and monuments, John Foxe made much of the accusationof conjuring and of Dee’s apparent conversion and ordination asthe hated Bonner’s chaplain. Dee succeeded in satisfying Bonnerthat he was orthodox in religion, and it is very probable that hetook holy orders and served Bonner. Likewise, it was widely be-lieved that Dee had used magic during the crisis. This reinforcedDee’s subsequent reputation as untrustworthy in his religious alle-giance if not heterodox or crypto-Catholic, and he worked hard tohave Foxe remove the references (Evenden, 2008, pp. 148–158).

With the flight of English Catholics and the return of the Marianexiles, new patronage networks were established in the early yearsof Elizabeth’s reign. Dee was handicapped by his reputation as acompromiser, conjuror and religious turncoat, and had much dam-age to repair if he wanted one of the many ecclesiastical prefer-ments on offer. This was surely why he feared posts whichincluded as a duty ‘cura animarum’—the care of souls.

Even under Edward, Dee had already spent two periods abroad,for a few months in 1547 and then for most of the period 1548 to1550. He spent them in Louvain, in the Hapsburg duchy of Brabant:a haven for refugees from the Edwardian regime.17 This raises ques-tions about what Dee was doing there at the same time. Historianshave tended to take Dee’s account of his time in Louvain at face va-lue, accepting Dee’s statement in the Compendious rehearsal that hewent to meet ‘chiefly Mathematicians’ (CR, 501). Louvain was a cen-tre of innovation in mathematics, where Dee was able to meet thelikes of Gemma Frisius and Gerard Mercator. As a result, he was ableto bring back to England novel instruments made by them. His ac-quired expertise enabled him to prepare Richard Chancellor for thefirst English voyage of exploration, an enterprise backed by North-umberland’s government (Clulee, 1988, p. 32).

17 It was one of the first whose faculty of theology condemned Martin Luther. See Mariu18 I owe this suggestion to an anonymous referee.

Clulee also suggests that he studied law in Louvain as part of thenormal preparation for service in government: ‘[s]uch study wasoften supported by the patronage of individuals already in govern-ment service’ (ibid., p. 27). He certainly had a patron: his fellowDudley client and Athenian, Sir William Pickering, now a risingdiplomat, a future exile in Venice, traitor condemned in absentiaand, for a while after 1558, a possible husband for Elizabeth (Dor-an, 2004). In December 1549, Dee recorded that he ‘began to eat atthe house of Sir William Pickering’ (Diary, p. 305). While Pickeringwas in Brabant in 1549 and 1550, Philip of Spain arrived at theBrussels court of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V: Charles’s son,soon to form a grand Catholic alliance by becoming the husbandof Mary Tudor. Once again, Dee passed over such matters andemphasised harmless mathematics as the basis of their relation-ship. Pickering came to him,

from the Emperours court at Bruxells . . . and of me wasinstructed in Logick, Rhetorick, Arithmetick, in the use of theAstronomers staff, the use of the Astronomers Ring, the Astro-labe, in the use of both Globes, etc. (CR, p. 503)

Whatever Dee was doing in Louvain, he was associating withEnglish Catholics who opposed Edward, and would serve Maryand resist Elizabeth. He continued to do so after many of his firstpatrons and colleagues had become Marian exiles. We will see thatthese associations impeded Dee’s ability to attract patronage, notmerely in the general sense that they rendered him suspect, butalso in specific senses. All too frequently when Dee sought offices,they were offices which had been held by his suspect Catholicacquaintances, and which were given to Protestants like ThomasWilson with a better record of steadfastness than his own.

Consider Dee’s relationship with John Christopherson, who Jon-athan Wright says can be ‘understood . . .as one of the leading ‘‘con-servative humanists’’ who worked in and round St John’s at thistime (Wright, 2004). Christopherson was not a client of Cheke,but his career began similarly to Dee’s. In 1546 he moved withDee from a fellowship at St John’s to take up a foundation fellow-ship at Trinity. The two listened to birdsong together one summernight in 1547 (Diary, p. 305). Like Dee, Christopherson left Englandfor Louvain in 1547 and they must have met up there, although un-like Dee he stayed until Mary was installed as Queen. On his return,Mary rewarded him with the mastership of Trinity College, havingremoved the Athenian William Bill. Christopherson was elevated tothe bishopric of Chichester and acquired a fearsome reputation,underscored by Foxe, for enforcing Marian orthodoxy. He may evenhave facilitated Dee’s passage to ordination.18 Even after Elizabeth’saccession, Christopherson dared to preach against the restored Wil-liam Bill (Wright, 2004). It was probably best for him that he died inthe first year of Elizabeth’s reign!

