DEE, Francis (c.1581-1638)

Dee’s forebears hailed from Radnorshire, and were allegedly descended from Rhodri Mawr, the ninth-century king of Gwynedd. Under the Tudors a number of the family settled in London, including Dee’s Shropshire-born father David, who became rector of St Bartholomew-the-Great in 1587.27 C.F. Smith, Life of Dr. John Dee, 15; Wilson, ii. 1175; Vis. Suss. 205; Newcourt, i. 144. Like his cousin, the celebrated Elizabethan astrologer John Dee, David proved to be a controversial figure. Noted for his legal tussles with his own parishioners, he was appointed a prebendary of St Paul’s Cathedral in 1598 but resigned after just six months. In 1605 he was also deprived of his rectory, probably for ‘insufficiency’ rather than nonconformity.28 D. Lysons, Environs of London (1792), i. 377, 385; E.A. Webb, Recs. of St Bartholomew the Great, ii. 311-12; Fasti, i. 30; K. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, 324 n. 10.

Dee himself was born in London, and attended the Merchant Taylors’ school, from which he graduated with a scholarship to St John’s College, Cambridge.29 Al. Cant.; Robinson, i. 33. The university presumably became his principal base for the next few years, particularly once he obtained a fellowship at St John’s, but he also retained close ties with London. Ordained at St Bartholomew’s in 1602, he married a member of the city’s Huguenot community, Susanne Le Porcq, around four years later. He evidently also had contacts at Canterbury Cathedral, for his eldest son Adrian was baptized there in January 1607, the same month in which the dean and chapter appointed him rector of the London parish of Holy Trinity the Less. The chapter likewise controlled the patronage of his next church, All Hallows, Lombard Street, to which he was presented in 1615, and, following the death of his first wife, he married the daughter of a former Canterbury prebendary, John Winter.30 CCEd; Reg. French Church, Threadneedle Street, London (Huguenot Soc. ix), 93; Al. Cant. (Adrian Dee); Fasti, iii. 28. The precise date of this second union is not known, but probably occurred before 1618, when Dee was appointed chancellor of Salisbury Cathedral, as the bishop, Martin Fotherby^*, was married to another of Winter’s daughters. The two brothers-in-law were certainly on very friendly terms, for when Fotherby died in 1620, he was buried at his own request in All Hallows, Lombard Street.31 Lincs. Peds. (Harl. Soc. l), 367; PROB 11/135, f. 207v.

Dee retained his chancellorship for another 14 years, but little is known of his activities during that period. By 1621 he had become one of James I’s chaplains, and he continued in this role following the accession of Charles I. It was presumably at around this time that he met William Laud^*, the future archbishop of Canterbury, who became dean of the Chapel Royal in 1626 and bishop of London two years later. In December 1629 Dee wrote to Laud, forwarding letters he had received from an English agent imprisoned in Paris.32 Works of Abp. Laud ed. J. Bliss, vii. 28-9. A poor summary of this letter in CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 127 implies incorrectly that Dee was chaplain to the English ambassador to France. Four months later, quite possibly at Laud’s suggestion, Dee was appointed to the deanery of Chichester. The local bishop, the Arminian polemicist Richard Montagu^*, was keen to raise the standard of services in the cathedral, and Dee proved to be a vigorous reformer, disciplining the vicars choral for lax performance of their duties, and latterly sacking two of them, along with the organist. Whether he also introduced Laudian liturgical practices is unclear from the surviving records, but he certainly handed Laud himself a degree of influence in Chichester by helping to arrange his appointment in 1630 as high steward of the cathedral’s lands.33 Fasti, ii. 7; CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 254; Fincham, 141-3; Chichester Chapter Acts, 242, 244, 249, 251, 254; A. Foster, ‘The Dean and Chapter 1570-1660’, Chichester Cathedral: an Historical Survey ed. M. Hobbs, 97. In Chichester Chapter Acts, 242, ‘William, bishop of London’ is misidentified as William Juxon^†. On a more questionable note, the dean also exploited his position to provide his son Adrian with a Chichester prebend and the Sussex rectory of Birdham. Dee evidently spent a good deal of his time at Chichester, to the extent that his family was included in the 1633 heralds’ visitation of Sussex.34 Fasti, ii. 31; Chichester Chapter Acts, 245; Vis. Suss. 205.

Laud’s appointment as archbishop in August 1633 sparked a round of lesser episcopal promotions, in the course of which Godfrey Goodman^* was expected to move from Gloucester to Hereford. Dee was nominated in September as the new bishop of Gloucester, but three months later Goodman’s translation unexpectedly fell through, and the Hereford vacancy was instead filled by the then bishop of Peterborough, Augustine Lindsell^*.35 CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 229; SO3/10, unfol. (Sept. 1633); T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, ii. 229. At this critical moment, Dee ensured that he was not overlooked at court by preaching a controversial sermon in praise of the Virgin Mary, almost Catholic in tone. According to the newsletter-writer Edmund Rossingham, he

did so extol womankind as if he had been [trying] to marry a daughter, and had no portion for her …. He spake so much in commendation of virginity, as I do verily believe all those women that heard him, that have wicked husbands, or are aged, wish themselves virgins and young again. Sure this doctor made no good choice of the court to commend virginity in. But the greatest clerks are not always the wisest men.36 Birch, ii. 230-1.

