The time was ripe, for my stock was high. The Queen read what I had to say, and liked it.
That was in November 1577. Within a month I had secret sign from Walter that she would risk granting me a Charter of colonisation—if first I’d agree to try what Drake had already done in 1572.
“Quid pro quo, Humfrey,” said she when we met privately to discuss it, “I have not much advantage to get from putting unruly malcontents in another land where the first thing they’ll do is deny our Throne and Sovereignty. But of course you are only going to scout the land, and should you happen to… to veer a little southward, perhaps…” She made a gesture with her hand. “You understand me?”
“Yes, yes, Your Majesty,” said I, bowing.
So to the months of preparation, hiring of men, victualling, purchase of ships and equipment and ordnance, and to the making of orders, open and secret, until at Plymouth I had eleven ships gathered. It was then that Knollys sailed off with four ships, leaving us seven, with which on the twenty-second of September we sailed to Dartmouth.
Four days later, as I said, we tried to set out.
The voyage was not a success.
First we were blown east to the Isle of Wight. A month later we tried again and were forced into Plymouth; and then again, and back to the Isle of Wight. At last on the twenty-ninth of November we sailed out and this time struggled to the open seas. We meant to make for the middle of America, and yes, we went looking for a fight. But it was too late in the year. The only fight we got during those dreadful weeks was with wind and sea. The storm never let up, and we were separated and driven apart, the Red Lion being lost, Miles and his crew with it. As for my command, it must be said I was too often angry, contradicting the better experience of others, insisting my dream would come true because it must. Even Walter got distressed with me, though he hid it, just as from myself I hid the fact that much of my petulance came through fear of the cunning man’s prophecy.
But this time it was ruin I met, not the Power not of Christ. Each alone we limped back to the wreckage of my reputation and my wife’s pocket. The investors got no return, I could not even pay the men, and the whole affair was wrapped in secrecy.
Yet I would not accept defeat. I was ready to try again and this time sail closer to my dream. But five years passed before I got a second chance. As soon as I returned Mendoza was at me. To tie me down he started new rebellion in Ireland, and brought a set of absurd charges against me, claiming I had thieved oranges from a Spanish ship in Walfled Bay, and sacked a monastery and village in Galicia!
I had to stay in London to answer all this and fight his agitation against me. He got my enemies in the Muscovy Company to persuade the Privy Council to order me not to leave the land; which was done, and also to revoke my Charter for colonisation, which briefly in October 1581 was also done. This put me in despair until the Queen restored me to my rights. Those rats! They lacked wit to see anything new! They saw to it that my ships were commandeered for the Irish fight; they made sure that I was bankrupted, discredited, cast from England’s mind, reduced to selling the clothes from off my poor wife’s back! It seemed impossible I would ever get anywhere again.
But in November 1580 Drake returned from his voyage round the world, his ship so heavy-laden with gold and silver of Peru it was a wonder it still floated. Golden Ship! Unlike me the Master Thief of the Unknown World was no dreamer; he went for gold and took it, returning his investors near five thousand times what they’d put in. The nation was overjoyed; the Queen too, for she knighted the bold little rascal on the deck of his ship while Mendoza and King Philip and all Spain howled for his blood. Yes, the pirate succeeded where the dreamer failed, not only in getting wealth but also in turning English thought more enthusiastically to the Unknown World. Profit of a million and a half had a lot to do with this, but truly, it was an epic voyage, firing the national imagination, and it helped me in my cause by improving the atmosphere for Discovery.
I met Drake after his return. He had knowledge that interested me, as you may imagine! While escaping the Spaniards he had sailed north up the coast of California, reaching that great Bay now overlooked by San Francisco (some claim now he landed in another Bay nearby, called Bodega, but from his description of it to me I think not). “I believe your Northwest Way is there,” he told me. “The coast never turned west: I would have gone on to try it, but the men were tired and would not go any more north. So we came back via the Moluccas and Cape of Good Hope. But I think you’re right!”
Hah! To know now I’m famous for advocating a Way that never was, that my argument influenced men for three hundred years! Well, I was right, there is a Northwest Passage… but none of us guessed how far America extended north, nor how frozen the Polar Sea. And had Drake tried it, he would probably have perished, and never have returned to stimulate the enthusiasm that got me to sea again.