When Dee wrote his Compendious rehearsal, Christopherson hadbeen dead for over 30 years. Given the long memories many Eliza-bethans had of Mary’s reign, some must have raised their eyebrowsat Dee’s inclusion of letters from Christopherson which, he said,testified to his ‘credit and estimation in England’ (CR, pp. 501, 506).

The most influential of Dee’s recusant and Louvainist acquain-tances was Richard Smith or Smyth (1499/1500–1563), who wasto act as Dee’s patron in 1554. Nevertheless, Dee recorded in theCompendious rehearsal that:

Of the Universitie of Oxford, some of the chiefe Students(Doctors of Divinity and Masters of Arts) caused a good yearlystipend to be offered unto me to read the MathematicalSciences there. Mr. Doctor Smith of Oriel College and Mr. Dr.

s (1999), p. 188.

456 S. Pumfrey / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012) 449–459

Bruarne of Christ’s Church were chiefly Agents in that cause.(CR, p 507)

Smyth had been Oxford’s first regius professor of divinity, butwas ejected by Edward VI in favour of Peter Martyr. He tooretreated to Louvain University, from whence he published anti-Protestant polemics. Smyth returned to England to becomevice-chancellor of Oxford University under Mary, and he presidedover the trial of Cranmer. In a mirror image of Wilson’s experience,on Elizabeth’s accession Smyth was arrested while attempting toflee to Scotland and ‘compelled to subscribe to the royal supremacyin matters spiritual.’ Escaping to escape to Louvain, he ‘was read-mitted ‘‘magister noster’’ (15 February 1561)’, resumed publishingand ‘attracted the first colony of English Louvainists to follow himto [the new English College at] Douai’ (Löwe, 2004).

It was the experience of men like Smyth which led McConica tosee the 1540s as the beginning of recusant history, rather than1558, when ‘the contemporaries of More and Fisher . . .went intoexile under Edward’ (McConica, 1963, p. 47). From these earlyexiles in the scholarly community, McConica singled out fromOxford John Bekinsaw, John Harpsfield, John Clement, JohnMorwen, and Richard Smith. From Cambridge he identified Dee’sfellow Johnians John Seton, John Clement, Thomas Watson, andJohn Christopherson.

In his Compendious rehearsal Dee volunteered that Smyth hadworked with Richard Bruarne in the attempt to get him to lecturein Oxford. This must also have shocked some because Bruarne(1519–1565) was, if anything, more of a nuisance to the fledglingElizabethan regime. A staunch Catholic and Oxford’s regius profes-sor of Hebrew, he obtained his prebendary stall at Christchurchwhen Mary stripped it from Peter Martyr. He angered reformersas one of the theologians who cross-examined bishops Cranmer,Ridley and Latimer in Oxford prison ahead of their execution. Withthe accession of Elizabeth his position was weak, and the exposureof a homosexual affair with an undergraduate was reason enoughto force him to resign his positions in 1559 (Samuel, 2004). Bruarnewas, as we shall see, to have one more moment of infamy, and it isagain surprising that Dee would later remind his readers of thisconnection thirty years in the past.

