Magician who blew the Spanish Armada away
SOME of you will have enjoyed the BBC’s lavish drama, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, the story of two Regency gentlemen trying to make magic respectable again.
A couple of centuries previously Stockport had a visit from a real magician, the most famous in England.
John Dee was credited with raising the wind that scattered the Spanish Armada.
He advised Queen Elizabeth on the most astrologically propitious day for her coronation and assisted leading statesmen and explorers in their endeavours.
He was a Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge and among his expertise lay mathematics, mechanics, astronomy, navigation, philosophy and social science.
He aimed at ‘universal knowledge’ spending 18 hours a day with his library of 4,000 books – at a time when Cambridge University had barely 500.
In 1595 he was elected Warden of Christ College, Manchester, now Chetham’s, and set about compiling an extensive survey of the area for a new map series.
Among the places he visited was Stockport, where he knew the rector of St Mary’s parish church, the Rev Richard Gerard, a former chaplain to the Queen.
He would have stayed at the former timber framed old rectory on the hill above the church – now a pub restaurant.
Dee may have gathered intelligence on local Catholics, whose religion inclined them to sympathise with an antagonistic foreign power (in those days Spain), and passed it on to Cecil, the Queen’s spy master.
Dee was an antiquary and wandered the old churchyard looking at the tombs.
He and a medium, Edward Kelley, were believed to have used magic spells to communicate with the dead in various places and he used a ‘skrying glass’ to see the future.
He was consulted on demonic possession at Manchester, and the college fellows reported him to the Bishop of Chester, but commissioners ordered to examine the matter, includ- ing Mr Gerard, dismissed the allegations.
Science then included many practices, such as alchemy, which bordered on magic and the distinctions were vague.
Today sub-atomic physics can demonstrate that ‘things’ appear and disappear quite randomly, or by means not yet understood.
Like the character Prospero, in his play, The Tempest, which Shakespeare modelled on Dee, the truth of what he did: “Like this insubstantial pageant faded, leaving not a wrack behind. For we are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded by a sleep.”
More stories in Stockport Heritage Magazine on sale at newsagents, bookshops, heritage outlets and online at stockport heritagemagazine.co.uk.