[Dee’s friendly association with Catholic bishop “Bloody Bonner” suggests there’s more to him than we know. Was he a spy? Is that why his name was removed from the Book of Martyrs (Foxe’s Actes and Monuments)?]
‘Dee got into many scrapes in his life and in 1555 was placed under house arrest for casting royal horoscopes without permission. He writes in the back of one book that he is in the Fulham house of “his singular friend” the bishop of London, Edmund Bonner. Was he really a friend of his persecutor, a man known as “Bloody Bonner” for his ruthless treatment of heretics?Birkwood said it was impossible to know. ‘Bonner was a horrible man, but they were both learned men and maybe they did get on. The tantalising thing is we can’t know.’Elsewhere are examples of codes Dee invented. He used one to record the daily weather in August 1548 when he was studying at Louvain near Brussels; his symbol for windy looks like a modern hashtag. “It is not a very difficult code to break,” Birkwood said.’I’m very used to his handwriting.”Pasted from <http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jan/17/john-dee-painting-circle-of-human-skulls-exhibition?CMP=fb_gu>