Here’s a quiz question for you. Who was the first 007?
If you answered Sean Connery or James Bond you’ve lost a point. The first secret agent with the codename 007 was spying for his Queen and country around 400 years before Ian Fleming dreamed up the suave but deadly Bond.
He was John Dee, one of the great Elizabethans. A much-travelled mathematician, astrologer and dabbler in the occult, he was a close confidant of Elizabeth I and, it is believed, one of her trusted intelligence agents.
Dee was born in July, 1527 in the village of Mortlake which has long since been swallowed up by London’s urban sprawl. His father was a courtier of Henry VIII.
He won a place at Cambridge University when only 15 and graduated with a BA two years later.
At 17 he was already a fellow of Trinity College. Soon after he began his travels in France and Holland, lecturing in geometry at universities, including the Sorbonne in Paris.
Accused of Sorcery
Back in London in 1851, he began a 30-year career teaching mathematics and navigation to naval captains.Then he fell foul of Queen Mary, “Bloody Mary” and was thrown into prison . He was accused of attempting to kill the monarch by sorcery after casting a horoscope for her half-sister Elizabeth. She apparently wanted to know when Mary would die so that as heiress she would ascend the throne.
Mary granted him a pardon in 1556 and two years later she died. Elizabeth became Queen and Dee’s career took off. He was even asked to provide the best astrological time for her coronation.
His interest in the occult and fortune-telling deepened and in 1564 the first of his many books on the subject, Monas Hieroglyphica, was published. He began trying to contact the spirit world and recruited an Irish “scryer” called Edward Kelly. Kelly had a shady past, having had his ears cropped for forgery, and though almost certainly a con artist amazed Dee with his knowledge and apparent successes.
Together, they built up a formidable reputation and travelled to Poland under the patronage of Albert Laski, Count Palatire of Siradz. Their work there included alchemy, vainly trying to transmute base metals into gold.
Laski lost his fortune, largely through his financial support for Dee and Kelly, and he arranged for them to meet Emperor Rudolph who was suitably impressed and gave them his backing. This came to an abrupt end when the Pope demanded the Emperor either dismiss them, imprison them or burn them at the stake.
A Count Rosenberg was the next to take the pair under his wing after King Stephen lost patience with them and their constant requests for money. Once again their experiments failed.
Meanwhile, Kelly had taken a fancy to Dee’s young wife and persuaded him that the spirits had told him they should share wives. After a parting of the ways, Dee reluctantly agreed but the situation was untenable and eventually Dee received permission from Queen Elizabeth to return to his home in Mortlake which, in the meantime, had been ransacked by a mob convinced that Dee was a wizard.
Kelly Killed
Dee was given several academic appointments and it is then that he is likely to have acted as an intelligence agent for the Queen. He made several trips on her behalf and signed his messages to her “007”.
He found two new scryers to replace Kelly but these were both charlatans. Meanwhile, Kelly was killed in a fall while trying to escape from prison in Prague.
Dee’s career suffered a nosedive when the Queen died and he returned to Mortlake and his fortune-telling. In 1604 he was once again accused of sorcery and appealed to King James 1 for protection.
He died in poverty four years later, at the age of 81.
A great man who could have been even greater if he had not wasted so much time on charlatans and fruitless alchemical experiments, Dee is believed to have been the inspiration for the character of Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Sources:
Brian Baker - My name is Brian Baker and I live in Manchester, England though I was born almost 70 years ago in Liverpool, 30-odd miles down the ...
