The King discounted my youth and my madcap ways and, when he founded the College of the Holy Trinity at Cambridge, installed me there as Reader in the Greek language. What could have tasted sweeter to my pride than to return so soon as a master at the place where I had been a pupil?
Tutor to men of my own age, often older, my Collegium Graeciae was more often a Collegium Bacchi et Veneris than a Collegium Officii. And truly, even now a laugh comes to my lips when I think of the performance of Pax by the ancient author of comedies, the divine Aristophanes. It was acted out by my pupils and colleagues, with most magical effects. According to the poet’s instruction I constructed a giant Scarabeus of fearsome appearance, which had, concealed within its body, a machine so that my dung beetle rose straight up in the air and flew with great din and stench over the heads of the terrified superstitious onlookers to bring the messenger to the Palace of Jupiter.
How the good Fellows and Professors, not to mention the honest burghers and magistrates, did wonder greatly and in fear and trembling did pray to all the Saints for protection against such wonders and the Black Arts of the insolent young magician, John Dee.
Had I harkened to the noise, laughter, hubbub and uproar of that day with a more attentive ear, I might have learned more of the way of this world in which I am condemned to live. For the mob, which governs this world, responds to high spirits and harmless pranks with bitter hatred and the deathly earnest of its vengeance.
That night they stormed my house to take me, whom they thought must be in league with the Devil, and drag me before their court of witless judges. And the Dean and Chapter led the mob, cawing like black carrion crows, all to punish the “blasphemy” of a lighthearted mechanick! And had it not been for Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, my friend and the worthy Master of the College, who knows, but the mob – both learned and profane – might have parted me from my life at that very hour and slaked their lust on streams of my blood.
But I escaped on a swift horse to my stronghold of Deestone and then once more over the sea to the great School of Louvain. Behind me I left an honourable office, a modest income and a name dragged through the mire by the foul suspicions and vicious calumnies of the justified and the pious. In those days I cared too little for the slanders hissed abroad by men beneath my station and whom I therefore thought of no account. I had but little knowledge of the world; it was only through bitter experience that I learnt that no-one is born too high nor any slanderer too low, but that the enmity of an even greater might not bind the two together and distil from the venom of the guttersnipe poison for the nobleman.
O my peers, how bitter was the lesson that taught me to know them!
Chemistry and alchymy were the objects of my study at Louvain and I learnt all that there was to be learnt about the nature of matter. And then I had constructed there for me – it cost me a pretty penny – a laboratory wherein I could study the natural and divine mysteries of the world in solitary peace. Therein I acquired much knowledge and understanding of the elementa naturae.
I was magister liberarum artium, and as the foolish, venomous rumours from England could scarcely pursue me this far, I was soon held in high honour by both the learned and unlearned; and when, in the autumn, I delivered lectures on astronomy at the College of Louvain, I counted amongst my auditory the Dukes of Mantua and Medina Celi who, especially to hear me, came every week from Brussels where the Emperor Charles V was keeping court. And several times His Majesty was Himself amongst the audience and would not permit the least change to be made to the normal order of the collegii for His sake. Also foremost amongst my hearers were Sir William Pickering, a learned and honourable gentleman from my own country, and Matthew Haco and John Capito from Denmark. And in those days it happened that I advised the Emperor to leave the Low Countries for a while, since I saw, by certain unmistakable signs such as I had studied before, that a plague would visit the land in the damp of the winter; and I faithfully reported this danger to the Emperor. Charles was astounded and laughed and refused to believe the prophecy. And many gentlemen of his entourage seized the chance to rob me, by mockery and slander, of the Emperor’s good opinion, which had long caused the worm of jealousy to gnaw at their vitals. But it was the Duke of Medina Celi who, in his solicitude, urged the Emperor not to disregard my warning. For when I understood his good opinion of me, I showed the Duke certain signs on which I based my prophecy.
Soon after the turn of the year the signs of the plague increased so much that the Emperor left his camp in Brussels in great haste and soon departed the country, not without requesting my company and, when I was forced to refuse the honour because of other, urgent plans, rewarding me with a most flattering and princely gift of gold and a golden chain with a medallion bearing his own fair likeness.
Soon after that the coughing death arose in Holland and raged in town and country so that thirty thousand were dead within two months.
I had fled the plague myself and moved to Paris. There Turnebus, the philosophers Peter Ramus and Ranconetus, the great physician Fernet and the mathematician Peter
