Book Description

An excerpt from CHAPTER II. There is no actual warrant for the very general belief that Dee took, at Louvain, the doctor's degree which had not been conferred on him at Cambridge. The chances are that the title "Doctor," so inseparable from his name in after-life and in the popular idea of him, was merely bestowed in its original complimentary sense, when it had become self-evident that he was verily and indeed "doctus," or learned. As "Doctor" he was doubtless known at the court of Edward VI. Towards the close of the year 1551, Sir John Cheke introduced him to Secretary Cecil, and accepted on behalf of his royal pupil two MS. treatises on astronomical subjects, which Dee, already an industrious writer, had dedicated to the young King. A yearly pension of a hundred crowns was now granted him by Edward. This was exchanged (not very profitably, as it afterwards appeared) for the lay-rectorships of Upton-on-Severn in Worcestershire and Long Leadenham in Lincolnshire. Soon after we hear of Dee's refusing the offer of a lectureship in Mathematical Science from the University of Oxford! He was seemingly content with his income from the aforesaid rectorships, and with the patronage of the Duchess of Northumberland, which he enjoyed at this time, writing, at her request, a treatise on the cause of tides and another on the heavenly bodies. The Duchess's ill-fated husband (the father-in-law of Lady Jane Grey) is better known to the general reader as an ambitious politician than as a literary student. But he was actually a man of considerable culture, a friend of Ascham's, and, for a short time, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. Dee may well have believed that, in,"]the shadow of such powerful patrons, he would be able to live a life of learned leisure, independent of formal appointments, and devoted more and more to his favorite lines of study. What those lines were, and how increasingly he was attracted to them, was soon to appear....