 Alchemists, Pirates and Pilgrims
The Unconventional in Lancastrian Knighthood Gilbert Bogner, Ohio University 
In the stained glass of Assheton parish church, Lancashire, may be seen the kneeling
figure of Sir Thomas Assheton (d. ca. 1458). This fifteenth-century knight is gloriously
depicted there adorned in a warrior's full plate armor; round his neck he wears the
Lancastrian 'SS' collar, given to loyal adherents of that regime. In spite of this
rather conventional iconography, however, Sir Thomas was a very unconventional
knight. For instead of pursuing a military or political career, as had his father and
grandfather, Sir Thomas seems to have devoted his life to the arcane and mysterious
science of alchemy. While his father, Sir John Assheton (d. 1428), had distinguished
himself as both a soldier and administrator, Sir Thomas held no administrative
offices, was never elected to a parliament, held only a single commission, that of
February 1438 to collect a subsidy in Lancashire, and is not recorded to have
participated in any military ventures. King Henry VI seems to have taken a great
interest in Sir Thomas's experiments, however, exampting him from serving on juries
in 1442 and granting him and his fellow Lancashire knight, Sir Edmund Trafford, a
license in 1446 to pursue unmolested their quest for the 'philosopher's stone', by
which it was believed base metals could be transformed into gold. [1]
Unfortunately, Assheton and Trafford passed away before they could make this
magnificent discovery, which, I might add, would have solved the king's money problems,
gven him an unlimited source of patronage, allowed him to win the war in France, and made the Lancastrian dynasty secure on the throne for centuries tocome! So I suppose there
was a certain logic to it.
Sir Thomas's devotion to alchemy is certainly not what one would think of as the proper pursuit of a knight, however. When one thinks of the medieval knight, one conjures an image similar to that of Sir Thomas as he is depicted in the stained glass of Assheton church: that of a heavily armored warrior. If one knows a little more about English history, one might also imagine the knight as a leader in his community, holding the highest offies in his shire and representing it in the Commons. There is no doubt that the typical English knight of the first half of the fifteenth century did serve his king bot militarily and administratively. But in order to acquire a deeper understanding of the meaning of English knighthood during this period, one must examine the unconventional as well as the conventional in the lives of actual knights of the time. The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the more atypical episodes, activities, and choices of fifteenth-century English knights, and thereby to make clearer the rich tapestry that was knighthood in the Lancastrian era.
Copyright © Gilbert Bogner; all rights reserved.
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