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 wife and family, and on the 20th was installed in his new office with great pomp. He lived on very ill terms with the fellows of his college, owing either to his bad management and haughty behaviour, or to their turbulent disposition. He refused to exorcise certain demons by which seven persons were possessed, ordered them to apply to a godly minister, and severely rebuked one Hartley, a conjuror, for his unlawful art (, Hist. of the Foundations in Manchester, i. 129–35).

On 5 June 1604 he presented to James I, at Greenwich, a petition praying that he might be tried and cleared of the horrible slander that he was, or had been, a ‘conjurer, or caller, or invocator of divels,’ offering to submit to death if the charge could be proved. The king, having received information from the Earl of Salisbury as to the nature of Dee's studies, refused to grant the prayer of the petition.

In November 1604 Dee, being in a very weak state of health, quitted Manchester, and returned with his family to Mortlake, where he had recourse to his former invocations, with the assistance of Bartholomew Hickman, who acted as seer. John Pontoys, who had been associated with him in Poland, was also admitted into his confidence. The last record of these ‘actions with spirits’ is dated 7 Oct. 1607.

At the close of his life he was so miserably poor that he was obliged from time to time to dispose of his books to procure subsistence. He was preparing for a new journey to Germany when, worn out by age and infirmities, he died in December 1608, and was buried in the chancel of Mortlake Church.

Dee's first wife died on 16 March 1574–5. By his second wife, Jane, daughter of Bartholomew Fromond, whom he married 5 Feb. 1577–8, he had a son, Arthur Dee [q. v.], and ten other children.

Aubrey says: ‘He had a very fair, clear, sanguine complexion, a long beard as white as milke. A very handsome man. … He was a great peacemaker; if any of the neighbours fell out, he would never lett them alone till he had made them friends. He was tall and slender. He wore a gowne like an artist's gowne, with hanging sleeves, and a slitt. A mighty good man he was. … He kept a great many stilles goeing,’ and ‘the children dreaded him because he was accounted a conjurer’ (Letters by Eminent Persons, vol. ii. pt. i. pp. 310–15).

The magic mirror into which Dee used to call his spirits is a disc of highly polished cannel coal. It was preserved in a leathern case, and was successively in the hands of the Mordaunts, earls of Peterborough, Lady Elizabeth Germaine, John, duke of Argyll, Lord Frederick Campbell, and Mr. Strong of Bristol, who purchased it at the Strawberry Hill sale in 1842, though another account states that it was then acquired by Mr. Smythe Pigott, at the sale of whose library in 1853 it passed into the possession of Lord Londesborough (Journal of British Archæological Assoc. v. 52; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. iv. 155). Dee's shew stone, or holy stone, which he asserted was given to him by an angel, is in the British Museum. It is a beautiful globe of polished crystal of the variety known as smoky quartz (Archæological Journal, xiii. 372; Notes and Queries, 7th ser. iv. 306). The consecrated cakes of wax used in Dee's mystical ceremonies, and marked with hieroglyphical and mathematical figures, are also in the British Museum.

No fewer than seventy-nine works by him, most of them never printed, are enumerated in ‘Athenæ Cantabrigienses.’ Among them are: 1. ‘A Supplication to Queen Mary for the Recovery and Preservation of ancient Writers and Monuments,’ 1555–6. In Hearne's ‘Johannes Glastoniensis,’ p. 490; reprinted in ‘Chetham Miscellanies,’ i. 46. Cf. Addit. MS. 4630, art. 1. 2. ‘Προπαιδεύματα ἀφοριστικά, de Præstantioribus quibusdam Naturæ virtutibus, ad Gerardum Mercatorem Rupelmondanum.’ Annexed to ‘Brevis et Perspicua Ratio Judicandi Genituras ex Physicis Causis, Cypriano Leonitio à Leonicia excellente Mathematico authore,’ London, 1558, 4to; also, separately, London, 1568, 4to. 3. ‘Monas Hieroglyphica, Mathematicè, Magicè, Cabalisticè, Anagogicèque explicata, ad Sapientissimum Romanorum, Bohemiæ, et Hungariæ regem, Maximilianum,’ Antwerp, 1564, 1584, 4to; Frankfort, 1591, 8vo and 12mo; reprinted in ‘Theatrum Chemicum,’ Strasburg, 1659, ii. 178. An English translation was made by Thomas Tymme, M.D. 4. ‘De Trigono, circinoque analogico, Opusculum mathematicum et mechanicum,’ lib. 4, 1565, Cotton. MS. Vitell. C. vii. 4. 5. ‘Testamentum Johannis Dee Philosophi Summi ad Johannem Gwynn transmissum,’ 1568. Printed in Ashmole's ‘Theatrum Chemicum,’ p. 334. 6. ‘Epistola ad eximium Ducis Urbini Mathematicum Fredericum Commandinum.’ Prefixed to ‘Machometi Bagdedini de superficierum divisionibus,’ Pisani, 1570. Dee was concerned in editing this work. 7. ‘A fruitfull Preface, specifying the chiefe Mathematicall Sciences, what they are, and whereto commodious; where also are disclosed certaine new Secrets Mathematicall and Mechanicall, vntill these our daies greatly missed.’ Before H. Billingsley's trans-