APPENDIX 7

Edward III’s Physicians and Surgeons

EDWARD’S HOUSEHOLD ORDINANCES made provision for one physician and one surgeon. Therefore it would appear that the periods when more practitioners were employed are an approximate indication of when more advice or wider medical services were required, and by implication when the king’s state of health was likely to have been poorer. As we cannot rely on payments for ‘medicines’ always being present when the king was ill – many cures took the form of nutrition or bleeding at certain times of the astrological cycle, or surgical acts requiring no extra purchases – it is instructive to know when Edward was employing more than one practitioner of physic and one of surgery. It is also revealing to note that this body of men who had such influence over the king were drawn from a number of European countries: Italy, England, Ireland, Spain and France.

Edward’s first physician, the Italian Pancio de Controne, had been physician to his father before him.¹ He had been present at the coup at Nottingham Castle in 1330 and played a significant money-lending role in funding Edward’s planned campaign at the end of the 1330s. He retired before the end of 1339.² At the same time, the famous physician, John Gaddesden (author of the Rosa Anglica Medicina) was in and around the court, having famously saved one of Edward’s uncles from smallpox during the reign of Edward II. However, although Edward personally provided him to a canonry in St Paul’s, London, at court Gaddesden seems to have served much the same function in Edward III’s reign as he served in his father’s, i.e. attending to the children. He seems to have served as physician to the Black Prince and was summoned in April 1341 to attend Joan, Edward’s second daughter.³ No evidence has yet come to light that he ever served as Edward III’s ‘personal physician’. He died in 1348 or 1349, during the plague.⁴

De Controne’s successor as Edward’s physician was an Englishman, Master Jordan of Canterbury, who was appointed on probation in 1338 and received confirmation that his appointment was for life in November 1340, after the king attested to his ‘expert skill’.⁵Master Jordan was with Edward and his predecessor, de Controne, in the Low Countries in 1338–39,⁶ and remained with Edward almost constantly. He was rewarded for his continual service in 1345 and was present at the siege of Calais in 1346–47.⁷ He continued to be employed in the 1350s and died about 1360.⁸ Master Godfrey de Fromond also appears as the king’s physician between January 1349 and July 1350.⁹ He does not appear after this date, and it may be that he was employed specifically on account of the plague, not necessarily to cure sufferers but to advise people about precautions they might take to avoid catching it. In the 1360s the title of king’s physician seems to have become accorded to several people simultaneously. The Italian John Paladyn was described as such in 1363 and 1367,¹⁰ but before his departure from England shortly after 22 November 1367, the English physician John Glaston was already in royal service. Glaston was first noted as the king’s physician in 1364 and he remained in office until Edward’s death in 1377.¹¹ During those years the king also received the ministrations of Master Peter of Florence in 1368–70 and of John Landreyn, John Bray and of Paul Gabrielis of Spain in late 1376.¹² He was also probably attended by William Waddesworth, who sought out and purchased medicines on his behalf in 1376–77.¹³ As a result, it would appear that several men were described as ‘the king’s physician’ as he progressively required more medical attention, from around 1363–64.

The king’s surgeon similarly seems to have started off as a particular appointment and become diffused as Edward needed more surgical assistance. In the early days his sole surgeon seems to have been Roger Heyton, who died in May 1349, probably of the plague. In June 1341 Edward had reason to use the services of the Irishman William Ouhynnovan.¹⁴ This seems to have been a one-off engagement, however, probably in respect of a particular injury. Heyton may have retired before his death, as the Norman-born William Hamon, prior of Cogges, seems to have been employed on probation as Edward’s surgeon from January 1347 (when he was at Calais), officially being appointed a member of the royal household in October 1349.¹⁵ William Hamon was succeeded in the 1350s by Master Adam le Rous, who is possibly to be identified with the Master Adam of ‘Pulletria’, surgeon.¹⁶ He was in the royal service as a surgeon before May 1357, regularly employed in that capacity, and was still acting as the king’s surgeon in February 1374. ¹⁷ During the duration of Adam le Rous’ service Edward also employed the following surgeons: Richard Wy (who was rewarded for ‘long service’ in 1359), Peter Gymel in 1362, Richard of Ireland in 1368–70, William Holme in 1371–76 and John Gouche, surgeon to Duke Henry of Lancaster.¹⁸ Finally, at the end of his life, the Irishman John [the] Leech attended him, significantly being described not as ‘the king’s surgeon’ but as ‘one of the king’s surgeons’. Others in late 1376 included William Wymondham and William Stodeley, as well as Adam ‘the leech’ (probably Adam le Rous) and William Holme.¹⁹ Therefore it would appear that Edward’s medical needs had prevailed over the household ordinance even before 1360, so that we should probably look to him requiring surgical assistance on and off for much of the last twenty years of his life, and especially from about 1370.