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

28:00So 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 Dee and it is thought that this is because 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.

28:43And 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 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 the death of a king or queen is a dodgy thing. And he doesn't manage to keep this a secret, does he?

29:23So the word gets out. And when people know that he's done this, I mean, he's in real trouble. 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 Dee, 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 are really bleak for him.

30:02But 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 I guess a guy's got to do what he's got to do. I mean, it's a kind of survival strategy, but it's not particularly glorious. And of course, 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.

30:46So Mary dies in November 1558 and is succeeded by Elizabeth, who is a Protestant, and Dee has 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. 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's sidekick. He's been interrogating Protestants. Why is he not punished? Why is there not a massive backlash against him? 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.

31:26So 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.

32:04And 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. Does he not still have some credit with Elizabeth for doing that horoscope? I mean, is she not still grateful to him for that? 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 status at court, financial security, all these things that he desperately craves? And so Dean knows that he has to prove his value. Elizabeth isn't just going to give him a living or her favour just because he cast a horoscope at a dangerous time.

32:43He 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. You know, he looks into the stars to work out when will be the most favourable time for her to be crowned. What was it? Why don't you, like the witch at the start of Discovery of Witches, go into the Bodleian and tell us? Well, I'll just actually look into this mirror that I've got next to my computer. Do some scrying. Ask the angels.

33:17It was actually Sunday, the 15th of January, 1559, which is funny enough, that's the date I would have chosen. So good choice. Wow. That is very necromantic and very suspicious. So rather like you, a great scholar who decides not to stay in the university system, but to go out into the world and trust your future to strange supernatural voices that kind of go out into the ether. 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.

33:59Well, that's very like me because I did it through the language and the secrets of the Daily Mail. He did it through the language and the secrets of angels. Some people would say the same thing. We'll take a break and we'll return with more John Dee.

34:13At four of the clock in the morning, my mother Jane D. died at Maud Lake. She made a godly end. God be praised, therefore. She was 77 years 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 the 10th of 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 I think it absolutely does It's a kind of touching glimpse of her concern for Dee, but it's also a tribute to her interest in his work and I think also the resources that he has gathered in his home.

35:20So Elizabeth, when she drops off on Dee, would almost certainly have been travelling 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 would 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.

36:05And this is knowledge is power. This is why Elizabeth is interested in Dee and in these kind of incredible resources of learning that he has in his house. 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 yeah 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 well as you know a lack of experience doesn't necessarily preclude one from pontificating about no of course not i mean he'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.

37:04Because what Dee brings is, I mean, let's 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.

37:46He 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 Dee, the Queen's Cundra, puts it very nicely, I think, a picture of the world emerged that the 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 yeah and actually mccator had given d 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 of knowledge that d can offer yeah and the second thing that he has he's got lots of books about occult science, alchemy, astrology, of course he does.

38:39And 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 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 recognise as being America.

39:21So 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 Dee 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 that Madoc's father was 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.

40:00But 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 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've found this new world, I founded a colony, anyone else want to come. Lots of people do pile onto his ships, they sail off.

40:37And that is the last that is heard of Madoc. 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. 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.

41:14And 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. 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. They are a kind of mad and inimitable blend of the practical. So all the maps, the occult, 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.

42:02Yeah so it actually genuinely matters and it inspires particularly Walter Raleigh doesn't it? Yes. 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 been reading or listening to Dee these ideas are rattling around Walter Raleigh's brain. So this actually has real world consequences. It absolutely does. And Raleigh always remains Dee's patron. But the problem is he gets caught up in all kinds of faction fights and court intrigues. And when Raleigh falls from favour, Dee risks falling from favour. And certainly by the 1580s, Dee 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.

42:49So at one point she was praising him as my philosopher. 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 D, he's stuck. He doesn't have a private fortune. He needs the support 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.

43:34and the first of these is a man that we've been mentioning, alluding to, kind of touching on throughout, but never actually saying who he is, where he comes from, why he's so significant. And this is this mysterious figure, this medium, this scryer, Edward Kelly. 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, but he's from the Midlands, right? From Worcester, possibly. From Worcester, probably educated at Oxford. He certainly seems to have known Latin and Greek. And he marries a woman called Joanna Dominic from Chipping Norton, your neck of the woods.

44:08And 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? Yeah. 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. Hard to imagine how you'd measure that.

44:48By 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 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.

45:23And 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 employing do turn out basically to be crooks. But Kelly seems to be the real deal. And Dee records his first attempt 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 etc 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 Dee can't understand what is being said, that his name is...

