Thomas Henshaw

Thomas Henshaw (born June 15 ^{. Jul} / June 25, 1618 ^greg. In London , † 2. January 1700 in Kensington (London) ) was an English diplomat, lawyer, courtier and a founder of the Royal Society . He played a role in alchemical circles in London in the 17th century.

youth

Henshaw grew up in London. His father Benjamin Henshaw was a merchant and captain of the City of London (died 1631). He studied from 1634 to 1638 in Oxford (University College), which he left without a degree. In Oxford he was among other things a student of the then leading English mathematician William Oughtred , who taught free mathematics to gifted students in his parish in Albury near Oxford (higher mathematics was not taught in Oxford at the time). With Oughtred he also received lessons in alchemy and other experimental natural sciences. After studying at Oxford, he went to London to study law at the Middle Temple. There he was the tutor of John Evelyn , with whom he became friends. In the English Civil War he was on the side of the royalists and joined King Charles I in York in 1642. When he visited London soon after to get weapons and money, he was arrested. He was allowed to travel abroad to Holland under the condition that he would not join Charles I's army. He visited Spain and Italy, where he met his student John Evelyn in Venice. In November 1645 he enrolled at the University of Padua .

Later years in England

He returned to England around 1650. He lived in Kensington where he inherited from his father's house (Pondhouse called because it was in the vicinity of fish ponds) and devoted himself along with others like Thomas Vaughan (Alchemist) , who lived with him in Kensington, alchemical studies. According to Samuel Hartlib , he claimed to have found Alkahest , a universal solvent sought after by many alchemists, that he allegedly obtained from the famous alchemist Jan Baptist van Helmont through Sir Hugh Platt. They were part of the Hartlib circle in which he was in contact with John Hall . It was a center of the early English Rosicrucians (Thomas Vaughan translated the Fama Fraternitatis and published it in 1652). After a communication from the American doctor Robert Childe to Hartlib, Henshaw founded a Christian learned society, which, isolated from society, endeavored to lead a Christian exemplary life and devoted itself to studies and maintained a laboratory (Christian Learned Society, Chymical Club). One of the employees of this society was Thomas Vaughan, who was then known in England as an alchemist and Rosicrucian. Henshaw also had contact with Elias Ashmole and was considered an expert on the occult with a large library. Ashmole praised his erudition in his Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (created from 1650). In 1654 he was admitted to the bar, but in 1658 he sold his position at Middle Temple to Ashmole and devoted himself to further studies in natural philosophy, attending meetings of the Oxonian Society at Gresham College, Oxford.

He was a founding member of the Royal Society in 1663 and had been active in preparations for its founding the year before. He was its secretary for six years and its vice-president in 1677. With other members such as the Baron Sir Robert Paston (1631–1683), who was his patron and whom he advised on scientific questions (letters between the two are known since 1663), he continued his alchemical experiments within the circle of the Royal Society and had There also good contacts with Robert Hooke . There is a manuscript in the British Library (Sloane 2222) in the possession of Paston with the (not fully disclosed) formula of the red elixir which he received from Henshaw, who in turn received it from his teacher Oughtred. According to those involved, this red elixir was the key to transforming the metals in the sense of the aforementioned Alkahest, which Henshaw boasted in 1650. In a partially preserved correspondence, Henshaw Paston gives advice on his experiments, but Paston was upset because he suspected that Henshaw was keeping secrets from him. In one of the letters, Henshaw signed as Halophilus (salt lover), an allusion to the closeness of Henshaw and Vaughan to the teaching of Michael Sendivogius .

In 1672 he went to Copenhagen as secretary to the ambassador to Denmark Charles Stewart, 3rd Duke of Richmond, and served as ambassador for two years when he died in 1672. On the mediation of Evelyn he later became one of the French Undersecretary of Charles II (and Gentlemen of the Privy Council in ordinary ). Even under his successors Jacob II and William III. he was a French secretary. He lived in his house in Kensington, which he had inherited from his father and where he had lived since 1650.

He possibly had his alchemical inclinations from his mother, who was considered a great chemist. While traveling, he acquired scientific instruments (especially in the optical field) for his cabinet of curiosities and met Athanasius Kircher in Rome .

family

Henshaw had been married to Anne Kipping of Twedley, Kent, since 1657 and had eight children, but only one of them reached adulthood (a daughter, Anne after his tombstone in Kensington). His wife died in 1671. His younger brother Nathaniel (1628–1673) was a doctor and also a Fellow of the Royal Society. He had studied in Leiden and later worked in Dublin.

Others

He published short treatises on gunpowder and saltpetre and an English translation of the Italian report on China by the Jesuit missionary Álvaro Semedo . A defense document published in Spa in 1654 by Thomas Henshaw, a major in the French army, who denied being involved in royalist conspiracies, is not from him, but from a cousin of the same name.

A youth portrait of him is in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

literature

• Jennifer Speake: Thomas Henshaw. In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
• Stephen Pasmore: Thomas Henshaw FRS (1618-1700) . In: Notes and Records of the Royal Society , Volume 36, 1982, pp. 177-188, JSTOR 531773
• Donald Dickson: Thomas Henshaw and Sir Robert Paston's Pursuit of the Red Elixir: An Early Collaboration between Fellows of the Royal Society . In: Notes and Records of the Royal Society , Volume 51, 1997, pp. 57-76
• REA:  Henshaw, Thomas . In: Leslie Stephen, Sidney Lee (Eds.): Dictionary of National Biography . Volume 26:  Henry II - Hindley. MacMillan & Co, Smith, Elder & Co., New York City / London, 1891, pp 134 - 135 (English).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Stephen Pasmore, Notes Records Royal Society, June 15 old calendar. Henshaw himself communicated this in a letter to Anthony Wood for the entry in his Athenae Oxonienses.
2. ↑ Alan Rudrum in Review of Donald Dickson's Edition of Aqua Vitis, Seventeenth-Century News, Volume 61, 2003, p. 193
3. ↑ Tobias Churtin: The invisible history of the Rosicrucians . Rochester VT / Toronto 2009, p. 337