The Alchemical Patronage of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley

occultism‖. 75 Bowden sees Medicina as ―an unusual choice for a layperson not intending to
practise medicine professionally‖. 76 Perhaps Lady Cecil shared her husband‘s fixation with
herbal and chemical medicines, like other gentle ladies such as Grace Mildmay, who used
chemical treatments in her own medical practice. 77
*
Many supplicants seeking Cecil‘s patronage knew of his ongoing fascination with
both the philosophical and practical implications of alchemy. Often university educated,
they shared his understanding of nature and were exposed to a similar range of humanist
and Aristotelian concepts. An appraisal of Cecil‘s relationship with two fellow Cambridge
scholars, John Dee and Richard Eden, reveals more about a common fascination with
alchemy developed through a common education. Examining the alchemist and herald
Francis Thynne further demonstrates that Cecil‘s clients both knew of and utilised his
interest in alchemical philosophical knowledge.
Very little has been written on Cecil‘s problematic relationship with the most
famous Elizabethan disciple of occult philosophy, and fellow Cambridge alumni, John Dee.
Historians have generally argued that while Cecil found Dee politically useful at times, he
was generally disdainful of Dee‘s particular brand of occult theory. 78 Dee certainly found
Cecil an intimidating figure, in 1582 recording a dream in which he
was deade and afterward my bowels wer taken out I walked and talked with
diverse, and among other with the Lord Tresorer [Cecil] who was com to
my howse to burn my bokes when I was dead, and thought he loked
sourely on me. 79
In many ways Dee embodied the ostentatious knowledge that Stephen Pumfrey and
Frances Dawbarn have argued did not interest Cecil. 80 This thesis maintains that whilst
75 John M. Forrester, ‗Tradition and Reform: Jean Fernel‘s Physiology (1567)‘, in Jean Fernel, John M.
Forrester (ed.), The Physiologia of Jean Fernel (1567), John M. Forrester (trans.),Philadelphia, 2003, p. 3.
76 Bowden, ‗The Library of Mildred Cooke Cecil‘, p. 16.
77 Linda Pollock, With Faith and Physic: The Life of a Tudor Gentlewoman: Lady Grace Mildmay 1552–1620, London,
1993, pp. 96-98.
78 Peter French, John Dee: the World of an Elizabethan Magus, London, 1972, pp.194-197.
79 John Dee, James Halliwell (ed.), The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee, London, 1842, pp 17-18.
80 Pumfrey and Dawbarn, ‗Science and Patronage in England‘, p. 160.
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