The Library of William Butler (1535-1618): Alchemy and Medicine in Early-Modern Cambridge

A recent survey of the Fellows' Library at Clare College, Cambridge, revealed sixty-one unsigned large-format medical and alchemical books donated to the college in the early part of the seventeenth century. The donor has now been identified as William Butler (1535-1618), one-time fellow of Clare, and his books associated with an important-but hitherto unattributed-collection of medical, alchemical, and allegorical notebooks now held in the Sloane Collection at the British Library. This article locates Butler's books within both early patterns of donation at Clare Fellows' Library and developments in late Tudor medical scholarship at Cambridge. Through a special focus on Butler's heavily annotated copy of Guglielmo Gratarolo's Veræ alchemiæ artisque metallica, it also offers some preliminary remarks on the working methods of an alchemical reader-practitioner in late Tudor / early Stuart England.