A tale of alchemy and fleecing a queen

Sir Armagil Waad, possibly Sharon's 11th great grandfather may not have been the "Columbus of England," as we looked at last week, but he was a key participant in a curious incident in which a man who identified himself as an alchemist may well have been trying to run a con on Queen Elizabeth I.

I would venture to say that most people associate alchemy with the idea of turning lead into gold, and that will be a key part of this story. But perhaps you're like me and don't know that alchemy goes beyond the idea of turning base metals -- the metals we use and rely on most of the time, such as copper, lead, nickel, tin, iron -- into precious metals. In those days that would mean primarily gold and silver. 

And you might think that alchemy was a pre-enlightenment fascination mostly centered in Europe. But alchemy has its roots in ancient Egypt, where not surprisingly it was associated religion. From there alchemy spread throughout the world as other nations arouse and conquered and disseminated the ideas they appropriated from the losers. 

Although we tend to downplay alchemy because it doesn't work, leading scholars, philosophers, scientists and religious leaders up to the time of the Enlightenment studied alchemical texts, and some writers would say that alchemy helped birth the modern concepts of science. Isaac Newton had a translation of an alchemical text in his library, and Roger Bacon, who was an early proponent of empiricism in the study of nature and thus an advocate of the principles that lead to our modern scientific method, experimented with alchemy. 

Bacon even thought that alchemy could be valuable in maintaining human health. One of the texts he translated contained advice for maintaining health -- things we readily accept today such as eating fruit and other healthy foods, exercising, etc. -- but Bacon knew that finding enough healthy food could be a difficult proposition in the 13th century. He mused that it might be possible to use alchemy to transmute other substances into medicines that would make up the dietary deficit. You might think of this as one of the earliest proposals for vitamins and other supplements, except that alchemy couldn't produce the necessary substances.

By the time of Queen Elizabeth, alchemy was a thing, and the emphasis was placed on producing gold. Various alchemists attempted to gain the queen's attention and sent her texts and proposals. They also hit up Lord William Cecil, Baron Burghley, one of the queen's trusted advisors and secretary of state at the time of our tale.

Enter Cornelius de Lannoy, aka Cornelius de Alneto, a well-to-do Dutchman who claimed to have mastered alchemy. In 1565 he sent her a communique offering to produce 50,000 marks worth of gold yearly. That's roughly 33,000 pounds, about a sixth of the queen's yearly revenue. He also claimed he could provide precious jewels.

Cecil's ears must have pricked up at this because the realm needed money. Monarchies can be expensive, you know, plus the previous regime had left a tidy debt. De Lannoy wanted an annual living of 250 pounds, quite a lot of money for the day, and said it would take him about three and a half years to produce the elixir necessary to cause the transmutation. Also the crown would need to pay for all his supplies. He was granted a living of 120 pounds, still a tidy sum, the expenses for a lab, and the use of Somerset House, an imposing edifice in Central London. Cecil also appointed Sir Armagil as his agent to watch over de Lannoy's work.

The next year a princess from Sweden who hoped to broker a marriage between Elizabeth and her brother the king of Sweden. She ran up an enormous debt and turned to de Lannoy in the hopes he could supply her with money by way of alchemy. De Lannoy agreed to help, in writing, and Cecil obtained a copy of the agreement. Sir Armagil became convinced de Lannoy had already developed the elixir and was going to abscond to Sweden with the princess, taking his processes with him. 

Meanwhile de Lannoy began sending the queen messages with excuses as to why he hadn't come up with anything yet -- poor quality materials he'd been provided, the presence of wicked men while he was working because their sinfulness interfered with making the elixir, and other nonsense. 

Sir Armagil, while still believing that de Lannoy had actually produced the elixir, wrote Cecil saying that de Lannoy had "greatly abused" the Queen, by which I read, he was scamming her out of money. Other intrigues and excuses followed and by the middle of 1566, Cecil had had enough. 

He tossed de Lannoy in the Tower of London, with Sir Armagil still charged with keeping watch. De Lannoy continued with the excuses, with Sir Armagil calling his bluff at every turn. Eventually the queen and Cecil lost their patience with de Lannoy. 

Though he ostensibly continued his work in the Tower, de Lannoy never produced an ounce of gold or a single gem, and the crown turned to other alchemists. Five years later, de Lannoy was still imprisoned in the Tower, and though his wife wrote Cecil a letter begging for her husband's release. We have no records showing that she was successful, and de Lannoy presumably never left the Tower alive. 

Information for this article is pulled from alchemywebsite.com/statepap.html, a transcription of a podcast, Ep. 154 by Heather Teysko on englandcast/history, and a master's thesis, The Alchemical Patronage of Sir William Cecil, by James Stuart Campbell. I've tried to summarize a great deal of information, and any mistakes in the narrative are mine.

Image: William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley,  attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=105117150