4

Next day, Kelly sees Master Vincent again, walking down by Charing Cross, accompanied by "a tall man with a cutberd, a sword and skie-coloured cloack." He passes on towards Westminster and overtakes a gentleman on horseback with five followers in short cape-cloaks and long moustaches. The rider is a lean-visaged man in a short cloak and with a gold rapier. His horse wears a velvet foot cloth. (It sounds like a vision of Raleigh.)

They are merry. Vincent laughs heartily and shows two broad front teeth. He has a little stick in his crooked fingers. The scar on his left hand is plainly seen. He has very high straight close boots. They arrive at Westminster Church (the Abbey). Many people are coming out. A number of boats lie in the river, and in the gardens at Whitehall a man is grafting fruit trees. The lean-visaged man on horseback alights, and goes down towards, and up, the steps of Westminster Hall, Vincent with him. His companion walks outside and accosts a waterman. The waterman asks if that is the Polish bishop? The servant wants to know what business it is of his. A messenger comes down the steps of the Hall and says to Vincent's man that his master shall be despatched to-morrow. The servant saith he is glad of it. "Then all that shew is vanished away."

There are one or two allusions here to an emissary from Denmark who has brought a bag of amber. Il also says he has much business in Denmark. Frederick, the King of Denmakr, was in frequent correspondence with Queen Elizabeth at this time.

At Bremen, where they stayed a week, Dee says that Kelly, when skrying by himself, was given a kind of rambling prophetical verse of thirty-two lines, which he prints, foretelling the downfall of England, Spain, France and Poland. In fact, a general debacle of nations. It is very bad prophecy and still worse poetry, but evidently inspired by the highly diplomatic foreign relations of Elizabeth and her two ministers.

On leaving Bremen, the party travelled by Osterholz to Harburg, on the left bank of the Elbe. They crossed the river and went on by coach to Hamburg. Laski had then rejoined them, but stayed behind in Hamburg, at "the English house," probably the consul's. Dee and the rest reached Lubeck on November 7.