542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe

Summary

Episode 542: Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe

Release Date: February 24, 2025

Introduction

In this compelling episode of The Rest Is History, hosts Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland delve into the enigmatic life of John Dee, the renowned court magician of Elizabeth I. Through a rich narrative, they explore Dee's intricate blend of scientific prowess and occult practices, his influence on the formation of the British Empire, and the dramatic twists that led to his eventual downfall.

Early Life and Education of John Dee

John Dee was born in the summer of 1527 in London, of Welsh descent, to Roland Dee, a successful textile merchant who served as a gentleman sewer to Henry VII ([18:08]). Dee's upbringing in a prosperous household allowed him to receive a thorough education, first at a grammar school and then at Cambridge University. At St. John's College, Cambridge, Dee was exposed to a diverse range of religious and philosophical ideas, fostering his ecumenical nature—a rare trait in the tumultuous religious landscape of 16th-century England ([20:03] Dominic Sandbrook).

Dee’s Multifaceted Scholarship

Dee was a polymath, excelling in mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy while simultaneously delving into alchemy and astrology. His innovative spirit was evident during his time at Trinity College, where he staged an elaborate Aristophanes comedy, showcasing his mastery of stagecraft and earning him a reputation as a conjurer ([21:39] Tom Holland). This blend of scientific inquiry and mystical exploration positioned Dee as a unique figure capable of bridging the gap between emerging scientific thought and age-old occult traditions.

Political Landscape and Dee’s Survival Strategy

Navigating the volatile political shifts between Protestantism and Catholicism under Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I, Dee adeptly maneuvered to maintain his standing. When Mary I’s Catholic reign threatened his prospects, Dee converted to Catholicism swiftly, securing favor with Edmund Bonner, the Catholic Bishop of London. This strategic conversion allowed Dee to prosper under Mary while laying the groundwork for his continued influence under Elizabeth I ([28:30] Tom Holland).

Patronage of Exploration and the British Empire

Dee’s visionary ideas extended beyond the occult into the realm of exploration and empire-building. He is credited with coining the phrase "British Empire," advocating for overseas exploration and colonization. His extensive library, enriched with cutting-edge maps from cartographers like Gerard Mercator, theoretical works on navigation, and antiquarian texts on legends such as Prince Madoc, provided intellectual ammunition for backing English ventures into the New World ([39:05] Dominic Sandbrook).

Dee’s Occult Pursuits and Relationship with Edward Kelly

Dee's deepest obsession was unlocking the "language of the angels," a divine language he believed held the secrets to the universe. To achieve this, he partnered with Edward Kelly, a talented scryer capable of channeling supernatural communications. Their collaboration began earnestly on March 10, 1582, when Kelly purportedly communicated with an angel named Uriel through Dee’s Aztec obsidian mirror ([48:58] Tom Holland). This partnership promised unprecedented insights but soon spiraled into chaos.

The Collapse: Disasters and Downfall

The alliance between Dee and Kelly deteriorated as Kelly's growing interest in alchemy clashed with Dee's mystical pursuits. Their attempts to support Rudolph II, Emperor of Prague, led to diplomatic disasters and personal betrayals. The climax occurred in 1587 when Kelly, influenced by malevolent apparitions, coerced Dee into compromising his moral and marital integrity. As a result, Dee’s standing plummeted, culminating in the theft of his extensive library upon his return to England in 1605 ([55:25] Tom Holland).

Legacy and Final Years

Despite his brilliance, Dee's legacy was marred by his associations with witchcraft and necromancy. Elizabeth I, though initially supportive, eventually distanced herself from him, leaving Dee to live his final years in relative obscurity and poverty. His contributions to navigation and empire, however, endure, illustrating the complex interplay between knowledge, power, and belief in Renaissance Europe ([62:33] Tom Holland).

Notable Quotes

• Dominic Sandbrook [00:54]: “On Sunday 30th March, 2025, it's the 44th anniversary of the attempted assassination on Ronald Reagan... we have decided to do a live show together...”

• Tom Holland [17:00]: “... the language of the angels, which he's absolutely obsessed by, isn't he?”

• Tom Holland [22:14]: “... the source of his reputation as a conjurer of wicked and damned spirits.”

• Dominic Sandbrook [34:23]: “What does this mean? Kelly explains, because of course he understands what the angels are saying. He reveals that what Medimi is saying is that he and D should sleep with the other person's wife.”

Conclusion

John Dee’s life encapsulates the Renaissance spirit—undaunted curiosity, a quest for knowledge, and the perilous blur between science and the supernatural. Through Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland’s engaging discussion, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of Dee’s indispensable yet tragic role in shaping Elizabethan England and the early contours of the British Empire.

Transcript

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Thank you for listening to the Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes ad free listening, early access to series and membership of our much loved chat community. Go to therestishistory.com and join the club that is thereestishistory.com hi everybody, Dominic Sambrook from the Rest Is History here now, as you can probably tell from the noise of the pool, I am joined by friend of the show, Anthony Scaramucci, who is on his island surrounded by the luxurious trappings of wealthy is of course the host of the Rest Is Politics, Us. And Anthony and I have a very special announcement. On Sunday 30th March, Anthony is over in the UK and we have decided to do a live show together at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London. Haven't we, Anthony?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

We have, you know, and thank God I'm not British because the Brits actually admire my American reviste attitude about life. Okay. But in any event, okay, it'll be the first time on stage with Dominic. I am very excited. We're gonna be doing a show on US Political history called the Rest Is Assassinations from Lincoln to JFK. But Dominic and I both know on the 30th of March, 2025, it's the 44th anniversary of the attempted assassination on Ronald Reagan. So there's not only assassinations here which are terrible, but there's an attempted assassination, several of them. Dominic. Right. Throughout U.S. history. And so we're excited to go through this and what the impacts were on American history and global history.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right? And there's so many great stories. So obviously jfk, you and I disagree about JFK because I of course think it was Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone. And you think differently. But there are other stories. You mentioned attempted assassinations. So for example, FDR, FDR was almost shot before his inauguration in 1933. And that's an attempted assassination that really could have changed the course of history because no FDR. Does the United States still enter the Second World War? Does the story of the 20th century play out completely differently? So there is so much to talk about and I'm really, really looking forward to doing it. What are you looking forward to most, Anthony?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Well, I mean all of that, but I want to, I want to delve into a little bit of the Secret Service and some of the men in that service close. Clint Hill is still alive. He was riding alongside of Jackie and John Kennedy on 22 November 1963. And we'll talk about what he saw and we'll talk about what other agents have written about recently and of course, now that Donald Trump is releasing the JFK assassination files, I think there'll be a lot to talk about there. I think people coming to the show are gonna learn things that have never been said or heard before.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So if you're a patriotic Brit who loves the special relationship, if you're an American living in London, or if you're an American who just loves getting on planes across the Atlantic to see the very highest quality entertainment, we absolutely expect to see you there in the west end on Sunday 30th March. And to tell you the truth, what I'm really hoping is that on the night Anthony will finally reveal the truth behind the JFK assassination.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Well, I'm, I'm probably going to Guantanamo for many reasons, Dominic, but that would be probably the top one. But anyway, we hope to see you there. I think you'll learn a lot. There'll be a lot of insight we'll provide and also provide great context on American and British and global history.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Tickets for this event are on sale now. To buy yours, just go to therestishistory.com.

