Quote:The first Englishman to have anything to do with the Voynich manuscript was...Wilfrid Voynich
Emma,
We don't know that; it could be true, but it may not be. If you want to take Mnishovsky's story as true, then even though it can't be a Roger Bacon autograph, it remains possible that the content came from one of Bacon's works, or something in his library.
I'm not saying it's so, but it's not something to dismiss in the absence of any effort to do the necessary research - which at present no-one is doing. There's also the fact that a specialist in Dee's variable and idiosyncratic hand identified the 'Arab' numerals as in Dee's hand.
There's no need to posit that Mnishovsky's alleged allegations are so: there's no evidence at all that Rudolf so much as saw it. But Dee was certainly in Prague and might have brought, or seen it.
It's true that Wilfrid was the first (naturalised) Englishman certainly to have owned it.