39 Facts About Elias Ashmole

Elias Ashmole was an English antiquary, politician, officer of arms, astrologer, freemason and student of alchemy.

Elias Ashmole was an antiquary with a strong Baconian leaning towards the study of nature.

Elias Ashmole's library reflected his intellectual outlook, including works on English history, law, numismatics, chorography, alchemy, astrology, astronomy and botany.

Elias Ashmole was an early freemason, although the extent of his involvement and commitment is unclear.

Elias Ashmole's family had been prominent, but their fortunes had declined by the time of Ashmole's birth.

Elias Ashmole's father, Simon Ashmole, was a saddler who had served as a soldier in Ireland and Europe.

Still in his early twenties, Elias Ashmole had taken the first steps towards status and wealth.

Elias Ashmole became allied with Major-General Charles Worsley, brother-in-law of his sister, Mary Ashmole, who married John Booth of Salford.

Elias Ashmole supported the side of Charles I in the Civil War.

Elias Ashmole was given the additional military post of captain in Lord Astley's Regiment of Foot, part of the Royalist Infantry, though as a mathematician, he was seconded to artillery positions.

Elias Ashmole seems never to have participated in any actual fighting.

Elias Ashmole arranged for his friend Wharton to be released from prison and appointed him to manage the estates.

Elias Ashmole appears to have been a collector of alchemical writings and a student of alchemy rather than an active practitioner.

Elias Ashmole's works were avidly studied by other natural philosophers, such as Isaac Newton.

Elias Ashmole met the botanist and collector John Tradescant the Younger around 1650.

Elias Ashmole helped Tradescant catalogue his collection in 1652, and, in 1656, he financed the publication of the catalogue, the Musaeum Tradescantianum.

Under the agreement, Elias Ashmole would take possession at Tradescant's death.

Elias Ashmole's determined aggressiveness in obtaining the Tradescant collection for himself has led some scholars to consider that Elias Ashmole was an ambitious, ingratiating social climber who stole a hero's legacy for his own glorification.

Elias Ashmole embarked on further catalogues, including one of the Roman coin collection of the Bodleian Library, which he finally completed in 1666 after eight years of work.

Elias Ashmole was appointed Secretary and Clerk of the Courts of Surinam and Comptroller of the White Office.

The King commissioned Elias Ashmole to prepare a catalogue of the coins and medals held in the Royal Collection, and appointed him to lead a commission responsible for tracing items from the collection which had been dispersed or sold by the parliamentary regime.

Elias Ashmole appears to have been involved in the organisation of the coronation, or at least set himself up as an expert upon it.

Elias Ashmole became one of the founding Fellows of the Royal Society in 1661, but he was not very active in the society.

Elias Ashmole had written a large part of it in 1665 while living in the country to escape the Great Plague which was then raging in London.

Elias Ashmole performed the heraldic and genealogical work of his office scrupulously, and he was considered a leading authority on court protocol and ceremony.

Elias Ashmole was offered the post of Garter Principal King of Arms, which traditionally came with a knighthood, but he turned it down in favour of Dugdale.

Elias Ashmole possessed his own coat of arms, to which he proved his entitlement by descent from armigerous ancestors, expressed in heraldic terminology as Quarterly, Gules and Or a Fleur de lis Argent in the first quarter with a Greyhound courant for the crest.

The Restoration led to the re-establishment of the Church of England, and Elias Ashmole presented new prayer books to Lichfield Cathedral.

In 1669, Elias Ashmole received a Doctorate in Medicine from the University of Oxford.

Elias Ashmole maintained his links with the University and, in 1677, Ashmole made a gift of the Tradescant Collection, together with material he had collected independently, to the University on the condition that a suitable home be built to house the materials and make them available to the public.

Elias Ashmole had already moved into the house adjacent to the Tradescants' property in 1674 and had already removed some items from their house into his.

In 1678, Elias Ashmole stood as a candidate in a by-election for the Lichfield borough parliamentary constituency caused by the death of one of the two incumbent members.

Elias Ashmole did not visit the constituency, and, as Elias Ashmole's own horoscope had predicted, he lost the election.

Elias Ashmole put himself forward as a candidate in the general election of 1685.

Elias Ashmole continued to hold his excise office throughout the reign of James II and after the Glorious Revolution until his death but became much less active in affairs.

Elias Ashmole began to collect notes on his life in diary form to serve as source material for a biography; although the biography was never written, these notes are a rich source of information on Ashmole and his times.

Two-thirds of his library now resides in the Bodleian at Oxford; its separation from the museum collection in the Victorian era contributed to the belief that Elias Ashmole designed the museum around the Tradescant collection, rather than his own.

Elias Ashmole was as successful in his legal, business and political affairs as he was in his collecting and scholarly pursuits.

Elias Ashmole formed several close and long-lasting friendships, with the astrologer William Lilly for example, but, as Richard Garnett observed, "acquisitiveness was his master passion".