[Tom Holland]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

Unfortunately, this is not the book you seek. I discovered it in my boxes on my return from Bohemia. But one treasured book was missing. I believe Edward Kelly replaced it. A rare text larger than this one, it contained many mysteries which Edward could understand with divine assistance. The Emperor Rudolph took great interest in both him and this book, Edward said it contained a secret method for obtaining immortality, so that everybody was Dr. John Dee, who is a character in the TV drama A Discovery of Witches, which is a series based on the All Souls trilogy by Deborah Harkness. And those people who've seen it will know that the series begins with a historian who goes to the Bodleian Library. And because she's a witch, she discovers all kinds of amazing stuff. So a vampire from Downton Abbey who is at the fall of Carthage. There's loads of time travel. And in season two, Tom, which I don't believe you've got to yet, because you've just started watching this, in season two, they go back to London in the time of Elizabeth I, and this is when they meet the person I was just ventriloquizing, Dr. John Dee. So tell us about Dr. John Dee.

[Tom Holland]

Well, so in A Discovery of Witches, he is a magician, he's an alchemist, he is the owner of the greatest library in London, and he has just returned home from Bohemia.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

And this is why the witch and the vampire have gone to meet him, because he has all these incredible books that are full of kind of amazing details about the secrets of eternal life and so on. Now, obviously, the witch and the vampire are not real, obviously, but Dr. D is. He's a genuine historical figure and he really was a magician. So he's the court magician of Elizabeth I, no less. He really did travel to Bohemia.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yep.

[Tom Holland]

Where he met with the Emperor Rudolph II in Prague, which in the late 16th century is the great city of magic. And. And he really did work with this guy who's name checked in that passage you read, this guy called Edward Kelly, a medium who claimed to be able to communicate with angels, or perhaps Dominic. These angels are in fact demons, of course, and to have penetrated the wisdom of the heavens.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

What a story. What's a story?

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, amazing story. And Dr. Dee is an amazing character. And it struck me when we were doing the series about the Nazi invasion of Poland, that we've actually done loads of stuff on the Nazis, but we haven't really done many episodes on that other great obsession of the British education system in the field of history, which of course is the Tudors.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No.

[Tom Holland]

And I thought that doing an episode on Dr. Dee would be a good way of making amends, because he is a fascinating topic.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, just to be clear to the listeners, we're not really about making amends on the Rest Is History, because we do whatever we like today. We'd like to do Dr. D and Dr. D, I mean, one reason for doing him, quite apart from what a fascinating person he is, he is a brilliant way of getting into the story of 16th century England because he lives right the way through from the final days of Henry VIII all the way through to the advent of James the First, James VI of Scotland and the dawn of a new era, doesn't he? So this is the age when England is sort of seesawing wildly from Protestantism to Catholicism and back again.

[Tom Holland]

Yes. And Dee kind of holds a brilliant mirror up to this, and I use that metaphor advisedly, because he's very into mirrors and thinks that you can see all kinds of strange, supernatural things within mirrors, as we will see. But the reason that he's particularly interesting on this is that that particular period, say when Henry dies, followed by Edward vi, who's a Protestant, followed by Mary, who's a Catholic, followed by Elizabeth, who's a Protestant, Dee has to negotiate all that, and he only succeeds in doing that by the absolute skin of his teeth. But as you say, he then lives right the way through the reign of Elizabeth, and he associates with lots of leading figures from her reign, including William Cecil, you know, her great chief minister, Sir Walter Raleigh, the guy who, of course, puts his cloak in the puddle.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

But also goes off to found colonies in the New World and to search for El Dorado. And as you said, he dies in the reign of James the First, so in the kind of the post Tudor age, at the age of 81. And so, yeah, his life spans much of the Tudor age. So I think that's a very good reason to look at him. But also another reason is that he has a key role to play in what is a crucial turning point in English history, a kind of shifting of England's horizons from the continent of Europe to overseas. So 1558, which is the last year of Mary's reign, a fateful episode, the fall of Calais to the French, which of course had been won by Edward III in the Hundred Years War, had been kept by England ever since, but it falls to the French in that year, and that effectively is the loss of England's last continental possession. So in a way, that is kind of almost the end of the Hundred Years War, the real end of the Hundred Years War.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And Mary is devastated by it. And there's this famous comment she's supposed to have made that when she dies and people cut her open and look at her heart, they will find Calais inscribed on it under her sister. So Elizabeth succeeds Mary in that same year of 1558, under Elizabeth, her subjects start looking westwards to Ireland, but also beyond Ireland, across the Atlantic to the New World, which the Spanish have begun to colonize. And the English start to think, well, we would quite like a bit of this. And this is the age of the. The Elizabethan sea dog.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Ruffs, beards, galleons, all of that.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Francis Drake, Sir John Frobisher, all these great characters.

[Tom Holland]

Yes. And Dee knows them. He works with them. And Dee himself is absolutely obsessed by overseas exploration. And he is a particular enthusiast for the idea of. Of planting and keeping colonies in kind of distant continents. And he coins a very portentous phrase to describe what this process of colonizing, you know, the New World would look like. And he calls it a British Empire. And he is very possibly. It's debated, but I think generally accepted that he is the first person to coin that phrase. And so he, in a sense, is the first great kind of cheerleader for the idea of a British Empire and definitely its leading kind of Tudor advocate.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And part of that is because he's fascinated by cartography, astronomy, exploration. So the idea of looking west across this vast expanse of sea kind of comes naturally to him because it's intellectually fascinating to him.

[Tom Holland]

Yes. But simultaneously, he has what I guess you could probably call kind of occult understanding of England's destiny, because as well as being a very practiced astronomer, he's also a very brilliant astrologer, England's most famous astrologer. And over the course of Elizabeth's reign, there are kind of celestial signs that he interprets as presaging the end of days, but more specifically, the fact that before the end of days, Elizabeth will come to be hailed by both Catholics and Protestants across Europe as the last empress, and that this is her great cosmic destiny.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Wow.

[Tom Holland]

And as Glen Parry, who's written probably the definitive biography of D, the arch conjurer of England, says Elizabeth easily accepted these suggestions.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Of course she does. Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Because, of course, unbelievably flattering to her.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And just to be clear for listeners who perhaps are puzzled by the combination of these things, what we would call sort of magic, the occult arts, and what we would now call science. So the stuff you do in school, these in the 16th century are not at all separate genres. They are seen as part of the same body of learning, and people don't really distinguish between the two. Hence alchemy and chemistry, for example.

[Tom Holland]

