The Alchemical Patronage of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley

the accounts of Elias Ashmole and Strype in order to present him as ―more of an impostor
than an enthusiast‖, who was imprisoned almost as soon as he entered Prague, only to die
trying to escape. 77 Mackay went out of his way to portray Kelley in an unflattering light:
Strype‘s description of him as a ―gentleman‖ and ―famous English chymist‖ became
―deficient in rectitude and right feeling...a vagabond‖; Ashmole‘s description of Kelley‘s
famous chemical demonstrations became ―low cunning and quackery‖. 78 This unscholarly
account coloured later historians‘ accounts, including Kelley‘s entry in the Dictionary of
National Biography (1891), which repeated many of the same errors, using Mackay‘s work as
a reference. 79
More recent scholarship has noted Cecil‘s credulity in Kelley‘s alchemical promises.
In the first modern biography of John Dee, Charlotte Fell Smith observed that Cecil played
the key role in the attempts to convince Kelley to return to England and asked ―what is to
be said of a staid and sober minister like Burleigh being ready to credit the truth of Kelley‘s
exploits?‖ 80 Ralph Sargent dismissed Cecil‘s interest in alchemy as a ‗weakness‘ noting that
when Edward Dyer returned to England bearing news of Kelley and Dee‘s alchemical
success ―in Burghley and Elizabeth he found attentive listeners. Alchemy, it happened, was
a weakness of both of them‖. 81 To both Fell Smith and Sargent, a belief in alchemical
transmutation was a flaw incompatible with their understanding of Cecil.
In his study of the intellectual environment surrounding Emperor Rudolf II, R. J.
W. Evans provided much needed details of Kelley‘s career at the Imperial Court. By
examining Czech documents, Evans demonstrated the important position that Kelley held
in the Court, whilst dispelling a number of myths about his eventual demise. Evans‘
recognised that the traditional view of Kelley as ―a thorough charlatan enjoying at most
77 Ibid. p. 154.
78 Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions, pp. 153, 192-193; Srype, Annals Vol 3, pp. 133, 135;
Ashmole, Theatrum Chemicum pp. 481-84.
79 Thomas Seccombe, ‗Kelley, Edward (1555-1595)‘, in Leslie Stephen (ed.), Dictionary of National Biography,
London, 1891
80 Charlotte Fell Smith, John Dee 1527 to 1608, London, 1909, p. 203.
81 Ralph Sargent, The Life and Lyrics of Sir Edward Dyer, Oxford, 1935, 2 nd Edition, 1968, p. 105.
89