The Alchemical Patronage of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley

again imprisoned, this time almost certainly for debt, although he once again blamed
unknown adversaries for his undoing. 195
William Medley, still concealed from the historiography by the condescension of
scientific progress, provides the most important example of the practical application of
alchemical knowledge within the English gentry. Cecil as in other instances throughout his
life, showed no scepticism about the legitimacy of this knowledge, nor its practical
possibilities. In fact Cecil maintained faith in its potential long after others had despaired
of Medley and his process.
The very fact that the Society of the New Art gained such widespread patronage
reveals the prevalence of belief in the possibility of alchemical transmutation in Elizabethan
England. Not only did the country‘s leading statesmen such as Cecil, Leicester and Smith
condone Medley‘s activities, they backed him financially with their own money. Medley,
unlike many practical alchemists in the Elizabethan period, was not a foreigner or a
stranger to the Elizabethan nobility. He came from a very well connected Protestant gentry
family, and formed part of what G. R. Morrison describes as Cecil‘s ―greater kin, related to
Burghley by virtue of his marriage to Mildred Cooke‖. 196 Although he did not attend
university, he had extensive legal training from the Middle Temple and his ‗Discourse of
Rhetoric‘ exhibits the kind of classical education that would have identified him as being
part of the upper strata of society.
Unlike Richard Eden, Medley never showed a philosophical interest in alchemy,
concerning himself with its practical applications, although his education would have
equipped him with a philosophical justification for his process. In this way Medley was
very much the English equivalent of the central European practical alchemists examined by
Tara Nummedal. These alchemists, according to Nummedal, appealed to elite patrons
195 William Medley to Robert Cecil, 15 November 1600, R. A. Roberts (ed.), CMS. Vol. 10: 1600, London,
1904, p. 385.
196 G. R. Morrison, ‗The Land, Family, and Domestic Following of William Cecil, Lord Burghley c. (1550-
1598)‘, Unpublished Phd Thesis, University of Oxford, 1990. p. 94.
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