John Dee as Ralegh's "Conjurer"
1947; University of Pennsylvania Press; Volume: 10; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/3815799
ISSN1544-399X
Autores Tópico(s)Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies
ResumoD TOGRAPHERS of Sir Walter Ralegh and of Christopher Marlowe L) are agreed that the mathematician and scientist Thomas Harriot was the man to whom Robert Parsons referred in I592 as the conjurer of Ralegh's school of atheism, which jested at and our Savior. The reasons for the identification are convincing: Harriot was a member of Ralegh's household; Marlowe was reported to have said, Moses was but a juggler and one Heriots being Sir W. Ralegh's man can do more than he; several witnesses in the investigation held at Cerne Abbas in I594 expressed doubts of Harriot's soundness in religion.' Although these rumors and reports survive in manuscripts of slightly later date than Parsons' book, they obviously reflect gossip which may have had wider currency than extant records indicate. Harriot's association with Ralegh had been publicly recognized: in the dedication of an edition of Peter Martyr's De Orbe Novo (I 587), Hakluyt had praised Ralegh for engaging Harriot as a tutor in mathematics; and Harriot himself had written A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (I588), a description based upon his experiences as a member of the colony which Ralegh sent out under Sir Richard Grenville. There would be little reason to question this plausible identification were it not for some sentences in which John Dee appears to accept Parsons' words as an attack upon him. On June 5, I 604, possibly in alarm over the new statute against witchcraft and perhaps in a supreme effort to win recognition in a new court, Dee petitioned the King to clear him of the slander of conjuring, by a hearing and trial before His Majesty, the Council, or Parliament. The unjust charge had followed him for many years, despite his repeated apologies:
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