Did James the First of England die from the effects of poison, or from natural causes? / by Norman Chevers.

  • Norman Chevers
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Did James the First of England die from the effects of poison, or from natural causes? / 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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    is beyond the reach of the Duke and his minions ; and he, undoubtedly, gave free circulation to a libel, resembling the “ Fore-runner/’ previous to ] 628. We should have considered it needless to expend^o much time in sifting anything so palpably frivolous as the Eglisham pamphlets, had not that learned advocate George Brodie given undue prominence to them in his “ History of the British Empire,” and had it not appeared that the circumstances of their publication need further enquiry. It is unquestionable that suspicions of unfair play, in the conduct of Buckingham, during the King’s fatal illness, were rather widely spread among the physicians in attendance ; and it is clear that, equally alarmed and offended by the Duke’s most rash and unjustifiable interference in the case of their royal patient, some of these gentlemen possibly incited by Eglisham, smarting under the recent loss of his kind and powerful patron the Marquis of Hamilton, spoke with great freedom. The conduct of Dr. Craig,—although indis- creet and, we believe, unjust towards the Duke,—in ventur- ing to blame the powerful favourite in the very presence of their dying master,—appears to have been most spirited. His consequent arrest and exclusion from the. Court, and the know- ledge that such a fracas as this had taken place, could not fail to spread, among the public and the medical profession, a deeply-rooted conviction that the unpopular Duke had been detected in the commission of a desperate crime. Eglisham asserts that Buckingham was “ infamous for his frequent consultations with the ring-leaders of witches, principally that false Doctor Lambe, publicly condemned for witchcraft.” Elsewhere, he says, “ Likewise a mountebank, about that time, was greatly countenanced by the Duke of Buckingham, and by his means procured letters, patents, and recommendations from the King, to practise his skill in physic through all England ; who, coming to London to sell poison, to kill man or beast within a year, or half a year, or two years, or a month or two, or what time prefixed any man desired ; in such sort that they could not be helped nor discovered.” “ Moreover,” he adds, “ the Christmas before my Lord Marquis’s death, one of the Prince’s footmen said that some of the great ones at Court had gotton poison in their belly, but he could not tell who it was.” The fate of the wretched impostor Lambe will have to be noticed at a later stage of our narrative.