Page 52 - Charnock alchemical letter

The Oxford Man

What Master Charnock you be young enough, to work it all in good time,
and the Queen majesty more younger, by God’s grace to live and see it
finished, and many years more after that, to her great joy and comfort,
and for a commodity to her highness whole realm and me thinketh not
only you, but also all those who have bent themselves to adorn and
garnish this realm with their worthy works, of astronomy, cosmography,
or physick, are worthy of high commendation.

Master Charnock

Truly they are worthy of great commendation and to be had in memory
who have set forth any such works of Astronomy, Cosmography,
physick, or philosophy as in the sciences which they do profess, or of the
talent which God hath lent them, whereof there hath flourished in this
our time many a learned one, who have been men greatly enriched with
knowledge in these sciences and have left their worthy works in print, as
a memorial to them for ever, and of a number these be the chief. Sir
Thomas Elyot knight29 / Doctor Ascham30 Doctor Boorde31 / Doctor
Caies32 / Doctor Recorde33 / Doctor Faire / Doctor Turner / Doctor
Cunningham / Master Bullein34 / Master Dygges35 / Master Moore /
Christopher Langton / Humphrey Lloyd / Thomas Reynold / William
Ward / Thomas Hill / with others. But truly these their books hath made
within this realm of many a good artificer, many a bad astronomer and
worse physician, who swarm about in summer, as bees in every shore,
with their capcases stuffed full of the smaller sort of these books, and
fain themselves as cunning, as he who hath eaten his bread with great
study seven years in Oxford, and take every cure in hand, and every
man’s money, and then they be gone with the swallow. And for this
cause I have stayed a book of physick, which I have almost finished,
named Charnock’s Charity unto the Poor, and meant to put him in print
and will be as of great a volume and thicker, than Master Bullein’s
Bulwark. And for my part since the death of that learned man Master
John Cock vicar of Stockland and parson of Coussenton, which whom I
did confer in physick a five years before he died, I have given it up by
little, and think of myself insufficient to deal or minister in this profound
science, which is so dangerous. But yet these good fellows make no
doubt of no disease, but compares themselves in learning unto Linacre.

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