The Alchemical Patronage of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley

from Mordechai Feingold‘s examination of the occult tradition in English universities,
which is otherwise comprehensive in its cataloguing of occultists in the university system. 115
Those historians that have examined Eden have focussed on his importance as a
translator and promoter of colonial projects. 116 Certainly Eden‘s translations of Spanish
accounts of the New World, such as The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India (1555), were
enormously influential, especially on the work of the later sixteenth century geographer
Richard Hakluyt. 117 Early studies such as Edward Arber‘s, ‗The Life and Labours of
Richard Eden, Scholar, and Man of Science, [?1521]–1576‘ (1885), provided only a
chronology of Eden‘s life, attempting little historical analysis. 118
Since C. J. Kitching‘s 1971 account of Eden‘s alchemical experiments with Richard
Whalley, there has been some attempt to explore Eden‘s alchemical beliefs. 119 David
Gwyn‘s article ‗Richard Eden: Cosmographer and Alchemist‘ (1984) remains the most in
depth study of Eden. 120 While he examines Eden‘s interest in alchemy, Gwyn
misunderstands some of his letters and treats Eden‘s alchemical obsession as separate from
his cosmological interests. More recently Edmund Valentine Campos has provided a
thought provoking examination of the metallurgical metaphors Eden employed in
describing the New World, such as comparing the signs of inhabitable land to the tokens
suggesting mineral deposits. 121 However, Campos‘ interpretation of Eden‘s account of an
alchemical experiment as a ―coded dream of colonial desire‖, couched in alchemical
115 This may be due to his omission from Athenae Cantabrigienses 1500–1585, appearing instead in the 1586–
1609 volume. See Charles Henry Cooper and Thomas Cooper, Athenae Cantabrigienses Vols. 1&2, Cambridge,
1858, 1861.
116 See Andrew Hadfield ‗Peter Martyr, Richard Eden and the New World: Reading, Experience and
Translation‘, Connotations, Vol. 5, 1995/6, pp. 1-22.
117 Richard Eden, The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India, London, 1555; Andrew Hadfield, ‗Eden, Richard
(c.1520–1576)‘, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008
[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8454].
118 Edward Arber, ‗The Life and Labours of Richard Eden, Scholar, and Man of Science‘, in Edward Arber
(ed.) The First Three English Books on America, Birmingham, 1885, pp. xxxvii-xlviii.
119 C. J. Kitching, ‗Alchemy in the Reign of Edward VI: an Episode in the Career of Richard Whalley and
Richard Eden‘, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, Vol. 44, 1971, pp. 308-315.
120 David Gwyn, ‗Richard Eden Cosmographer and Alchemist‘, The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1,
1984, pp. 13-34.
121 Edmund Valentine Campos, ‗West of Eden: American Gold, Spanish Greed, and the Discourses of
English Imperialism‘, in Margaret Rich Greer, Walter Mignolo, Maureen Quilligan (eds.), Rereading the Black
Legend: the Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires, Chicago, 2007, pp. 247-269.
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