5. John Dee: runner-up in the patronage game

Having looked in some detail at individuals involved with Dee’ssuits, we are now in a position to consider how well he fared in hisquests for office, and some of the reasons why his hopes of successwere so often thwarted. Returning to the first suit, his pursuit ofthe mastership of St Katharine’s, Dee wrote that in 1558, even be-fore her coronation, ‘her Majestie was willing, that, after Dr. Mallet,I should have the mastership of St. Katharine’s, wherein Dr. Willsonpolitickly prevented me’ (CR, p. 509).19

Historians, including Clulee, have wondered who was this ‘Dr.Willson.’20 Today we can be sure that it was the same Thomas Wil-son whom we have seen studying with Dee under Cheke and suffer-ing in a Roman prison. Given their very similar careers up to 1553, itis salutory to see Wilson collecting offices as readily as Dee was fail-ing to gain them, thanks to the patronage of Sir Robert Dudley, SirWilliam Cecil and Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury. In1560 Parker had obtained for him a position as master of the collegeof Stoke by Clare in Suffolk, a position and institution very similar to

19 The promise seems to have been made between her arrival in London in November 155favour towards him, the second being that she took Dee ‘to her service, at Whitehall beforPembroke, Lord Robert [Dudley, brother of John and Ambrose].’

20 Clulee (1988), p. 272 n. 13 writes: ‘This Dr. Willson may be the Dr. Willson to whom tthis Wilson was not a doctor.’ However, Doran & Woolfson (2004) note that he moved froNovember 1559, before returning to England by September 1560. His doctorate in law wa

21 In due course he would also succeed Bruarne as canon at St George’s Chapel, Windso

those we know Dee coveted. It was worth £400 per annum, but themastership of St Katharine’s was worth far more. And so with thepatronage of Dudley, whose assistant he had become, he obtainedthe post at St Katharine’s resigned by Francis Mallett in 1561 andpreviously promised by Elizabeth to Dee. Although Wilson’s rapa-ciousness as master of St Katharine’s has been exaggerated (Doran& Woolfson, 2004), he did very well there. For example, he pocketednearly £500 from the City of London in exchange for transferring to itthe hospital’s right to hold a fair (Page, 1909, pp. 525–530). Elizabethclearly had good intentions towards Dee, but the record shows thatthe mastership of St Katharine’s went to more deserving, or morepowerfully patronised servants of the crown than he. Dee had noderring do to match Wilson’s!

From this point of intersection their paths diverged. Dee strug-gled to survive as a client philosopher, while Wilson was advancedby Dudley and Cecil into a successful diplomatic career. His workas an ambassador was probably the reason he was rewarded in1577 as a privy councillor and as the successor to Sir Thomas Smithas principal secretary to the Queen. It was in the latter and exaltedcapacity that he met Dee again. Dee had been summoned to inves-tigate an apparent case of image magic performed against Eliza-beth, and he prudently asked for ‘the honourable, Mr. SecretaryWilson, whom, at the least, I required to have by me a witnes ofthe proceedings’ (CR, p. 522). One might conclude that theElizabethan state had need of politicians but not of philosophers.

Dee then turned his attention, probably late in 1564, to the

Provostship of Eaton by some [of] my friends in Court, [which]was humbly at her Majesties hands sued for to my behalfe, andfavourable answers were given therein. (CR, p. 510)

At Elizabeth’s accession, the Provostship was held by HenryCole (1504/5–1579/80). He had been involved in the execution ofThomas Cranmer in 1555, and inevitably soon lost the Provostshipand all his benefices (Mayer, 2004). Elizabeth intruded to the postthe long-suffering William Bill. If this was intended to neutraliseBill’s Catholic foes, the plan backfired. Bill died in 1561 (Knighton,2004), whereupon the conservative majority of Eton’s fellowshipelected Dee’s erstwhile patron, the uncooperative Catholic RichardBruarne, in an attempt to circumvent the royal prerogative. TheQueen’s visitors, led by Matthew Parker, investigated and took evi-dence. Dee might have smiled in recognition as Bruarne’s enemiescame out to denounce him for ‘popery, adultery, conjuring with theaid of a familiar spirit, and Judaizing (by eating a paschal lamb atEaster)’ (Samuel, 2004). He might not have smiled had he knownthat many of the fourteen approved candidates had gone into exileunder Mary (Usher, 2004). Dee was surely not sound enough tosucceed Bruarne. The reward went to the committed ProtestantWilliam Day (1529–1596)—who dutifully stripped Eton Chapel ofits ornamentation.21

Nevertheless, in the winter of 1564–65, Dee entertained hopesof succeeding Day. He wrote,

the Provostship of Eaton by some my friends in Court, was hum-bly at her majestie’s hands sued for to my behalfe, and favour-able answers were given therein. [source?]

