Page 7 - Charnock alchemical letter

Charnock was born at Faversham in Kent in 1526. He describes
himself in one of his writings as an “unlettered scholar”, meaning, one
supposes, that he did not have a formal education but was entirely self
taught. Early in his life his interests turned to astrology, divination and
alchemy. He was fortunate to meet an alchemical adept, only identified
as I. S., a monk of Salisbury in the early 1540’s. This monk taught him
the secrets of alchemy and when he died in 1554 Charnock inherited his
master’s alchemical process. He continued working this long process in
his furnace but somehow it caught fire and the work was destroyed. He
began again but this second attempt came to naught when the servant
who was attending his furnace failed to control the degree of heat.
Another attempt was interrupted by him being forced to become a soldier
and fight at the siege of Calais, and he destroyed his equipment in a fury.
He tells of this in his alchemical poem, the Breviary of Natural
Philosophy:

Then a gentleman that ought me great malice
Caused me to be pressed to go serve at Calais
When I saw there was no other boote [way of getting out]
But that I must go against my heart’s root
In my fury I took a hatchet in my hand
And broke all my work where it did stand.

Charnock’s process seems to have involved long continual steady
heating over a period seemingly of years, and these failures must have
made him realise that he needed the support of some benefactor in order
that he could have the leisure and the materials to bring the process to a
conclusion. Thus this desperate gamble hoping for the help of the Queen.

Charnock found another master, a prior of Bath, William Bird or
Gibbs, who apparently had the secret of alchemy from George Ripley,
the famous alchemist from Bridlington. Prior Gibbs possessed the red
tincture but had to hide it in a wall when the Abbey was dissolved during
the reign of Henry VIII. It was lost or stolen and the prior who was
confused and wandering around the country met up eventually with
Charnock and instructed him into the secret of alchemy. A century later
Elias Ashmole, antiquarian and compiler of the Theatrum chemicum
Britannicum, 1650, investigated this tale and made these remarks in one
of his notebooks (now MS. Ashmole 972 in the Bodleian Library,
Oxford) concerning this red tincture:

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