After I was Batchelor of Arts, I went beyond the seas (Anno 1547—May) to speak and confer with some learned men and chiefly Mathematicians. . . . Anno 1548 I was made Master of Artes. I became a student at Lovain 1548 midsummer, and there I made abode, till the 15th of July 1550. . . . From Lovaine I took my journey towards Paris Anno 1550, . . . where within a few days (at the request of some English Gentlemen, made with me to do somewhat there for the honour of my Country) I did undertake to read freely and publicly Euclid's Elements Geometrical. . . a thing never done publicly in any University of Christendome. My auditory in Rhemes College was so great. . . that the Mathematical Schooles could not hold them; for many were fain, without the schooles at the windows, to be auditors and spectators as they best could help themselves thereto. I did also dictate upon every proposition, besides the first exposition.[1]
John Dee was held in high esteem not only in Paris and Louvain, but at almost all the courts of Europe. He relates (and there is no reason to question the statement) that he might have served five Christian emperors, namely, "Charles V, Ferdinand, Maximilian, this Rudolph and this present Moscovite," but Queen Elizabeth "very graciously" took him into her service. Just what the service was that is referred to here is not evident, but the Queen called upon "Master Dee" for a great variety of services. At one time he instructed her in astrology, using the book which he had written for the Emperor Maximilian. Once he was sent for post-haste to prevent mischief to her majesty's person apprehended from a waxen image of her, found in Lincoln's Inn Fields with a pin stuck in its breast. In 1577 the queen sent for Dee to come to Windsor on account of a comet, and for three days she listened to his discourse and speculations on the subject. Five years earlier there had appeared a brilliant star in "Cassiopeiæ" that caused such consternation among the people that John Dee and Thomas Digges united in an attempt to give an explanation and bring to an end the terror of the people. As a result Dee printed in 1573 his "Parallactiæ commentationis praxeosque nucleum," but not content with that, he printed in the same year a work entitled "de Stella admiranda in Cassiopeiæ asterismo cœlitus demissa ab orbem usque Veneris." Knowing the superstitions of the times, Dee frequently urges the desirability of man's understanding nature. After enumerating various natural phenomena, he asks:
Is it not commodious for man to know the very true cause, and occasion naturall? Yea, rather, is it not greatly against the Souverainty of man's nature, to be so overshot and abused, with thinges (at hand) before his eyes?
In 1580 the queen desired to know her title to countries discovered in different parts of the world and Dee drew up for her two large rolls of description and maps which were approved by the queen and Lord Burleigh. Not only the queen, but explorers, men of affairs and the learned men of Europe sought him out. To him came Sir Humphry Gilbert and John Davis to talk of the Northwest Passage (John Dee
- ↑ Dee's "Compendious Rehearsal."