Had Day been elevated to a bishopric at that time, Dee mighthave stood a chance. However, as Day’s biographer notes, the ‘chiefinterest of Day’s long career is his failure to secure a bishopric until

8 and coronation on 15 January 1559. In the CR p. 509, Dee lists this as Elizabeth’s firste her Coronation, being to her Majestie commended by the right honourable Earle of

he position went in 1560, he becoming master of requests at the same time, althoughm Rome ‘to Ferrara, from which university he acquired a doctorate in civil law on 29s incorporated at Oxford University on 6 September 1566 and at Cambridge in 1571.’r. See Usher (2004).

S. Pumfrey / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012) 449–459 457

the last months of his life [in 1596]’ (Usher, 2004). Dee was stilloptimistic 25 years later. On May 1590 he wrote: ‘Good news . . .-about obtaining the agreement for Eton College &c’ (Diary, p.248). And we recall that in December 1594 he had had hopes fora chancellorship because it was ‘the Queen’s wish . . . that I shouldhave Dr. Day his place in Paul’s’ (ibid., p. 268). By 1594, however,Dee was 67: he was yesterday’s man, the fallen favourite, with apowerful enemy, and no longer in contention for the provostship.Archbishop Whitgift and the Earl of Essex arranged Day’s elevationto the bench because Essex’s client Sir Henry Savile (1549–1622)had been lined up for the provostship, and he was pressing hisclaim. It was Savile and not Dee who succeeded Day in 1596(Usher, 2004). The elderly Dee’s fate is reminiscent of the way inwhich della Porta was eased aside in the Accademia dei Lincei byGalileo. Both were, inter alia, magicians whose practice of occultphilosophy had met with ecclesiastical censure: in Savile andGalileo patrons recognised brighter, younger, fresher intellects.The same happened to Galileo when, at the age of 69, he wasdropped by patrons as his trial approached in 1633 (Biagioli,1993, Ch. 6; Freedberg, 2002, Ch. 4).

We turn finally to what Dee wanted most badly: the mastershipof the hospital of St Cross, Winchester. By his own account, he firstpetitioned the Queen for it around 1572. At that time the incum-bent was a divine called John Watson (c. 1520–1584), who maywell have been at the University of Louvain in 1554. He did wellunder Mary, and Bishop Bonner helped him to become chancellorof St Paul’s Cathedral in 1558. Despite this he rose rapidly underElizabeth, probably because he readily accommodated himself tothe religious settlement, and he was one of the few members ofSt Paul’s to accept the oath of supremacy in August 1559. He kepthis chancellorship and in the same month was also appointed mas-ter of St Cross (Ladley, 2004).22

In a now familiar story, Dee believed that Elizabeth had exer-cised her authority and ‘granted me the next room after DoctorWatson’ (CR, p. 514). As ever, the matter seemingly depended upona good promotion. In the event, Watson was elevated to the bish-opric of Winchester in 1580 but was allowed to retain the St Crossoffice for another three years. His biographer suggests that this wasto compensate for the large ‘first fruits’ payment Watson was re-quired to make (Ladley, 2004). Perhaps it was this irregular proce-dure that frustrated Dee yet again, because in 1583 the mastershippassed to Robert Bennett. Dee considered that Bennett ‘came to itby an avowson, better speeding, than my former grant at her Maj-estie’s hand’ (CR, p. 515).

Late in 1592, the partial success of Dee’s supplication and associ-ated Compendious rehearsal renewed his hope. The Queen gave him100 marks and encouraged Lady Howard to send six gold angels in aletter to Jane. Lord Admiral and Lady Howard learned of Elizabeth’sintention that ‘St Crosse’s I should have, when the Incumbent DoctorBennet might be conveniently placed in some bishoprick’ (CR, p.550; Diary, p. 258). But positions came and went, and Dee,

began to doubt, that her majestie hitherto had not been given tounderstand fully the truth of my very hard case and incredibledistress, through unseemly want of all things necessary to themaintenance of me and mine, contrary to her Majestie’s will.(CR, p. 516)

