Elias Ashmole

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

Elias Ashmole was an English polymath with a penchant for marrying well above his station. He was alchemist, antiquarian, astronomer, astrologer, botanist, civil servant, lawyer, courtier, army officer, member of the Royal Society, and Freemason.

He was an early, but not particularly active, member of the Royal Society, and is on the first recorded list of Freemasons. Ashmole was a gunnery officer in Oxford in the Civil War, where he was affiliated with Brasenose College. Ashmole was a favorite of Charles II, and was created Windsor Herald by Charles II immediately upon the latter's return to England, as well as Comptroller of the Excise, and Clerk of the Courts of Surinam. His third marriage was to the daughter of Ashmole's colleague at the College of Arms, Sir William Dugdale, Garter Principal King of Arms and the author of the Monasticon Anglicanum, a seminal work in the development of modern historical methods.

Ashmole studied alchemy, but is not known to have experimented extensively, besides occasional crafting of lead charms for medical use. His interests were more on the mystical, theoretical side. His three works on alchemy are Fasciculus chemicus, Theatrum chemicum Britannicum, and The Way to Bliss. He is especially noted as a major translator of the works of Dr. Dee.

Ashmole had a large and well-regarded collection of coins and medals, almost entirely lost in the Great Fire of 1666. He inherited the Tradescant Collection of curiosities, though it took a number of lawsuits to obtain and secure it. That collection, along with his own collections, were bequeathed to Oxford University and form the basis of the Ashmolean Museum, the first public museum in Britain.

Ashmole is mentioned on page 271 of Quicksilver as developing a great library. Ashmole did have a respectable library, and many of his books and manuscripts were bequeathed to the Ashmolean Museum. Most of the textual material from the Museum's collections were eventually transferred to Oxford's Bodleian Library, which is one of the British depository libraries. John Wilkins calls him Sir Elias Ashmole, but Ashmole was never knighted.

(My personal interest in Ashmole is heraldic. He was expert in a huge number of disciplines, but though he was associated with the Royal Society, he never really embraced proper science. For that reason I title him the Last Renaissance Man.)