Thomas Charnock was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 alchemist

Alchemy

Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...

 and occultist who devoted his life to the quest for the Philosopher's Stone

Philosopher's stone

The philosopher's stone is a legendary alchemical substance said to be capable of turning base metals into gold or silver. It was also sometimes believed to be an elixir of life, useful for rejuvenation and possibly for achieving immortality. For many centuries, it was the most sought-after goal...

.

A native of the Isle of Thanet

Isle of Thanet

The Isle of Thanet lies at the most easterly point of Kent, England. While in the past it was separated from the mainland by the nearly -wide River Wantsum, it is no longer an island ....

, Charnock spent most of his life in Combwich

Combwich

Combwich is a village in the parish of Otterhampton within the Sedgemoor district of Somerset, between Bridgwater and the Steart Peninsula.The village lies on Combwich Reach as the River Parrett flows to the sea and was the site of an ancient ferry crossing. In the Domesday book it was known as...

, a small village on the Steart Peninsula

Steart Peninsula

The Steart Peninsula is a peninsula in Somerset, England. At its outermost tip is Fenning Island, at the tip of which is Steart Point. It consists largely of low-lying flat farmland, and projects northwards on the west side of Stockland Reach, the lower stretches of the estuary of the River...

, near Bridgwater

Bridgwater

Bridgwater is a market town and civil parish in Somerset, England. It is the administrative centre of the Sedgemoor district, and a major industrial centre. Bridgwater is located on the major communication routes through South West England...

 in the west of England. His unpublished notebooks are useful, not just for an understanding of Elizabethan

Elizabethan era

The Elizabethan era was the epoch in English history of Queen Elizabeth I's reign . Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history...

 attitudes towards alchemy in general, but for the insight they give to Charnock's life and thoughts. Apart from the usual preoccupations of his profession, he also had an amateur interest in Atlantic exploration

European colonization of the Americas

The start of the European colonization of the Americas is typically dated to 1492. The first Europeans to reach the Americas were the Vikings during the 11th century, who established several colonies in Greenland and one short-lived settlement in present day Newfoundland...

, and in his study he had an astrolabe

Astrolabe

An astrolabe is an elaborate inclinometer, historically used by astronomers, navigators, and astrologers. Its many uses include locating and predicting the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars, determining local time given local latitude and longitude, surveying, triangulation, and to...

, maps, a globe and other navigational instruments. He rather quaintly described the difficulties he found in trying to decipher Medieval English texts on alchemy, which were "as harde to my understanding as yff I had harde one rede a booke off the language off the natione which dwell in the fourth parte off the worlde named America."

His uncle, also called Thomas Charnock, had been an alchemist, as well as the confessor

Confessor

-Confessor of the Faith:Its oldest use is to indicate a saint who has suffered persecution and torture for the faith, but not to the point of death. The term is still used in this way in the East. In Latin Christianity it has come to signify any saint, as well as those who have been declared...

 to Henry VII

Henry VII of England

Henry VII was King of England and Lord of Ireland from his seizing the crown on 22 August 1485 until his death on 21 April 1509, as the first monarch of the House of Tudor....

. Thomas' interest in the subject appears to have been stimulated when he inherited his uncle's books while in his teens. Although he married in 1562, and had two children, he preferred the life of scholarly solitude, made clear in the preamble of the treatise he wrote for Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I of England

Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...

. He says that his pursuit of the Philosopher's Stone has in large measure been impeded by "worldly necessities", and that the said Stone is reserved for men who have the gift of "solitariness."

Charnock took this seriously enough to vainly ask Elizabeth to allow him to carry on his experiments in the Tower of London

Tower of London

Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress, more commonly known as the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London, England. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, separated from the eastern edge of the City of London by the open space...

, or another "solitary place." This was probably stimulated by the hostility of his neighbours, which forced him to barricade himself in his cottage. It seems obvious from the hostility he engendered locally that his neighbours had deep superstitious fears, which Charnock did much to encourage, describing himself as a magus as well as a philosopher, who had mastery of "dark and misty terms." After his death, it was reported that no-one would live in his former cottage, which was "troublesome and haunted by spirits and that its owner had a reputation as a troublesome person and a conjurer."

His work was tiresome and demanding, requiring him, amongst other things, to keep a fire burning at a constant temperature. Quite often he would wake up in the night, troubled that things were not going well. Concerns over servants, fires, and the cost of fuel were steady preoccupations. He was also pursued by fairly constant bad luck: "God send me better fortune or else I am clean discouraged and will turn from philosophy to husbandry and go and get me unto the plough." When England went to war with France in 1557, the local Justice of the Peace, who seems to have been a personal enemy, made sure that Thomas was forced into military service. In frustration, he took a hatchet to his equipment, smashing glasses and pots alike. Undaunted, Charnock was back at his experiments seven years later.

Charnock himself was always aware of the ambiguity of his art, warning that Roger Bacon

Roger Bacon

Roger Bacon, O.F.M. , also known as Doctor Mirabilis , was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empirical methods...

, the founder of English alchemy, had come dangerously close to the occult, and had ultimately been unsuccessful in his quest for the Stone because the Devil was his familiar. His own search for the Stone proceeded in the face of one failure after another. Even so, he kept his fires burning for three years constantly, which "brought him more joy than any worldly goods."