When in 1747 Dr Peter Chamberlen wrote in his apologia, ‘A Voice in Rhama', that he was nursed up (as from the Cradle) to all Parts of Physick, and that in Asclepiad-Families, he was not referring simply to his father and uncle, the Peters (Younger and Elder) Chamberlen of obstetric forceps’ fame. They were surgeons and accoucheurs; his mother’s family counted clergymen as well as physicians and apothecaries among their number and the young Peter must indeed have grown up in a family steeped in both medical practice and religious study. Both families were refugees from the religious terrors of sixteenth century France, arriving in England in the second half of the reign of Elizabeth l. Both were to find fortune and royal patronage as they became established in their new lives. One was to found a medical dynasty that lasted through five generations, the other to produce a generation whose varied accomplishments died as the eldest son outlived all his siblings, only one of whose children became an apothecary – and he was to predecease his uncle. This is a brief biography of these two families, bound together by the ties of marriage, profession, faith and nationality.
King H. Chamberlen family (per. c.1600–c.1730). In: Oxford dictionary of national biography. Oxford University Press, 2004. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/printable/5065 (accessed 27 December 2013).
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‘Stranger church' was the English term for independent non-English speaking congregations of Reformed Protestants throughout the country.
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Aveling JH. The Chamberlens and the midwifery forceps. J & A Churchill London, 1872. Reprinted Hugh K Elliott, London, 1967.
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Spicer A DeLaune. William (c.1530–1611). In: Oxford dictionary of national biography. Oxford University Press, 2004.http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7452 (accessed 27 December 2013).
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BirkenW. The dissenting tradition in English medicine of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Medical History1995; 39: 197–218.
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In his Will, William DeLaune left a new house that he had built to his son Paul, the proceeds of the sale of other houses to be divided between all his sons, and an injunction that his son-in-law, Peter Chamberlen the Younger, should repair the entry of the house he was living in to the condition it was in when he first went there before he received any benefit from the Will. Will of William Delaune, Preacher and Physician. Prerogative Court of Canterbury and related Probate Jurisdictions: National Archives Collection: PROB11/117/241. http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=D915044 (accessed 17 July 2013).
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St Ann Blackfriars, Register of marriages 1562–1726, P69/ANN/A/002/MS04509. London Metropolitan Archives.
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St Ann Blackfriars, Register of births 1560–1700, P69/ANN/A/001/MS04508. London Metropolitan Archives.
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Poynter FNL, Gideon DeLaune and his family circle, The Gideon DeLaune lecture for 1964, The Wellcome Historical Medical Library, London 1965.
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St Dionis Backchurch, Composite register: baptisms 1538–1666 and 1668–1736/7, marriages 1538–1666 and 1674–1736, burials 1538–1736/7, P69/DIO/A/001/MS017602. London Metropolitan Archives.
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Her father's Will mentions a daughter born in 1607 as the ‘eldest surviving child' which indicates at least one older child must have died and the marriage must have taken place at least by 1605. Will of Peter Chambrelan, Surgeon of London. National Archives. Collection. Records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. National Archives Collection. PROB 11/149/689. http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=D891282 (accessed 14 November 2013).
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Extracts from the Council Register of the Burgh of Aberdeen. Vol. 2. 1570–1625 printed for the Spalding Club 1886: 374. https://archive.org/details/extractsfromcoun 02spal (accessed 18 November 2013).
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Maitland ThomsonJ. Entry of David Chalmerlaine in Registrum Magni Sigilli Regum Scotorum, The Register of the Great Seal of Scotland 1609–1620, Vol VII, Edinburgh: Scottish Record Society, 1984, pp. 543–544.
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MacInnes AI and Williamson AH. Shaping the Stuart world 1603–1714: the Atlantic connection. Brill Leiden 2006; 72.
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Peter Chamberlen had assisted in checking the surgeon’s chests for the Company on 3 October 1617.
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Anderson PJ (ed.) Fasti Academiae Mariscallanae Aberdonensis: selections from the records of the Marischal College and University. MDXCIII–MDCCCLX. Printed for the New Spalding Club, 1889, pp.182–184. https://archive.org/details/fastiacademiaema01univuoft (accessed 18 November 2013).
Salmon V. Nathaniel Chamberlain and his Tractatus de Literis & Lingua Philisophica (1679). In: Language and society in early modern England: selected essays, 1981–1994, John Benjamins Publishing, Amsterdam, 1996, Chapter 7.
