When Magic And Science Were The Same Thing | John Dee Podcast Documentary

Two things to say One D surely is the most gullible person we've ever had on this podcast and two what is this like Indecent Proposal disastrously an angel has popped up and told him to go to Rudolph and rebuke him for his sins the other possibility is the possibility that he really was seeing supernatural beings 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 [Music] [Applause] D 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 stand 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 D 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 bodan Library and because she's a witch she discovers all kinds of amazing stuff so a vampire from Downtown Abbey who is at the fall of Carthage Lota 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 the

and this is when they meet the person I was just ventriloquizing Dr John John D so tell us about Dr John D 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 right and this is why the witch and the vampire have gone to meet him because he has all these incredible books that 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 the no less he really did travel to Bohemia yeah where he met with the emperor Rudolph II in Prague which in the late 16th century is the great city of magic and he really did work with this guy whose 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 what a story what's a story yeah Amazing Story and Dr D 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 tuders no and I thought that doing an episode on Dr D would be a good way of Making amends because

he is a fascinating topic well just to be clear to the listeners we're not really about making amends on the rest of 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 VII all the way through to The Advent of James the 1 James I 6 of Scotland

and the dawn of a new era doesn't he so this is the age when England is sort of seesing wildly from protestantism to Catholicism and back again yes and the 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 so when Henry dies followed by Edward I 6 who's a Protestant followed by Mary who's a

Catholic followed by Elizabeth who's a Protestant D 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 cile You know her great chief minister so Walter Raleigh the guy who of course puts his cloak in the puddle yeah 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 I first so in the kind of the post tuder 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 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 Cal 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 100 Years War yeah 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 Cal

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 with 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 yeah roughs beards gallions all of that Francis Drake uh s John frobisher all these great characters yes and D knows them he works with them and d himself is

absolutely obsessed by overseas exploration and he is a particular Enthusiast for the idea Of of planting and keeping colon 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 it's leading

kind Of tutor Advocate 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 that it's intellectually fascinating to him yes but simultaneously he has what I guess you could you could probably call kind of a cult 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 pressing

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 wow and as glimp Parry who's written probably the definitive Biography D the arch condur of England says Elizabeth easily accepted these suggestions course she does yeah because of course unbelievably flattering to her and just to be clear for listeners who perhaps are puzzled by the combination of these things um 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 right and I think this is the third reason why D 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 D who illustrates this Elizabeth the first does as well so she is famously intellectual and Brilliant Incredibly learned very well educated very schol 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 me of the way that K starma 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 stone yeah this way of turning kind of lead or whatever into gold then this would be brilliant and

and England's economy will be absolutely flying I mean the iron is that we now know that that was a Hogwarts but they didn't know that then yeah they didn't know that did they anyway so D 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 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 D 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 prag 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 de'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 D 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 scrier 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 scrier 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 de 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 right because how do you tell the difference yeah what if these figures are pushing D And Kelly towards satanic ends and as

we will see the revelations that Kelly supposed ly has do indeed in the end lead him and D 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 cranky may prove to shelter you know Potentially deadly Peril 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 Rader yes and John D would always claim that he Was descended from a great line of Welsh princes from gwiin ID but in reality it seems that his four bears were kind of impoverished cattle farmers and that is one of the

reasons why Roland D 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 sewer to Henry VII so a kind of bespoke Taylor I guess Cy 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 uh 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 antw worp 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 of Naval exploration right and

of Naval imperialism and we know that John D must have been an extremely Bright boy and of course because his father has done very well he's able to sent his son to a grammar school and then sent him to Cambridge University where D 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 there 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 yeah so St John's College has been in existence for about 30 years when de 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 D he's a kind of instinctive Centrist almost a kind of slippery Centrist you might say bearing in mind what 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 Right and of course in that he will be a bit like Elizabeth the 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 VII so there's still a statue of Henry VII at Trinity College and D is appointed as one of the founding fellows and one of his jobs is To stage plays so Cambridge colleges they love plays and D does this Aristophanes comedy so ancient Greek comedy and it the stage the stage directions require character to fly up to Mount Olympus on the back of a giant dung beetle bizarre

yeah it's a challenge but D pulls it off with the kind of amazing Cuda tatra 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 de 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 but as we will see D 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 conura 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 yes because it is part of the

