The Alchemical Patronage of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley
The Alchemical Patronage of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley
The Alchemical Patronage of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley
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<strong>The</strong> Frobisher voyages and the associated industrial scale assays had come at huge<br />
expense. According to Hogarth et al, ―they had cost £19,200, two ships, about 22 boats and<br />
pinnaces, and at least 24 lives‖. 47 Whilst Lok bore the brunt <strong>of</strong> the financial cost, Court<br />
investors were loath to accept such a failure, and assays <strong>of</strong> the ore continued until July<br />
1583. 48 Eventually the ore was abandoned as worthless. 49<br />
<strong>The</strong> project does, however, reveal several characteristics about the Elizabethan<br />
Court‘s attitude to alchemy. Two <strong>of</strong> the assayers <strong>of</strong> Frobisher‘s ore were alchemists <strong>of</strong><br />
some repute: a fact that does not seem to have dissuaded the majority <strong>of</strong> England‘s<br />
courtiers and politicians from investing in the scheme. In fact they may have seen alchemy<br />
as necessary for the success <strong>of</strong> the project. News <strong>of</strong> the precious metal content <strong>of</strong> the ore<br />
had surprised both English courtiers and Spanish spies. It conflicted with their<br />
understanding <strong>of</strong> gold and silver as ‗hot‘ metals which required intense occult influences<br />
from the sun to be formed in the earth. 50 <strong>The</strong>y could not form in colder climates such as<br />
Baffin Island. <strong>Sir</strong> Philip Sidney, an alchemical pupil <strong>of</strong> John Dee and friend <strong>of</strong> Edward<br />
Dyer, who invested £200 in the project, expressed his surprise that ―precious metals were<br />
produced in a region so far to the north‖, whilst the Spanish Ambassador wrote to King<br />
Philip II, observing that ―it is incomprehensible that a land so cold as this can produce<br />
anything‖. 51 From this perspective, the involvement <strong>of</strong> alchemists, with their experience in<br />
simulating the solar heat by which metals were thought naturally to transmute, would have<br />
logically been advantageous.<br />
In many ways the Frobisher voyages demonstrate the difficulty in differentiating<br />
between alchemy and chemistry in the period; to contemporaries they were inextricably<br />
47 Hogarth, Boreham, and Mitchell, Mines, Minerals & Metallurgy, p. 52.<br />
48 Ibid., pp.93-94.<br />
49 Donald Hogarth and John Loop‘s study <strong>of</strong> the minerals from the location <strong>of</strong> Frobisher‘s mine determined<br />
the ore to be primarily Hornblend, containing quantities <strong>of</strong> silver and gold around one thousandth <strong>of</strong> that<br />
suggested by Agnello, Shutz and Kranich. See Hogarth and Loop, ‗Precious Metals‘, pp. 261-62.<br />
50 Georgius Agricola, De Re Metallica, 1556, Hebert Hoover (trans.), London, 1912, p. 44.<br />
51 Philip Sidney to Hubert Languet, 1 October 1577, in Philip Sidney and Steuart A. Pears(eds.) <strong>The</strong><br />
Correspondence <strong>of</strong> <strong>Sir</strong> Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet, Steuart A. Pears (trans.), London, 1845, p. 119; Don<br />
Bernardino de Mendoza to King Philip II, 15 November 1578, quoted in James McDermott, Martin Frobisher:<br />
Elizabethan Privateer, New Haven, 2001, p. 157.<br />
126