So great an alarm was conceived about this time respecting the art of
transmutation, that an act of parliament was passed in the fifth year
of Henry IV, 1404, which lord Coke states as the shortest of our
statutes, determining that the making of gold or silver shall be
deemed felony. This law is said to have resulted from the fear at that
time entertained by the houses of lords and commons, lest the
executive power, finding itself by these means enabled to increase the
revenue of the crown to any degree it pleased, should disdain to ask
aid from the legislature; and in consequence should degenerate into
tyranny and arbitrary power. [185]
George Ripley, of Ripley in the county of York, is mentioned, towards
the latter part of the fifteenth century, as having discovered the
philosopher's stone, and by its means contributed one hundred thousand
pounds to the knights of Rhodes, the better to enable them to carry on
their war against the Turks. [186]
About this time however the tide appears to have turned, and the alarm
respecting the multiplication of the precious metals so greatly to
have abated, that patents were issued in the thirty-fifth year of
Henry VI, for the encouragement of such as were disposed to seek the
universal medicine, and to endeavour the transmutation of inferior
metals into gold. [187]