Yes, for during this Drake hullaballoo I was busy trying to raise money and support for a new expedition, doing so by selling parts of the unknown American lands I owned by right of letters patent. To this end I had already concluded agreement with Doctor John Dee, making over to him the future royalties of all Discovery above the fiftieth parallel of latitude. Thus in September 1580 Doctor Dee became owner of the land of Labrador.
Dee! After the visit of his shade last night I have him much in mind, and also the night when he and I went to Cooke’s house.
It’s for tomorrow. My blood is chill from too much sitting.
9. How Doctor Dee Founded the British Empire
Three times three!
Three times three!
Three times three I call John Dee!
Here I sit, looking inward, and the mists are growing lighter. I see a glimmering of light. I call John Dee!
I hear a voice!
“…for if there’s no Intelligence in the Monad, how can any exist in the parts and units? Whence comes Intelligence?”
The light grows stronger. I see, I hear:
“…How can we deny the Light that lets us deny? Humfrey, this patch of sunlight that spills on the table and floor between us—is its origin in the table and floor it lights, or elsewhere?”
The table and floor. The table and floor—
The light grows, and forms swim, and—
I see him! We are in the full library of his house at Mortlake. He stands the other side of a table which is strewn with books and sheets of maps. He awaits my answer, his finely-chiselled face austere, his tall slender form clad in his usual sombre colours, with black skull-cap and white lace ruff less extravagant than mine, the downward spear of his white beard prominent against the dull colour of his breast-cloth. As for myself, I sit on a cushioned chair in my most bombastic doublet, the black one, slashed with side-vents to show scarlet satin below, and in my most inflated trunk-hose, with a thin gold chain wound triply round my neck below my biggest ruff, and silver earrings, and perfume in my beard, and the rapier with steel lacework on the hilt. I am done up to the nines today. Also I have a silver pomander, with many scents and spices, which’ll be important later on, as I’ll tell. I know this day. It is September the tenth of 1580, and I am done up gorgeously because I have a “product to sell,” and wish to Impress, and because I have notions for entertainment later tonight after Business is done. Yes, I remember this day very well, and what came of it! Yet this afternoon’s a jewel, soft and mild with but a hint of approaching autumn. The window’s wide open with carpets drawn back, the sparkling lawns slope gently down to the willowy and placid Thames. I look out and see the swans glide by, and the boats, and the wooded gardens of Richmond beyond; and the splashes and laughing of folk on the water drifts in, and the scent of roses and heady murmurous bee-drowsing pollen, mingling through this leather-dark room with its must of books and binding-gum and strange incense. And the Sun! It spills bright on the oak-plank floor and over my kid-booted feet and climbs up clawed feet and legs to the top of the heavy large table. It runs golden over the Gloucestershire she
et of Saxton’s new National Atlas, lights the numbers on opened pages of nautical declination tables by Bourne of Gravesend, and clarifies the heavy dark titling on the cover of Doctor Dee’s own General and Rare Memorials pertaining to the Perfect Art of Navigation. It is early in the afternoon, after dinner, and we await the arrival of my brother Sir John to witness our Labrador agreement, and we are comfortably alone in the library. Doctor Dee’s second wife Joan is elsewhere about the house—I hear her, singing somewhere upstairs—and the servants have been dismissed to make the most of the lovely day. Best of all, both Kelly and Barnabus Saul are somewhere else, thank God, for in my opinion they poison this house with their backbiting and treacherous, nervous excitements of jealousy and fear. But they are not here today, and the Doctor himself is a reverend gentleman, about fifty years old now, Christian, but Celtic too, much given to praying to Angels for Vision of God, and other dreamy wayward practices which excite the suspicion of the ignorant, so they call him Necromancer, which he is not—though I well believe that Kelly may be: I heard he was pilloried in Lancashire for digging up and using newly-buried corpses. The man is a rogue, and violent, and Doctor Dee knows all this well, yet insists he needs Kelly, or Saul, or whoever can scry for him, which he cannot always do well. Yet it is not my business, and the Doctor is a friend to Adventurers, and if his passion for the Unknown leads him astray sometimes, then I am the same.
