Progress (?) report

Going to be offline for a bit starting in a couple of days, at least until I can get net access set up at the place I'm moving into, so here's a brief update on progress with the Sloane 3824 project.

Primary key-entry on the two biggest divisions of the MS. is done (i.e. the notebook in Ashmole's hand forming fol. 3-79 and the book of spirit "experiments" forming fol. 89-120: all or most of the latter is also in A Book of Treasure Spirits though).  All figures from the first section and most (barring a set of seven seals of planetary "kings") from the second redrawn / cleaned up.  Still have all of the talisman figures (37 or so) + accompanying text from fol. 80 & 84-88, and everything in fol. 121-154 (a partial English translation of the Steganographia, and a variant Heptameron) to do.

I did at least manage to work out who the "L. C. E. of S." mentioned on 116r & 120v was.  The date of 1607 in the former citation, coupled with the reference coming immediately after the description of a spirit copied from A True & Faithful Relation suggested checking the largely-ignored final fragment of Dee's Spirit Diaries for that year.  Dee, reduced to poverty, was at the time trying to hawk his services to Lord Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, a high official in the court of King James.  During a Spirit Action with Bartholomew Hickman on the 24th of March, "Raphael" declared:

"... it was the will of God […] to suffer the heart of thy supreme head and governour, under God  to be hardened against thee, that you art no better account made of unto him, but to be such an one that doth deal with Devils and by Sorcery, as you commonly term them Witchcraft: and who doth, and who hath informed him, to be thus evil and hardly informed against thee, but only the Devil, and by the hatred of thy secret enemy whom thou knowest (Salisbury I mean) and all malice and enemies that he can by his Devils, Maserien, Hermcloe, the four wicked ones, the which are accounted the four Rulers of the Air, whose names be Ories, Egym, Paynim, and Mayrary: They be the Devils that he doth deal withal, that he through their enticing and his, he thinketh to be pleasant and good wisdom that he receiveth at their hands; That he and his Devil do seek thy overthrow in all good things, and doth and shall, so far forth as God will suffer them, seek all the malice and hindrance in all good causes to be done to thy good." 

(T&FR p. *34, Cotton Appendix XLVI part ii fol. 229r). 

Maserien and Hermcloe are the spirits named at the foot of Sloane MS. 3824 fol. 116r as being familiar to the "L. C. E. of S.," and those variant names of the familiar four demon Kings of the quarters are mentioned on fol. 120v in connection with the same initials.