Portal:History/Featured article/May, 2007

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Elias Ashmole (23 May 1617–18 May 1692), the celebrated English antiquary, was a politician, officer of arms, student of astrology and alchemy, and an early speculative Freemason. He supported the royalist side during the English Civil War, and at the restoration of Charles II he was rewarded with several lucrative offices. Throughout his life he was an avid collector of curiosities and other artifacts. Many of these he acquired from the traveller, botanist, and collector John Tradescant the younger, and most he donated to Oxford University to create the Ashmolean Museum. He also donated his library and priceless manuscript collection to Oxford.

Apart from his collecting hobbies, Ashmole illustrates the passing of the occult philosophy in the 17th century: while he immersed himself in alchemical, magical and astrological studies and was consulted on astrological questions by Charles II and his court, these studies were essentially backward-looking. Although he was one of the founding members of the Royal Society, a key institution in the development of experimental science, he never participated actively.