And he waited, wanting my answer to his question about the origin of sunlight.
“Why,” I said, “obviously not in the House of Man, but in the Sun, through the light and power of which the House of Man is built.”
“So I should hope!” he answered, his voice jumping a little at the end in a way characteristic of him. He moved round the table and sat down on a chair in shadow on the other side of the sunlight, which now lay between us, with his hands folded in the lap of his gown, and eyed me with a gravity grown through years of difficulty. “Tell me, Sir Humfrey: how long have we known each other?”
“Near twenty-five years,” I said, “As long as I’ve known the Queen. I came into her service just after she was released from the Tower, and met you likewise about the same time, when you came to see her after your own release.”
“I was a young fool with a big mouth,” he said thoughtfully, “and lucky not to be burned. I thought it was inevitable, when they dragged my cell-mate out to the stake.”
He fell silent. He meant the time when he came back to England famous, with a European reputation as a mathematician, having at age twenty-three turned down the offer of a post as lecturer at the University of Paris. He drew up a chart of Queen Mary’s stars, then went to Princess Elizabeth and did the same for her, and compared them too loudly, for which he was nearly executed.
“But the Queen did not forget you,” I said.
“Without her protection I could never have stayed in England.” He sighed, and almost smiled. “As it is, I can do what I can do.”
“I’m grateful” I told him, “Your offer is a considerable help. I’ll get to America yet! But do you think Cooke will help?”
“If you keep your temper and don’t get high-handed.”
“I? High-handed? I respect men as they respect me!”
“Precisely.” He lifted one hand apologetically. “Excuse me, Sir Humfrey—surely you will know this for yourself—but many find it hard to deal with your quick impatient enthusiasm. They’re attracted to you and your cause, but you make them uncertain, you bear too direct and make large demands without taking the temperament of others into account, and…”
“Large demands? It is a large matter! This thing to be founded, that you call the ‘British’ Empire! It is a large matter!”
“Yes.” I see now he was patient, and that many tried to be patient with me. “But there are diplomatic ways of going about these things—which I hardly know, for I am an enthusiast like you, and often forget my common-sense—and I do think that with a man like Cooke you might…”
“Not diplomatic? I am not diplomatic?”
“…try not to draw attention to his ancestry, nor compare it with your own, for he has the money, and you…”
“I’m not a fool. I will act honourably!”
“Money has little to do with honour. Sir Humfrey, I must be blunt! You have powerful enemies and few resources, your star is still occluded by your last effort to sea, you cannot be as rash and fiery as you please with men like Cooke. They are all too aware of their recent elevation, and apt to be sensitive about it, and I do suggest that this evening you try to contain your impetuosity, and let me speak for you, as much as possible.”
I gazed hard at the pool of sunlight on the floor.
“True,” I said rapidly, bitterly, “I have to go begging on every street-corner, and I’m in trouble again, with rumours flown sly about me, and Company wolves at the Privy Council to deny my rights—but still, I can speak for myself, though I know you mean well!”
“Sir Humfrey…” Doctor Dee began.
But then the doorbell clanged.
For the next hour or so I had to endure my brother’s comments while he and his manservant Stoner formally witnessed my grant of rights to Discovery’s royalties above the fiftieth parallel to Doctor John Dee of Mortlake. My brother Sir John and I never understood each other. He was phlegmatic, and shorter than I, and darker, and more thickset, and he found as much to disapprove of in my life as I found to bore me in his. Yet by this time (we were both more than forty) we had learned a certain mutual tolerance. He had helped the funding of my 1578 expedition (though I suspect our mother had twisted his arm a little, for she had seen it very much as a family venture—not surprising, as three of her sons were commanders of the ships), and after my sad return he had defended me against the charges of piracy, and formally undertook to be answerable for me. Yet he did these things out of family duty, not for love of me: he still saw me as an irresponsible fool, avoiding family obligations to plan mad rushes across the seas; and the attitude he played on this afternoon of the tenth was very much that of Superior & Responsible Elder Brother. It was clear he thought both Dee and I fools, Dee for buying and I for selling a land we had not seen—land reported barren, moreover.
