William Harvey

by Sir D'Arcy Power

CHAPTER VII
Harvey’s Death, Burial, and Eulogy

Harvey died at Roehampton in the house of his brother Eliab on the 3rd of June, 1657. Aubrey says that on the morning of his death, about ten o’clock, he went to speak and found that he had the dead palsy in his tongue; then he saw what was to become of him. He knew there were then no hopes of his recovery, so presently he sends for his young nephews to come up to him, to whom he gives one the minute watch with which he had made his experiments, to another his signet ring, and to another some other remembrance. He then made signs (for being seized with the dead palsy in his tongue he could not speak) to Sambroke, his apothecary in Blackfriars, to let him blood in the tongue, which did him little or no good, and so ended his days, dying in the evening of the day on which he was stricken, the palsy giving him an easy passport.

It would appear from this account that Harvey died of a cerebral hemorrhage from vessels long injured by gout and situated rather at the base or internal parts of the brain than in the frontal lobes. Most probably the left Sylvian artery gave way, leading at first to a slight extravasation of blood, which rapidly increased in quantity until it overwhelmed his brain. The copy of the death mask in the church at Hempstead shows the left eye more widely open than the right, whilst the furrows on the right side of the face are much more marked than those on the left side.

The body was brought to London, where it seems to have been placed in Cockaine House, which also belonged to Eliab Harvey, and in that room of the house which became afterwards the office of Elias Ashmole, the antiquary to whom Oxford owes the Ashmolean Museum. Here it rested many days because, though Harvey died on the 3rd of June, it was not until the 25th of June that the Fellows of the College of Physicians received a notice requesting them, clothed in their gowns, to attend the funeral on the following day. In the meantime, Eliab, as his brother’s executor, had decided that Harvey should be buried at Hempstead in Essex, and accordingly, on the 26th of June, 1657, the funeral procession started from London. It was followed far beyond the City walls by a large number of the Fellows of the College of Physicians, many of whom must afterwards have hurried back to Westminster Hall, where, on the same day, with the greatest ceremony and with all the pomp of circumstance, Cromwell was a second time inaugurated after the humble petition and advice had given him the power of nominating his successors and of forming a second House of Parliament, whilst it assigned to him a perpetual revenue.

There is no record of the time when the funeral party reached Hempstead, nor where it stopped on the way. The village is situated about fifty miles from London and seven miles east of Saffron Walden, so that one, if not two, nights must have been spent upon the journey. Here, about 1655, Eliab Harvey had built “the Harvey Chapel,” a plain, rectangular building of brick with a high-pitched tile roof, on the north side of the church, adjoining and communicating with the chancel and lighted by three large windows. He had also built the outer vault beneath it as a place of sepulture for his family, and when this became full in 1766, one of his descendants, also an Eliab Harvey, but of Claybury, built the inner vault. Twice before had Eliab made a similar journey. Once in 1655, after the death of his daughter Sarah, a girl of twelve, and again in 1656, at the funeral of Elizabeth, another daughter aged nine. Harvey was laid in the outer chapel, between the bodies of his two nieces, and like them he was “lapt in lead,” coffinless, and upon his breast was placed in great letters—

DOCTOR
WILLIAM + HARVEY +
DECEASED + THE + 3 +
OF + JUNE + 1657 +
AGED + 79 + YEARS.

“I was at the funeral,” says Aubrey, “and helped to carry him into the vault.” The simple wrapping of the body in lead seems to have been a custom peculiar to the Harvey family. The leaden case used for William Harvey was roughly shaped to the form of the body, the head part having the rude outline of a face with mouth, nose, and eyes; the neck wide and the shoulders expanded. The breastplate was broad and the inscription upon it was in raised letters. The body of the case was long and tapering towards the feet, where the lead was turned up at a right angle. The measurements of the case show that it afforded no data as to Harvey’s size, for though he was a man “of the lowest stature,” its extreme length from the crown of the head to the toes was no less than six feet and a quarter.

When the late Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson first entered the vault in 1847, the remains of Harvey had not been visited within the memory of man, though the villagers knew by tradition that “Dr. Harvey was a very great man, who had made, they were told, some great discovery, though they did not know what it was.” At that time the vault was practically open to the public, for the window in it at the eastern end was uncased and badly barred. The leaden shell containing Harvey’s remains lay upon the floor just beneath the window and with the feet directed towards it. It was therefore exposed to the drift of rain when it beat into the vault with an east wind, and the sarcophagus was so unprotected that boys could throw stones upon it, and did so. The lead in the upper third of its length from the feet was almost torn through on its upper surface, though the rent was only a small one. The leaden case, too, was beginning to bend in over the middle of the body like a large scoop or spoon, in which water could accumulate.

Some repairs were made in the vault after it had been visited and its condition had been reported upon by Dr. Stewart and (Sir) Richard Quain in 1868, but the leaden case still remained upon the floor and the opening had become so large that a frog jumped out of it on one occasion as soon as it was touched. Ten years later Sir Benjamin Richardson made a further examination of the case and reported that the centre of the shell, extending from the middle of the trunk to the feet had so far collapsed that the upper surface all but touched the lower one, whilst the crack in the lead was now so large that it measured fully six inches in length. But owing to the greater collapse of the lead the fissure was not so wide as it was in 1868; indeed, the edges had now closed, leaving only a space of half an inch at the widest part.