George Ripley

 

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Compound of Alchemy by George Ripley written 1471

Here are some links to sites about George Ripley, the Alchemist

bartleby.com re: The English Chaucerians.

The Alchemy Web Site

About George Ripley


The biography below indicates that George Ripley was in possession of great wealth, and may have been heir to the Ripley Castle, built a few years before his birth, possibly by his father. He may also be the Ripley to whom the Coat of Arms was granted which is shown above.

Note that his use of the surname Ripley is in the time of great fluidity of naming. It was a derivative of Hyrpie, the Celtic Tribal name, with variants depending on location and grouping (clans). 'Ripley' was a combination of 'Hyrpie' and 'Lea', signifying woodland. 'Lea' may also be connected to settlement on the Lea River, farther south in England, running from the west into the area of London. Other direct relatives and descendants of George are observed and recorded with surnames Rippon, Hyrpie, etc.

The occupation of Alchemist seems to fit curiously well with the Celtic tribal links. By pursuing alchemy, and receiving the secret of the Philosopher's Stone (as stated below - where is that secret now?) George was fulfilling a quest which was perfectly in line with Celtic spirituality. Yet, of course, George was a devoted Christian, in that wonderful era, before Church Councils had set hard and fast rules about spiritual pursuit. This spiritual climate allowed George to work with the full blessing of the Church. Incidentally, the decree that priests could not marry (George was a Canon) was not put in place until the Council of Trent in 1730, so George could fulfill his personal destiny, as father and forbear of a great family. None of the achievement and quest described below could have been fulfilled under later Church rigidity: hence the movements of Protest later, which may have led to a new church, more like the original one.

It is significant that George wrote his works in verse, rather than prose. Again the ancient oral tradition of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon spirituality was maintained.

In other writings by and about George Ripley, as recorded by Gordon Ripley (Canada, 1995 and later), George states that he has a family or clan of over 300 individuals in the Yorkshire area at this time. He does not refer to siblings, and George may have been an only surviving male child. Parish and other records are difficult to find, and specific persons are shrouded in darkness at this time. No doubt more information will appear eventually.

It is known that the title to Ripley castle passed to the Ingleby family, as by male succession rules, the male (Ripley) heir who had title to the castle died with a daughter as his only heir. She married an Ingelby. This event is shown in this family tree, when Thomas Ingleby married Susannah Ripley (registered as 'Hyrpe') in May 28, 1626. From that point on, the castle has remained in the Ingleby family. IF George Ripley was the son of the builder of the castle, then the line of descent shown in this family tree must be close to the truth.

George Ripley [1415?-1490] was one of the most important of English alchemists. Little is known about him, but it is supposed that he was a Canon at the Priory of St Augustine at Bridlington in Yorkshire during the latter part of the 15th century, where he devoted himself to the study of the physical sciences and especially alchemy. To acquire fuller knowledge he travelled in France, Germany and Italy, and lived for some time in Rome, and there in 1477 was made a chamberlain by Pope Innocent VIII. In 1478 he returned to England in possession of the secret of transmutation. He pursued his alchemical work, and is reputed to have given vast sums to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem at Rhodes to defend them from the Turks. But his labours becoming irksome to the abbot and other canons, he was released from the order, and joined the Carmelites at Boston, where he died in 1490.

His name is attached to as many as five and twenty (25) different works, most of which remain in manuscript. Whether or not they are all by him may be doubted, and it has been asserted that what is called the 'Vision' is not by him but is the work of an anonymous writer of the following century. Tanner has enumerated his books and manuscript with the libraries of Oxford and elsewhere, where they are preserved.

Ripley adopted an allegorical approach to alchemy, and his most important writings are his Compound of Alchemy in verse which describes the alchemical process as undergoing twelve stages or 'Gates', and his emblematic 'Ripley Scrowle'. The Compound of Alchymy, was one of the most popular on the subject. it circulated widely in manuscript. It was first printed at London.