Protestant Attack on 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 uh I think a couple of years back talking about his 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 condas because to quote Francis priests were quite literally kras since they received the minor order of Exorcist on the way

to the priesthood and cono 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 right so the fact that D seems to been quite fond of these practices and these rituals kind of does Cast him in Protestant eyes as a bit of a conjurer but if that's not Sinister and unish enough he's also really interested in maths isn't he which is also a very

yeah very sinister so calculating and Conjuring are synonyms at the time yes and so doing a lot of complicated equations and whatnot isn't you an unmistakable sign that you're in League with the devil yes so there's that as well and D 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 yeah and again this kind of suggests he might be a curer

to people who are not o with as you say simultaneous equations but this isn't the only reason that D comes to be associated with with magic yeah because actually he is investigating it right exactly he is a conjurer I mean There's no two ways about it yeah he genuinely is yeah he's trying to keep this quiet but right from his earliest days as an undergraduate of 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

lens 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 so Alchemy and astrology are two obvious ones but even more exciting is the um the language of the Angels which he's absolutely obsessed by isn't he yes so we mentioned that 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 yeah and D 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 of almost of nuclear physics there right the idea that there is power to be obtained in unlocking the kind of the secret dynamics of the cosmos and this is what D is after he wants to harness its power and he attempts to harness his 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 and this guy Kelly is 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 de himself because he could be facing a um very brief appointment with either a funeral P or whatever or um The Chopping Block and this comes back to Edward v 6 ultr 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

gray 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 yeah is back on the throne now why is that a problem specifically for D well de'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 gray is you know defeated she has a head chopped off and all of that which we did in in those

previous episodes as you said de's dad gets caught up in this he gets sent to the to 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 KnockOn effect on D who had been relying on his father basically to subsidize his studies and it means that D now has to kind of turn his academic studies maybe his occult studies into either money or into Royal favor 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'd say Mecca making England Catholic again that's her business but lurking in the background her Heir is Elizabeth who's a Protestant yes so de's approach to this problem is massively to hedge his bets so what solution despite the fact that I actually under 6 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 six degrees of ordination 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 boner and he ends up being called by Protestants bloody boner so that gives some idea of his reputation with the more

Evangelical wing of Christian but Actually boner 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 D and it is thought that this is because they they may well have been related so boner as well seems to have come from the Welsh marches so that's good D 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 de is a priest he can go to

Woodstock where Elizabeth who essentially has been kept under house arrest she's allowed to go and and hear mass in Woodstock and he can kind of make contact with her and when he makes contact with her de'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 Phillip 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 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 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 de 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 proced proced he's Probably put to the rack so suffers quite brutal torture and things look really Bleak for him but he does still have this one trump card which is the bishop of London Edmund boner and D is brought before boner who couldn't be more Charming not only does he license D's release but he actually then

employs d as his personal chaplain and in this role D then takes part in the interrogation of respected Heretics and you know 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 no 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 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 D

has you know he's become a priest he's been hanging out with bloody boner 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 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 D does continue to visit boner even after he ends up being

Put in the the martial C prison um so he does stand by him he's not kind of 100% repenting and recanting his role but it is awkward so D 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 D features in it you know one of the interrogations of these Martyrs and it takes D over a decade to get this mention of him removed which in Du cuse 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 condr 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 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 you know status at court Financial Security all these things that he desperately craves and so de knows that he has to prove his value you know Elizabeth isn't just going to give him a living or her favor 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 As England's greatest astrologer I mean that is still very much in Elizabeth's mind and so it it is D who is

charged with fixing on the best date for her coronation right you know he looks into the Stars to work out when will be the most favorable time for her to to be crowned what was it why don't you like the witch at the start of Discovery witches go into the bodan and and tell us well I'll just actually look into this mirror that I've got next to the Next to my Compu crying ask the Angels it was actually Sunday the 15th of January 1559 which is funny enough that's the date I would have Chason 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 yeah but to go out into the world and trust your future to strange Supernatural voices that kind of go out into the ether yeah D 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 well that's very like me because

