2 A Biography of Edward Kelly, the English Alchemist and Associate of Dr. John Dee Michael Wilding The errors, distortions, fabrications, and defamations in existing accountsof the life uf Edward Kelly arc too many for individual refutation. Even the mo st responsible commentators and historians have, upon dealing with Kelly, re- pea ted these unsubstantiated and generally derogatory stories. In this article I have sought to assemble most records of his Life that can be verified from contemporary evidence, focussing for reasons of space on the documentary de- tails of everyday life, rather than on the vuluminou:; dialogues with spirits that he undertook for Dee. Edward Kelly was born at Worcester on August l, 1555, at 4 P.M. His surname is sometimes spelled Kelley (it is standardized toKdly thoughout this article), and he also went under the name of Edward Talbot. John Dee recorded Kelly's date of birth in the horoscope he drew up llf his nativity,1 and in the margins of the almanac he used as a diary: Kelly natus hora quana a meridie ut annotatum reliquit pater cjus."! At some point Dcc gave Kelly a copy of an octavo bible printedby Robert Stephens in 1555. It is the only book that Dec records giving to Kelly The coincidence of its publication ·date and Kclly's birth date surely lay behindthe gift, whatever other hope for moral guidance may have been implied. 3 Parishrecords show that Edward Kelly, son of PatrickKdly, was christened on August 2, 1555, at St. Swithin's church, Worcester. He had a sister Elizabeth bom in 1558, and a brother Thomas. Thomas later joined Dee's householdand Dee records his birth date in the diary, October 17, 1565, also at Worcester at four in the afternoon.4 And Dee records, too the birth date of Edward Kelly's wife in his diary: June 23, 1563. "Jane Cooper, now Mystris Kelly, toward evening" (PD, 1-2). She came from Chipping Norton. Not much is knownof Kdly before he met Dec. Detailsof his education are unknown Neither the Royal Grammar School nor the King's Schooll Worcester, has pupil records from this period. There is a story that hewas at university at Oxford, but it has not been substantiateJ. Anthony aWood records in Atheru:e Oxoniensis that Kelly "being about 17 years of Age, at which time he had attained to a competency of Grammar learning at Worcester and else- where, was sent to Oxford, but to what House I cannot tell. However I have 36 MYSTICALMETALOF GOLD been informed by an ancient Bachelorut Di\'inity whu in his )·uunger years had and retained strongconnectionsthere, so the story may be aurhcnri..:. uthenticis the...: been an Amanul!nsis to Mr. ThomasAllen ofGloucester Hall that he (Kelly)had tirst conuncntator to identify Kdly with Talbot; with no published records to spent some time in that House whereuplm I, recurring to the matriculation, draw on, he nonetheless knew this detail.9 could not finJ the nameof Kelly, only T albotoflrdand, three of which name The cropping of ears was a standard judicial punishmentin Tudor were students there in 1573, 74, &c .. This relation being somewhat dubiously but no contemporary record hasbeen discovered ot what crime Kclly was alleged delivered to me, I must tellyou rhar Kclly having an unsettled mind, left Oxon to have committed, or of the execution of such a sentence.10ln Prague in 1593 abruptly, withoutbeing entered into the m.atricula."; Somewhere along the line Christopher Parkins was asked of Kellt "iin the Emperor's name, if I could give Kdly learned fluentLatin. any account of the diminishing of one of his ears.'' 11 Weever may haveexagger- Elias Ashmolerecurded in 1675 that the astrologer "Mr Lilly toldme rhat ated in having both ears lopped, just as later commentatorsexaggerate inhavmg John Evans who first taught him astrology informedhim that he was acquainted Kelly regularly digging up corpses Only one corpse is reported tll have bel.!n with Kdly's sister in Worcester and that she showed him some of the gold her disinterred, and only one car is here said to have been lopped. brother had transmuted and that Kdly was first an apothecary in Worcester.'>c> In 1581 John Deehad begun looking foran assistant to help him consult Lengler du Fresnoy claimed that Kdly was a notary in London, specializing in with spirits. Dce was tifry,tive, a distinguished mathematician, astrologcr, anJ forging ancient title deeds, but nodocumentary evidence is known to exist.i speculative thinker.ll He had the largest private library in Britain butit was not In his ANcientFunerallMonuments (1631) John Weever cites Lucan and enough, Now he wanted direct access to divine knowledge, mediated through Chaucer onthe technique of raising the dead for spiritual prophecy. He then angels, of course. The voluminous records of the spiritual transactions that tells a story of Kdly in Lancashire: resulted from Kdly's partnership with Dee are preserved in manuscripts in the British Library. The major part arc recorded in MS Cotton Appendix XLVI This dialbolical questioning of the dead for the knowledge of future parts I and 2. This was transcribed and published by Mcric Casaubon, as A True accidents was put in practice by the foresaid Kelly; who, upon a certain and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Y l!ars Between Dr. )uhn Dee (.