The Alchemical Patronage of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley

Chapter Three: Alchemy and Crown Finances
Elizabeth‘s finances were under considerable pressure during two periods. The
first, in the years immediately after her accession to the throne, from 1558 to 1568, saw the
Crown, faced with a hostile France, having to deal with a legacy of inflation and debt.
During the second, from the late 1580s to the end of her reign, war with Spain stretched
the normally frugal monarch‘s finances almost to breaking point. During both periods
Cecil played a central role in attempts to stabilise Crown costs and increase Crown
revenues. Although the Earl of Winchester—described by A.G.R. Smith as ―one of the
great administrators of Tudor England‖—acted as Elizabeth‘s Lord Treasurer until 1570,
by the time of her accession the venerable councillor was in his mid eighties. 1 As a result,
his influence was much diminished even before Elizabeth dismissed him as speaker of the
House of Lords on account of ―the Decay of his Memory and Hearing, Griefs
accompanying hoary Hairs and old Age‖. 2 With Winchester‘s star waning, Cecil, as the
Queen‘s Principal Secretary, demonstrated a considered concern for the Crown‘s finances,
playing a central role in obtaining essential subsidies from Parliament. 3
The debasement of the coinage during the first half of the sixteenth century caused
the Elizabethan government enormous problems. War with France in the 1540s had left
England in enormous debt, and so under Henry VIII and Edward VI, the treasury
employed an old trick in order to restore the royal finances: reducing the precious metal
content of English coins to extract increased revenue from existing gold and silver stocks. 4
The treasury‘s overzealous activities during the Great Debasement, as historians have
termed it, fuelled the inflation that plagued sixteenth century England. 5 At the same time
the massive influx of Spanish silver from the New World decreased the value of both the
1 A. G. R. Smith, The Government of Elizabethan England, London, 1967, p. 52.
2 Anon., Journal of the House of Lords: Volume 1: 1509-1577, London, 1802, p. 637.
3 Graves, Burghley, p. 42.
4 C. E. Challis, The Tudor Coinage, Manchester, 1978, pp. 81-111.
5 Ibid.
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