The Alchemical Patronage of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley

y such prolific authors as A. E. Waite, further separated alchemy from the other more
accepted aspects of intellectual history. 37 Recent scholars have outlined the continuing
effect that nineteenth century spiritualists have had on the scholarly study of alchemy, with
many of their assumptions still evident in historical discussion. 38
Whilst alchemy certainly took on a spiritual dimension, especially in the minds of
philosophers such as Cornelius Agrippa and later Robert Fludd, it would be a mistake to
assume that this correlation was universal. Alchemists‘ aims ranged from purely spiritual
transformation to the physical transmutation of metals. This thesis classifies alchemy as
occult only for lack of a better term and then only with reservations. Its meaning should
been taken as referring to the Renaissance search for the hidden knowledge of the unity of
matter and creation, rather than the esoteric spiritualism born in the nineteenth century. To
the Elizabethan elite alchemy was not part of ―the spells and curses of popular imagination,
but a philosophical outlook which animated human attempts to control nature‖, and hence
requires separate evaluation. 39
The scholarly study of alchemy and occultism improved from the 1920s. Lynn
Thorndyke‘s ground breaking eight volume work A History of Magic and Experimental Science
(1923-58) and the 1937 inauguration of the Society for the History of Alchemy and
Chemistry‘s journal Ambix, established alchemy as a legitimate subject for scholarly
attention. 40 Many historians of science, however, continued to consider alchemy as merely
an illogical precursor to modern chemistry, to be studied only for that reason. They tended
to regard Renaissance alchemy as something particularly primitive and a ―continuing
embarrassment in the story of genuine science‖. 41 Herbert Butterworth in his Origins of
37 Lawrence M. Principe and William R. Newman, ‗Some Problems with the Historiography of Alchemy‘, in
William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton (eds.), Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe,
Cambridge (Mass.), 2001, pp. 393-95.
38 Ibid.
39 Vaughan Hart, Art and Magic in the Court of the Stuarts, London, 1994, p 1.
40 Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 Vols., London, 1923-58.
41 Brian Copenhaver, ‗Hermes Trismegistus, Proclus, and the Question of a Philosophy of Magic in the
Renaissance‘ in Ingrid Merkel and Allen Debus (eds.), Hermeticism and the Renaissance, London, 1988.
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