The Alchemical Patronage of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley

Whilst there is little record of Eden over the next few years, his next
correspondence with Cecil warrants special attention. Eden wrote to Cecil in August 1562,
appealing to him specifically as a patron of alchemical learning. 141 Firstly Eden thanked
Cecil for his recent ―favour & goodnesse towarde me in your lately ernest travaile in my
behalfe‖. 142 As convention required, Eden compared Cecil to the famous Roman patron of
the arts Gaius Maecenas, grateful that due to the ―vertues as it hathe pleased you to thinke
comendable in me ... I maye hereafter with quietnesse spende my tyme in studie‖. 143 It
seems that the Master of Savoy Hospital, Thomas Thurland, had conveyed this message of
favour from Cecil, along with £20 to fund the translation of Pliny‘s Naturalis Historia, which
deals extensively with Eden‘s most favoured subjects: cosmography and metallurgy. 144
Eden was sure of the value of the work as ―it is not unknown unto your L[ordship] that the
Latins receaving bothe the science of philosophie and phisike of the Greeke‖. 145 While
there is no evidence Eden completed the translation, he insisted it could be done, despite
Cecil‘s concerns that ―the booke coulde not be translated into the Englisshe toonge‖. 146
Even if Cecil was sceptical of the practicalities of the translation, this was clearly a matter
that interested him and on which they had corresponded before.
Knowing Cecil ―to take pleasure in the wonderfull woorkes of arte and nature‖,
Eden sent with his letter a ―philosophicall booke, wherin is described ... so excellent and
precious an experiment, wrought by arte to the similitude of the universall frame of the
worlde‖. 147 The book described an alchemical experiment, which replicated the universe in
microcosm, and when compared to the automatons of the alchemist Roger Bacon ―this
Michrocosmos so far suremount it, as nature passeth arte‖. 148 For Eden the experiment
141 Richard Eden to Cecil, 1 August 1562, BL, Lansdowne, Vol. 101. No 5.
142 Ibid.
143 Ibid.
144 Ibid.; Gian Biangio Conte, Joseph B. Solodow, Don P Fowler and Glenn W. Most, Latin Literature: A
History, Baltimore, 1999, p. 498.
145 Eden to Cecil, Lansdowne, Vol. 101. No 5.
146 Ibid.
147 Ibid.
148 Ibid.
40