{"id":6307,"date":"2021-10-08T10:05:02","date_gmt":"2021-10-08T08:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=106998"},"modified":"2021-10-08T13:05:54","modified_gmt":"2021-10-08T11:05:54","slug":"john-dee-elizabethan-007-scientist-magician-and-spy","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/john-dee-elizabethan-007-scientist-magician-and-spy\/","title":{"rendered":"John Dee: Elizabethan 007, scientist, magician and spy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Elinor Evans\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Friday, 08 October 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Who was John Dee? His contemporaries, such as Sir Walter Raleigh<\/a>, Sir Francis Drake<\/a> and William Shakespeare<\/a> \u2013 who is said to have based the magician Prospero in The Tempest<\/em> on Dee \u2013 are securely bookmarked in our catalogue of British history. Dr Dee, astrologer and confidant to Queen Elizabeth I<\/a>, has no such acknowledgment.<\/p>\n

He has been painted as a deluded man who looked to the stars for guidance, dabbled in alchemy and communed with angels. But an alternative view is that he was one of the most brilliant men of the Renaissance, whose contribution has been muddied by centuries of slander. He was a polymath, engaged with the most cutting-edge science of his day, which at the time was intertwined with magic and the occult.<\/p>\n

John Dee was born on 13 July 1527 in London. His father was a minor courtier who sent his son to Cambridge at 15. His appetite for knowledge meant he slept only four hours a night, spending his waking hours studying Greek, Latin, geometry, mathematics, astronomy, navigation, scripture, law, medicine and cryptography \u2013 the art of writing codes.<\/p>\n

While still in his 20s, Dee was invited to lecture on algebra at the university in Paris. He swiftly became the most successful lecturer on the continent, packing halls and introducing the public to the addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (x) and division (\u00f7) signs for the first time.<\/p>\n

He lifted astronomy from obscurity, taught mathematics and developed navigation systems that later would help to establish England\u2019s naval superiority <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>

He was England\u2019s foremost scientist, respectful of, if not an advocate for, the controversial theory of heliocentrism (the astronomical model in which the planets all revolve around the Sun). Dee lifted astronomy from obscurity, taught mathematics and developed navigation systems that later would help to establish England\u2019s naval superiority.<\/p>\n

While at the University of Louvain in the Netherlands, Dee studied the occult. This was not uncommon for the era\u2019s intelligentsia, for whom science and magic were part of the quest to understand God.<\/p>\n

A storm on the Spanish\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

When Elizabeth I took the English throne, she consulted Dee on a regular basis. He even chose her coronation date. It was said he cast a spell on the Spanish Armada<\/a> in 1588, which sent huge waves crashing down on their ships \u2013 although a more likely explanation is that because he knew about meteorology, he was able to anticipate the storm.<\/p>\n

When the Spanish ships approached England, Dee suggested waiting, correctly predicting that the Spanish fleet would be severely hit by the storms so it would be best to keep the English ships at bay. Most of the Spanish ships were lost or damaged and, when the storms subsided, the English ships disposed of the rest. It was Dee\u2019s greatest moment.<\/p>\n