“This day Dr. Harvey Physician to this hospital declares to this court that he is commanded by the Kings most excellent majesty to attend the illustrious Prince the now Duke of Lenox in his travels beyond the seas and therefore desireth this court would allow of [Edmund] Smith, Doctor in Physic for his deputy in performance of the office of physician for the poor of this hospital during his absence. It is thought fit that the Governors of this Hospital shall have further knowledge & satisfaction of the sufficiency of the said Mr. Smith. Then they to make their choice either of him or of some other whom they shall think meet for the execution of the same place during the absence of the said Dr. Harvey.”
Leave of absence having been thus granted by the College of Physicians and St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, Harvey had only to get a substitute for his Court appointment. An undated letter written from abroad by Harvey to Mr. Secretary Dorchester, says: “Before I went I entreated and appointed Dr. Chambers and Dr. Bethune [physicians in ordinary to the King] and one Dr. Smith of London, one of them at all occasions to perform the duty for me; and I acquainted the household therewith [though] it is not usual [to do so] for serjeant [surgeon] Primrose was away above a year (and he is surgeon of the household) and yet none were put in his place to wait whilst he was in Germany with my Lord Marquis. Sir Theodore Mayerne [too] in Switzerland in King James his time was away very long and none put in his place.” The letter was written upon an unfounded report which had reached Harvey in his absence that Dr. Adam Moesler “hath gotten to be appointed to wait in my place for the household.”
Dr. Aveling’s care has traced the course of the travellers on this journey. Sir Henry Mervyn writes to Nicholas (clerk of the Council) under the date of the 28th of July, 1630, “of having put over my Lord Duke [Lennox] for the coast of France.” The journey was therefore begun at this date, but the Duke and his retinue seem to have stayed for a time in the towns upon the French coast, for on the 2nd of August Sir Henry Mervyn writes that he is going to attend the Duke of Lennox, and purposes to be in the Downs, &c.; and again on the 10th of August he says he has landed the Duke of Lennox at Dieppe. On the 23rd of September of the same year Edward Dacres writes to Secretary Dorchester that the Duke of Lennox is now settled in Paris for the winter; and again on the 22nd of November, saying that the Duke is willing to stay in Paris, and that “in the spring he intends the tour de France, and in the end of the summer to go into Italy, unless the continuance of the wars or the plague hinder him.”
Dacres writes again, on the 5th of April, 1631, that the Duke is still in Paris but he thinks of going out of town for a few days. Harvey, however, was in London on the 8th of October and on the 22nd of December, 1630, so that he probably joined the Duke in Paris in the spring or early summer of 1631. Nothing is known of the movements of the party after April, until Dacres writes again to Dorchester in August, 1631, saying: “Blois proved a place not long to be endured by my Lord because of the plague which grew hot there, as Tours likewise, where we made little stay, so that we came down to Saumurs there to pass the dog days from whence we are now parting they being at an end. My Lord hath continually been in good health and intends now to follow your Lordship’s directions this winter for Spain whither we are now bending our course (viâ Bordeaux) where we shall be before the latter end of September.”
It is probably of this part of his journey that Harvey writes to Viscount Dorchester, “the miseries of the countries we have passed and the hopes of our good success and such news your Honour hath from better hands. I can only complain that by the way we could scarce see a dog, crow, kite, raven or any other bird, or any thing to anatomise, only some few miserable people, the relics of the war and the plague where famine had made anatomies before I came. It is scarce credible in so rich, populous, and plentiful countries as these were that so much misery and desolation, poverty and famine should in so short a time be, as we have seen. I interprete it well that it will be a great motive for all here to have and procure assurance of settled peace. It is time to leave fighting when there is nothing to eat, nothing to be kept, and nothing to be gotten.” The forecast was correct. The Mantuan war was soon afterwards brought to a close by the mediation of Pope Urban VIII. It was one of the minor struggles in which Richelieu’s attempts to consolidate the power of his master were counteracted by the combined efforts of Spain and the Empire, for in the end Charles of Nevers was left to enjoy his Duchy of Mantua. The plague, too, was especially virulent in Northern Italy about this time. It was reckoned that above a million died of it in the territories which Lennox and his retinue would have traversed to reach Venice; and 33,000 are said to have died in Verona alone. It was partly for this reason and partly, perhaps, from political motives, that the travellers turned off into Spain instead of visiting Italy, as had been intended. In February, 1632, Sir Thomas Edmonde, writing to Sir Harry Vane, says: “the Duke of Lenox has been made a Grand in Spain;” and it was about this time that the party returned homewards.
Harvey was certainly in England on the 26th of March, 1632, for on that day he drew up a set of rules for the Library of the College of Physicians, towards a site for which he had subscribed £100 on the 22nd of December, 1630. The necessity for a new set of rules to govern the use of the Library seems to have been due to an important bequest of 680 volumes presented by Dr. Holsbosch, a graduate in medicine, and a German who had practised surgery and physic in England for fifty years, though he had not attached himself to the College. The new regulations laid down that the key of the room was to remain in the keeping of the President, whilst the key of the book-cases was kept by the Senior Censor. The Library was to be open on all College days to the Fellows, Candidates, and Licentiates; but no book was to be taken away from the College without leave from the President and Censor and the deposit of a “sufficient caution” for its value. Harvey was also present at a meeting of the College of Physicians on the last day of May, 1632, when he signed a petition to the King, praying him to limit the sale of certain poisons unless the purchaser was willing to give his name.
There is no record of the exact date at which Harvey was made Physician in Ordinary to the King Charles I., though the time is fixed approximately by the following extract from the minutes at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital:—
“Monday 25 April 1631 at a Court [of Governors]
held in the Mansion house in the presence of
Sir Robert Ducy Lord Mayor, President.