Although Howard now pressed for Dee to receive the St Paul’schancellorship, Parry maintains that these efforts were all in vain,

22 The ability of the many men like Watson to flourish as the religio-political situation chaflexibility. Watson finally resigned the chancellorship when he was made bishop of WinWhitaker resigned it in turn when he became master of St John’s College in 1587, to be sucWatson, the Catholic master of St John’s College in the 1550s, later Bishop of Lincoln, men

23 In a time of famine in north-west England he maintained a household of nine family anClulee (1998), p. 191.

arguing that ‘Whitgift kept Bennett at St Cross to deny the appoint-ment to Dee.’ Hence, ‘once Dee had been sidelined as Warden ofManchester Collegiate Church, Bennett prospered’ (Parry, 2011).

Dee’s wardenship in Manchester was the final stage of his pur-suit of office through the patronage of Elizabeth and the Countessof Warwick. It was final in that Dee had achieved a Pyrrhic victory,final in being the last significant act of court patronage he wouldexperience, and final in that the position drove him to penury, des-pair and, arguably, Jane and him to their graves. Dee’s letter to SirEdward Dyer of 1597 complained of the ‘pore Revenue of my sti-pend’, which did not go far enough ‘in these times of very greatdearth here.’23 College administration was burdensome, and thePuritan fellows uncooperative with a warden who had a reputationfor conjuring: they had stuck the heads of three executed recusantson the church steeple in 1584 (Calder, 1952, Ch. 10.II). This was notthe kind of scholarly community of which Dee had imagined hewould be the head.

6. Conclusions

If Dee’s career in the English patronage system endured moresetbacks than successes, it was arguably more productive than thatof any other natural philosopher, practising physician or mathe-matical practitioner, certainly in the Tudor period. William Cuning-ham, who spent much of Mary’s reign abroad, obtained thepatronage of Robert Dudley on his return. He wrote of Dudley’s‘incoragement of me to knowledge, bothe in wordes and moost lib-erall rewardes’ (Cuningham, 1559, dedicatory epistle), evident inthe splendid 1559 edition of his Cosmographicall glasse. Little morecame of it and, as a result, much of Cuningham’s work has been lost(ibid., sig. a2v; Menefee, 2004). Concerning William Gilbert, a phy-sician both to the Cecil family and to Elizabeth herself, there is noevidence of patronage of his experimental ‘magnetic philosophy.’

Sir Francis Bacon was a very successful courtier, rising to be-come James I’s Lord Chancellor, but we find no evidence of courtlysupport for his reforms of natural philosophy. Bacon needed royalfunding to set up even a preliminary version of Solomon’s Housebecause he was in constant and massive debt. Yet Bacon’s lack ofready money was very different to Dee’s. As Jardine & Stewart note,financial debt ‘was the glue that bound English society in a condi-tion of mutual indebtedness, in which everyone owed somethingto somebody else.’ The problem of debt lay ‘in having insufficientcredit to keep creditors confident of eventual repayment’ (Jardine& Stewart, 1998, pp. 199–200). All depended up on the debtor’schances of obtaining a good position. In the 1590s and 1600s,Bacon’s chances proved to be good while Dee’s were dismal.

Perhaps the most poignant comparison is that of Dee’s close col-league, Thomas Digges. Together with Dee, Digges had advisedLord Burleigh on the new star of 1572. Having tried and failed toget Burleigh to patronise his advanced work in astronomy andCopernican cosmology, Digges reconciled himself to advance theElizabethan war effort under the utilitarian patronage of the Earlof Leicester. In his Arithmaticall militare treatise he announced hischange of direction. He had,

spent my younger years, even from my cradle, in the sciencesliberal, and especially in searching the most difficult and curi-ous demonstrations mathematical . . .yet finding none, or veryfew, with whom to confer and communicate those my delights(and remembering also that grave sentence of the divine Plato,

nged casts some doubt upon Clulee’s hypothesis that Dee’s problem was his religiouschester in 1580. He was succeeded by Whitgift’s Puritan protégé William Whitaker.ceeded by William Day. John had a brother Thomas, but he was no relation to Thomastioned above. See Horn (1969).d nine servants, no smaller than it had been in 1592. See Calder (1952), Ch. 10.II, and

