Making Their Fortunes

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 66, 27 September 1940, Page 5

Making Their Fortunes

HATEVER the cause, there is little doubt that a firm belief in the possibility of making gold ence existed. Henry VI. granted permission to several commissions to experiment on the transmutation of base metals into gold and silver. That was in 1455. The Commission consisted of two mercers, two grocers, two goldsmiths and two drapers. Business men seem to have predominated. Another commission was appointed the next year, consisting of an alderman, a fishmonger, two more grocers, two physicians with Thomas Atclyffe the Queen’s physician and Henry Sharp, Master of the College of St. Lawrence. This Commission appears to have been appointed to keep an eye on the previous one. Three years afterward, the Continent was flooded with counterfeit English Rose nobles: and Scotland safeguarded itself, with customary caution, by prohibiting the entry of English money. Alchemical cases also came before the law courts. I like the one in which the Countess of Erbach was involved in 1725. This lady had given protection to a suspected poacher. In gratitude he turned all her silver plate into bars of gold. The gold was examined by a goldsmith, who pronounced it pure gold. The count, her husband, then claimed half of it. But the Court at Leipzig decided that as the plate belonged to the countess before the transmutation it must still remain her property-(Professor F. G. Soper, "The Evolution of Chemical Ideas,’ 4YA September 3).