Right. And I think this is the third reason why De is so fascinating, because he's a reminder of exactly that age where what Today we would call science and the occult arts can kind of merge and bleed into one another. And I guess that it's not just Dee who illustrates this. Elizabeth I does as well. So she is famously intellectual and brilliant, incredibly learned, very well educated, very scholarly, very shrewd. But this doesn't stop her from believing all kinds of things that to us today might sound completely mad, such as, for instance, that she's destined to be, you know, the last empress before the end of days. And you mentioned alchemy. So she and lots of her ministers are absolutely obsessed by this idea that base metals can be turned into gold. And she herself is the only English monarch known to have practiced alchemy personally. And she's very, very keen on it in a way that actually slightly reminds of the way that Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have been bigging up AI recently as a kind of a panacea, a solution to the problem of stimulating England's economy and kind of clearing the country's national debts and all this kind of thing. This is what Elizabeth thinks alchemy might promise. If only they can find what they call the philosopher's stone. Yeah, this way of turning kind of lead or whatever into gold, then this would be brilliant and England's economy will be absolutely flying.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I mean, the irony is that we now know that that was a Hogwarts. But they didn't know that then.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, they didn't know that, did they?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Anyway, so Dee, he knows about all these things, doesn't he? So you mentioned alchemy, astrology, astronomy. He knows about maps, he knows about all this stuff. But this is quite dangerous at the same time, isn't it? Because in a Protestant age, a lot of people are very suspicious of all of this knowledge.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, because they see it simultaneously as being Satanic, potentially, but also Catholic, as Papist, and of course, as Protestants, they tend to conflate the Satanic and the Papist. And Dee absolutely understands this for reasons that we will explore, because he's sailed very close to the wind a number of times, and he is actually an obsessively private person, and he makes sure to keep his kind of most venturesome occult explorations absolutely secret. And the most extraordinary of these occult explorations are those that take him to Prague, embroil him with this extraordinary figure, this medium, Edward Kelly, and potentially open him up to very serious charges of necromancy and essentially what this great climactic adventure of Dee's life and. And, you know, it reverberates so powerfully that A series set about vampires and witches in the 21st century can kind of allude to it. Dee wants to learn the language of the angels, and he believes that Kelly is the one man who can access it for him. And this is because Kelly, I've described him as a medium, but he's more properly what the Elizabethans would have called a scryer, which is a man with a gift for contacting the dimension of the supernatural by gazing into a glass. So crystal ball. You know, if you. If you see things in a crystal ball, you're a scryer, but in the Elizabethan period, more properly, into a kind of mirror or a glass or a kind of a shining stone. And Kelly does this. And Dee believes that the figures that Kelly sees in his mirror are indeed angels. But of course, the shadow hangs over this entire venture. What if they are actually demons?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right, because how do you tell the difference?

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. What if these figures are pushing Dee and Kelly towards satanic ends? And as we will see, the revelations that Kelly supposedly has do indeed, in the end, lead him and Dee on a very, very dark path. And it ends in absolutely shocking scandal. And it's a reminder that the occult is dangerous, both because those who practice it might end up being charged with necromancy, with witchcraft, but also because the supernatural itself may prove to be dangerous.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Crikey.

[Tom Holland]

May prove to shelter, you know, potentially deadly peril.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exciting. But before we get into all that, before we get to the shadows and the deadly peril, what we haven't done is actually tell people exactly where we are and who we're dealing with. So let's do a bit of that. John D. He's born in summer of 1527. He's born in London in the shadow of the Tower of London. But actually he is of Welsh descent, isn't he? So his father is called Roland and he's from Radnorshire.

[Tom Holland]

Yes. And John Dee would always claim that he was descended from a great line of Welsh princes, from Gwynedd. But in reality, it seems that his forebears were kind of impoverished cattle farmers. And that is one of the reasons why Roland Dee ends up coming to London, because, you know, Great Expectations. And actually he does amazingly well for himself. He's obviously a very smart, shrewd businessman. He goes into the textile business. He wins membership of the City's Guild of Mercers. You know, the City Guilds are very, very powerful. And he ends up being appointed to a position in the Royal Court as the gentleman se to Henry vii. So a kind of Bespoke tailor, I guess.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Crikey.

[Tom Holland]

You know, he sews the royal clothing, he orders in materials. And also, weirdly, part of being a gentleman sewer is that you have responsibility for setting the table at royal feasts and kind of supervising all that. And he ends up becoming very, very wealthy. And I suppose young John, growing up in his house very close to the docks, I mean, he must be aware that his father's wealth is very dependent on international trade, you know, all those ships going across to Antwerp and Amsterdam and whatever. And it may be, I guess, that this is what fosters a kind of interest for him in the idea of naval exploration and of naval imperialism.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And we know that John Dee must have been an extremely bright boy. And of course, because his father has done very well, he's able to send his son to a grammar school and then send him to Cambridge University, where Dee, again, is brilliant. And it's at Cambridge, it's a mixture, isn't it? Because there are some people there who are hot Protestants, very evangelical. At his college, St. John's it's famous for its evangelical Protestants, but it's quite a lot of diversity. There are loads of Catholics as well. So he's getting, you know, he's getting ideas and whatnot from everywhere, and he's quite ecumenical by nature.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. So St. John's College has been in existence for about 30 years when Dee goes there, and as you say, it has these very, very brilliant Catholic humanists, but it is also getting a reputation for kind of radical Protestantism. And Dee, he's a kind of instinctive centrist, almost a kind of slippery centrist, you might say, bearing in mind what's going to happen, as we'll see. But I. I guess a kind of more generous way to put it might be to say that he feels the tug of aspects, both of Catholic and Protestant doctrines and religious practices. He seems to have been kind of genuinely ecumenical, which is quite rare in the 16th century. You know, he's definitely. He's a very devout man, but he doesn't feel a kind of instinctive sense that he has to stand on one side or other of this great religious divide that is opening up.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

And of course, in that, he will be a bit like Elizabeth I, who is also kind of quite like that. So that's an important aspect of his character that develops at Cambridge, and another is a taste for theatrical spectacle. So 1546, he graduates from St. John's and he goes to Trinity Cambridge, which has been founded by Henry viii. So there's still A statue of Henry VIII at Trinity College. And Dee is appointed as one of the founding fellows. And one of his jobs is to stage plays. So Cambridge colleges, they love plays, and Dee does this Aristophanes comedy, so an ancient Greek comedy. And it. The stage. The stage directions require character to fly up to Mount Olympus on the back of a giant young beetle.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Bizarre.

[Tom Holland]

That's a challenge. But Dee pulls it off with the kind of amazing coup de teatra. He. He has very innovative use of pulleys and mirrors, and people sat there watching this can't believe what they're seeing. And it's so impressive, this kind of visual special effect, that in the long run, it leads to accusations that he could only have achieved it via witchcraft. And Dee himself, later in his life, when he's complaining about all the accusations of necromancy that are being leveled at him, he says that this was the source of his reputation as a conjurer of wicked and damned spirits.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But as we will see, Dee is being very disingenuous here, isn't he? Because there are other very good reasons, more obvious reasons, why he gets this reputation as a conjurer. So before we get on to the fact that he is genuinely a conjurer, part of this is religious because he's kind of an ecumenical fellow by temperament. His more evangelical hot Protestant friends think, oh, you've got Catholic sympathies and they love a bit of magic and that. You're mixed up in all that, aren't you?

[Tom Holland]

Yes, because it is part of the Protestant attack on the Catholic priesthood in particular, that they are magicians or actually specifically conjurers. So Francis Young, very much friend of the show we had on the Rest of History, I think, a couple of years back, talking about his book Magic in Merlin's Realm, a history of occult politics in Britain. So in that book, he points out that there is a measure of truth to this Protestant accusation that Catholic priests are conjurers. Because to quote Francis, priests were quite literally conjurers since they received the minor order of exorcist on the way to the priesthood. Priesthood, and conjurer was just a synonym for exorcist. A priest exorcised or conjured every time he baptized. So, you know, revoking Satan and all that kind of stuff. And traditional exorcisms of salt and water preceding the Mass were considered an integral part of the rite. So the fact that Dee seems to have been quite fond of these practices and these rituals kind of does cast him in Protestant eyes as a bit of A conjurer.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But if that's not sinister and un English enough, He's also really interested in maths, isn't he? Which is also a very.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, very sinister.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So calculating and conjuring are synonyms at the time.

[Tom Holland]

Yes.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And so doing a lot of complicated equations and whatnot is an unmistakable sign that you're in league with the devil.