In fact, Dee had positioned himself well. In January 1634, at Laud’s request, he was selected as Lindsell’s replacement at Peterborough, though he was not actually consecrated until the following May.37 CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 397; Davies, 41 n. 190. Lindsell had already begun promoting the Laudian agenda in the diocese, and Dee wasted no time in accelerating this process. His 1634 visitation articles were the earliest set on record to insist on communion tables being placed at the east end of churches, and railed in. He enforced this policy through his consistory court, and by December 1637 only six churches in the western half of his diocese were still without altar rails. Chancels were cleared of seating, and congregational pews were rearranged to face east. Dee encouraged monthly communion services, and individual confession. He was also one of only a handful of bishops who both insisted on communion services being conducted from the communion table and prosecuted communicants who refused to receive the sacraments at the altar rails.38 J. Fielding, ‘Arminianism in the localities: Peterborough Dioc. 1603-42’, Early Stuart Church 1603-42 ed. K. Fincham, 103-6; J. Davies, Caroline Captivity of the Church, 221; N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 204-6; Vis. Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church, ii. ed. K. Fincham (Church of Eng. Rec. Soc. v), p. xvii.; K. Fincham and N. Tyacke, Altars Restored, 214, 250. He is not known to have suspended clergy who refused to read the Book of Sports, but he clamped down hard on ministers and churchwardens who obstructed the altar policy, and also took steps to limit the activities of puritan preachers. The suspension of the popular lectures at Kettering, Northamptonshire sometime during the early 1630s offended their patron, Edward Montagu^*, 1st Lord Montagu. However, while Dee was sensitive to the baron’s opinions, he refused to reinstate the lectures, insisting that the proper place for sermons was in parish churches, and stating that, as a preacher of some 33 years’ standing, he was well-placed to judge what was appropriate. Clarifying his position further, he added: ‘I retain this resolution, that no man’s learning and piety shall excuse … his unconformity, nor any man’s conformity and learning bolster out his lewd or lazy and scandalous living’.39 Davies, 168, 191-2; CSP Dom. 1635, pp. 489-90; 1637, pp. 382, 499-500; 1637-8, p. 157; Fielding, 105, 107-8; HMC Buccleuch, i. 275; E. Cope, Pols. without Parls. 1629-40, pp. 152-4.

It is clear from Laud’s annual reports to the king on the state of the Church that he strongly backed Dee’s policies, noting in January 1638: ‘my lord of Peterborough hath taken a great deal of pains, and brought his diocese into very good order’. As a further sign of the archbishop’s favour, Adrian Dee had been presented 12 months earlier to an additional benefice at Pagham, Sussex, which lay in Laud’s gift.40 Works of Abp. Laud, v. 330-1, 349; C58/42 (12 and 17 Jan. 1637); CCEd. By this time the bishop had earned the respect of his diocese, and in April 1637 he was appointed arbiter in a Northamptonshire dispute over ship money assessments.41 CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 39, 333, 350. Dee seemed well placed for further promotion in the Church, but fate then intervened. In May 1638 his son Adrian died. Exactly five months later Dee himself passed away at his palace in Peterborough, having never sat in Parliament, and was buried in the cathedral, close to the bishop’s throne.42 Wilson, ii. 1171; Ath. Ox. ii (Fasti), 300-1. Under the terms of his will, made on 28 May 1638, he bequeathed to his wife £500 and the annual revenues of Pagham’s impropriated rectory, which he had leased from the dean and chapter of Canterbury. After her death, the residue of the lease was to be transferred to St John’s, Cambridge, on condition that the college founded two fellowships and two scholarships in Dee’s memory. He also left to the college all his communion plate, the paintings from his private chapel, and the bulk of his library, comprising Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French and English books, mostly on theological topics. To his daughter he gave £300, in addition to money already bestowed on her. Two sums of £100 were donated towards the repair of Peterborough Cathedral and St Paul’s Cathedral.43 PROB 11/178, ff. 154v-6; D. Pearson, ‘Libraries of English Bps. 1600-40’, The Library, 6th ser. xiv. 225, 227, 240. Despite his somewhat authoritarian record as an administrator, Dee was subsequently remembered as ‘a person of a pious life and conversation, and of very affable behaviour’. His widow remarried in 1641, taking as her second husband a Peterborough resident, Humphrey Orme. Her later life has not been elucidated.44 Ath. Ox. ii. (Fasti), 300; Bp. of London Mar. Lics. 256.