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Dee had been requested to prepare a calculation for the reformation of the Calendar, or at any rate to give his opinion on the scheme propounded by Pope Gregory. His calculations were approved by all the English mathematicians of the time, but the Queen, advised by the bishops, did not see her way to adopt them in effect. Dee tells his angel friends how "grieved" he is that "Her Majestie will not reform the Kalendar in the best terms of veritie." He desires counsel what to do.

Easter Day passed, and the crystal gazing still went on. The sittings were often long. On April 3, Dee ventured to tell his visitor that "it will be dark soon, and our company will expect our coming down to supper. If without offence we might now leave off, it might seem good to do so." Three days after, he again offered a slight remonstrance, asking why they had not been warned of Mistress Frances Howard's coming, a gentlewoman of Her Majestie's Privy Chamber. She had caused interruption of their exercise for a full hour, or two. Was this to be forgiven her because of her great charity, and goodness in procuring the Queen's alms for many needy people?

The Queen was then at Richmond, and Dee was several times at Court. He seems to have been there to bid her adieu when she left for Greenwich on the 18th: - "At her going on horseback, being new up, she called for me, by Mr. Rawly his putting her in mynde, and she sayd, `quod defertur non aufertur,' and gave me her right hande to kisse."

Dee was now puzzling over some mysterious papers brought him by Kelly, whether those he is reported to have found in Wales of Glastonbury we can scarcely decide, but they seem to concern ten places in England where treasure was supposed to be hid. There is a curious drawing of them in the MS. diary: "After coming from the Court, I thought I would try to discover the cipher of the paper E.K. brought me as willed to do, found at Huets Cross, with a book of magic and alchemy, to which a spiritual creature led them." Dee was by no means the easy dupe of Kelly that he has been called. Two or three months after he first knoew him he writes in his diary of his "abominable lyes"; and he here makes a very telling remark, an aside, so to speak: "Of this K., I doubt yet."

Kelly's hot, uncontrollable nature and his overbearing ways had already begun to appear. There was an outbreak at supper one night because Charles Sled had "done him an injurie in speeche at my table." Probably some story of his early career had been raked up. A voice next morning says to him appropriately: "Serve God and take hold of nettles."

The manuscript in crabbed signs puzzled the astrologer desperately, and he was unhappy at the delay. An angel tells him they are to be "rocks in faith." "While sorrow be meansured thou shalt bind up thy fardell." He is not to seek to know the mysteries till the very hour he is called. "Can you bow to Nature and not honour the workman?"

A new spirit visits them, Il, "a merie creature, apparelled like a Vyce in a [morality] play. He skipped here and there." Dee asks where is his Arabic book of tables that he has lent and lost. Il says it is in Scotland and is nothing worth. Then Dee asks about the Lord Treasurer's books, for he had not seen Burleigh's library, and had all the rival collector's jealousy over his own treasures. He was never quite sure that Burleigh was his friend; there semed always a suspicion in his mind where the Lord Treasurer was concerned. The feeling was reflected in a curious dream that he had soon after the beginning of his partner ship with Kelly: "I dreamed on Saturday night that I was deade, and afterwards my bowels wer taken out. I walked and talked with divers, and among other with the Lord Thresorer, who was cum to my howse to burn my bookes when I was dead. I thought he looked sourely on me." Now, Il tells him that Burleigh has no books "belonging to Soyga," and explains that name as in "the language of Paradise, before Babel's aery tower." Dee takes up a lexicon to look for the word, but Il points to another book on "the mysteries of Greek, Latin and Hebrew." Then Il becomes very practical, and says: "Your chimney will speak against you anon," and Dee remembers that he had hidden there "in a cap-case" the records of his doings with Saul and the others. Il advises Kelly to communicate to his employer the book and the powder, and all the rest of the roll. "True friends arenot to hide anything each from the other."


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