[Tom Holland]

Yes. So there's that as well. And Dee is such a brilliant mathematician that he actually gets offered to be professor of Mathematics at Oxford and he turns it down because he's hoping for better things. But he's clearly, you know, again, he is seen as being the best at maths in England.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And again, this kind of suggests he might be a conjurer to people who are not okay with, as you say, simultaneous equations. But this isn't the only reason that Dee comes to be associated with. With magic.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Because actually, he is investigating it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right, exactly. He is a conjurer. I mean, there's no two ways about it.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, he genuinely is. Yeah. He's trying to keep this quiet, but right from his earliest days as an undergraduate at Cambridge, he is genuinely studying the occult arts in some detail. And he does it at St. John's he does it at Trinity, then he goes abroad, he studies in the lowlands, he ends up studying in Paris. And everywhere he goes, he is combining his studies in mathematics, in philosophy, in astronomy, kind of what you might call legitimate subjects, with an exploration of more magical and occult avenues to wisdom and knowledge.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So alchemy and astrology are two obvious ones. But even more exciting is the. The language of the angels, which he's absolutely obsessed by, isn't he?

[Tom Holland]

Yes. So we mentioned this. He first starts kind of thinking about this. He's in Paris, studying there, and he has his eyes opened to the possibility that he could access the language of the angels, which he equates with the language that God had used when he spoke to Adam in the Garden of Eden.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And Dee comes to think that this kind of primal, divine language, that it must have a grammar, it must have an Alphabet, and that because God has created all the universe, therefore this language must interfuse the whole of nature, everything that you can see and everything that you can't see, and that if only you could unlock the secrets of this language, then the mysteries of the universe itself would be unlocked. And there's something kind of almost of nuclear physics there.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

The idea that there is power to be obtained in unlocking the kind of the secret dynamics of the cosmos. And this is what Dee is after, he wants to harness its power. And Dee attempts to harness this power and to penetrate its secrets partly through his own studies. So he accumulates an absolutely massive library. But of course another option is also floating in his mind and that is, well, what if, what if I reach out to these angels and what if I can find someone who can understand the angelic language?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And this guy Kelly's going to come into view eventually, isn't he? But before we get to that, it's all kicking off politically and this is very challenging for Dee himself because he could be facing a very brief appointment with either a funeral pyre or whatever, or the chopping block. And this comes back to Edward vi, ultra Protestant, you know, four years old or whatever he is. Yeah, he dies in 1553. And we did a podcast about this, we did a two part about Lady Jane Grey. There are Protestants who want to stop Edward's sister Mary, who is Catholic, becoming queen, but that fails. And Mary, who is determined to turn back the clock and restore Catholicism, is back on the throne. Now why is that a problem specifically for Dee?

[Tom Holland]

Well, Dee's dad seems to have been very embroiled in these, these Protestant attempts to stop Mary coming to the throne. And when Mary successfully brushes these attempts aside, so Lady Jane Grey is being defeated, she has her head chopped off and all of that, which we did in those previous episodes. As you said, Dee's dad gets caught up in this. He gets sent to the Tower, he, he's released, but massively fined and basically this destroys his credit. So from that point on, he's ruined. And this has a massive knock on effect on Dee, who had been relying on his father basically to subsidize his studies. And it means that Dean now has to kind of turn his academic studies, maybe his occult studies, into either money or inter royal favour, which in turn would give him kind of various perks and livings and enable him to live in the style to which he has kind of grown up accustomed. But obviously this is very tricky in a world where Mary is Catholic, you know, she's. What would you say? I guess you say Mecca making England Catholic again, that's her business.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay.

[Tom Holland]

But lurking in the background, her heir is Elizabeth, who's a Protestant.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes.

[Tom Holland]

So Dee's approach to this problem is massively to hedge his bets. So one solution, despite the fact that actually under Edward vi he'd seemed very keen on the Protestant Reformation, I mean, he'd said all the right things. Despite the fact that secretly he was quite into Catholic ritual under Mary, he becomes a Catholic priest and he does it in a single day. So you have to go through 6 degrees of alternation and these are rushed through. Very, very unusual that you can become a Catholic priest in a single day. I gather he's able to do this because it is facilitated for him by the Bishop of London, the Catholic Bishop of London, a guy called Edmund Bonner. And he ends up being called by Protestants bloody Bonner. So that gives some idea of his reputation with the more evangelical wing of Christian. But actually, Bonner is. He's a very shrewd, very charming man. If he's not, you know, sending you to be burnt at the stake. Yeah, he seems very keen on dark. And it is thought that this is because they. They may well have been related. So Bonner as well, seems to have come from the Welsh Marches, so that's good. Dee is now a Catholic priest. This will obviously help him with Mary. But what about Elizabeth? How can he keep Elizabeth on board? Well, now that Dee is a priest, he can go to Woodstock, where Elizabeth, who essentially has been kept under house arrest, she is allowed to go and hear mass in Woodstock, and he can kind of make contact with her. And when he makes contact with her, Dee's reputation as the best astrologer in England is already secure. He casts Elizabeth's horoscope, he casts Mary's horoscope, and he casts the horoscope of Philip of Spain, to whom Mary is married. And this, of course, is exceedingly dangerous because essentially, you know, he's. He's letting Elizabeth know that the heavens have predicted that she will become queen. And presumably that means that the horoscopes that he's cast for Mary and Philip are not as positive and encompassing.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The death of a king or queen is a dodgy thing. And he doesn't manage to keep this a secret, does he? So the word gets out and. And when people know that he's done this, I mean, he's in. He's in real trouble.

[Tom Holland]

He really is. So he's arrested, he's charged with calculating, conjuring, witchcraft. I mean, this is very bad. And on top of that, this informer appears who accuses Dee of having used enchantments to kill one of this guy's children and to have blinded another. So that's kind of added to the tally of necromantic crimes. And d, like, his dad is sent to the Tower, where almost certainly, although he never actually mentions it, but this would have been standard procedure, he's probably put to the rack, so suffers Quite brutal torture and things that really bleak for him. But he does still have this one trump card, which is the Bishop of London, Edmund Bonner. And Dee is brought before Bonner, who couldn't be more charming. Not only does he license Dee's release, but he actually then employs Dee as his personal chaplain. And in this role, Dee then takes part in the interrogation of suspected heretics. And, you know, I guess a guy's got to do what he's got to do, right? I mean, it's a kind of survival strategy, but it's not particularly glorious.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No.

[Tom Holland]

And of course it's, you know, he's now storing up all kinds of problems for himself. If, as the horoscope had foretold, Elizabeth is to become Queen, which, of course, in due course, she does. So Mary dies in November 1558 and is succeeded by Elizabeth, who is a Protestant. And Dee has, you know, he's become a priest. He's been hanging out with bloody Bonner. He's been taking part in the interrogation of Protestants. I mean, it's not looking good for him.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So surely he's now massively exposed himself. I mean, he's changed sides, you know, enough times now for everybody to distrust him. But, you know, he's been this bloke sidekick. He's been interrogating Protestants. Why is he not punished? Why is there not a massive backlash against him?

