About this time Dr. Freind had been elected member of parliament for Launceston in Cornwall, and acting in his station as a senator with that warmth and freedom which was natural to him, he distinguished himself by some able speeches against measures which he disapproved. He was supposed to have had a hand in Atterbury’s plot, as it was then called, for the restoration of the Stuart family; and having been also one of the speakers in favour of the Bishop, this drew upon him so much resentment that (the Habeas Corpus Act being at that time suspended) he was, on March 15, 1722-3, committed to the Tower. Here he lay a prisoner for some months, and my master did all he could to procure his liberation: during his confinement his practice fell chiefly into the hands of Mead. As soon as permission could be obtained, which was not till he had been some time in prison, we paid a visit to Freind, and entered that building whose low and sombre walls and bastions have frowned on many an innocent and many a guilty head.
When his room door opened, we found him in the act of finishing a Latin letter to my master, “On certain kinds of the Small-pox;” and, as he perceived our approach, he came forward with an expression of great delight in his countenance. “I was writing a letter to you, with the permission of the governor of the Tower; and you are indebted,” he added in a low whisper, “to my companion (looking at the warder, who was in the same chamber with his prisoner) for its brevity: for I don’t find that his presence assists me much in composition.”—During our interview, Freind told Mead that he passed his time not unpleasantly, for that he had begun to write the History of Physic, from the time of Galen to the commencement of the sixteenth century; but that at present he felt the necessity of consulting more books than the circumstances in which he was now placed would give him an opportunity of perusing—“Though I ought not to repine,” said he, “while I have this book (pointing to a Greek Testament, which was lying on the table), the daily and diligent perusal of which solaces my confinement. I have lately been reading the Gospel of St. Luke, and I need not point out to a scholar like yourself, and one who has paid so much attention to what I may call the medical history of the Bible[17], how much nearer the language of St. Luke, who was by profession a physician, comes to the ancient standard of classical Greek than that of the other Evangelists. To be sure it has a mixture of the Syriac phrase, which may be easily allowed in one who was born a Syrian; yet the reading the Greek authors, while he studied medicine, made his language without dispute more exact. His style is sometimes even very flowing and florid—as when, in the Acts of the Apostles, he describes the voyage of St. Paul; and when he has occasion to speak of distempers or the cure of them, you must have observed that he makes use of words more proper for the subject than the others do. It is besides remarkable that St. Luke is more particular in reciting all the miracles of our Saviour in relation to healing than the other Evangelists are; and that he gives us one history which is omitted by the rest, viz. that of raising the widow’s son at Nain.”
My master left the prisoner, with an assurance that he would use all the influence he possessed to procure his liberty: “For,” said he, smiling, “however much your cultivated mind is enabled to amuse itself by reading and writing, I presume you will have no sort of objection to resign your newly-acquired office of Medicus Regius ad Turrim[18].”
From a spirited medallion of Dr. Freind, carved in box-wood. There is a portrait of him in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford, upon which is inscribed the following stanza from the pen of Anthony Alsop:
Cui suas artes, sua dona lætus
Et Lyram, et Venæ salientis ictum
Scire concessit, celerem et medendi
Delius usum.
Very shortly afterwards, the opportunity of effecting this did actually occur; for when Sir Robert Walpole, the minister of the day, sent to consult Mead on account of an indisposition, he availed himself of the occasion to plead the cause of the captive. He urged, that though the warmth and freedom of Freind might have betrayed him into some intemperate observations, yet no one could doubt his patriotic feelings and loyalty; that his public services had been great, for he had attended the Earl of Peterborough in his Spanish expedition as an army physician; and had also accompanied in the same capacity the Duke of Ormond into Flanders; that he deserved well of science, for he had done much to call the attention of the world to the new and sound principles of the Newtonian philosophy; and was besides a man of excellent parts, a thorough scholar, and one whom all acknowledged to be very able in his profession: and, finally, the Doctor refused to prescribe for the Minister unless the prisoner was set at liberty. He was almost immediately relieved from prison, and admitted to bail; his sureties being Dr. Mead, Dr. Hulse, Dr. Levet, and Dr. Hale.