46:24Which Kelly reveals is Uriel. I mean, you made the noise of the angel there, but Dee can hear nothing. And Dee, I think it's fair to say, can see nothing. No. So some listeners may say Dee is, for an intelligent person, he is being unbelievably credulous in 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? So two things to say to that. One possibility, which I think is likely to be true, is that Kelly has an unbelievably vivid imagination and learning and understands what Dee wants.

47:05He's part of this occult world. He conjures up incredible visions of an astonishing richness. And the things that he is reporting are the kind of things that Dee is expecting, only better. So Kelly's probably read the same books, in other words. Kind of. He's plugged into the same world. The other possibility, which is one that occultists to this day uphold, is the possibility that he really was seeing supernatural beings. So that is an alternative. We should leave that open as a possibility and listeners can make up their own minds, I think it's fair to say. Yes. Okay. This is an exciting development for Dee.

47:40But then the following year, there's another exciting development. And we've had quite a lot of polls in the series so far. Love a poll. 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 of his 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.

48:21Okay, sounds lovely. He's a very keen alchemist, very much aware of Dee'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. Wow. What's the answer? 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 Ladike.

49:07No angel would really have that name. 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. Poland, this is... Yeah, Poland. Wow, that's great. So this prospect, Lasky will become king and thereby 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 Lasky 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.

49:47Both Kelly and Dee take their wives and their families with them. They all set out, all seem set fair. Everything looks promising. This is what the angels have promised. What could possibly go wrong? Well, I mean, it's fair to say everything goes wrong, right? Everything does go wrong. What follows is an absolute and utter disaster. Yeah. So four months they're on the road and they get to Lasky's hometown, which is called Lasko. And it's when they get there that Lasky realises that the angels have been misleading him because basically he's not going to become king of Poland. Right. And also been misleading Dee and Kelly, because if he's not going to become king, then they have no prospects of success as the angels has been promising.

50:26And 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 absolute losers, you're renegades, you're traitors. So that's bad. And also warning that Poland's in a condition of civil war. You don't want to be there. Why have you come there? And Kelly does not say, well, you told us to come. 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 Rudolf II in Prague. And Rudolf is a famous patron of alchemists, astrologers, everything to do with the occult.

51:02He loves all that kind of stuff. 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 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 Rudolph 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 Dee goes and does this and it doesn't go down tremendously well.

51:37This is like Kelly winding Dee up, surely. 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.

52:18So 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 con? Is he a fraudster? 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 barefaced 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. No. I mean, it's in the kind of border zones between fantasy, between charlatanism.

52:59Yeah. A capacity for imagining that you are seeing things that aren't there. He's deluding himself as much as he's deluding. 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 scryer, he turns out to be a very promising alchemist. And alchemy is potentially much more lucrative than kind of talking to angels. But he's not actually turning lead into gold. Well, we will see. So the fact that Dee is kind of noting down the voices of angels, Kelly is starting to get into alchemy.

53:39Unsurprisingly, 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, Rudolf 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.

54:17And 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. 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 of them can see.

54:52Well, Kelly can see it, he says. Yeah. So Madimi 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 Madhimi is saying is that he and Dee 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.

55:33The agreement has been fulfilled. 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. Dee describes the negotiations. She's very upset. He's very upset. But they seem mutually have 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, Dee returns to England. He's had enough. He doesn't care that he won't be able to talk to the angels anymore.

56:10Maybe 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 stay there and you give me the gold and don't go off and do other mad stuff.

56:53Kelly 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 Philosopher's Stone. Right Others say that he A bit like the men Who become the Nazgul That he transmutes Into a kind of Ghoulish spectre 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 Wow So I mean all of those I guess are kind of Pretty tragic ways to go Well unless you're still around I mean that's great Would you want to live around Maybe you would Dee's not still around Is he?

57:34Dee'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 knew what they were looking for. 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 Tudor times. Elizabeth doesn't completely abandon him.

58:08So 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. Apologies to Mancunian listeners, but he really feels he's been sent into exile. 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. It's funny because James loves witches and demonology and stuff, doesn't he? Well, he does, but he's kind of quite hostile to witches. Yeah. And I think the taint of witchcraft hangs around Dee. Right. And it means that a bit like Walter Raleigh, you know, he's been left over from the previous reign.

58:43Right. Okay. 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 portrait of of dr d so spencer describes a room decorated with paintings of famous wizards and he goes on to write there sat a man of ripe and perfect age who did there meditate all his life long.

59:52So that's the paintings of the famous wizards. But through continual practice and usage, he now was grown right wise and a wondrous sage. 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 I am. Some would say the story of an absolute mug, which is what I would say. But listeners, you can make up your own minds. Yeah, you decide. 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. Bye-bye.