Besides the professed ability to see spirits or angels in a "shew-stone" or mirror, which John Dee so valued,[2] Kelley also said that he possessed the secret of transmuting base metals into gold, the goal of alchemy, as well as the philosopher's stone itself.

His flamboyant biography, his relationships with Queen Elizabeth I's royal magus Sir John Dee and Emperor Rudolf II, and his repute of having great alchemical skill and the ability to communicate with angels have all led to his relative notoriety among historians.

[4] He may have studied at Oxford under the name of Talbot; whether or not he attended university, Kelly was educated and knew Latin and possibly some Greek by the time he met Dee.

Anthony à Wood records in Athenae Oxoniensis that Kelley, "being about 17 years of age, at which time he attained to a competency of Grammar learning at Worcester and elsewhere, was sent to Oxford, but to what house I cannot tell.

[5] John Weever says, "Kelly (otherwise called Talbot) that famous English alchemist of our times, who flying out of his own country (after he had lost both his ears at Lancaster) was entertained with Rudolf the second, and last of that Christian name, Emperor of Germany.

In those seven years, they conducted conferences or seances, including "prayers for enlightenment... in the spirit of Dee's ecumenical hopes that alchemy and angelic knowledge would heal the rift of Christendom".

(Accounts of Kelley's finding the book and the powder in the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey were first published by Elias Ashmole, but are contradicted by Dee's diaries.)

With the powder (whose secret was presumably hidden in the book) Kelley believed he could prepare a red "tincture" which would allow him to transmute base metals into gold.

[5] Kelley and Dee's involvement in necromancy eventually caught the attention of the Catholic Church, and on 27 March 1587 they were required to defend themselves in a hearing with the papal nuncio, Germanico Malaspina, bishop of San Severo.

Dee handled the interview with tact, but Kelley is said to have infuriated the nuncio by stating that one of the problems with the Catholic Church is the "poor conduct of many of the priests."

In 1587, possibly as an act to sever the sessions, Kelley revealed to Dee that the angels (namely a spirit "Madimi") had ordered them to share everything they had, including their wives.

This "cross-matching" occurred on 22 May 1587 and is noted in John Dee's diary: "May 22nd, Mistris Kelly received the sacrament, and to me and my wife gave her hand in charity; and we rushed not from her.

[1] The manuscript collector Karl Widemann from Augsburg was between 1587 and 1588 his secretary at the court of Rudolf II, and also worked for the Rosenberg family in Třeboň.

[7] In England in 1588 rumours circulated that Kelley was arrested by the Emperor for falsely advertising that he could transmute base metals to gold, a skill that Queen Elizabeth could employ.

William Cecil wrote to Edward Dyer, an English diplomat, inviting Kelly to return to England and the queen's service.

[8] In October 1590 one of his associates, Ralph Lacy, a recusant from Yorkshire, arrived at the court of James VI of Scotland from Prague.

[9] By 1590 Kelley was living an opulent lifestyle in Europe, enjoying the patronage of nobility: he received several estates and large sums of money from Rosenberg.

Because of this precedent, and of a dubious connection between the Voynich Manuscript and John Dee (through Roger Bacon), Kelley has been suspected of having fabricated that book too, to swindle Rudolf.