The Heresy of Dr Dee

Notes and Credits

A YEAR AFTER it was opened, the inquest into the death of Amy Dudley did indeed end, as John Dee expected, with a verdict of Accidental Death. It made no difference. Dudley would never marry Elizabeth.

Most of the theories about Amy’s death are explored in depth in Death and the Virgin by Chris Skidmore and Elizabeth and Leicester by Sarah Gristwood. A letter, dated August 24 – a fortnight before her death – from Amy to her dressmaker, places an order for the alteration of a velvet gown.

In these increasingly secular times, it’s easy to underestimate the influence of religion, superstition and magic in Tudor England and Wales. Often, advances in science only added credibility to the concept of magic.

For anyone still sceptical, the classic Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas and The Arch-Conjurer of England by Glyn Parry will explain everything in scholarly detail.

Once again, I also relied on The Queen’s Conjurer by Benjamin Woolley, John Dee by Richard Deacon, John Dee, The World of an Elizabethan Magus by Peter J. French and The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age by Frances Yates. Some informed speculation about the Dee dwelling at Mortlake can be found in John Dee of Mortlake by Nicholas Dakin, published by the Barnes and Mortlake History Society. Damon Albarn’s music for his opera Dr Dee shows a sympathetic understanding of Mortlake’s finest and is well worth a listen.

Dee’s abilities as a dowser are fairly well chronicled. John Aubrey records how he’d find missing items for his Mortlake neighbour, Goodwife Faldo. The Faldo family of Mortlake were long-time neighbours of John Dee and his mother. It may have been the daughter-in-law of the Goodwife Faldo mentioned in this manuscript, who, as an old woman, gave an account of the tall, good-looking and generous Dr Dee to Aubrey.

Dee’s scrying sessions, in later life, with the medium, Edward Kelley, are well chronicled. He apparently told people his crystal had come ‘from the angels’ but where his scrying activities began is less certain. The Queen’s interest is well known, as is her visit to Dee’s house to examine his scrying equipment for herself. It’s likely she was accompanied on this visit by Robert Dudley. The beryl in the British Museum may have been Dee’s… or may not.

Dowsing is the only fringe-psychic gift he appeared to have possessed. Thanks to Ced Jackson, John Moss, Graham Gardner and Helen Lamb of the British Society of Dowsers for background. And Caitlin Sagan for the BM pictures.

The story of how Presteigne became the assize town of Radnorshire is well documented. The Mid Wales organised-crime syndicate, Plant Mat, based in a cave in the Devil’s Bridge area of Ceredigion, accepted responsibility for the murder of a judge at Rhayader and some of its members were subsequently hunted down.

The Prices did finish their new home, still known as Monaughty and still the most impressive Elizabethan house in Radnorshire, standing alone, in a curve of the road from Knighton to Penybont.

John Dee is recorded as visiting Wigmore in 1576, when he found discarded manuscripts, which he considered to be of some value, in the remains of the chapel at Wigmore Castle, already falling into ruin. Today, the castle is far more visible than the abbey. The abbot’s house is now the home of John and Carol Challis, who were kind enough to show us around… and put me on to Abbot Smart, more of whose alleged misdeeds were uncovered by John Grove, of the Mortimer History Society.

Roger Vaughan went on to become MP for Radnorshire and, in the 1580s, bought Kinnersley Castle, just over the English border, which he restored extensively, putting in large windows to flood its rooms with light. A ceiling, decorated with esoteric symbols in its moulding, is said to have been designed by John Dee. As Dee was not known as an interior decorator, it can only be assumed that, if he was the designer, it was meant to serve some protective purpose, but that’s another story.

Five years later, in 1565, local merchant John Beddoes, after whom Presteigne High School is named, left an area of land, the rent from which is still used to pay for the ringing of the nightly curfew. But that was another book.

Twm Siôn Cati – Thomas Jones, of Tregaron – is still a well-known folk hero in south-west Wales, often celebrated as the Welsh Robin Hood. He was pardoned by Elizabeth not long after she came to the throne. And he did indeed become John Dee’s cousin by marriage.

It was Tracy Thursfield, student of the Hidden, who first told me about the shewstone (which was last heard of at Brampton Bryan Castle, home of the Harleys, who were also connected with Wigmore Abbey) and gave regular advice throughout. Mairead Reidy, ace researcher, found more details and provided a rich assortment of relevant literature. Keith Parker, author of A History of Presteigne, provided the background on Dee’s family, Nicholas Meredith and Stephen Price, and Hilary Marchant suggested the sites of judicial premises.

Thanks once again to the present owners of the two houses at Nant-y-groes. Also Duncan Baldwin and Lucille, for legal advice. Apart from those involving royalty and high government figures, there’s little evidence of the way Elizabethan trials were conducted, especially at assize level. It seems unlikely that there were barristers for the prosecution and defence, as we know them today, which suggests that most of the questioning of witnesses was done by the judge himself. The rights of the accused to offer up a defence were not automatic and might depend on the generosity of the judge.

Thanks to Sir Richard Heygate, co-author with Philip Carr-Gomm of (every home should have one) The Book of English Magic for links to portals and John Dee; Ed Wilson for London geography and yet more legal assistance; Bev Craven, masterly graphic artist and connoisseur of the curious; Alun Lenny for the background on Plant Mat, Twm and Dee’s Welsh roots; my wife, Carol, for the usual massive and perceptive edit; and Sara O’Keeffe at Corvus for a final overview… and a lot of patience.

Pilleth Church on Brynglas is well worth a visit. The holy well remains, if not the statue of the Virgin and – as someone said – it’s so light and welcoming up there these days that it looks as if ‘work’ has been carried out there.

The name of Rhys Gethin, who achieved Owain Glyndwr’s greatest victory, at Pilleth, is still remembered in Wales – most recently as the professed author of communications from the small terrorist unit, Meibion Glyndwr, who ran an arson campaign against English-owned holiday cottages in north Wales in the 1980s. The most intriguing account of Glyndwr’s campaign and its aftermath is Alex Gibbon’s The Mystery of Jack of Kent and the Fate of Owain Glyndwr.

My apologies to Nicholas Meredith, who may have been an entirely honest and decent businessman and property dealer.

The Mappa Mundi can be seen at Hereford Cathedral.

Legends of guardians of ancient sites are well known on the Welsh border. And some stories of guardian manifestations are rather too recent to qualify as old legends. An archaeologist once told me he’d been refused permission to excavate a Bronze Age mound on a farm in Powys because the farmer had himself once sunk a spade into it and seen something so dreadful he’d not gone near it since, with any kind of implement.

According to legend, the restless spirit of Amy Robsart at Cumnor Place was removed from Cumnor by ten priests with candles.

Poor Amy. That seems wrong, somehow.