Page 16 - Scottish Alchemists

and possibly put the King and the Abbot into a state of great “hignes of
glorificatioun.”

The unfortunate death of James the Fourth at the battle of Flodden, in
1513, put an abrupt termination to those experiments, but his successor,
James V, if he did not patronise the labours of the alchemists, at least
pursued with much zeal the mining operations which his father had also
commenced. In those times the soil of Scotland was supposed to be teeming
with gold and other precious metals, and we are informed by Bishop Lesly
that in 1526 the King gave a grant of the Scottish mines to a company of
Germans, who worked for many years most laboriously in Clydesdale,
seeming to be only employed in rolling up great balls of earth, from which,
however, they were supposed to have enriched themselves by extracting
quantities of the purest gold.

In the Epistolae Regum Scotorum is a letter from James IV to Mr James
Inglis, relative to some volumes of alchemical works which the king was
anxious to possess.

This James Inglis, we learn from the Privy Seal Register, was appointed
in April 1510, to sing for the souls of King James III and his queen in the
church of Cambuskenneth, with a fee of twenty marks a year. On 23d July
1511 he got a grant of a pension of L40 yearly till he obtained a benefice of
100 marks in value. In the half yearly payments of this he is called “clerk of
the king’s closet.” He also held the chaplaincy of the Virgin Mary’s Chapel,
near the Bridge of Bannockburn, to which he was appointed on 20th
December 1517.

The king’s letter to him is in Latin, but is translated as follows:-

“James, by the grace of God King of Scots, to his beloved Mr James
Inglis, greeting: We have received with pleasure the proof you have given of
your friendly disposition in intimating in your letters to us that secret books,
containing the sounder philosophy of alchemy, are in your possession; and
that although most worthy men were soliciting these works from you, you
have kept them, though with great difficulty, for our use, because you had
heard that we were engaged in the study of that art. We give you thanks and
will give you due recompense when occasion requires, and have despatched
a confidential messenger James Mercheinstoun to you, who will take charge
of such books as you may wish to transmit to us, and whom you will trust in
our name. Farewell. At our palace of Edinburgh.”3

3 Epist. Reg. Scot., No. lxxii. To Mr James Inglis.

11