Catalogue Entry: ALCH00054
Incomplete copy of W[illiam] Yworth, 'Processus Mysterii Magni Philosophicus' (c. 1702), in (probably) Yworth's hand.
Custodial History
Bought at the Sotheby sale by Francis Edwards for £2.10s. and sold to Keynes on 18 August 1936 for £3.10s.
Sotheby Lot
SL118Contents
Copy of a ten-chapter version of this unpublished treatise. The last chapter is incomplete. The author's name appears on ff. 1r and 2v. A dedicatory epistle (to Newton?) refers to a work (Mercury's caducean rod, by 'Cleidophorus Mystagogus', i.e. Yworth) published in 1702.
Related Material
Cf. the abstract in Keynes Ms. 66, the further fragment in Keynes Ms. 91, and the variant copies in Hampshire Record Office, Ms. NC17, and Yale Mellon Ms. 80. See also Figala, 'Zwei Londoner Alchemisten', and Figala and Petzold, 'Alchemy in the Newtonian circle' (esp. 179-90). There is a letter in the same hand from Yworth to Newton, New College, Oxford Ms. 360(2), f. 78r-v, printed in NC, 7: 441 (and dated c. 1705 in NC but shown to be 1702 by Figala and Petzold, op. cit., 186). H1138, 1302-3 and 1760 are all printed Yworth works owned by Newton; H1138, 1302 and 1303 are works written under his pseudonym Cleidophorus Mystagogus.