I did it through the um the language and the secrets The Daily Mail he did it through the language of Secret of angels some people would say the same thing we'll take a break and we'll return with more John D this advert is brought to you by S so Dominic I think you should explain to our viewers what s actually is Tom I would love to because I'm absolutely passionate about s now listen s is a new eim service app and it's brought to you by the Creator of nordvpn the brilliant thing about s is

that you can choose from several affordable eim plans into more than 180 countries and eight different regions and the amazing thing that I really love about s is that with a s eim you will Always have a connection when you need it and best of all you will reduce those dreaded roaming fees absolutely brilliant and S couldn't be easier to use all you need to do is download the app buy a plan install the eim and the great thing is that with s an eim can be installed only once so that eliminates the need for

you to install a new eim for each country it's absolutely brilliant it's it's a brilliant thing so I it's changed my life genuinely so Please download S in your app store or by scanning the QR code on screen and use the code rest is history at the checkout to get 15% off your first purchase the details are in the episode description box at 4: in the morning my mother Jane D died at M Lake she made a goodly 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 exalting Ed me briefly to take my mother's death patiently and with all 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 D'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 the first you know was she going to be

the Empress of All Catholics and Protestants but she still not too Grand to um 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 D but it's also um 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 D would almost certainly have been traveling either to or from her Palace in Richmond which is Down the temps from London and

the reason that she stops off to to see D on the way is because he also has a house on the temps between Richmond and London at a place called Mort Lake uh 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 tenaments 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 D and in these kind of incredible resources of 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 Sea himself well as you know a lack of experience doesn't necessarily preclude one from pontificating about it no of course not I mean he's genius and I think it's not an exagger 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 D brings is I mean as say this incredible library but also I think

just nerve kind of hser 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 um and when he was there he'd become a very close friend of the most celebrated uh cartographer of his day Gerard mcer 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 woly in his Biography of D the Queen's KRA puts it very nicely I think a picture of the world emerged 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 M had 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 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

the future because it enables D to give to Elizabeth and Her advisor what seems to be an absolutely foolproof legal claim to a British Empire over seas and you mentioned King Arthur so that's an important part of it D uces 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 Mado and the story is that mok's father was the the prince of Gwined the most powerful Prince um in Wales he dies mad's Brothers all fall out with one another kind of squabbling over the

inheritance but madok 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 Pass Florida rounds it goes to Mexico establishes a colony comes back to Wales reports to everyone in Wales look i' 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 madok for those books like d has on Prince madok I mean let's be frank their 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 tude a 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 Madok actually existed is minimal but you can see why it appeals to D 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 advisers are intrigued by these arguments you know they are a kind of mad and inimitable blend of the Practical so all the maps the ult the last empress and the antiquarian Arthur and madok 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 yeah so it actually genuinely matters and it inspires particularly Walter rally doesn't it yes we mentioned in the first half

him going off to El Dorado or of course he famously went off To Virginia and founded the Rono colony and he's he's been reading or listening to D these ideas are rattling around wter R's brain so this actually has real world consequences it absolutely does and Raleigh always remains these Patron but the problem is he gets caught up in you know all kinds of faction fights and caught intrigues and and when Raleigh Falls from favor D risks falling from favor and certainly by the 1580s D 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 yeah but those days by the 1580s are starting to fade away and there are very influential factions at court led by William CLE who is the greatest of all Elizabeth's min 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 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 scrier 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 Irish to sentence the name Kelly yeah but he's from the Midlands right from Worcester possibly from Worcester probably educated at Oxford he he certainly seems to have known Latin and Greek yeah and he marries a woman Called Joanna dominate from chipping Norton your neck of the words yeah and he always seems to have had a quality of the disreputable so there were lots of stories that he had had his ears cropped which was the the punishment for

for forgery um we don't know whether that's true but it 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 D's house in 158 2 D 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 scrier that D has ever met hard to imagine how you'd measure that by the quality and richness of the visions that you have so

you know de has been trying to contact angels for decades he's been employing various people who claim to have this ability because d himself doesn't D gazes into kind of mirrors and sees nothing he has This incredible um 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 a computer but 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 frauders and charlatans and Crooks and all the people That de has been appying do turn out basically to be Crooks but Kelly seems to be the real deal and D 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 felt a

prayer and intreaty Etc in the mean space I in my oratory did 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 I

mean you made the noise of the Angel there But de can hear nothing and D I think it's fair to say can see nothing no so some listeners may say d 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 is likely to be true is that

