The Alchemical Patronage of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley

gold into France to fund Catholic exiles. 86 Bossevyle assured Cecil that the blistering of the
skins caused by application of leather plasters soaked in ―waters‖, likely an acid, would
draw out the gout‘s ―badde humore‖. 87 He was confident that ―when he is cured your
Lordship [Cecil] schall se a difference betwene alcumists and phisicians, and then your
Lordship maye bouldely deale with me‖. 88 Bossevyle, not a marginal ―odd foreigner‖ as the
Lansdowne Catalogue dismisses him, hoped Cecil would part with the massive sum of
£300 for the treatment. 89 While it is to be hoped that Cecil ignored this gruesome ‗cure‘, it
is significant that suitors thought he would be receptive to these extreme chemical
medicines.
Cecil‘s suitors did not limit themselves to offers of practical medical assistance:
there are two lengthy manuscript treatises, focussing on the theoretical aspects of
alchemical medicine, dedicated to Cecil. The first, Humfrey Lock‘s ‗Collections on
Alchemy‘, written to Cecil from Russia, probably in the early 1570s, consists of a collection
of various alchemical works, prefaced by a dedicatory epistle to Cecil outlining alchemy‘s
medical usages. The second, Samuel Norton‘s ‗Summarie Collections of True Natural
Magick‘ utilised mathematical and biblical arguments to first refute Galenic medicine, and
then advocate Paracelsian medicine as the true successor of ancient Christian alchemical
knowledge.
Until very recently, Lock has not been examined in any great detail. His name only
occurs briefly either in studies of England‘s trade with Russia in the sixteenth century, or in
catalogues of alchemical literature. 90 It was only with Peter Grund‘s 2004 PhD thesis
‗―Misticall Wordes and Names Infinite‖: An Edition of Humfrey Lock‘s Treatise on
Alchemy‘, expanded in a forthcoming book, that biographical details about Lock have
86 Henry Bossevyle to Francis Walsingham, 13 February 1590, TNA, SP 12/230/71.
87 Bossevyle to Cecil, Lansdowne Vol. 69, No. 60.
88 Ibid.
89 Ibid; Ellis and Douce (eds.), A Catalogue of the Lansdowne Manuscripts, p. 131.
90 J. Hamel, England and Russia, London, 1854, p. 177; Robert Schuler, English Magical and Scientific Poems to
1700: An Annotated Bibliography, New York, 1979, p. 55.
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