G M Hort

Dr. John Dee G M Hort

In 1558 Queen Mary died, and her younger sister, remembering the sage whose prophecies had beguiled her dark hour, at once sent for Dee to come to court and to calculate a favourable day for her crowning. Dee named January 14, 1559, and was, from this time on, as his biographer, Miss Charlotte Fell-Smith, expresses it, "continually busied about one thing and another at the fancy of the Queen."This was not, perhaps, in itself undesirable. Dee's attachment to Elizabeth seems to have been quite sincere, and he was never unwilling then or later to come at her bidding to give his judgment on any strange circumstance which troubled her-such as the discovery in Lincoln's Inn Fields of a wax image of herself, with significant pins driven through its heart, the appearance of a great comet, and so on! But Elizabeth had much of the Tudor close-fistedness; and her astrologer's services were not substantially repaid. Preferments for which he sought were given to others, and he seems to have grown weary of his ambiguous position.