a foreign country, as well as some families who were ennobled in Sweden but for some reason never introduced at the Swedish House of Nobility. Anthoni Grill (I) Anthonie Grill (1607–1675) was born in Augsburg as the son of goldsmith Balthasar Grill (1568–1614) and Rosina Schweigler. The city was a centre of European silversmithery. During the Thirty Years' War, the Lutheran city was occupied by a Bavarian army but recaptured by the Swedish army in April 1632. At some point, Anthoni and his brother Andries moved to Amsterdam. The two silversmiths both got married in January 1634, and Andries for the second time in February 1640, who had then settled in The Hague. Their younger brother Johannes (I), a journeyman, got married in September 1645. In December 1635, Anthoni promised his business partner to reveal a secret about smelting silver, which is generally found in a combined state in nature, usually with copper or lead. In 1637 and 1642 he took on and lodged two apprentices. In 1638 he became a burgher of Amsterdam. In March 1651 Anthoni bought a property for 12,000 guilders between Looiersgracht and Passeerdersstraat. There Anthoni set up a number of laboratories or furnaces, testing fresh and recycled metals to ascertain their purity for jewellery and coin making. In 1653, Anthoni, somehow connected to or observed by members of the Hartlib Circle, cooperated in an alchemist project with his brother Andries. According to Johann Friedrich Schweitzer they used a hydrochloric acid. It is possible that a son of Michiel le Blon, a goldsmith, art dealer and agent for Christina, Queen of Sweden, informed the Swedish Board of Mines about Grill's experiments to extract precious metals from ore through the use of what Grill called a "secret matter". On 28 May 1658, this earned him the position of riksguardie, working for the Münzmeister at the Swedish Mint. He also got a 30-years patent on his "secret" extraction methods. Anthoni moved to Stockholm after 10 June 1659. His silver smelting lab was rented out by Cornelis le Blon to the chemical engineer Johann Rudolf Glauber, until it was sold for 20,880 guilders on a foreclosure auction in January 1661. Grill continued his smelting experiments with cupellation of noble metals in Sweden. With three companions he was allowed to conduct experiments with copper and lead from the Lövåsens silvermine in Stora Skedvi. However, his methods were never successful and