when it came to the point, whatever he might have been when there was no danger, and he gladly accepted his life upon these conditions, and left Tunis with the intention of proceeding to Rome. He afterwards changed his plan, and established himself at Milan, where, for a length of time, he practised alchymy, and some say astrology, with great success.
Most writers who believed in the secrets of alchymy, and who have noticed the life of Raymond Lulli, assert, that while in Milan, he received letters from Edward King of England, inviting him to settle in his states. They add that Lulli gladly accepted the invitation, and had apartments assigned for his use in the Tower of London, where he refined much gold; superintended the coinage of “rose-nobles,” and made gold out of iron, quicksilver, lead, and pewter, to the amount of six millions. The writers in the Biographie Universelle, an excellent authority in general, deny that Raymond was ever in England, and say, that in all these stories of his wondrous powers as an alchymist, he has been mistaken for another Raymond, a Jew of Tarragona. Naudé, in his Apologie, says, simply, “that six millions were given by Raymond Lulli to King Edward, to make war against the Turks and other infidels:” not that he transmuted so much metal into gold; but, as he afterwards adds, that he advised Edward to lay a tax upon wool, which produced that amount. To shew that Raymond went to England, his admirers quote a work attributed to him, De Transmutatione Animæ Metallorum, in which he expressly says that he was in England at the intercession of the king.7 The hermetic writers are not agreed whether it was Edward I. or Edward II. who invited him over; but, by fixing the date of his journey in 1312, they make it appear that it was Edward II. Edmond Dickenson, in his work on the Quintessences of