The Alchemical Patronage of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley

new process which ―my Lord Burghley and my lord of Leicester do like‖. 101 Meanwhile,
Medley had realised that, despite assurances from Smith, the Society‘s patent omitted his
name entirely. Medley characteristically assumed this was part of Gilbert‘s intrigues to
deprive him of his process. Smith, trapped in Paris and distrustful of Medley‘s ―negligence,
riot and inconstancy‖, instructed Gilbert to travel to Poole and insinuate himself with
Medley‘s assistant Cornelius Stephenson, ―because you have no acquayntance there nor
knowedge of the earths‖. 102 Smith had come to suspect that
Mr. Medley will always be like himself, that is to mar the good gifts which
God and his industry hath gotten to him by the evil ordering of himself 103
Cecil attempted to prevent the disintegration of the project by promising Medley that he
would try to convince the Queen to create a new patent, with Medley‘s name included. 104
Medley wrote indignantly to Cecil that but for ―the loose dealinge that I have suforyd‖ the
endeavour would have already been worth over £1,000. 105 Nevertheless, on his return
from France in July 1572, Smith found the works at Poole abandoned, himself owing rent
to Lady Mountjoy and wages to unpaid workmen, and that Medley had fled to Ireland. 106
Historians have assumed that this fiasco deterred the nobility from costly ventures
in industrial alchemy, or at least from investing in Medley‘s copper making process.
However, by 1574 Medley had resurrected his enterprise on Parys Mountain, on the Isle of
Anglesey, Wales. 107 By boiling scrap iron in the mineral waters of Parys Mountain, rich in
sulphate of copper after flowing through copper ores, Medley no longer required the
expensive vitriol, making for a much more economical project. 108 Cecil, and Leicester,
along with Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir Henry Sidney, also devotees of alchemy, made
101 Ibid.
102 Thomas Smith to Humfrey Gilbert, 20 May 1572, SP70/146 f.56v.
103 Thomas Smith to Humfrey Gilbert, 10 April 1572, SP70/146 f.40r.
104 William Medley to Cecil, 19 April 1572, TNA, SP 12/86/14.
105 Ibid.
106 Smith to Cecil and Leicester, Lansdowne Vol. 19, No. 45.
107 Ibid.
108 John Henry Pepper, The Playbook of Metals: Including Personal Narratives of Visits to Coal, Lead, Copper, and Tin
Mines, London, 1861, p. 274.
137