l, to the dominion of an unseen
power--a theocracy or millennium--himself the sole medium of
communication, the high priest and lawgiver. To this end he sought the
alliance and support of foreign potentates; and his diary, published
by Casaubon, the original of which is in the British Museum, is a
remarkable and curious detail of the intrigues resorted to for this
purpose. His mission to the Emperor Rodolph, offering him the sceptre
of universal dominion, is told with great minuteness; and there is
little doubt that Elizabeth herself did not disdain to converse and
consult with him on this extraordinary project. Her visits to his
house at Mortlake are well known. He had been consulted as to a
favourable day for her coronation, and received many splendid
promises of preferment that were never realised. At length,
disappointed and hopeless as to the success of his once daring
expectations, he settled down to the only piece of preferment within
his reach--to wit, the wardenship of the Collegiate Church of
Manchester, where he arrived with his family in the beginning of
February 1596. His advice and assistance were much resorted to, and
particularly in cases of supposed witchcraft and demoniacal
possession--articles of unshaken belief at that period with all but
speculatists and optimists, the Sadducees of their day and generation.
His chief colleague throughout his former revelations had been one
Edward Kelly, born at Worcester, where he practised as an apothecary.
In his diary Dee says they were brought together by the ministration
of the angel Uriel. He was called Kelly the Seer. This faculty of
"_seeing_" by means of a magic crystal not being possessed by the
Doctor, he was obliged to have recourse to Kelly, who had, or
pretended to have, this rare faculty. Afterwards, however, he found
out that Kelly had deceived him; those spirits which ministered at his
bidding not being messengers from the Deity, as he once supposed, but
lying spirits sent to deceive and to betray.

Kelly was an undoubted impostor, though evidently himself a believer
in magic and the black art. Addicted to diabolical and mischievous
practices, he was a fearful ensample of those deluders given up to
their own inventions to believe the very lies wherewith they attempted
to deceive.

He was a great treasure-hunter and invoker of demons, and it is said
would not scruple to have recourse to the most disgusting brutalities
for the gratification of his