[Tom Holland]

I mean, it's striking. Something quite admirable is that Dee does continue to visit Bonner even after he ends up being put in the Marshalsea Prison. So he does stand by him. He's not kind of 100% repenting and recanting his role, but it is awkward. So Dee appears in Fox's Book of Martyrs, which is the great volume recounting the Marian persecution of Protestants, the burning at Smithfield and all of that. And Dee features in it, you know, one of the interrogations of these martyrs. And it takes Dee over a decade to get this mention of him removed, which in due course he does manage to do. But, I mean, it is a kind of embarrassment. And in Fox's Book of Martyrs, he is referred to as the Great Conjurer. So he's being cast not just as a papist, but as a necromancer. And on top of that, his dad has been ruined. He's completely skint. He has to make his own living. I mean, it's looking really, really bad for him.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Does he not still have some credit with Elizabeth for doing that horoscope? I mean, is she not still grateful to him for that.

[Tom Holland]

That is his one crucial contact. It is enough to keep him secure from his enemies. But the question is, is it going to be enough to secure him, you know, status at court, financial security, all these things that he desperately craves. And so Dean knows that he has to prove his value. You know, Elizabeth isn't just going to give him a living or her favour just because he cast a horoscope at a dangerous time. He has to prove that he is worth her investment of time and money. But fortunately, his reputation as England's greatest astrologer, I mean, that is still very much in Elizabeth's mind. And so it is Dee who is charged with fixing on the best date for her coronation.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

You know, he looks into the stars to work out when will be the most favourable time for her to to be crowned.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

What was it?

[Tom Holland]

Why don't you like the witch at the start of a discovery of witches? Go into the Bodleian and tell us.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, I'll just actually look into this mirror that I've got next to the.

[Tom Holland]

Next to my crying. Ask the Angels.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It was actually Sunday 15 January 1559, which is funny enough, that's the date I would have chosen. So good choice.

[Tom Holland]

Wow, that is very necromantic and very suspicious. So rather like you, a great scholar who decides not to stay in the university system.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

But to go out into the world and trust your future to strange supernatural voices that kind of go out into the ether.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Dee is kind of aiming at a similar thing. He knows that he has to offer Elizabeth something. But how? Through his learning through alchemy. Or maybe, just maybe by tapping into the language and the secrets of the angels. Time will tell.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, that's very like me because I did it through the the language and the secrets. The Daily Mail. He did it through the language of secrets of angels. Some people would say the same thing. We'll take a break and we'll return with more John Dee D. Daredevil is born again on Disney plus. Why did you stop being a vigilante? Empty. The line was crossed. Sometimes peace needs to be broken. Chaos must reign. On March 4th, the nine episode event begins. I was raised to believe in grace, but I was also raised to believe in retribution. Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again. Don't miss the two episode premiere March 4th only on Disney Plus. Have you ever spotted McDonald's hot crispy fries Right as they're being scooped into.

[Tom Holland]

The carton and time just stands still.

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

At four of the clock in the morning, my mother, Jane Dee D died at Mortlake. She made a godly end. God be praised. Therefore she was 77 year old. The Queen's Majesty, to my great comfort, came with her train from the court and at my door graciously calling me to her on horseback, exhorted me briefly to take my mother's death patiently and withal told me that the Lord Treasurer had greatly commended my doings for her. She remembered also how at my wife's death it was her fortune likewise to call upon me. So that's John Dee's diary for 10 October 1580. So his mother Jane has died at 77 years old. Very good innings and it's a sweet little moment. Elizabeth I, you know, was she going to be the Empress of all Catholics and Protestants? But she's still not too grand to stop off and see how he's doing. Doesn't that reflect well on good Queen Bess?

[Tom Holland]

I think it absolutely does. It's a kind of touching glimpse of her concern for Dee, but it's also tribute to her interest in his work and I think also the resources that he has gathered in his home. So Elizabeth, when she drops off on Dee, would almost certainly have been traveling either to or from her palace in Richmond, which is down the Thames from London. And the reason that she stops off to see Dee on the way is because he also has a house on the Thames between Richmond and London at a place called Mortlake. He has this large garden that runs down to the banks of the river and it's a great rambling pile. He's bought up kind of various local tenements and turned them into alchemical workshops. So Elizabeth obviously be very interested in that. But his house contains possibly an even greater wonder than his alchemical workshops, which is the largest private library in England. And this is knowledge is power. This is why Elizabeth is interested in Dee and in these kind of incredible resources of, of learning that he has in his house.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And a great example of that is this project that he's fascinated by. Well, he has been fascinated by for most of the preceding decade, which is this idea that you mentioned in the first half of a British Empire. It's so interesting that he's using those words before there is even really a British Empire.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But the funny thing is he's obsessed by the sea and cartography and all of that, but he's never been to see himself.

[Tom Holland]

Well, as you know, a lack of experience doesn't necessarily preclude one from pontificating about it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, of course not.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, Dee's genius, and I think it's not an exaggeration. I mean, he is a remarkable man. It lies in the way that he is able to kind of blend and fuse an amazing kind of array of categories of information, fields of study in a way that no one else would be able to do. Because what Dee brings is, I mean, as I say, this incredible library, but also, I think, just nerve kind of chutzpah in kind of blending it all together. So his project to kind of promote a British Empire is drawing on all different kinds of books. So he has in his library absolutely cutting edge books on navigation. So we talked about how as a young man, he had gone to study in the Low Countries, and when he was there, he'd become a very close friend of the most celebrated cartographer of his day, Gerard Mercator, who is busy incorporating coastlines of the New World, you know, the reports of that being brought back by Spanish and other sailors. He is banishing the kind of the maps that had been traditional in the Middle Ages, where you'd put Jerusalem at the center. And as Benjamin Woolley, in his biography of D, the Queen's Conjurer, puts it very nicely, I think a picture of the world emerged that to 16th century eyes would have been just as startling and significant as the first photographs of Earth taken from space were in the 20th. So it's opening up a new way of understanding the globe.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And actually Mercator had given Dean not just kind of maps and volumes on cartography, but also a pair of globes, one of the Earth, one of the heavens, you know, which are incredibly valuable. So that's also part of this kind of great library of knowledge that Dee can offer.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. And the second thing that he has, he's got lots of books about occult science, alchemy, astrology. Of course he does. And then the third thing, antiquarian books. Now, why are these antiquarian books? So they're going back to the time of King Arthur and Welsh princes and stuff. Now why are they so important for.

[Tom Holland]

The future, because it enables Dee to give to Elizabeth and her advisors what seems to be an absolutely foolproof legal claim to a British Empire overseas. And you mentioned King Arthur, so that's an important part of it. Dee adduces all kinds of ancient texts and histories proving that Arthur had conquered most of the continent, but had also conquered a whole chain of islands leading to Greenland and beyond Greenland into what people would now recognize as being America. So this is brilliant. This proves that Elizabeth is absolutely destined to be the last empress. But there is also, intriguingly, a Welsh aspect, and we talked about how D is of Welsh pedigree, as is Elizabeth, of course. As is Elizabeth. So this is also something that ticks a lot of boxes. And this is the story of a Welsh prince who lived in the late 12th century. So that's going centuries and centuries back. And this is a guy called Madoc. And the story is, is that Madoc's father was the. The Prince of Gwynedd, the most powerful prince in Wales. He dies. Madoc's brothers all fall out with one another, kind of squabbling over the inheritance. But Madoc is a man of peace. He doesn't want to be part of this game of Thrones. And so he resolves to leave Wales with refugees from the Civil war and sail westwards in search of a new land. And there are various accounts of where he went, but the most popular account says that he sailed up to the Arctic Circle, that he then went down the coast of North America, past Florida, rounds it, goes to Mexico, establishes a colony, comes back to Wales, reports to everyone in Wales. Look, I've. I found this new world. I founded a colony. Anyone else want to come? Lots of people do. Pile onto his ships, they sail off. And that is the last that is heard of Madoc.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But those books that Dee has on Prince Madoc, I mean, let's be frank, they're works of fiction. I mean, this didn't happen.