458 S. Pumfrey / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012) 449–459

that we are born not for ourselves, but also for our parents,country and friends), after I grew to years of riper judgement,I have wholly bent myself to reduce those imaginative contem-plations to sensible practical conclusions of those my delectablestudies, as also to be able, when time is, to employ them to theservice of my prince and country. (Digges & Digges, 1579,‘Preface’)

He was soon at work on the refortification of Dover Harbour,and then as muster-master for the expeditionary force to theLow Countries led by Leicester, of whose deeds Digges wrote aglowing Briefe and true report (Johnston, 2004). No wonder hehad £10 to lend to his indigent ‘mathematical father’ (Diary, p.259)!

The failure of Thomas Digges to find courtiers ‘with whom toconfer and communicate’ theoretical delights may have increasedthe resolve of Dee, England’s Christian Aristotle, to look abroadfor Alexanders. If the British were ‘skorners and Disdainers of suchhis faythfull enterprises: undertaken chiefly, for the Advancementof the wonderfull Veritie Philosophicall’ (Dee, 1577, sig. D4v), Deeexpected great support from Prince Albrecht Łaski and EmperorRudolf. Little had changed when he returned to England: privycouncillors were interested in Edward Kelley and his alchemicalgold, rather than him.

In the light of these comparisons, one might say that Deeplayed his patronage cards reasonably well, or as well as anyonecould who had his sincere commitment to the occult sciences. Wecan, of course, use a retrospectoscope to identify mistakes. Argu-ably his biggest was to aspire, as an English Galileo, to the posi-tion of ‘court philosopher’ in a country unwilling to accord thattitle to anyone, not even to Sir Isaac Newton. He should not haveexpressed his impatience (even in the third person) with the lim-ited horizons of English patrons of science. Obviously, Dee alsoplayed his religio-political cards wrongly: if he was unwilling toleave England with the Protestant Athenians in 1553, or withthe Catholic Marians in 1558, he should have adopted a morecautious strategy, and certainly tried to limit his entanglementwith Bonner.

He should also have had more of his work completed andprinted, and filled the volumes with flattering dedications, asmemorials of or invitations to patronage. Yet it is important toremember that most of Dee’s contemporaries saw through thepress only a fraction of their work. Dee deserves respect for hisintegrity: he knew what kind of studies he wanted to pursue,and he pursued them, even when that meant acquiring a reputa-tion for conjuring, or having to go abroad.

In developing the issue of Dee and patronage, Sherman has dis-agreed with scholars like Stephen Clucas and Lesley Cormack whoclaim that Dee ‘simply didn’t know how’ or ‘was unwilling to playthe patronage game.’ He suggested that ‘if Dee lost the patronagegame it was certainly not due to an ignorance of the rules or anunwillingness to play’ (Sherman, 1995, p. 19). We have seen thatDee was certainly not ignorant. Willing or not, he engaged withthe patronage game because, in Biagioli’s words, ‘by not engagingin it one would commit social suicide’ (1993, p. 16). But Dee playedthe game in his own way, both in England and abroad. In the end,one can only admire the self-confidence with which Dee, havingfinally secured an audience with his ideal patron, Holy RomanEmperor Rudolf II, announced that ‘[t]he Angel of the Lord hath ap-peared to me, and rebuketh you for your sins. If you will hear me,and believe me, you shall triumph’ (Dee, 1998, p. 143). Needless tosay, there were no further signs of favour. It was as well for Deethat, even in his sixties, as he ceased to be of use to Elizabethanlords, he continued to win the support of ladies: the Countess ofWarwick, Lady Howard, and Queen Elizabeth herself. His warden-ship in Manchester may have seemed like being sent to Coventry,

but it was something, and for an Elizabethan philosopher it wasunique.

Acknowledgements

I must thank two anonymous referees, and especially DrJennifer Rampling, for their patient assistance, which has improvedthe article immensely. Errors and superficialities that remain areall my doing.

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Further reading

Hudson, W. (1980). The Cambridge connection and the Elizabethan settlement of 1559.Durham, NC: Duke University Press.