# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Radcliffe, John (1650-1714)

1904 Errata appended. Contains subarticle John Radcliffe (1690–1729)
​RADCLIFFE, JOHN (1650–1714), physician, was born in a house in the market-place at Wakefield in 1650 (Leatham, Lectures, p. 142). His father, George Radcliffe, of strong republican principles, was governor of the Wakefield house of correction from 1647 to 1661, and increased his moderate estate by marrying Sarah, daughter of Mr. Louder (Lupton, Wakefield Worthies, p. 104). There was a large family. John was sent to the Wakefield grammar school, but is alleged to have received part of his education at the Northallerton grammar school, under Thomas Smelt (Kennett's notes in Lansd. MS. 987, f. 221; Ingledew, History of Northallerton, p. 295). At the age of fifteen he was admitted to University College, Oxford, matriculating on 23 March 1665–6. In 1667 he was made senior scholar after obtaining much honour in the logic school (Pittis, Memoirs of Dr. Radcliffe). He graduated B.A. in October 1669, and became fellow of Lincoln College. The degree of M.A. followed in June 1672. Then, turning to medicine, he proceeded M.B. in July 1675, M.D. and grand compounder in July 1682. In his study of medicine, as of other subjects, he succeeded more by his ready wit than by his learning. His medical library, he said, consisted of some phials, a skeleton, and a herbal. On settling in practice in Oxford, he paid little regard to professional conventions, and thus incurred the anger of older practitioners. But his success in coping with an epidemic of smallpox, and his treatment of Sir Thomas Spencer's wife, assured him a prosperous career. In 1677 he resigned his fellowship rather than take orders, and having incurred the displeasure of Dr. Thomas Marshall [q. v.], rector of Lincoln College, he gave up his chambers there.
Radcliffe moved to London in 1684, and settled in Bow Street; and in the following year he obtained a large increase of practice through the death of Dr. Richard Lower of King Street, Covent Garden (Wood, Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iv. 298). His apothecary, Dandridge, who died worth 50,000l., said that Radcliffe had not been in town a year before he made more than twenty guineas a day. Many people, we are told, pretended to be ill in order that they might be entertained by his witty conversation. In 1686 the Princess Anne of Denmark chose Radcliffe for her principal physician, but he was not made a fellow of the College of Physicians until 12 April 1687. In that year he gave an east window for the chapel at University College, Oxford, and in 1688 Dr. Obadiah Walker, the head of the college, corresponded with him in the hope of bringing him over to the Roman catholic faith. Although Radcliffe declined conversion, he felt great respect for Walker, and afterwards gave him a handsome competency, and in 1699 contributed to his funeral expenses (ib. iv. 444; Hearne, Collections, i. 85–6).
The services Radcliffe rendered to the Earl of Portland and the Earl of Rochford caused William III to give him five hundred guineas from the privy purse, and to offer him an appointment as one of his physicians, with 200l. a year more than any other. Radcliffe declined the offer, owing to the calls of his private practice; but for eleven years he cleared on the average over six hundred guineas a year by his attendance on the king. In March 1690 Radcliffe was elected M.P. for Bramber, and he sat for that borough until the dissolution in 1695. He seems to have saved the king's life during a dangerous attack of asthma in 1690, and next year he attended William, duke of Gloucester, the infant son of the Princess Anne, with such good result that Queen Mary ordered the lord chamberlain to present him with one thousand guineas. In 1692 he lost 5,000l. owing to the capture by the French of a ship in which he had ventured the money at the advice of Betterton the actor; but when friends condoled with him he said he had only to go up two hundred and fifty pairs of stairs to make himself whole again. At the suggestion of his friend Dr. Arthur Charlett [q. v.], master of University College, Radcliffe gave large sums to the college in 1692–1694, including 1,100l. towards exhibitions.
Queen Mary was seized with smallpox in December 1694, and, after the disease had well developed, Radcliffe was sent for by the council. As soon as he read the recipes given her he said she was a dead woman, as ​she had received the wrong medicines. She died on the 28th. According to another account (Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, vii. 435–6), Radcliffe mistook the smallpox for measles. Burnet is in error in suggesting that Radcliffe was among those first called in; and he shows his bias by calling the doctor ‘an impious and vicious man, who hated the queen much, but virtue and religion more. He was a professed Jacobite, and by many thought a very bad physician; but others cried him up to the highest degree imaginable.’ It is said that the queen fancied when she was dying that Radcliffe had given her a popish nurse (Ralph, ii. 540).