The title has a woodcut border; there is an ornamental capital E containing a portrait of Queen Elizabeth (note: Queen Elizabeth died in 1602; George could have had nothing to do with this cover), to whom the book is dedicated, and there is an engraved diagram called Ripley's Wheel. Ashmole reprinted it in the Theatrum Britannicum and added a note upon the author. He also printed several other pieces by Ripley: 'Verses belonging to his Scrowle', 'The Mistery of Alchymists', 'the Preface to his Medulla, which he wrote Ann. Dom. 1476, and dedicated to Geo. Nevell then Archbishop of Yorke', and another 'Shorte Worke'. All of these, like the 'Compound of Alchymy', are in verse.

Bibliography of printed books The Compound of Alchymy. Or the ancient hidden Art of Alchemie: Conteining the right & perfectest meanes to make the Philosophers Stone, Aurum potabile, with other excellent Experiments. Divided into twelue Gates. First written by the learned and rare Philosopher of our Nation George Ripley,... whereunto is adioyned his Epistle to the King, his Vision, his Wheele, and other his Workes, neuer before published:... Set foorth by Ralph Rabbards Gentleman... London Imprinted by Thomas Orwin, 1591, small 4to. 52 folios. To quote a prayer of George Ripley...


Memoirs of Popular Delusions Vol. 3
by Charles Mackay

While alchymy was thus cultivated on the continent of Europe, it was not neglected in the isles of Britain. Since the time of Roger Bacon, it had fascinated the imagination of many ardent men in England. In the year 1404, an act of parliament was passed, declaring the making of gold and silver to be felony. Great alarm was felt at that time lest any alchymist should succeed in his projects, and perhaps bring ruin upon the state, by furnishing boundless wealth to some designing tyrant, who would make use of it to enslave his country. This alarm appears to have soon subsided; for, in the year 1455, King Henry VI, by advice of his council and parliament, granted four successive patents and commissions to several knights, citizens of London, chemists, monks, mass-priests, and others, to find out the philosopher's stone and elixir, "to the great benefit," said the patent, "of the realm, and the enabling of the King to pay all the debts of the Crown in real gold and silver." Prinn, in his "Aurum Reginae," observes, as a note to this passage, that the King's reason for granting this patent to ecclesiastics was, that they were such good artists in transubstantiating bread and wine in the Eucharist, and therefore the more likely to be able to effect the transmutation of baser metals into better. No gold, of course, was ever made; and, next year, the King, doubting very much of the practicability of the thing, took further advice, and appointed a commission of ten learned men, and persons of eminence, to judge and certify to him whether the transmutation of metals were a thing practicable or no. It does not appear whether the commission ever made any report upon the subject. In the succeeding reign, an alchymist appeared who pretended to have discovered the secret. This was George Ripley, the canon of Bridlington, in Yorkshire. He studied for twenty years in the universities of Italy, and was a great favourite with Pope Innocent VIII, who made him one of his domestic chaplains, and master of the ceremonies in his household. Returning to England in 1477, he dedicated to King Edward IV. his famous work, "The Compound of Alchymy; or, the Twelve Gates leading to the Discovery of the Philosopher's Stone." These gates he described to be calcination, solution, separation, conjunction, putrefaction, congelation, cibation, sublimation, fermentation, exaltation, multiplication, and projection! to which he might have added botheration, the most important process of all. He was very rich, and allowed it to be believed that he could make gold out of iron. Fuller, in his "Worthies of England," says that an English gentleman of good credit reported that, in his travels abroad, he saw a record in the island of Malta, which declared that Ripley gave yearly to the knights of that island, and of Rhodes, the enormous sum of one hundred thousand pounds sterling, to enable them to carry on the war against the Turks. In his old age, he became an anchorite near Boston, and wrote twenty-five volumes upon the subject of alchymy, the most important of which is the "Duodecim Portarum," already mentioned. Before he died, he seems to have acknowledged that he had misspent his life in this vain study, and requested that all men, when they met with any of his books, would burn them, or afford them no credit, as they had been written merely from his opinion, and not from proof; and that subsequent trial had made manifest to him that they were false and vain. [Fuller's "Worthies of England."]