One of the most remarkable and successful fortune-tellers known to English
history was John Dee, who was born in London, 1527, and died in 1608. A
biographer says, "He was an English divine and astrologer of great
learning, celebrated in the history and science of necromancy, chancellor
of St. Paul's, and warden of Manchester College, in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth. He was also author of several published works on the subject of
astrology, revelations of spirits, etc., which books are preserved in the
Cottonian library and elsewhere."
Dee enjoyed for a long time the confidence and patronage of Elizabeth. He
then resided in an elegant house at Mortlake, which was still standing in
1830, and was used for a female boarding school. "In two hundred years it
necessarily had undergone some repairs and alterations; yet portions of it
still exhibited the architecture of the sixteenth century.
"From the front windows might be seen the doctor's garden, still attached
to the house, down the central path of which the queen used to walk from
her carriage from the Shan road to consult the wily conjurer on affairs of
love and war.
"He was one of the few men of science who made use of his knowledge to
induce the vulgar to believe him a conjurer, and one possessing the power
to converse with spirits. Lilly's memoirs recorded many of his impostures,
and at one time the public mind was much agitated by his extravagances.
The mob more than once destroyed his house (before residing at Mortlake)
for being too familiar with their devil. He pretended to see spirits in a
stone, which is still preserved with his books and papers.... In his
spiritual visions Dee had a confederate in one Kelley, who, of course,
confirmed all his master's oracles. Both, however, in spite of their
spiritual friends, died miserably--Kelley by leaping from a window and
breaking his neck, and Dee in great poverty and wretchedness. The remains
of the impostor lie in Mortlake Church, without any memorial."
He unfortunately had survived his royal patroness.
Queen Mary had had Dee imprisoned for practising by enchantment against
her life; but her successor released him, and required him to name a lucky
day for her coronation.
"In view of this fact," asks the author of 'A Morning's Walk from London
to Kew,' "is it to be wondered at that a mere man, like tens of thousands
of other fanatics, persuaded himself that he was possessed of supernatural
powers?"