He was renowned as a mathematician, physician, astrologer, geographer and, in the popular parlance, a ‘conjuror’.
Dee, then in his mid-fifties, was the Queen’s chief consultant on all matters occult. It begins with his arrival at Dr Dee’s house, in the Thameside village of Mortlake, near London, in early March 1582. The best-known part of Kelley’s story concerns his long partnership with the magus John Dee. I have always had a sneaking fascination for Kelley, and hoped that a visit to the Czech Republic might shed some light on the foggy circumstances of his last years. He is discernible in Bohemian documents for a couple of years after this: the date of his death is more probably November or December 1597, at the age of 42.
ALCHEMIST BEER BORN ON DATE FULL
News of his death reached England in late 1595, and for a long time this provided the death-date in such biographies of him as existed (there is still no full biography). At the time of his arrest Kelley was an internationally famous figure, but thereafter the story grows confused: he disappears from view into the dungeons of 16th-century Bohemia.
It was at this inn, on the evening of, that the English alchemist, clairvoyant and con-man Edward Kelley was arrested by officers of Emperor Rudolf II. There is a cramped little beer-cellar full of gaming machines, but it is decidedly not the old ‘inn’ which stood on the square in the days when Sobeslav was a staging-post between Prague and the southern stronghold of Cesky Krumlov, seat of the powerful Rozmberk family. The town square is deserted the tall-spired church a hulk. The winter night falls early in the small Czech town of Sobeslav, and with it comes a cold, creeping fog laced with coal-smoke that leaves a bitter coating in the mouth.
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