Elias Ashmole (23 May 1617 – 18 May 1692) was an English antiquary, politician, officer of arms, astrologer, freemason and student of alchemy. Ashmole supported the royalist side during the English Civil War, serving in the artillery of Lord Astley's Regiment of Foot. He held the military rank of a captain. At the restoration of Charles II, Ashmole was rewarded with several lucrative offices. In his later years, he collected notes on his life in diary form to serve as source material for a biography. His diary was posthumously published in 1717.
Ashmole was an antiquary with a strong Baconian leaning towards the study of nature. His library reflected his intellectual outlook, including works on English history, law, numismatics, chorography, alchemy, astrology, astronomy and botany. Although he was one of the founding Fellows of the Royal Society, a key institution in the development of experimental science, his interests were antiquarian and mystical as well as scientific. He was an early freemason, although the extent of his involvement and commitment is unclear. Throughout his life he was an avid collector of curiosities and other artefacts. Many of these he acquired from the traveller, botanist and collector John Tradescant the Younger. Ashmole donated most of his collection, his antiquarian library and priceless manuscripts to the University of Oxford to create the Ashmolean Museum, Britain's first public museum.
Solicitor, royalist and freemason
Ashmole was born on 23 May 1617 in Breadmarket Street, Lichfield, Staffordshire. His family had been prominent, but their fortunes had declined by the time of Ashmole's birth. His mother, Anne, was the daughter of a wealthy Coventry draper, Anthony Bowyer, and a relative of James Paget, a Baron of the Exchequer. His father, Simon Ashmole, was a saddler who had served as a soldier in Ireland and Europe. Elias attended Lichfield Grammar School (now King Edward VI School) and became a chorister at Lichfield Cathedral. In 1633, he went to live in London as mentor to Paget's sons, and in 1638, with James Paget's help, he qualified as a solicitor. He enjoyed a successful legal practice in London, and married Eleanor Mainwaring, a member of a déclassé Cheshire aristocratic family, who died while pregnant only three years later on 6 December 1641. Still in his early twenties, Ashmole had taken the first steps towards status and wealth. He also became allied with Major-General Charles Worsley, brother-in-law of his sister, Mary Ashmole, who married John Booth of Salford.
Ashmole supported the side of Charles I in the Civil War. At the outbreak of fighting in 1642, he left London for the house of his father-in-law, Peter Mainwaring of Smallwood, Cheshire. There he lived a retired life until 1644, when he was appointed King's Commissioner of Excise at Lichfield. Soon afterwards, at the suggestion of George Wharton, a leading astrologer with strong court connections, Ashmole was given a military post at Oxford, where he served as an ordnance officer for the King's forces. In his spare time, he studied mathematics and physics at his lodgings, Brasenose College. There he acquired a deep interest in astronomy, astrology and magic. In late 1645, he left Oxford to accept the position of Commissioner of Excise at Worcester. He was given the additional military post of captain in Lord Astley's Regiment of Foot, part of the Royalist Infantry, though as a mathematician, he was seconded to artillery positions. He seems never to have participated in any actual fighting.
After the surrender of Worcester to the Parliamentary Forces in July 1646, he retired to Cheshire. Passing through Lichfield on his way there, he learnt that his mother had died just three weeks before from the plague. During this period, he was admitted as a freemason. His diary entry for 16 October 1646 reads in part: "I was made a Free Mason at Warrington in Lancashire, with Coll: Henry Mainwaring of Karincham [Kermincham] in Cheshire." Although there is only one other mention of masonic activity in his diary, he seems to have remained in good standing and well connected with the fraternity as he was still attending meetings in 1682. On 10 March that year he wrote: "About 5 H: P.M. I received a Sumons [sic] to appeare at a Lodge to [be] held the next day, at Masons Hall London." The following day, 11 March 1682, he wrote: "Accordingly, I went ... I was the Senior Fellow among them (it being 35 yeares since I was admitted) ... We all dyned at the halfe Moone Taverne in Cheapeside, at a Noble Dinner prepaired at the charge of the New-accepted Masons." Ashmole's notes are one of the earliest references to Freemasonry known in England, but apart from these entries in his autobiographical notes, there are no further details about his involvement.
In 1646–47, Ashmole made several simultaneous approaches to rich widows in the hope of securing a good marriage. In 1649, he married Mary, Lady Mainwaring (daughter of Sir William Forster of Aldermaston), a wealthy thrice-widowed woman twenty years his senior; she may have been a relative by marriage of his first wife's family and was the mother of grown children. The marriage took place despite the opposition of the bride's family, and it did not prove to be harmonious: Lady Mainwaring filed suit for separation and alimony but it was dismissed by the courts in 1657. Nevertheless, the marriage provided Ashmole with Mary's first husband's estates centred on Bradfield in Berkshire which left him wealthy enough to pursue his interests, including botany and alchemy, without concern for having to earn a living. He arranged for his friend Wharton to be released from prison and appointed him to manage the estates.
During the 1650s, Ashmole devoted a great deal of energy to the study of alchemy. In 1650, he published Fasciculus Chemicus under the anagrammatic pseudonym James Hasolle. This work was an English translation of two Latin alchemical works, one by Arthur Dee, the son of John Dee. In 1652, he published his most important alchemical work, Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, an extensively annotated compilation of metaphysical poems in English. The book preserved and made available many works that had previously existed only in privately held manuscripts. A corrected edition using Ashmole's two errata sheets and the additional chapter seven of a piece by Thomas Charnock was published in 2011. There is little evidence that Ashmole conducted his own alchemical experiments. He appears to have been a collector of alchemical writings and a student of alchemy rather than an active practitioner. He referred to himself as the son of William Backhouse, who adopted him in 1651 as his spiritual son—for the connection he gave him to the long spiritual chain of hermetic wisdom that Backhouse was part of. According to Ashmole, Backhouse "intytle[d] me to some small parte Of grand sire Hermes wealth [sic]". His final alchemical publication was The Way to Bliss in 1658, but thereafter his interest seems to wane in favour of his other pursuits. Ashmole promoted the use of therapeutic remedies drawing on both Galenic and Paracelsian principles, and his works attempt to merge the two schools. The Way to Bliss recommends ways to prevent illness: a balanced diet, moderate exercise and enough sleep. His works were avidly studied by other natural philosophers, such as Isaac Newton.
Ashmole met the botanist and collector John Tradescant the Younger around 1650. Tradescant had, with his father, built up a vast and renowned collection of exotic plants, mineral specimens and other curiosities from around the world at their house in Lambeth. Ashmole helped Tradescant catalogue his collection in 1652, and, in 1656, he financed the publication of the catalogue, the Musaeum Tradescantianum. In 1659, Tradescant, who had lost his only son seven years earlier, legally deeded his collection to Ashmole. Under the agreement, Ashmole would take possession at Tradescant's death. When Tradescant died in 1662, his widow, Hester, contested the deed, claiming her husband had signed it when drunk without knowing its contents, but the matter was settled in Chancery in Ashmole's favour two years later. Hester was to hold the collection in trust for Ashmole until her death. Ashmole's determined aggressiveness in obtaining the Tradescant collection for himself has led some scholars to consider that Ashmole was an ambitious, ingratiating social climber who stole a hero's legacy for his own glorification.