William Harvey

by Sir D'Arcy Power

The appointment carried with it a lodging at Whitehall and certain perquisites which are mentioned in the following order extracted by Mr. Peter Cunningham from the Letter Book of the Lord Steward’s office:

“Charles R.

“Whereas we have been graciously pleased to admit Doctor Harvey into the place of Physician in Ordinary to our Royal Person, our will and pleasure is that you give order for the settling a diet of three dishes of meat a meal, with all incidents thereunto belonging, upon him the said Doctor Harvey, and the same to begin from the seventeenth day of July last past and to continue during the time that the said Doctor Harvey shall hold and enjoy the said place of Physician in Ordinary to our Royal Persen, for which this shall be your warrant.

“Given at our Court of Whitehall the sixth of December 1639.

“To our trusty and well beloved Councillors Sir Henry Vane and Sir Thomas Jermyn, Knights, Treasurer and Comptroller of our Household or to either of them.”

In Scotland the religious riots of 1637 had culminated in the destruction of episcopacy and the formation of the Covenant, acts of rebellion which were assisted by Richelieu in revenge for Charles’s opposition to his designs upon Flanders. Preparations were at once made for war. Early in the summer of 1639 the King joined the army under the command of Harvey’s friend the Earl of Arundel, and summoned the peers of England to attend him in his progress towards Scotland. His splendid Court, accompanied by nearly 25,000 troops, marched to Berwick. The Scotch forces, with Leslie as their leader, marched South and encamped on Dunse Law, a hill commanding the North Road. The two armies faced each other for a short time, but the King, finding that his troops sided with the Scotch and that defeat was inevitable, concluded a sudden treaty,—signed on the 18th of June, 1639, and known as the “Pacification of Berwick,”—and returned to London. The pacification was not of long duration, but it led to the summoning of that Parliament whose actions soon showed the more sagacious politicians that a civil war was imminent.

The Estates met in Edinburgh on the 2nd of June, 1640, and ordered every one to sign the Covenant under pain of civil penalties. In so doing they acted in direct defiance of the King, and they refused to adjourn at his order. They sent Commissioners to London, but Charles refused to see them, and the Estates then appealed for help to France. A Scotch army was again mustered. It crossed the Tweed and entered England on the 20th of August, 1640. Newcastle, Durham, Tynemouth, and Shields were occupied, whilst the fortresses of Edinburgh and Dumbarton again fell into the hands of the insurgents, who defeated the King’s troops at Newburn-on-Tyne.

The King travelled to York, where he held a great Council of Peers on the 24th of September, 1640. By the advice of the Council negotiations were opened with the Scots. Eight Commissioners from their army came to Ripon, and a treaty—called the Treaty of Ripon—was entered upon, though it was not signed until nearly a year later. All that the Scots asked was conceded, and they were promised £300,000 to defray the expenses they had incurred. The armies were then disbanded, and for a time peace seemed to be restored. The King again visited Scotland, and a meeting of the Estates was held, whilst in London the Long Parliament met on the 3rd of November, 1640, and chose Lenthall their Speaker.

Harvey must have witnessed all these events, for he was in close personal attendance upon the King during the whole time. He received a warrant by Royal Sign Manual whilst the King was at York, addressed to the Comptroller of the Household and dated the 25th of September, 1640, by which the King gives £200 to Dr. William Harvey for his diet.” This was in lieu of the three dishes of meat, which in those troublous times were not easily to be obtained.

A month or two later Harvey was in London, for on the 24th of November, 1640, he obtained permission from the College of Physicians to sue the heirs of Baron Lumley in the name of the College to recover the salary of the Lumleian lecturer on surgery and anatomy. Leave was given him, but the political disturbances and Harvey’s attendance upon the King appear to have prevented him from carrying out his object. Dr. Munk says that no further mention of this suit occurs in the Annals of the College until the 31st of May, 1647, when “a letter was read from Dr. Harvey desiring the College to grant him a letter of attorney to one Thompson to sue for the anatomical stipend. It was presently generally granted, and shortly afterwards sent him under the general seal.” From a manuscript of Dr. Goodall’s, in the possession of the College, it appears that Harvey expended at least five hundred pounds in various lawsuits on this subject, which was not settled until some time after his death, and then at the expense of Sir Charles Scarborough, his successor in the chair of the Lumleian Lecturer.