-\ night, in the park of Walton le Dale in the county of Lancaster, Mathematician of Great Faml.! in Q. ELizabeth anJ King }ames their Reignes) and with onePaul Waring (his fellow companil>n in such deeds of darkness) Some Spirits: T cmding (hadit succeeded toa General Alteration ofMostStatesand invocated some one of the infernal regiment to know certain passages Kingdomes in the Wurld (London: Printed by D. Maxwell tor T. Garthwait, in the life, as also what might be known by the devil's foresight, of the 1659). 13The records of the initial transactions had become separated from the manner and time of the death of a noble young gentleman, as then in materials Casaubon transcribed, and were acquiredby Elias Ashmole in 1672.14 his wardship. The black ceremonies of that night being ended, Kelly They are now preserved as British Library MS Sloane 3188. They were tran· demanded of one of the gentleman's servants, what corpse was the last scribcd and edited by ChristopherWhitby in a doctoralthesis at the University buried in Law church,yard, a church thereunto adjoining, who told him of Binningham, 1981, John Dee's Actions with Spirir.s: 22 December 1581 to 23 of a poor man that was buried there but the same day. He and the said May 1583.'5 A further episode, preserved in the BodleianLibrary (MS Ashmole Waring entreated this foresaid servant to go with them to the grave of 1790 art. 1), was discovered and translated by C. H. Jostenas "An Unknown the man so lately interred, which he did; and withal did help them to Chapter in the Life of John Dee," Journalofthe Warburg and Courtauld Institutes dig up the carcase of the poor caitiff, whom by their incantations, they 28 (1965): 223--57; EdwarJ Fenton in The Diaries of John Dee 185--89, draws made him (or rather some evil spirit through his organs) to speak, who on a seventeenth-century translation llt this episode (British Library, MS Shxmc deliveredstrange predictions concerning the said gentleman. 3645, fols. 22-38). Some of the materials from the spiritual sessions were tran· I was told thus much by the said servingman, a secondary actor in scribcd and systematized into othermanuscript volumes. to · thatdismal abhorred business, and divers gentlemen, and othersare now Dee's first spiritual experiments were unsatisfactory. He foundan assistant li vingin Lancashire tu whom he has related this story. And the gentle, Barnabas Saul, a preacher and master of arts. In February 1582 Saul was indicted man himself (whose memory I am bound to honour) told me a little but released, "his ·indictment being by law found insifficient at Westminster before his death of this conjuration by Kelly; as he had it by relation Hall," Dee records, though without specifying what the charge was (PD. 1-t; from his said servant and tenant; only some circumstances excepted, Fenton, 24). If it involved summoning up spirits Dce was lucky not to have which_he thought not fitting to come to his master's knowlcdge."8 l been charged too.The project could easily have come toan end. But early in March a new seer was introduced to Dee by a Mr. Clerkson. March 8 "Mr W eeverbegins his accountKelly(otherwisecalled T albot) that famous English Clerksonand his friend came to my house . .. .''The following day, "Friday at alchemist of our times, who tlying out of his own country (after he had lost l dinner time, Mr Clerkson and Mr T albot declared a great deal of Barnabas' hoth his cars at Lancaster) was entertained with Rudolf the second, and last of naughty dealing toward me: as in telling Mr Clerkson ill things of me that J that Christian name, Emperor of Germany." Weever was born in Lancashire should mak[Fenton: "mock" his friend, as that he was weary of me, thatI would MYSTiCAL METAL l)F GOLD Sl ~ tlatterhis friend the learned manthatI would borrow[Fenton:"bereave") him "I had sight in crystallooftered me, and I saw" (PD, 11; Fenton 13). But thatr orhim. BU[ his friendtoldme, before my wife and Mr Clerkson, that a spiritual seems to have been a rare occasion. His practice now was to put his questions creature told him that Barnabas had censured [Femon: "cosened:] both Mr and the spiritual creatures would answer through Kelly, who saw themin the Clerkson and me.