[Tom Holland]

I agree that they are implausible. And what adds to the implausibility of these stories is that actually there is no written record of this legend at all until the Tudor period. It's generally accepted that this probably was a tradition that was current in the Middle Ages, part of this kind of great swirl of stories and fantasies about lands beyond the Atlantic that inspired Columbus. But it doesn't seem to have been a particularly prominent one. And as you say, I mean, the likelihood that Prince Madoc actually existed is minimal. But you can see why it appeals to Dee. You can see why it appeals to Elizabeth. Yeah, both of them, as you say, are kind of Welsh, because it enables her to lay claim to the New World on the grounds that people from Britain had got there and founded colonies long before the Spanish. And so it's not surprising that Elizabeth and her advisors are intrigued by these arguments. You know, they are a kind of mad and inimitable blend of the practical. So all the maps, the cult, the last empress and the antiquarian, Arthur and Madoc, all kind of mixed up, basically, to provide the English with a justification for going abroad and nicking stuff from the Spanish and indeed, in the long run, from Native Americans.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. So it actually genuinely matters and it inspires particularly Walter Raleigh, doesn't it?

[Tom Holland]

Yes.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

You mentioned in the first half him going off to El Dorado, or of course, he famously went off to Virginia and founded the Roanoke colony. And he's. He's been reading or listening to Dee. These ideas are rattling around Walter Rally's brain. So this actually has real world consequences.

[Tom Holland]

It absolutely does. And Raleigh always remains De's patron, but the problem is he gets caught up in, you know, all kinds of faction fights and court intrigues. And when Raleigh falls from favor, d risks falling from favor. And Certainly by the 1580s, DE is getting quite nervous that his credit at court is getting severely overdrawn, that Elizabeth seems to be a little less fond of him than she was. So at one point she was, you know, praising him as my philosopher.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

But those days by the 1580s are starting to fade away. And there are very influential factions at court led by William Cecil, who is the greatest of all Elizabeth's ministers, who's very opposed to this vision of an overseas empire because he thinks it's quixotic and even worse, very expensive and so dark, he's stuck. He doesn't have a private fortune. He needs the support of. Of great figures at court. And so by the early 1580s, he's looking around for a new patron. And in the space of just over a year, so that's between 1582 and 1583, he meets not one, but two people who seem to open up to him dramatic new avenues of promise. And the first of these is a man that we've been mentioning, alluding to, kind of touching on throughout, but never actually saying, you know, who he is, where he comes from, why he's so significant. And this is this mysterious figure, this medium, this scryer, Edward Kelly.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So he's the bloke who's talking to the angels, and we can't be entirely certain where he came from. He's probably of Irish descent, hence the name Kelly.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But he's from the Midlands, Right.

[Tom Holland]

From Worcester, possibly from Worcester. Probably educated at Oxford. He certainly seems to have known Latin and Greek.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And he marries a woman called Joanna Dominic from Chipping Norton, your neck of the woods.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And he always seems to have had a quality of the disreputable. So there are lots of stories that he had had his ears cropped, which was the punishment for forgery. We don't know whether that's true, but it is telling, perhaps, that he always seems to have worn a cap pulled down over his ears, so who knows?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

So a slightly shady, mysterious figure when he turns up at Dee's house in 1582. Dee thinks he is great. And the reason for this is that Kelly proves himself very, very rapidly to be the most talented, the most formidable scryer that Dee has ever met.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Hard to imagine how you'd measure that.

[Tom Holland]

By the quality and richness of the visions that you have. So, you know, Dee has been trying to contact angels for decades. He's been employing various people who claim to have this ability because Dee himself doesn't. Dee gazes into kind of mirrors and sees nothing. He has this incredible obsidian mirror that seems to have come from Mexico. So kind of Aztec mirror that is kind of ideal for the purpose this. This should be opening up massive great visions of the heavens. But he can't do it. You know, it's like having a computer being unable to switch it on or something. He needs someone to do it for him. And of course, the risk is this makes him an absolute gull for fraudsters and charlatans and crooks. And all the people that Dee has been applying do turn out basically to be crooks. But Kelly seems to be the real deal. And Dee records his first attempt to. To kind of gaze into this Aztec mirror and summon up the angels. And it happens on the 10th of March, 1582. So he describes Kelly. He then settled himself to the action and on his knees at my desk, setting the stone before him, fell to prayer and entreaty, et cetera. In the mean space, I in my oratory to pray and make motion to God and his good creatures for the furthering of this action. Within one quarter of an hour or less, he had sight of one in the stone. I then came to him to the stone, and after some thanks to God and welcome to the good creature used, I required to know his name. And he spake plainly to the hearing of Edward Kelly. So d can't understand what is being said that his name is, which Kelly reveals, is Uriel.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I mean, you made the noise of the angel there, but Dee can hear nothing. And D, I think it's fair to say, can see nothing.

[Tom Holland]

No.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So some listeners may say D is for an intelligent person. He is being unbelievably credulous and basically believing this bloke who says, I've seen an angel and I've heard him talking to me. I mean, you can neither see nor hear him, but I assure you, he's there. Why is he so gullible?

[Tom Holland]

So two things to say to that. One possibility, which I think is. Is likely to be true, is that Kelly has an unbelievably vivid imagination and learning and understands what Dee wants. He's part of this occult world. He conjures up incredible visions of an astonishing richness.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And the things that he is reporting are the kind of things that Dee is expecting, only better.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So Kelly's probably read the same books.

[Tom Holland]

In other words, kind of. He's plugged into the same world.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

The other possibility, which is one that occultists to this day uphold.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay.

[Tom Holland]

Is the possibility that he really was seeing supernatural beings. So that is an alternative.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

We should leave that open as a possibility and listeners can make up their own minds. I think it's fair to say, yes.

[Tom Holland]

Okay. This is an exciting development for Dee, but then the following year, there's another exciting development, and we've had quite a lot of polls in this series so far.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Another poll.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, and here's another one. This is a guy called Obracht Lasky. He's a count, very flamboyant, very mysterious, and he arrives by boat up the Thames at Dee's house on the 15th of June, 1583. So he is notable for an absolutely massive beard. Big fan of a large beard on the rest is history. So Hollinshead, the historian whose accounts inspire so many of Shakespeare's plays, gives a description of Lasky's beard. It was of such length and breadth as that lying in his bed and parting it with his hands, the same overspread his breasts and shoulders, himself greatly delighting therein and reputing it. An ornament.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay. Sounds lovely.

[Tom Holland]

He's a very keen alchemist, very much aware of De's reputation. In fact, it's likely that that is one of the kind of principal reasons he's come to England. And he's very restless, he's very ambitious, and he is desperate to know if the reigning king of Poland is long for the world. And if not, whether Lasky is himself destined to replace him.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Wow. What's the answer?

[Tom Holland]

So Kelly gets out the Aztec obsidian mirror, does his scrying, contacts the archangel Uriel, and Uriel answers, which Kelly reveals means, I will grant him his desire. And later that summer, there's another angel who has the brilliant name of Juban Ladak.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No angel would really have that name.

[Tom Holland]

And he reveals, and I won't give the angelic words, you shall pass into his country to help his kingdom be established again. So that's looking good.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Poland. This is.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, Poland.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Wow, that's great.