Kelly has an Unbelievably Vivid imag ation and learning and understands what de wants he's part of this occult world he conjures up incredible visions of an astonishing richness yeah and the things that he is reporting are the kind of things that de is expecting only better so Kelly's probably read the same books in other words kind of he's plugged into the same world yeah the other possibility which is one that a cultists to this day Uphold okay 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 for D but then uh the following year there's another exciting development and we've had quite a lot of polls in this series so far love poll yeah and here's another one this is a guy called obra lasi he's a count very Flamboyant very mysterious and he arrives by boat up the Temps at D'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's history so Holland's head the historian whose accounts inspir 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 repu it an ornament okay sounds lovely he's a very keen Alchemist very much aware of D'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 lasi 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 Des and later that summer there's another Angel yeah who has the brilliant name of juban ladik No Angel would really have that name and he reveals and I won't give the Angelic words yeah 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 lasy will become king and thereby you know be their great Patron combines with the fact that he's lost favorite 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 lasi 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 D 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 well I mean it's fair to say everything goes wrong right yeah everything does go wrong what follows is an absolute and utter disaster yeah said four months they're on the road and they get to laska's Hometown which is called Lasco and it's when they get there that lasy realizes that the angels have been misleading him because basically he's not

going to become a king of Poland right and also been misleading D and uh 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 your 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 you know 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 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 de 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 D 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 you is absolutely terrified about doing but the angel insists on it so d goes and does this and it you know doesn't go down tremendously well this is like Kelly winding D up surely and what makes it even worse is that just before d 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 D 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 Mimi and she has the appearance of an 8-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 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 con is he a fraudster I really don't know it's it's too distant it's too strange Kelly's Visions are so consistent uh and D 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 Mimi actually exists right no I mean it's in the kind of Border zones between fantasy between charlatanism a capacity for imagining that you were seeing things that aren't there he's deluding himself as much as he's deluding well except that that on top of that I suspect that part of what is going on is that Kelly is getting a bit fed up with d by this Point because Kelly's fortunes are actually on the upturn because as well as a brilliant scri he turns out

to be a very promising Alchemist and Alchemy is potentially much more lucrative than kind of Talking to Angels but it's not turning lead into gold well we will see so the fact that D 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 Nuno in Prague mhm they are from a Protestant Kingdom even though D 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 D might be a spy D and Kelly are endlessly being banished from Prague allowed back in Banished again D's relationship with Kelly is going very badly downhill you know de 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 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 K stor and AI thing Again yeah please come back and help Revive Our economy by giving us Lads of gold it's in this year 1587 that you get an absolutely massive bombshell from Mimi 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 well Kelly can see it he says yeah so Mimi 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 Medi is saying is that he and de should sleep with the other person's wife and Kelly basically has had the hots for D's wife right the way through their trip and D 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 in

his diary Pactum factum the agreement has been fulfilled two things to say One D 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 he describes the negotiations she's very upset he's very upset but they seem mutually have to decideed 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 had 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 stone right others say that he a bit like the men who become the nascal that he transmutes

into a kind of ghoulish Spectre and is seen stalking the lands of 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 to live I may maybe maybe you would de is not still around is he de is 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 Mort Lake 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 um and these seem to have been some of his Students I mean people basically who knew what they were looking for right and D complained that 500 volumes had been stolen and that some of these volumes had been worth of pounds which is I know an inordinate amount of money back in in Tuda times yeah 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 exiled 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 yeah and he finally returns to Mort Lake in 1605 by which point Elizabeth is dead James is on the throne I mean James has no interest in D at all it's funny cuz James loves 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 the right and it means that a bit like Walter Raleigh you know he's Been left over from the previous Reign right 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 GL Hammer over memories of Elizabeth's Reign I think I mean I agree he 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 he goes on to write there sat a man of ripe and perfect age who did their 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 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 D and we'll be back next time with something completely different thank you very much Tom and goodbye bye-bye [Music]