An enquiry into the circumstances of the death of King Charles the Second, of England / by Norman Chevers.

  • Norman Chevers
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An enquiry into the circumstances of the death of King Charles the Second, of England / by Norman Chevers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    “ Interim et ceeteri Medici, per celerrimos nuncios advocati, in Regis subsidium convolarunt,* liabitoque inter se consilio, omnem navanmt^operam, ut periclitanti Majestati suppetias ferrent prsestantaneas. Burnet's account is as follows :—“ In the morning, one Dr. King, a physician and a chymist, came, as he had been ordered, to wait on him. All the King's discourse to him was so broken that he could not understand what he meant, and the doctor concluded he was under some great disorder either in his mind or in his body. The doctor, amazed at this, went out, and meeting with Lord Peterborough, he said the King was in a strange humour, for he did not speak one word of sense. Lord Peterborough desired he would go in again to the bed-chamber, which he did. And he was scarce come in, when the King, who seemed all the while to be in great confusion, fell down all of a sudden in a fit like an apoplexy: he looked black, and his eyes turned in his head The physician, who* had been, formerly, an eminent surgeon, said it was impossible to save the King's life, if one minute was lost: he would rather venture on the rigour of the law, than leave the King to perish. And so he let him blood. The King came out of that fit: and the physicians approved what Dr. King had done : upon which the privy council or- dered him a thousand pound, which yet was never paid him. Lord Bruce, afterwards Earl of Aylesbury, in a letter to Mr. Leigh, of Adelstrop, says—“ My good King and master fall- ing upon me in his fit, I ordered him to be blooded, and then I went to fetch the Duke of York. Wei wood, urging the opinion that the King was poisoned, tells us,—“ That morning there appeared to everybody about him a ghastliness and paleness in his looks : and, when he sat down to be shaved, just before the fit took him, he could not sit straight, as he used to do, but continued in a stooping posture * Lord Macaulay says, (quoting Dugdale’s correspondence,) that so high did political animosities run, that the presence of some Whig phy- sicians was regarded as an extraordinary circumstance. Dr. Lingard refers to “ a very interesting Letter by Mr.” (Dr. P) “ Fraser, one of the Medical Attendants, to Sir Robert Southwell, in the London Monthly Miscellany p. 383.” I have been much disappointed in not being able to get a sight of this. Fraser says that there were five bishops and twenty five lords and privy councillors in the King’s room. He adds that, every night, “ there sate in the room by him four doctors, four lords of the coun- cil, three lords of the bed-chamber, three grooms of the bed-chamber, one apothecary and one surgeon, besides several inferior servants.”
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