William Humfrey

William Humfrey (also Humphrey or Humphreys) (c.1515–1579) was an English goldsmith, mining promoter, and Assay Master at the Royal Mint during the reign of Elizabeth I.

Little is known of Humfrey's life before 1560, when he is recorded as a member of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths in London, and as a resident of the parish of St Vedast. He obtained the patronage of Sir William Cecil, later Lord Burghley, who 'considered him an expert on metallurgical matters', and provided him with both financial and political backing.

Humfrey was appointed Assay Master at the Royal Mint in 1561. German technologists had recently been brought to England to assist with the recoinage of the debased English currency, and through these contacts both Humfrey and Cecil became convinced that German metallurgical techniques could be used in the development of the English mining industry. In particular, Humfrey needed someone knowledgeable about calamine ore, essential to the production of latten and brass, and in 1563 he paid the way to England of a metallurgist from Saxony, Christopher Schutz. In 1564 Schutz, aided by twenty German-speaking workers, built England's first blast furnace at Tintern. In a letter of 16 August 1565 to Sir William Cecil, Humfrey stated that Schutz was 'bound in £10,000 to communicate his art in working metals', and requested that he and Schutz be granted a joint patent. In September 1565 Humfrey and Schutz were granted licences to prospect for calamine in England and in The Pale in Ireland, and to mine and process the ore, being joined in some of their licences with Thomas Smythe, William Williams and Humfrey Cole. Only a few months later, in early 1566, they found calamine in the Mendip Hills in Somerset, and Daniel Hoechstetter designed a refining process by which it could be used in Schutz' furnace at Tintern. According to Hulme, 'the first true brass' produced in England by this new refining process was exhibited in 1568.

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