ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the personal collaboration of a small group within the Samuel Hartlib circle on a quest to attain spiritual enlightenment through practical experiment. In 1647, at the same time Hartlib was canvassing the possibiliy of bringing Glauber to England to teach chemistry, Benjamin Worsley was preparing for a visit to the Netherlands. Johann Moriaen and Worsley had almost certainly come to an agreement, either formally or informally, to pursue the ‘metallicke Busynesse’ in their separate countries after Worsley’s return to England, and to pool the results of their experiments. Late 1649, the date of Worsley’s disgruntled return home, was precisely the time of Moriaen’s bitterly lamented financial crash. Moriaen was himself conscious of the linguistic limitations he was confronted with. He promised to explain an operation to Worsley ‘insofar as this can be done in writing, for indeed the greatest part of its explanation lies in method and manual dexterity’.
