In the course of a few years, however, broader and more enlightened views prevailed; and it came to be acknowledged that scientific research ought to be relieved from legislative interference. In 1455 Henry VI. issued four patents in succession to certain knights, London citizens, chemists, monks, mass-priests, and others, granting them leave and license to undertake the discovery of the philosopher's stone, 'to the great benefit of the realm, and the enabling the King to pay all the debts of the Crown in _real gold and silver_.' On the remarkable fact that these patents were issued to ecclesiastics as well as laymen, Prynne afterwards remarked, with true theological acridity, that they were so included because they were 'such good artists in transubstantiating bread and wine in the Eucharist, and were, therefore, the more likely to be able to effect the transmutation of base metals into better.' Nothing came of the patents. The practical common-sense of Englishmen never took very kindly to the alchemical delusion, and Chaucer very faithfully describes the contempt with which it was generally regarded. Enthusiasts there were, no doubt, who firmly believed in it, and knaves who made a profit out of it, and dupes who were preyed upon by the knaves; and so it languished on through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It seems at one time to have amused the shrewd intellect of Queen Elizabeth, and at another to have caught the volatile fancy of the second Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. But alchemy was, in the main, the _modus vivendi_ of quacks and cheats, of such impostors as Ben Jonson has drawn so powerfully in his great comedy--a Subtle, a Face, and a Doll Common, who, in the Sir Epicure Mammons of the time, found their appropriate victims. These creatures played on the greed and credulity of their dupes with successful audacity, and excited their imaginations by extravagant promises. Thus, Ben Jonson's hero runs riot with glowing anticipations of what the alchemical _magisterium_ can effect.
'Do you think I fable with you? I assure you, He that has once the flower of the sun, The perfect ruby, which we call _Elixir_, Not only can do that, but, by its virtue, Can confer honour, love, respect, long life; Give safety, valour, yes, and victory, To whom he will. In eight-and-twenty days I'll make an old man of fourscore a child.... 'Tis the secret Of nature naturized 'gainst all infections, Cures all diseases coming of all causes; A month's grief in a day, a year's in twelve, And of what age soever in a month.'