Edward, under pretence of doing honour to Raymond, gave him an apartment in the Tower of London, where the adept repeated his process. He transmuted base metal into gold, which was coined at the mint into six millions of nobles, each worth three pounds sterling at the present day. These coins are well known to antiquarians by the name of Rose Nobles. They prove in the assay of the test to be a purer gold than the Jacobus, or any other gold coin made in those times. Lully in his last testament declares that in a short time, while in London, he converted twenty-two tons weight of quicksilver, lead, and tin into the precious metal.
His lodging in the Tower proved only an honourable prison, and when Raymond had satisfied the desires of the King, the latter disregarded the object which the adept was so eager to see executed, and to regain his own liberty Lully was obliged to escape surreptitiously, when he quickly departed from England.
Cremer, whose intentions were sincere, was not less grieved than Raymond at this issue of the event, but he was subject to his sovereign, and could only groan in silence. He declares his extreme affliction in his testament, and his monastery daily offered up prayers to God for the success of Raymond’s cause. The Abbot lived long after this, and saw part of the reign of King Edward III. The course of operations which he proposes in his testament, with apparent sincerity, is not less veiled than are those in the most obscure authors.[N]
Now, in the first place, this story is not in harmony with itself. If Raymond Lully were at Vienna in 1311, how did John Cremer contrive to meet him in Italy at or about the same time? In the second place, the whole story concerning the manufacture of Rose Nobles is a series of blunders. The King who ascended the throne of England in 1307 was Edward II., and the Rose Nobles first appear in the history of numismatics during the reign of Edward IV., and in the year 1465.
“In the King’s fifth year, by another indenture with Lord Hastings, the gold coins were again altered, and it was ordered that forty-five nobles only, instead of fifty, as in the last two reigns, should be made of a pound of gold. This brought back the weight of the noble to one hundred and fifty grains, as it had been from 1351 to 1412, but its value was raised to 10s. At the same time, new coins impressed with angels were ordered to be made, sixty-seven and a half to be struck from one pound of gold, and each to be of the value of 6s. 8d.—that is to say, the new angel which weighed eighty grains was to be of the same value as the noble had been which weighed one hundred and eight grains. The new nobles to distinguish them from the old ones were called Rose Nobles, from the rose which is stamped on both sides of them, or ryals, or royals, a name borrowed from the French, who had given it to a coin which bore the figure of the King in his royal robes, which the English ryals did not. Notwithstanding its inappropriateness, however, the name of royal was given to these 10s. pieces, not only by the people, but also in several statutes of the realm.”[O]
In the third place, the testament ascribed to John Cremer, Abbot of Westminster, and to which we are indebted for the chief account of Lully’s visit to England, is altogether spurious. No person bearing that name ever filled the position of Abbot at any period of the history of the Abbey.
The only coinage of nobles which has been attributed to alchemy was that made by Edward III. in 1344. The gold used in this coinage is supposed to have been manufactured in the Tower; the adept in question was not Raymond Lully, but the English Ripley.
Whether the saint of Majorca was proficient in the Hermetic art or not, it is quite certain that he did not visit the British Isles. It is also certain that in the Ars Magna Sciendi, part 9, chapter on Elements, he states that one species of metal cannot be changed into another, and that the gold of alchemy has only the semblance of that metal; that is, it is simply a sophistication.
As all the treatises ascribed to Raymond Lully cannot possibly be his, and as his errant and turbulent life could have afforded him few opportunities for the long course of experiments which are generally involved in the search for the magnum opus, it is reasonable to suppose that his alchemical writings are spurious, or that two authors, bearing the same name, have been ignorantly confused. With regard to “the Jewish neophyte,” referred to by the Biographie Universelle, no particulars of his life are forthcoming. The whole question is necessarily involved in uncertainty, but it is a point of no small importance to have established for the first time the fabulous nature of the Cremer Testament. This production was first published by Michael Maier, in his Tripus Aureus, about the year 1614. The two treatises which accompany it appear to be genuine relics of Hermetic antiquity.