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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again imprisoned, this time almost certainly for debt, although he once again blamed<br />
unknown adversaries for his undoing. 195<br />
<strong>William</strong> Medley, still concealed from the historiography by the condescension <strong>of</strong><br />
scientific progress, provides the most important example <strong>of</strong> the practical application <strong>of</strong><br />
alchemical knowledge within the English gentry. <strong>Cecil</strong> as in other instances throughout his<br />
life, showed no scepticism about the legitimacy <strong>of</strong> this knowledge, nor its practical<br />
possibilities. In fact <strong>Cecil</strong> maintained faith in its potential long after others had despaired<br />
<strong>of</strong> Medley and his process.<br />
<strong>The</strong> very fact that the Society <strong>of</strong> the New Art gained such widespread patronage<br />
reveals the prevalence <strong>of</strong> belief in the possibility <strong>of</strong> alchemical transmutation in Elizabethan<br />
England. Not only did the country‘s leading statesmen such as <strong>Cecil</strong>, Leicester and Smith<br />
condone Medley‘s activities, they backed him financially with their own money. Medley,<br />
unlike many practical alchemists in the Elizabethan period, was not a foreigner or a<br />
stranger to the Elizabethan nobility. He came from a very well connected Protestant gentry<br />
family, and formed part <strong>of</strong> what G. R. Morrison describes as <strong>Cecil</strong>‘s ―greater kin, related to<br />
<strong>Burghley</strong> by virtue <strong>of</strong> his marriage to Mildred Cooke‖. 196 Although he did not attend<br />
university, he had extensive legal training from the Middle Temple and his ‗Discourse <strong>of</strong><br />
Rhetoric‘ exhibits the kind <strong>of</strong> classical education that would have identified him as being<br />
part <strong>of</strong> the upper strata <strong>of</strong> society.<br />
Unlike Richard Eden, Medley never showed a philosophical interest in alchemy,<br />
concerning himself with its practical applications, although his education would have<br />
equipped him with a philosophical justification for his process. In this way Medley was<br />
very much the English equivalent <strong>of</strong> the central European practical alchemists examined by<br />
Tara Nummedal. <strong>The</strong>se alchemists, according to Nummedal, appealed to elite patrons<br />
195 <strong>William</strong> Medley to Robert <strong>Cecil</strong>, 15 November 1600, R. A. Roberts (ed.), CMS. Vol. 10: 1600, London,<br />
1904, p. 385.<br />
196 G. R. Morrison, ‗<strong>The</strong> Land, Family, and Domestic Following <strong>of</strong> <strong>William</strong> <strong>Cecil</strong>, <strong>Lord</strong> <strong>Burghley</strong> c. (1550-<br />
1598)‘, Unpublished Phd <strong>The</strong>sis, University <strong>of</strong> Oxford, 1990. p. 94.<br />
151