"_Petruchio_. Pray, have you not a daughter
Call'd Katharina, fair and virtuous?
_Baptista_. I have a daughter, sir, call'd Katharina,"
_Taming of the Shrew, Act II. Scene_ I.
"What sudden chance is this, quoth he,
That I to love must subject be,
Which never thereto would agree,
But still did it defie?"
_King Cophetua and the Beggar-maid._
"Yet she was coy, and would not believe
That he did love her so;
No, nor at any time would she
_Any countenance to him show_."
_The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington_.
The wonderful exploits of Edward Kelly, one of which is recorded in the
following narrative, would, if collected, fill a volume of no ordinary
dimensions. He was for a considerable time the companion and associate
of John Dee, by courtesy called Doctor, from his great acquirements,
performing for him the office of seer, a faculty not possessed by Dee,
who was in consequence obliged to have recourse to Kelly for the
revelations he has published respecting the world of spirits. These
curious transactions may be found in Casaubon's work, entitled "A true
and faithful Relation of what passed for many Years between Dr John Dee
and some Spirits,"--opening out another dark page in the history of
imposture and credulity. Dee says that he was brought into unison with
Kelly by the mediation of the angel Uriel. Afterwards he found himself
deceived by him in his opinion that these spirits, which ministered unto
him, were messengers of the Deity. They had several quarrels
before-time; but when he found Kelly degenerating into the worst species
of the magic art for purposes of avarice and fraud, he broke off all
connection with him, and would never afterwards be seen in his company.
Kelly, being discountenanced by the Doctor, betook himself to the
meanest practices of magic, in all which money and the works of the
devil appear to have been his chief aim. Many wicked and abominable
transactions are recorded of him. Wever, in his "Funereal Monuments,"
records that Kelly, in company with one Paul Waring, who acted with him
in all his conjurations, went to the churchyard of Walton-le-Dale, near
Preston, where they had information of a person being interred who was
supposed to have hidden a considerable sum of money, and to have died
without disclosing where it was deposited. They entered the churchyard
exactly at midnight, and having had the grave pointed out in the
preceding day, they opened it and the coffin, exorcising the spirit of
the deceased until it again animated the body, which rose out of the
grave and stood upright before them. It not only satisfied their wicked
desires, it is said, but delivered several strange predictions
concerning persons in the neighbourhood, which were literally and
exactly fulfilled.