Radcliffe soon afterwards offended the Princess Anne by neglecting to visit her when sent for, and saying that her distemper was nothing but the vapours; and Dr. Gibbons became her physician in his place. Later in 1695 he attended the Earl of Albemarle, who was suffering from fever in the camp in Belgium, and the king paid him 1,200l. for this service, and offered him a baronetcy, which was declined. By 1695 he was in friendly intercourse with Arbuthnot, and in 1697 Aldrich, the dean of Christ Church, was staying at his house (Aitken, Life of Arbuthnot, pp. 13, 15, 17). In 1697 Radcliffe relieved the king in a serious illness, and in 1699 he was again called in to see the young Duke of Gloucester; but he at once said the prince would die next day, and expressed contempt of the doctors who had been in attendance. The king was ill again at the end of this year, when Radcliffe, after seeing William's swollen ankles, said he would not have the king's two legs for his three kingdoms. This gave such offence that William never saw him again, though he used the doctor's diet-drinks. When Anne came to the throne Godolphin made vain efforts to reinstate the doctor in her favour. He was, however, often consulted privately by the queen's physicians.
Radcliffe was mentioned only incidentally, but respectfully, in Codrington's verses prefixed to Garth's ‘Dispensary,’ 1699, and in the ‘Dispensary Transversed,’ 1701 (cf. Addit. MS. 29568, ff. 27–30). In March 1703 Radcliffe was dangerously ill, and made a will; but he unexpectedly recovered, and was said to become very devout. In 1704, under an assumed name, he settled 50l. a year for ever upon the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts; and he gave 500l., with a request that it might be kept secret, to Dr. William Lloyd, nonjuring bishop of Norwich, for distribution among fifty poor clergy. In 1705 he was called in to see Pope, then a lad of seventeen, and the adoption of his advice to study less and ride more restored his patient's health (Spence, Anecdotes, 1856, p. 6). In the same year he bought an estate near Buckingham with a view to settling it upon University College; but for various reasons the transfer was delayed. According to a scurrilous pamphlet, ‘A Letter from a Citizen of Bath to his Excellency Dr. R——at Tunbridge,’ 1705, Radcliffe had vilified the Bath waters, and was once more patronising Tunbridge Wells, though he had lately taken a freeman's oath to do all the good he could for Bath. This fickleness was attributed to his base birth and brutish temper. In 1706 Radcliffe assisted James Drake [q. v.], who was accused of writing against the government in his ‘Memorial of the Church of England,’ and he subscribed liberally towards improvements at Oxford. By 1707 he was worth 80,000l., and, besides lending money to Arthur Mainwaring or Maynwaring [q. v.], he contributed, though not in his own name, to the relief of the episcopal clergy in Scotland. He declined to become a governor of Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospitals on the ground that his duties as a governor of St. Bartholomew's Hospital occupied all his available time. In 1708 Radcliffe bought, besides property in Northamptonshire and Yorkshire, the perpetual advowson of Headbourne-Worthy, Hampshire, which he bestowed on Dr. Joseph Bingham [q. v.], fellow of University College.
Prince George of Denmark became dangerously ill in October 1708, and the queen sent for Radcliffe; but the dropsy had reached such a stage that the doctor could hold out no hope, and the prince died in six days. In 1709 Radcliffe, after passing for years as a misogynist—the result of a disappointment in 1693—fell in love with a patient, one Miss Tempest. Steele ridiculed him in the ‘Tatler’ for 21 and 28 July, and 13 Sept., under the name of ‘Æsculapius,’ for setting up a new coach and liveries in order to please the lady. Some said that Radcliffe was in love with the Duchess of Bolton (Wentworth Papers, p. 97) [see under Paulet or Powlett, second Duke of Bolton]; in any case he did not marry. In 1710, after a serious illness, he thought of retiring, but was persuaded to continue his practice by Dr. Sharp, archbishop of York, whose life he was soon afterwards the means of saving. He aided Sacheverell, and was invited to be a member of parliament for Buckingham, an offer which he declined for the time. In 1711 he was much depressed by the death of ​his bottle-companion, Lord Craven, whom he had saved from death some months earlier. By February 1711 Radcliffe was treating Swift for his dizziness; and on 26 March Swift complained that Harley's wound was neglected because ‘that puppy’ Radcliffe would admit none but his own surgeon (Journal to Stella, 10 April 1711).
Radcliffe was chosen M.P. for Buckingham on 25 Aug. 1713; two short speeches have survived, one in favour of the Malt-tax bill, and the other on behalf of the bill to prevent the growth of schism. About this time he began to recommend Dr. Mead, then a rising physician, to many of his patients. A kinsman, Richard Fiddes [q. v.], was, at Radcliffe's request, given the degree of B.D. of Oxford, for the university was looking forward to a generous benefaction from the doctor (Letters written by Eminent Persons in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, i. 261, Thomas Carte to Dr. Charlett, 8 Oct. 1713). Next year, when the Duke of Beaufort died, Radcliffe said he had lost the only person in whose conversation he took pleasure. Arbuthnot, who had already introduced Radcliffe into the ‘History of John Bull,’ 1712, proposed now to give him a place in the ‘Memoirs of Scriblerus.’ Radcliffe was to be painted at the corner of a map of diseases, ‘contending for the universal empire of this world, and the rest of the physicians opposing his ambitious designs with a project of a treaty of partition to settle peace’ (Arbuthnot to Swift, 26 June 1714).
