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This was perhaps the cause of the "great and eager pangs" that now took place between Dee and Kelly. The medium pretends to fear they are dealing with evil spirits. He bursts into a passion, declares he is a cumber to the house, and dwells there as in a prison. He had better be far away in the open country, where he can walk abroad, and not be troubled with slanderous tongues. He is wasting his time there, and must follow some study whereby he may live. As for these spirit mysteries, Adam and Enoch knew them before the Flood. Dee responds gfravely to this tirade: He will wait God's time, and he will not believe a stone will be given them and no bread. As to Kelly's necessities, are not his own far greater? At the present moment, he owes £300, and does not know how to pay it. He has spent forty years, and travelled thousands of miles, in incredible forcing of his wit in study, to learn, or bowel out, some good thing, yet he would willingly go up and down England in a blanket, begging his bread, for a year or more, if at the end he might be sure of attaining to godly wisdom, whereby to do God service for His glory. He was resolved either willingly to leave this worlk, to enjoy the fountain of all wisdom, or to pass his days on earth in the enjoyment of its blessings and mysteries.

Another violent scene occurred before long; this time the mistress of the house was the one offended. Dee says: "By A[drian] G[ilbert] and Providence, E.K.'s vehement passions were pacified. He came back again to my house, and my wife was willing and quiet in mind and friendly to E.K. in word and countenance. A new pacification in all parts confirmed and all upon the confidence of God his service faithfully performed." Kelly's wife had not yet joined him at Mortlake, but he had occasional letters from her. One found him in a tender religious mood, about to "pray in his bedchamber, on a little prayer book which Mr. Adrian Gilbert had left here, ad it lay on the table during the action." It was Seven Sobbes of a Sorrowful Soul for Sinne, in English metre, "made by Mr. William Harris." When he opened it, he found some automatic script in the end, or, as he calls it, a counterfeit ofhis own hand. He took it to Dee, who saw in it the work of a wicked spirit trying to shake their confidence. The next evening, both prayed against their enemy, Kelly on his knees before the green chair standing at the chimney. Uriel appeared and said temptation was requisite. "If it were not, how should men know God to be merciful?" He speaks to Kelly: - "Thou, O yongling, but old sinner, why dost thou suffer thy blindness to increase? Why not yield thy Limbs to the service and fulfilling of an eternal veritie? Pluck up thy heart, and follow the way that leadeth to the knowledge of the end." He explains how the trouble is caused by Belmagel, "the firebrand who hath followed thy soul from the beginning."

The whole of this spring, the pair of partners had been busily engaged in preparing the various things - the table, the wax seals, the ring and lamin - required for use. Most complicated diagrams of letters and figures had also been dictated to them, and Kelly, whose mathematical training had been slight, was sometimes very exhausted. Once fire shoots out of the crystal into his eyes, and when it is taken back, he can read no more. As Dee remarks one day to a spirit, apologising for his many questions: "For my parte I could finde it in my heart to contynue whole days and nights in this manner of doing, even tyll my body should be ready to synk down for weariness before I could give over, but I feare I have caused weariness to my friends here." A journey is foretold, but first of all Kelly is to go to the places of hidden treasure, and bring earth, that it may be tested. He may be away ten days. He bought a "pretty dun mare" for the journey, of "good man "Penticost," for which he paid £3 ready money in angels. A day or two after, he took boat to London to buy a saddle, bridle, and "boote-hose."

At supper the night before he started, in a clairvoyant state, he had an extraordinary prophetic sight of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, a beautiful woman having her head cut off by a tall black man. He also speaks of seeing the sea, covered with many ships. Uriel warns them that foreign Powers are providing ships "against the welfare of England, which shall shortly be put in practice." It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that the Queen of Scots' execution and the defeat of the Spanish Armada took place in two following years, 1587, 1588, four years after this vision.