The Alchemical Patronage of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley

Clearly aware of Cecil‘s rising influence, George had his second son William Medley
―bred up under Lord Burghley, being thereto preferred by Lady Burghley‖. 77 According to
Read, Cecil ―took a great interest in the education of promising young Englishmen. His
household indeed was currently regarded as the best training school for the gentry in
England‖. 78 While nothing else is known of William‘s early life, he probably received a
similar education to his cousins Francis and Margaret Willoughby. After their father‘s
death in 1549 the Willoughby siblings became wards of George Medley, at a cost to him of
£1000, and were privately tutored in Latin and Greek. 79 In 1575 William Medley would
demonstrate his classical learning to Cecil, presenting him with a lengthy ‗Discourse of
Rhetoric‘, comprised of fifty pages of advanced discussion of Aristotelian rhetorical
method in both English and Latin. 80 Clearly William Medley received the humanist
education appropriate to his family‘s social status; although there is no evidence he
attended university. Having inherited a bequest for his further education upon his father‘s
death in 1562, by 1564 Medley had been admitted to study law at the Middle Temple. 81 He
also received some significant leases, cementing his place among the gentry of Essex. 82
Along with Medley‘s training in law, at some point he developed an expertise in
metallurgy—exceptionally rare among Elizabethan Englishmen. Until the 1560s the
English had very limited experience with mining or metallurgy beyond the relatively
straightforward production of tin, lead, and iron. 83 The Germanic regions of central
Europe far outstripped England in metallurgical knowledge, having introduced a number
of innovations since the fourteenth century to their much more advanced mining industry.
Virtually all of the mining and mineralogical treatises published in the sixteenth century
77 William Medley to Sir Robert Cecil, 3 November 1598, Roberts, R. A. (ed.), CMS. Vol. 8: 1598, London,
1899, p 421.
78 Read, Lord Burghley, pp 124-125.
79 Eric Ives, Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery, Chichester, 2009, p. 37.
80 William Medley, ‗A Brief Discourse of Rhetoric‘, 1575, Hatfield House, Cecil Papers, M485/6.
81 ‗Will of George Medley‘, TNA, PROB 11/46; Charles Henry Hopwood and Charles Trice Martin (eds.),
Middle Temple Records, Volume 1, London, 1904, pp. 146, 150.
82 ‗Will of George Medley‘, PROB 11/46.
83 Eric H. Ash, Power, Knowledge, and Expertise in Elizabethan England, Baltimore, 2004, pp 22-23.
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