[Tom Holland]

So this prospect, Lasky will become king and thereby, you know, be their great patron, combines with the fact that he's lost favourite court, that he's being harried by his creditors. He seems to have arrived at a bit of a dead end, career wise, in England. And he decides that he will sail with Laski from England to Holland and from there travel onwards to Poland. Kelly will have to come with him because otherwise they can't keep in touch with the angels. Both Kelly and Dee take their wives and their families with them. They all set out, all seems set fair. Everything looks promising. This is what the angels have promised. What could possibly go wrong?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, I mean, it's fair to say everything goes wrong, right?

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, everything does go wrong.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

What follows is an absolute and utter disaster. Yeah. So four months down the road and they get to Laska's hometown, which is called Lascaux, and it's when they get there that Lasky realizes that the angels have been misleading him because basically he's not going to become king of Poland.

[Tom Holland]

Right. And also been misleading Dee and, and Kelly because if he's not going to become king, then they have no prospects of, of success, as the angels has been promising. And in fact, as they start traveling to Poland, the angels keep popping up with all kinds of helpful comments along the lines of, everyone back in England thinks you're. You're absolute losers, you're renegades, you're traitors, so that's bad. And also warning that Poland, a condition of civil war, you don't want to be there. Why have you come there? And, you know, Kelly does not say, well, you told us to come. Yeah, but this is obviously kind of lurking in the background. So then the angels say, actually forget Poland, go to the Emperor. And this is Rudolph II in Prague. And Rudolph is a famous patron of alchemists, astrologers, everything to do with the occult. He loves all that kind of stuff. Yeah, they don't really have any Money, Dee and Kelly by this point. But they think, well, since the angels are telling us to go, we, we, we probably should. They arrive in Prague and this too turns out to be a disaster. So Dee has this European reputation as an alchemist and astrologer and so Rudolf is interested in him, allows him to have an audience. But disastrously an angel has popped up and told him to go to Rudolph and rebuke him for his sins, which Dee is absolutely terrified about doing. But the angel insists on it. So De goes and does this and it, it, you know, it doesn't go down tremendously.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well this is like Kelly winding Dee up, surely.

[Tom Holland]

And what makes it even worse is that just before Dee goes in for his interview with Rudolph, Kelly's been arrested for brawling with one of the imperial guards, has been locked up and so Dee has to go and get him out. And adding to the fun is the fact that a particularly sinister angel has appeared on the scene and she is called Madimi. And she has the appearance of an eight year old girl who wears a kind of a splendid satin dress, a gown that changes from red to green and back again. And she starts warning them that Satan is after them, that Satan seeketh the destruction of thy household and the life of thy children.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So just for a second, your own personal view, like what's going on with Kelly? He's conjuring up this or he's pretending he can see like this weird girl and all that. Is he mad or is this a colossal conversation? Is he a fraudster?

[Tom Holland]

I really don't know. It's too distant, it's too strange. Kelly's visions are so consistent and Dee keeps a very detailed record of them. It's hard to believe that he is just a bare faced fraudster. Yeah, I suspect he kind of does think that he has access to the dimensions of the supernatural. But obviously I don't think that Madimi actually exists.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

No, I mean it's in the kind of border zones between fantasy, between charlatanism. Yeah, a capacity for imagining that you were seeing things that aren't there.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He's deluding himself as much as he's deluding.

[Tom Holland]

Well, except that on top of that, I suspect that part of what is going on is that Kelly is getting a bit fed up with Dee by this point because Kelly's fortunes are actually on the upturn. Because as well as a brilliant scry, he turns out to be a very promising alchemist. And alchemist alchemy is potentially much more lucrative than kind of talking to angels.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But it's not actually turning lead into gold.

[Tom Holland]

Well, we will see. So the fact that Dee is. Is kind of noting down the voices of angels, Kelly is starting to get into alchemy. Unsurprisingly, this starts to attract the attention of the papal nuncio in Prague. They are from a Protestant kingdom. Even though Dee, of course, is an ordained Catholic priest, it's a treacherous position for them to be in. At the same time, Rudolph is starting to suspect that Dee might be a spy. Dee and Kelly are endlessly being banished from Prague, allowed back in, banished again. Dee's relationship with Kelly is going very badly downhill. You know, Dee needs Kelly to keep him in touch with the angels because otherwise he's sunk. But because Kelly is increasingly more interested in establishing his reputation as an alchemist, he's getting a bit bored with talking to the angels. And it may not be coincidence that in 1587, when Kelly's reputation as an alchemist is becoming so impressive, that it's not just Rudolph who is kind of saying, well, I might sign you up. People from England are coming and saying, come back to England. You know, it's this kind of Keir Starmer and AI thing again. Yeah, please come back and help revive our economy by giving us loads of gold. It's in this year, 1587, that you get an absolutely massive bombshell from Madimi, who has recently started doing strip teases. So she started pulling her gown back and showing her private parts, which neither.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Of them can see.

[Tom Holland]

Well, Kelly can see it. He says, yeah. So Medimi then announces that all things are possible and permitted to the godly. Nor are sexual organs more hateful to them than the faces of every mortal. So what does this mean? Kelly explains, because of course he understands what the angels are saying. He reveals that what Medimi is saying is that he and D should sleep with the other person's wife. And Kelly basically has had the hots for Dee's wife right the way through their trip. And Dee is completely appalled. He adores his wife, they're very close, but obviously he can't disobey the angels. And so 21st of May 1587, he writes in his diary, pactum Factum. The agreement has been fulfilled.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Two things to say. One, Dee surely is the most gullible person we've ever had on this podcast. And two, I mean, his wife has no say in this. What is this, like, Indecent Proposal?

[Tom Holland]

Dee describes the negotiations. She's very upset, he's very upset. But they seem mutually have to decided, you know, if this is what the angels are saying, then that's what they've got to do. But obviously, the consequences of this are kind of devastating. Relations between the two men really, really break down. And in 1589, D returns to England. You know, he's had enough. He doesn't care that he won't be able to talk to the angels anymore. Yeah, maybe he is starting to suspect that the angels are actually demons. And Kelly remains in Bohemia, where, amazingly, despite the fact that he's been nothing but trouble for years and years in Bohemia, Rudolph employs him as his chief alchemist. He knights him. He lavishes him with all the riches that Kelly had secretly been hankering after all this time. But then there's the problem that, you know, Rudolph is expecting gold and Kelly can't provide it. And so Rudolph imprisons him, not so much to punish him for not turning up with gold, but to basically say, well, you know, you stay there and you give me the gold and don't go off and do other mad stuff. Kelly tries to escape and, it is said, dies in the attempt. But there are other accounts as well. So some say that he did escape Rudolph and made off and did discover the. The Philosopher's Stone.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

Others say that he, a bit like the men who become the Nazgul, that he transmutes into a kind of ghoulish specter and is seen stalking the lands of Bohemia. And there are others, occultists living today who say that Kelly never died, that he is. He's still on the scene, he's still around.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Wow.

[Tom Holland]

So, I mean, all of those, I guess, are kind of pretty tragic ways to go.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, unless you're still around. I mean, that's great.

[Tom Holland]

Would you want to live? Maybe. Maybe you would.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Dee's not still around, is he?