“Labrador? Haw-haw!” he boomed, exaggerating his voice, “a good un! Put ’er to the plough, will ’ee, Doctor?”
“Sir, I am a British gentleman,” Dee replied icily, “and I mean to aid your brother in his patriotic and far-reaching scheme!”
“Iss, Doctor, vat be ‘British Gentleman’?”
“Brother!” I interrupted sharply, “I’m grateful for your help, but you really don’t have to play the bumpkin for us!”
This was just what he wanted to hear. It gave him excuse to stamp about, ostentatiously rustic in his jerkin and boots and slouch hat, booming about City decadence and calling me a snob while his man Stoner hovered behind a scarce-hid smile. It irked me, and I was relieved when the business was done. We parted frostily. Doubtless what he said about me was as harsh as what I said about him to Dee.
“Enough!” The Doctor cut off my mutterings. “We must prepare for Cooke’s. First I have some work at the Table of Practice.”
He meant his scrying and trances, which he did in an inner room that once he showed me. His “Table of Practice” carried a Shewstone on red silk cloth, and inscribed tablets of wax, a Solomon Seal being drawn on the face of the Table, and the Seven Names of God round the edge of it—all of it stuff I did not go with. So, while he was at it, I went down the lawn to the river’s edge, and sat dreamily musing as the sun went down—then suddenly in the rippling water I saw a ship at sea, pitching in a fierce storm—and next I saw the scabby face of the cunning man! I shot to my feet, shaken, and uselessly scuffed the water with my boot to break the image, and in a pale state returned to the library to find Dee also disgruntled. He stared.
“You’ve seen something!” he said rapidly
“In the water,” I admitted, but refused any more.
�
�More than I did!” Up in the air went his arms. “Where’s Kelly? I told him to be back for the Evening Working, but not a sign of him? Drunk, no doubt! How can I… oh, never mind! God’s sake!”
“The sun’s down!” I was fretful. “We should go!”
“Oh! Very well! Let me tell Joan!”
He vanished again, and I paced, but soon he was ready. “Ned is harnessing the trap,” he said. “Let us wait outside.” Dee’s coachman Ned brought the trap round to the front, drawn by two roan geldings. It was a small affair, creaky and exposed and uncomfortable, and both Dee and myself were in poor mood as we took our seats. Ned, a small thin man buried under the bushiest beard and tallest hat I ever saw, hiyaa’d up the horses and started us away towards Chiswick Bridge and Wichcross Street, where Cooke lived. I was brooding on what I’d seen, and silent about it, but Dee wanted to talk. I said yes and no as I stared out over the soft twilit fields and parks, paying little attention, but he talked anyway, as he would, about anything and everything, about Anabaptists and the Family of Love, and Jean Bodin’s absurd new book on witches, the Démonomanie, and how the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn had caused such a popular scare the previous April and of a new perspective glass he had, “for the better grounding of true astronomy.” And on and on until we were past Sheen and over the bridge and somewhere near Hammersmith, the sky near dark, with Venus bright and low and the first stars out, and he was still going on, about an infallible way of finding buried treasure while avoiding the guardian demons, and a new trigonometrical theorem for determining stellar paradox; then suddenly he was on about the Music of the Spheres; waxing ecstatic about Number and the “unit”—a word he invented—and before I could draw breath he’d jumped again, to the virtue of being “British.” All the way to Chelsea he talked with perfect obsession how Walter and myself and others would found this “British Empire,” and how British gentlemen would show the world “true Christian manners.” Much though I agreed, he did go on till I was blue in the face, and my own thoughts about Cooke and the cunning man and where and with whom I’d rest that night in quite a spin. Yet I did not object: he needed to talk, and he was helping me, and his obsessions and mad tumblings of loquacity from subject to subject were all part of his genius. For he was a great explorer in many realms; he knew more first-rate men and had more information than anyone else in Europe: information he made freely available to any true seeker. He brought the globes of Gemma Frisius to Cambridge, and knew Mercator well, and made many improvements to ships and navigation. As to his magic interests, I have heard him rated with Agrippa and Paracelsus, and it is true that he worked with the Moon, which Science has tried to banish.
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