Page 53 - Charnock alchemical letter

The Oxford Man

Now by my faith you have told even the truth, and without some redress,
it will turn to much inconvenience, and cause these sciences to be evil
spoke of, through such lewd loitering fellows. And as I understand here
is a ruffian hereby, who I am assured within this three years when I was
last here with you in the country, he could never a letter in the book, and
as I here, he is now become a great astronomer and a physician, and
brags himself that there is not his fellow for his time not in three shires. I
mean the tailor of Fydenton with one eye, Martin Samford.

Master Charnock

Let this pass, and let us harp upon another string for be this you have
made me to swerve somewhat from my determined purpose, wherefore if
you have no more questions towards the perfection and augmenting of
my book, I will knit up the knot with this.

The Oxford Man

It marry have I. Where I pray you is your book of natural philosophy that
you made into English metre which you showed me at my last being
here, named Charnock’s Breviary in natural philosophy,36 containing all
vessels and instruments which belongeth to this science with other pretty
stories, in the which I took great delight?

Master Charnock

I departed from him after a strange sort, as thus:

There happened to come to my house at Stockland within half a year
after your last departure a handsome man, well and trimly apparelled,
and gentleman like full of humanity and of a modest nature, for the
which my fancy gave me much to favour him, and therefore I entertained
him after my rude education, and so entering into familiar talk, he
opened unto me that he was a student in philosophy, and had been so by
the space of seven years, and that he had forsaken his right path, to come
to me by a long and crooked way, as upon a learned report which he had
heard of me, he being far off.

And then I asked him from whence he came, and whether he was bound,
and he told me that he had been in Cornwall, and his journey was to
London, and that he did retain unto the honourable lord, the Lord Robert

48