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Chamberlaine, Henry (1657–1665), CCEd Person ID: 5145. The Clergy of the Church of England Database 1540–1835.http://www.theclergydatabase.org.uk (accessed 24 January 2014).
Will of Gideon Delawne of Saint Ann Blackfriars, City of London. Prerogative Court of Canterbury and related Probate Jurisdictions: National Archives Collection: PROB 11/293/271. http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=D802719 (accessed 4 July 2013). The date of Abraham DeLaune and Anne Sondes’ marriage (6 July 1627) is given in the Will, dated for probate on 20 June 1659.
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Shaw WA. The Knights of England; a complete record from the earliest time to the present day of the knights of all the orders of chivalry in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of knights bachelors. London: Sherat and Hughes, 1906, p.239. https://archive.org/details/knightsofengland02shawuoft (accessed April 1 2014) and Hasted E. The history and topographical survey of the county of Kent: Volume 1. Knights of the royal oak. British History Online 229. http://www.britishhistry.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=53766&strquery=DeLaune (accessed 1 April 2014).
These lines, in Latin, are an addition to the elaborate memorial to Ann Huguessen’s first husband, Rudolph Wekerlin in the Huguessen Chapel in Lynsted’s Church of SS Peter and Paul. David Wood. Memorials and Tablets inside Lynsted Church of Saints Peter and Paul. Lynsted with Kingsdown Society. 2006. http://www.lynsted-society.co.uk/Library/Books/Lynsted_Church_memorials_and_tablets.html#NorthAisle (accessed 5 April 2014).
The DeLaunes lived first in Cork and then in Dublin. Henry Delaune’s marriage to Alice Boyle brought them into the family circle of the wealthy and influential family of the Earls of Cork, a connection that stood them in good stead through several generations. Henry’s descendants include the great Irish statesman Henry Grattan (1756–1820) and Captain William DeLaune, leader of General Wolfe’s Forlorn Hope and one of the two officers who accompanied Wolfe’s body on its return to England.
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Smart WRE, Inspector–General of the Royal Navy. On the medical services of the Navy and the Army from the accession of Henry VIII to the Restoration. British Medical Journal 1874. http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC2293861/pdf/brmedj05133-0008.pdf (accessed 17 September 2014). It seems very likely that no earlier such appointments have come to light in the intervening years.
34.
Will of Benjamine Delaune, Merchant but now in the Honourable East India Company's Employment Prerogative Court of Canterbury and related Probate Jurisdictions: National Archives Collection: PROB 11/363/677. http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=D710253 (accessed 21 August 2013). In it, he appoints friends to act as trustees of his goods to ensure that his wife and family benefit from his endeavours in the East Indies. Written in Amoy on 2 September 1679. Probate granted 17 December 1680.
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St Nicholas, Cole Abbey. Parish registers. 1509–1982: P69/NIC2. London Metropolitan Archives. Paul Chamberlen was first married to Mary Disbrowe. His marriage to Mary Barrington was by Special Licence, issued by the Archbishop of Canterbury to Paul Chamberlain, 56, widower, of St Martin in the Fields and Mary Barrington, 26, spinster, of St Anne's, Westminster, ‘in her own disposition, her parents being dead'.
St Mary Magdelen Old Fish Street. Composite register: baptisms, 1664–1717, marriages, 1664–1712 and burials, 1664–1717: P69/MRY10/A/002/MS10221. London Metropolitan Archives. Hugh Chamberlen’s three wives are mentioned on his monument but only Mary Bacon and Mary, Lady Crewe, are named. He married Mary Bacon at Bridewell Chapel, London on 11 May 1696 and Mary, Lady Crewe, at St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe on 19 November 1719. For this last wedding he returned to where the Chamberlens had settled when they first came to London – after the church of St Ann Blackfriars was destroyed in the Great Fire its parish was joined with that of St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe. The London Metropolitan Archives hold the registers of all these churches.
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Elias AC (ed.) Memoirs of Laetitia Van Lewen Pilkington (1709–1750). University of Georgia Press, Athens (Georgia), 1997, p, 219.
40.
Hunting P. A history of the Society of Apothecaries. London: Society of Apothecaries, 1998, pp.29–33 and more.
