Catalogue Entry: ALCH00135
Incomplete copy, in (probably) the author's hand, of a six-chapter version of William Yworth's 'Processus Mysterii Magni Philosophicus' (1702).
Custodial History
Bought at the Sotheby sale by Heffers for £3.10s.
Sotheby Lot
SL117Contents
Prefaced by 'A short Epistle to my Children'. Dated 1702 on f. 6r, and signed 'Wiliam Yarworth V.D.' on ff. 7r and 9v.
Notes
This is the only known instance of this author calling himself 'Yarworth': in all his other printed or manuscript material he appears as 'Yworth', 'Y-worth' or 'Y.worth'. This has often been taken as an abbrevation of 'Yarworth', but Figala and Petzold suggest ('Alchemy in the Newtonian circle', 181-2) that it may rather be an anglicisation of a Dutch form such as Ijvaert, as the author was by his own account Dutch by birth.
Related Material
Cf. Keynes Mss. 65, 66 and 91, and Hampshire Record Office Ms. NC17. On Yworth generally and his association with Newton, see Figala and Petzold, 'Alchemy in the Newtonian circle', esp. p. 187 for this manuscript. See also 'McPhail, Alchemy and the Occult, 4: 484-6, where the manuscript is incorrectly identified as SL116 (which is in fact Hampshire Record Office Ms. NC17: Figala and Petzold are also mistaken in describing the whereabouts of SL116 as unknown (pp. 180, n. 25 and 187, n. 60)).
