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John
Dee's Conversations With Angels |
The first Parliament of James met on March 19, 1604. On the 275h a new and more stringent Act against Witchcraft was brought into the House of Lords. It was referred to the bishops, who discovered it was imperfect, and had a fresh one drawn. On June 9 the execrable Act that disfigured our statute book for 150 years became law. This haste, it was supposed, was used to meet offences exposed by the Scottish trials, now again evidently revived and much talked of in England. It is significant to remember that Shakespeare finished writing Macbeth in 1606. In what way Dee felt himself specially involved, unless by the publication, in 1603, of Harsnet's tirade against impostures and exorcists, it is hard to conjecture, but the times were ripe for him to make, at this identical moment, a passionate appeal to the King and Parliament. On June 5 he presented to James, in the Palace at Greenwich, a petition couched in the strongest and most piteous terms that any man could devise.
He urged upon the King
"to cause your Highnesse said servant to be tryed and cleared of that horrible and damnable, and to him most grievous and dammageable sclaunder, generally, and for these many yeares last past, in this kingdom raysed and continued, by report and Print against him, namely that he is or hath bin a conjurer or caller or invocator of divels."
He went on to relate how he had published many times his "earnest apologies against the slander [one we remember in his preface to Billingsley's Euclid in 1570, and another, the letter to the Archbishop in 1595, he had republished in 1599 and 1603], and yet this ungodly and false report, so boldly, constantly and impudently avouched," has been uncontrolled and unpunished for so many years; and, moreover, in spite of all, some writer, either a "malicious forraine enemy or an English traytor to the flourishing State and Honor of the Kingdom," on January 7, 1592, had called him, John Dee, in print, "the conjuror of the Queen's Privy Council." It seems, therefore, very needful that the suppliant shall be brought to trial, for the credit of the Lords of the Privy Council as well as for his own. "Therefore he offereth himself willingly to the punishment of Death, yea eyther to be stoned to death, or to be buried quicke, or to be burned unmercifully, if by any due, true, and just meanes, the name of conjuror, or caller, or invocator of Divels or damned Sprites, can be proved to have beene or to be duely or justly reported and told of him (as to have been of his doing) were true, as they have been told or reasonably caused any wondering among or to the many-headed multitude, or to any other whoseever else."
Dee's sympathies were so strongly with the unfortunate, persecuted, so-called witches, that he was willing to throw in his lot with them and share the same fate. He ends this extraordinary petition with "a great and undoubted hope" that the King will "soon redress his farder griefs and hindrances, no longer of him possibly to be endured, so long hath his utter undoing, by little and little, beene most unjustly compassed."
Following up this petition, the poor man, grown desperate, three days later (June 8) presented an address in verse to Parliament, begging them to pass "an Act Generall against slander, with a special penal order for John Dee, his case." He was far too much in earnest to be suspectedof any humorous intention, but a thought of the needful reformation such an Act might have wrought in the country by this time cannot be suppressed. Certainly it would have been a more creditable piece of legislation than the Act which afforded such wicked and cruel pretext for espionage and terrorism, and for putting unfortunate lunatics - called witches - to death by hanging, burning and stoning by a mob.
It seems as if Dee's ruined and beggared condition, the long procession of disappointments he had patiently borne, had entirely destroyed the sense of proportion in his mind between personal and public affairs. Continual brooding over the thought of the neglect, the suspicion, that his undeniable talents had undergone, the obstinate slander, ignorant incredulity, or flat denial of things in which he most truly put his faith, all distorted by his natural vanity and good opinion, seems to have convinced him that his crushed and melancholy fate was little short of a national disaster. This feeling had become an obsession.
There was unfortunately nothing in his halting verses to induce Parliament to pay any heed to a tiresome old petitioner, a survival from the last century and the last reign, who had outlived every contemporary inclined to believe in him, and whose course was now nearly run.
Nor did James respond in any way to his heartbroken petition. Robert Cecil, and all who wished to stand well with him, took their cue from the King, and Dee in his old age was left forsaken and alone.
The following is the address to Parliament: -
"TO THE HONORABLE ASSEMBLIE OF THE COMMONS IN THE PRESENT PARLIAMENT."
"The Honor due unto you all, And reverence to you each one, I do first yeeld most speciall; Grant me this time to heare my mone.
"Now (if you write) full well you may, Fowle sclandrous tongues and divelish hate, And help the truth to beare some sway In just defence of a good Name.
"In sundry sorts, this sclander great (Of conjurer) I have sore blamde: But wilfull, rash, and spiteful heat, Doth nothing cease to be enflamde.
"Your helpe, therefore, by Wisdom's lore, And by your Powre, so great and sure, I humbly crave, that never more This hellish would I shall endure.
"And so your Act, with Honour great All Ages will hereafter prayse; And Truth, that sitts in Heavenly sear, Will in like case your comforts rayse.
Most dutifully in all humilitie at your commandment, John Dee, servant and Mathematician to his most royall Majestie.
An. 1604. Junij 8."
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