The Alchemical Patronage of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley

Cecil‘s physician in the early 1580s, Hector Nunez, also consulted with Barlow for chemical
medicines. 80 In 1588 the navy approached Gilbert and four other physicians to administer
a chemical therapy that would ―have care of the helthe of the noblemen, gentlemen and
others‖. 81 Gilbert‘s involvement in the College of Physicians‘ controversial and
unsuccessful first attempts to produce a pharmacopeia of chemical medicines in the early
1590s further demonstrated his interest in Paracelsian medicine
*
The numerous offers of chemical solutions to Cecil‘s medical problems
demonstrate that his contemporaries knew of his fascination with chemical medicines.
Whilst a great many of the suits made to Cecil for medical patronage have no surviving
response (unsurprising given the paucity of Cecil‘s surviving outgoing correspondence)
they nevertheless exemplify the type of medical therapies that suitors thought would
interest Cecil. In 1583 Nicholas Gybbard wrote to Cecil claiming the ability to cure any
illness, including Cecil‘s gout, using an alchemical tincture of gold. 82 This Paracelsian
treatment is reminiscent of the seventeenth century alchemist and physician Francis
Anthony‘s popular panacea aurum potabile (drinkable gold). 83 Far from an uneducated fraud,
Gybbard was a respected physician, who possessed an extensive library of both Galenic
and Paracelsian works, and had graduated as a licensed medical doctor from Oxford
University. 84
In 1591 Henry Bossevyle, a recusant gentleman and sometime lawyer to the
prominent Catholic Earls of Sussex, offered Cecil an alchemical cure for his gout. 85 Cecil
and Sir Francis Walsingham had previously suspected Bossevyle of smuggling alchemical
80 Ibid; Read, Lord Burghley, p. 261.
81 The Privy Council to William Gilbert, 28 March 1588, John Roche Dasent (ed.), APC, Volume 16: A.D.
1588, London, 1897, p. 5.
82 Nicholas Gybbard to Cecil, 1583, BL, Lansdowne, Vol. 39, No. 53.
83 F. V. White, ‗Anthony, Francis (1550–1623)‘, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, Sept 2004;
online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/590].
84 R. T. Gunther, A History of the Daubeny Laboratory, Magdalen College, Oxford, London, 1904, pp. 383-6.
85 Henry Bossevyle to Cecil, 11 April 1586, TNA, SP 12/188/11; Henry Bossevyle to Cecil, 1591, BL,
Lansdowne Vol. 69, No. 60.
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