[Tom Holland]

Dee's definitely not around. So he goes back to England and he has a very kind of miserable last few years. So he goes back to Mortlake, to his house, and he finds that it's been absolutely trashed and his beloved library people have gone in and they've nicked loads of volumes. And these seem to have been some of his students. I mean, people basically who knew what they were looking for.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

And Dee complained that 500 volumes had been stolen and that some of these volumes had been worth hundreds of pounds, which is an inordinate amount of money back in. In Tudor times.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Elizabeth doesn't completely abandon him, so she appoints him to a post in the cathedral in Manchester, which gives him a kind of income. But he is an exile from court. I mean, he feels it, you know, apologies to Mancunian listeners, but he really feels, you know, he's been sent into exile.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And he finally returns to Mortlake in 1605, by which point Elizabeth is dead, James is on the throne. I mean, James has no interest in Dee at all.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It's funny cause James loves witches and demonology and stuff, doesn't he?

[Tom Holland]

Well, he does, but he's kind of quite hostile to witches.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And I think the taint of witchcraft hangs around Dee and it means that a bit like Walter Raleigh, you know, he's been left over from the previous reign.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right. Okay.

[Tom Holland]

He dies pretty poverty stricken. He's had to sell off such of his possessions as have been left to him. But he does leave behind this haunting reputation. I mean, it's why he appears in A discovery of witches. And he casts a kind of supernatural glamour over memories of Elizabeth's reign, I think. I mean, I agree he clearly is unbelievably gullible and the story of his deception by Kelly is a kind of really tragic one. But he is also clearly very, very brilliant. The scope and scale of his learning, it was absolutely astonishing. And so I thought, rather than leave listeners with thoughts of what an absolute idiot he was, it might be kinder to quote one of the greatest of the Elizabethan poets, Edmund Spencer, author of the Fairy Queen, this kind of great allegorical portrait of the Elizabethan period. And in it he gives what is almost certainly a portra of. Of Dr. D. So Spencer describes a room decorated with paintings of famous wizards. And he, he goes on to write, there sat a man of ripe and perfect age who did there meditate all his lifelong. So that's the paintings of the famous wizards that through continual practice and usage, he now was grown right wise and a wondrous sage.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Lovely Tom. What a fascinating. What a richly fascinating story. Some would say the story of a wise and wondrous sage. That's Tom, who is a much kinder person than some would say. The story of an absolute mug, which is what I would say. But listeners, you can make up your own minds.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, you decide.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

That's the story of John Dee. And we'll be back next time with something completely different. Thank you very much, Tom, and goodbye.

[Tom Holland]

Bye bye.

[Al Murray]

Hi there, I'm Al Murray, co host of we have ways of making you Talk, the world's premier Second World War history podcast from Goal Hanger.

[James Holland]

And I'm James Holland, best selling World War II historian. And together we tell the best stories from the war. This time we're doing a deep dive into the last major attack by the Nazis on the west, the Battle of the Bulge.

[Al Murray]

And what's so fascinating about this story is we've been able to show how quite a lot of the popular history about this battle is kind of the wrong way round, isn't it, Jim? The whole thing is a disaster from the start. Even Hitler's plans for the attack are insane and divorced from reality.

[James Holland]

Well, you're so right. But what we can do is celebrate this as an American success story for the ages. From their generals at the top to the gis on the front line. Full of gumption and grit, the bold should be remembered as a great victory for the usa.

[Al Murray]

And if this sounds good to you, we've got a short taste for you here. Search we have ways, wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks. Yeah.

[James Holland]

Anyway, so who is Overstuff Van Fuhrer?

[Al Murray]

Joachim Piper, but I see his jaunty hat and I just think skull and crossbones. Well, I see his reputation and I think, you know, you might be a handsome devil, but the emphasis is on the devil bit rather than that.

[James Holland]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, be that is May. He's 29 years old and he's got, he's got a very interesting career really because he comes from a, you know, a pretty right wing family. Let's face it. He's joined the SS at a pretty early, early stage. He's very. International socialism. He's also been Himmler's adjutant. Yeah, he took a little bit of time off in the summer of 1940 to go and fight with, with the 1st Waffen SS Panzer Division.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yep.

[James Holland]

Did pretty well. Went back to being Himmler's adjutant, then went off and commanded troops in, in the Eastern Front. Rose up to be a pretty young regimental commander. I mean, it's not many people that age or. No. Besturm Banfuhrer, which is sort of Colonel.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Yes, I.

[Al Murray]

You see, what must it have been like if you're in, if. If Himmler's adjutant turns up and he's been posted to you as an officer, do you think? Well, he only got that job because of his connections. For Piper, it must have been always. He's always having to prove himself, surely, because he has turned up. He's not worked his way through the ranks of the Waffen ss. He's dolloped in having come from head office, as it were. It must be a peculiar position to be in. Right. He's got lots to prove. Right. That's what I'm Saying.

[James Holland]

Yeah. And he's from a sort of middle class background as well.

[Al Murray]

Yeah.

[James Holland]

But he's got an older brother who's had mental illness and attempted suicide and never, never really recovers and actually has died of t eventually in 1942. He's got a younger brother called Horst who's also joined the SS&TOTEN cop Verbanda and died in a never really properly explained accident in Poland in 1941.

[Tom Holland]

Right.

[James Holland]

Piper gains a sort of growing reputation on the Eastern Front for being kind of very inspiring, fearless, you know, obviously courageous, you know, all the guys love him, all that kind of stuff. But he's also orders the entire. The destruction of entire village of Krasnaya Pollyanna in a kind of revenge killing by Russian partisans. Yeah. And his unit becomes known as the Blowtorch Battalion because of his penchant for touching Russian villages. So he's got all the gongs. He's got Iron Cross, second Class, First Class Cross of Gold, Knight's Cross. Did very well at Kursk briefly in Northern Italy, actually, then in Ukraine, then in Normandy. He suffers a nervous breakdown.

[Al Murray]

Yeah.

[James Holland]

And he's relieved of his command on the 2nd of August and he's hospitalized from September to October. So he's not in command during Operation Lutech. And then he rejoins 1st SS Panzer Regiment as its commander again in October 1944. It's really, really odd.

[Al Murray]

I mean, but isn't that interesting, though, because if you're a lancer, if you're an ordinary soldier, you're not allowed to have a nervous breakdown. You don't get hospitalised, you don't get time off. How you could interpret this is. This is a sort of Nazi princeling, isn't he? He's Himmler's adjutant. He's demonstrated the necessary Nazi zeal on the Eastern front and all this sort of stuff. It comes to Normandy where they. Where they're losing. Why else would he have a nervous breakdown? Down. He's shown all the zeal and application in the Nazi manner up to this point. And they're losing, you know, and because he's a knob, you know, because he's well connected, he gets to be hospitalized. If he has a nervous breakdown, he isn't told like an ordinary German soldier, there's no such thing as combat fatigue, mate. Go back to work.

[James Holland]

Yes. And it's a nervous breakdown, not combat fatigue.

[Al Murray]

Well, yes, of course, but.

[James Holland]

But you know what SS soldier said of him? Piper was the most dynamic man I ever met. He just got things done.

[Al Murray]

Yeah.

[James Holland]

You get this image I have of him of. Of having this kind of sort of slightly manic energy. Yeah, kind of. He's virulently National Socialist. He's got this great reputation. He's damned if anyone's going to tarnish it. You know, he's a. He's a driver, you know, all those things.

[Al Murray]

He's trying to make the will triumph, isn't he? He's working towards the fur. He's imbued with. He knows what's expected of him. Extreme violence and cruelty and pushing his men on. I mean, he's sort of. He's the Fuhrer principal writ large, isn't he? As a. As an SS officer. Yeah, which is why cruelty and extreme violence are bundled in to wherever he goes, basically.