Sir Kenelm Digby biography

[Paul Ferguson]

"Sir Kenelm Digby was one of the most remarkable Englishmen who ever lived: a trusted advisor to the King, but the sworn enemy of the all-powerful Duke of Buckingham; a pioneering philosopher and scientist, but committed to the occult arts of alchemy and astrology; a friend not only of Ben Jonson, Thomas Hobbes and van Dyck, but even Oliver Cromwell. He was also widely known as the ‘son of a traytor and husband of a whore’: a man who witnessed his father’s gruesome execution for high treason as a Gunpowder Plotter, and the lover of the most celebrated beauty of the age, Venetia Stanley."

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stain-Blood-Rem...B019CGXRXE

[Paul Ferguson]

Some more Kenelm Digby materials here:

"Digby was good friends with Anthony van Dyck, the Flemish-turned-English portrait painter; the two often performed alchemical experiments together."
https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/sci...elm-digby/

https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2022/06/08/...alchemist/
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/...and-foodie
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...0000000019
https://csmbr.fondazionecomel.org/blog/f...larianism/

[Paul Ferguson]

Van Dyck's Portrait of Sir Kenelm and Lady Venetia and two of their sons.