The main object Dee had in view was the mastership of St. Cross's Hospital, which Elizabeth had formerly promised him. This he never received; but in December, 1594, he was appointed to the Chancellorship of St. Paul's Cathedral, which in the following year he exchanged for the wardenship of the College at Manchester. He still continued his researches into supernatural mysteries, employing several persons in succession as 'skryers'; but he found no one so fertile in invention as Kelly, and the crystal uttered nothing more oracular than answers to questions about lovers' quarrels, hidden treasures, and petty thefts--the common stock-in-trade of the conjurer. In 1602 or 1604, he retired from his Manchester appointment, and sought the quiet and seclusion of his favourite Mortlake. His renown as 'a magician' had greatly increased--not a little, it would seem, to his annoyance; for on June 5, 1604, we find that he presented a petition to James I. at Greenwich, soliciting his royal protection against the wrong done to him by enemies who mocked him as 'a conjurer, or caller, or invocator of devils,' and solemnly asserting that 'of all the great number of the very strange and frivolous fables or histories reported and told of him (as to have been of his doing) none were true.' It is said that the treatment Dee experienced at this time was the primary cause of the Act passed against personal slander (1604)--a proof of legislative wisdom which drew from Dee a versified expression of gratitude--in which, let us hope, the sincerity of the gratitude is not to be measured by the quality of the verse. It is addressed to 'the Honorable Members of the Commons in the Present Parliament,' and here is a specimen of it, which will show that, though Dee's crystal might summon the spirits, it had no control over the Muses:
'The honour, due unto you all, And reverence, to you each one I do first yield most spe-ci-all; Grant me this time to heare my mone.
'Now (if you will) full well you may Fowle sclaundrous tongues for ever tame; And helpe the truth to beare some sway In just defence of a good name.'
Thenceforward Dee sinks into almost total obscurity. His last years were probably spent in great tribulation; and the man who had dreamed of converting, Midas-like, all he touched into gold, seems frequently to have wanted bread. It was a melancholy ending to a career which might have been both useful and brilliant, if his various scholarship and mental energy had not been expended upon a delusion. Unfortunately for himself, Dee, with all his excellent gifts, wanted that greatest gift of all, a sound judgment. His excitable fancy and credulous temper made him the dupe of his own wishes, and eventually the tool of a knave far inferior to himself in intellectual power, but surpassing him in strength of will, in force of character, in audacity and inventiveness. Both knave and dupe made but sorry work of their lives. Kelly, as we have seen, broke his neck in attempting to escape from a German prison, and Dee expired in want and dishonour, without a friend to receive his last sigh.