Queen Anne was attacked by her fatal illness in July 1714. Charles Ford told Swift on 31 July that at noon on the previous day Radcliffe had been sent for ‘by order of council,’ but that he said he had taken physic and could not come. According to a letter in the ‘Wentworth Papers,’ it was reported that Radcliffe's answer was that to-morrow (31 July) would be time enough to wait on her majesty. According to Pittis, he was not sent for by either the queen or the privy council; but Lady Masham sent to him privately two hours before the queen's death, after Radcliffe had learnt from Mead that the case was hopeless. He was then at Carshalton, Surrey, suffering from a severe attack of gout, and he sent word that, in view of the queen's antipathy to him, he feared his presence would do her harm rather than good, and that, as the case was desperate, it would be best to let her majesty die as easily as possible. But if a letter given by Pittis is genuine, he also said he would have come, ill as he was, had he been sent for by the proper authorities. According to another letter, his life was afterwards threatened by several persons who were angry at his conduct. On 5 Aug. Radcliffe's old friend, Sir John Pakington (1671–1727) [q. v.], moved that the doctor should be summoned to attend in his place to be censured for not waiting upon the queen when sent for by the Duke of Ormonde, but the matter dropped (Boyer, Political State, viii. 152).
Radcliffe died on 1 Nov. 1714, after a fit of apoplexy. On 15 Oct. he wrote to the Earl of Denbigh that he should not live a fortnight, and that his life had been shortened by the attacks made upon him after the queen's death. He begged Lord Denbigh to avoid intemperance, which he feared he had encouraged by his example. His body lay in state at Carshalton until the 27th, and was then removed to Oxford, where it was buried on 3 Dec. in St. Mary's Church. By his will, dated 13 Sept. 1714, Radcliffe left most of his property to the university, and there was an imposing public funeral. The handsome annuities to his sisters and other relatives show that Peter Wentworth's charge—‘he had died like an ill-natured brute as he has lived; he left none of his poor relations anything’—is groundless (Wentworth Papers, p. 434). Property was left to University College in trust for the foundation of two medical travelling fellowships, for the purchase of perpetual advowsons for members of the college, for enlargement of the college buildings, and for a library. Other estates were left to his executors in trust for charitable purposes, as they might think best, and from these funds the Radcliffe Infirmary and Observatory were built and Bartholomew's Hospital enlarged; and since then money has been granted towards the building of the College of Physicians in London, the Oxford Lunatic Asylum, and St. John's Church, Wakefield. The Radcliffe Library was completed in 1747. Radcliffe's will was disputed by his heir-at-law, and the question was long before the court of chancery (Sisson, Historic Sketch of the Parish Church, Wakefield, 1824, p. 99).
It is difficult, as Munk remarks, to form a correct estimate of Radcliffe's skill as a physician. He was certainly no scholar, but he was ‘an acute observer of symptoms, and in many cases was peculiarly happy in the treatment of disease.’ He was often at war with other doctors and with the authorities of the College of Physicians. He was generally regarded as a clever empiric who had attained some skill by means of his enormous practice; but Mead said ‘he was deservedly at the head of his profession, on account of his great medical penetration and experience.’ ​Defoe speaks in ‘Duncan Campbell’ of ‘all the most eminent physicians of the age, even up to the great Dr. Radcliffe himself.’ Rough in his manners, and fond of flattery, he was generous to those in need, a good friend, and a magnificent patron of learning. Bernard Mandeville attacked him in the ‘Essay on Charity Schools’ subjoined to his ‘Fable of the Bees.’
A portrait of Radcliffe, painted by Kneller in 1710, is in the Radcliffe Library, and there are statues in the library and in one of the courts of University College. Another portrait was at Sir Andrew Fountaine's at Narford. An engraving from Kneller's painting, by Vertue, was published in 1719, and engravings by M. Burghers are prefixed to ‘Exequiæ clarissimo viro Johanni Radcliffe, M.D., ab Oxoniensi Academia solutæ,’ 1715, and ‘Bibliotheca Radcliffiana, or a Short Description of the Radcliffe Library,’ by James Gibbs, architect, 1747. A portrait engraved by M. Vandergucht is given in ‘Dr. Radcliffe's Practical Dispensatory,’ by Edward Strother, M.D., 1721. A gold-headed cane, said to have been Radcliffe's, was given by Mrs. Baillie to the College of Physicians.
John Radcliffe, M.D. (1690–1729), seems to have been no relative of his namesake. He was son of John Radcliffe of London, gentleman, was born on 10 May 1690, and was admitted to Merchant Taylors' School in 1703. He matriculated at St. John's College, Oxford, on 17 Oct. 1707, and became B.A. on 2 June 1711, M.A. on 23 April 1714, and M.D. on 30 June 1721. On 25 June 1724 he was chosen a fellow of the College of Physicians; and he was physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He died on 16 Aug. 1729 (Munk, Coll. of Phys. ii. 86; Foster, Alumni Oxon.)
G. A. A.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.229 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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