The Queen’s Conjuror: The Life and Magic of Dr. Dee. Benjamin Woolley

life in England far from convivial. The Marchioness of Northampton, whom he had escorted back from Antwerp, had secured the promise of the deanery of Gloucester when it fell vacant, as was imminently expected. It was just the sort of post he needed, promising to provide him with the secure and undemanding living he needed to continue his philosophical work. However, in April 1565, when the marchioness finally succumbed to breast cancer, so did his claim to the deanery. Such offices were entangled with growing antagonisms at court, the tensions between Robert Dudley (just made Earl of Leicester), the leader of the militant Protestant faction and the Duke of Norfolk, the nation’s most senior peer and focus of Catholic sympathies. Dee’s religious loyalties were not delineated clearly enough to arouse the support of either, so he was swept aside in favour of John Man, a radical Protestant who later became Bishop of Gloucester.

      Dee did not help the situation by being so inept at cultivating aristocratic patrons. He attended court irregularly, and then only to see the Queen. Robert Dudley had known Dee when he was appointed to the household of his father the Duke of Northumberland in 1553, and would have been an excellent potential benefactor, yet Dee did not dedicate a single work to him. Rather, he eulogised Robert’s brother John, Earl of Warwick, in his Mathematicall Praeface, who had died in 1554.

      He seemed to put as much effort into befriending Elizabeth’s servants as her courtiers, welcoming both her Italian dwarf, Tomasina and a ‘Mr Fosku’ of the Queen’s wardrobe to Mortlake.