The Alchemical Patronage of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley

Cecil tended to favour more practical aspects of alchemical patronage, he was more often
alienated by Dee‘s religious ambiguity and lack of political judgement.
While Dee matriculated at St. John‘s shortly after Cecil had left, the extent of his
association with Cecil‘s academic circle is unclear. Although both attended St. John‘s
College, Dee associated largely with conservative Catholic scholars and was out of step
with the more reformist instincts of the group surrounding Cheke and Smith. 81 Dee‘s
interest in alchemy and occultism certainly developed out of his Cambridge education.
According to his book on occult symbolism, Monas Hieroglyphica (1564), Dee started his
study of alchemy during his first year at Cambridge. 82 Nevertheless, Dee‘s biographers
have argued that he was somehow out of place at Cambridge; that scholars like Cecil,
Smith, and Cheke were concerned only with the study of logic and discourse rather than
alchemical secrets. 83 However, in arguing that there is no indication that Cambridge
introduced Dee to any of his alchemical, occult or hermetical ideas in a ―formal way‖,
Nicholas Clulee inadvertently made an important point. 84 Dee provides the best example
of the way in which the informal promulgation of alchemical and occult knowledge at
English universities, especially Cambridge, influenced the educated classes of Elizabethan
England. Dee and many others would take advantage of these shared obsessions in order
to attract lucrative patronage. Appeals for Cecil that demonstrate the author‘s alchemy
expertise are important because they demonstrate an awareness amongst supplicants that
they could attract Cecil‘s patronage by appealing to his fascination with alchemy.
After studying at the conservatively Catholic Louvain University, Dee received
some favour under Edward VI. 85 Dee‘s 1592 autobiographical tract, Compendious Rehearsal,
all too often taken at face value by historians, implies that his advancement to the Court
81 Parry, The Arch-Conjuror of England.
82 Feingold, ‗The Occult Tradition‘, p. 80.
83 French, John Dee, p. 22; Nicholas Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion, London,
1988, pp. 22-28.
84 Nicholas Clulee, ‗Astrology, Magic, and Optics: Facets of John Dee‘s Early Natural Philosophy‘, in Brian
Levack (ed.), Renaissance Magic, New York, 1992, p. 7.
85 Parry, The Arch-Conjuror of England.
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