Antiquary, born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, C England, UK. He qualified as a lawyer in 1638 and subsequently combined work for the royalist cause with the study of mathematics, natural philosophy, astronomy, astrology, and alchemy, entering Brasenose College, Oxford. In 1652 he issued his Theatrum chymicum, and in 1672 his major work, a History of the Order of the Garter. In 1677 he presented to the University of Oxford a fine collection of rarities, thus founding the Ashmolean Museum (built in 1682).
Elias Ashmole (23 May 1617–18 May 1692), the celebrated English antiquary, was a politician, officer of arms, student of astrology and alchemy, and an early speculative Freemason. Many of these he acquired from the traveller, botanist, and collector John Tradescant the younger, and most he donated to Oxford University to create the Ashmolean Museum.
Apart from his collecting hobbies, Ashmole illustrates the passing of the occult philosophy in the 17th century: while he immersed himself in alchemical, magical and astrological studies and was consulted on astrological questions by Charles II and his court, these studies were essentially backward-looking.
Solicitor and royalist
Ashmole was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire. His family had been famous, but its wealth had declined somewhat by the time of Ashmole's birth. His father, Simon Ashmole, was a soldier and a saddler; Ashmole attended Lichfield Grammar School and became a chorister at Lichfield Cathedral. He enjoyed a successful practice in London, and married Eleanor Mainwaring, a member of a poor but aristocratic family, who died only three years later. Still in his early twenties, Ashmole had taken the first steps towards status and wealth. Ashmole supported the side of Charles I in the Civil War. Soon afterwards, he was given a military post at Oxford, where he devoted most of his time to study and acquired a deep interest in alchemy, astrology and magic. at that time, the division between official and personal property was not as rigorously observed as it is today, so such offices could be very lucrative to their holders.) Ashmole was given the additional military posts of Captain of the Horse and Comptroller of Ordnance, though he seems never to have participated in any fighting.
Freemason
After the Royalist defeat of 1646, he retired again to Cheshire.
Marriage
In 1649, he married Mary, Lady Mainwaring (daughter of Sir William Forster of Aldermaston), a wealthy thrice-widowed woman twenty years his senior. The match, did, however, provide Ashmole with her first husband's estates centred on Bradfield in Berkshire which left him wealthy enough to pursue his interests without concern for his livelihood.
Alchemy and the Tradescant Collection
During the 1650s, Ashmole devoted a great deal of energy to the study of alchemy. This work was an English translation of two Latin alchemical works, one by Arthur Dee. In 1652, he published his most important alchemical work, Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, an extensively annotated compilation of alchemical poems in English.
In 1653, the alchemist and near-neighbour, William Backhouse of Swallowfield, who had made Ashmole his alchemical "son", is said to have confided the secret of the Philosopher's Stone to Ashmole when the former believed himself to be close to death. (The Philosopher's Stone was a substance or object that had the power to convert base metals to gold, among other mystical virtues: its discovery was one of the key goals of European alchemists.) Ashmole is said to have passed the secret on to Robert Plot, the first keeper of the Ashmolean Museum. Ashmole published his final alchemical work, The Way to Bliss, in 1658.
Ashmole met the botanist and collector John Tradescant the younger around 1650. 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 and heir ten 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, but the matter was settled in Chancery in Ashmole's favor two years later. Some scholars consider that Ashmole was an “ambitious, ingratiating” social climber who stole a hero's legacy.
Restoration
At the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, Ashmole's loyalty was richly rewarded. He was given the office of Comptroller for the Excise in London, and later was made a Commissioner of Surinam and the Accountant General of the Excise, a position that made him responsible for a large portion of the king's revenue.
Ashmole became one of the founding members of the Royal Society in 1661, but he was never an active member. In this position he devoted himself to the study of the history of the Order of the Garter, which had been a special interest of his since the 1650s. In 1667, he began collecting information for his Antiquities of Berkshire and, five years later, published the fruits of years of research concerning The Institution, Laws and Ceremonies of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, a lavish folio with illustrations by Wenceslaus Hollar. Ashmole performed the heraldic and genealogical work of his office scrupulously, and he was considered the leading authority on court protocol and ceremony.
In 1668, Lady Mainwaring died, and Ashmole married the much younger daughter of his friend and fellow herald, the antiquarian Sir William Dugdale.
As might be expected of a herald, Ashmole possessed a coat of arms. In 1661, Ashmole was granted a new crest in place of the greyhound, one which reflected his interest in astrology: On a wreath sable and or the planet Mercury collocated in the middle of the caelestiall Signe Gemini proper his right hand extended toward heaven and left holding a Caducan rod or.
Though his interest in alchemy cooled somewhat after the 1650s, he never lost interest in magic and astrology.
Ashmolean Museum
In 1677, Ashmole made a gift of the Tradescant Collection, together with material he had collected independently, to Oxford University on the condition that a suitable home be built to house the materials and make them available to the public. It would have been more, but a large part of Ashmole's own collection, destined for the museum, including coins, medals, antiquities, books, manuscripts and prints, was destroyed in a disastrous fire in the Middle Temple on January 26, 1679.
Ashmole's health began to deteriorate in the 1680s, and though he would hold his excise office until he died, he became much less active in affairs. although the biography was never written, these notes are a rich source of information on Ashmole and his times. Ashmole bequeathed his library and his priceless manuscript collection to Oxford.
Michael Hunter, in his entry on Ashmole for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, concluded that the most salient points of Ashmole's character were his ambition and his hierarchical vision of the world—a vision that unified his royalism and his interests in heraldry, genealogy, ceremony, and even astrology and magic. His antiquarian work is still considered valuable, and his alchemical publications, especially the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, preserved many works that might otherwise have been lost.
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