Abstract
This paper provides a biographical outline of the career of Thomas Secker, MD, who from 1758-68 was Archbishop of Canterbury. Although much has been written on Secker, this study seeks to highlight his training in medicine, which has been largely overlooked hitherto by historians.
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References
1.Walpole H. Memoirs and portraits , ed. Matthew H (London, rev.ed, 1963) p. 6. Walpole’s Memoirs of the last ten years of the reign of George the Second, from which Hodgart’s edition derives, were not published, edited by Lord Holland, until 1822, long after Secker’s death .
2.For his scathing attack on Newcastle, see Memoirs, pp. 18–20 .
3.See, for example, Downey J. The Eighteenth Century Pulpit (Oxford, 1969) pp.89–114; Barnard L. Thomas Secker. An Eighteenth Century Primate (Lewes, 1998); Robert GI. Religion, Reform and Modernity in the Eighteenth Century. Thomas Secker and the Church of England (Woodbridge, 2007); Jenkins AP (ed) The correspondence of Bishop Secker, Bishop of Oxford 1737–1758 (The Oxfordshire Record Society, Vol. 57, 1991); Elizabeth Ralph (ed). Bishop Secker’s Diocese Book (Bristol Record Society, Vol. XXXVII, A Bristol Miscellany, ed. Patrick McGrath, 1985); Jeremy Gregory (ed). The Speculum of Archbishop Thomas Secker (The Church of England Record Society, 2, 1995); Ingram RG. Nation, empire and church. Thomas Secker, Anglican Identity and public life in Georgian Britain, 1700–1770, ((Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Virginia, 2002); Griffiths HV Thomas Secker, LLD, MD, 1693–1768, as a Pastoral Theologian (Unpublished MPhil thesis, University of Wales, Lampeter, 2007) .
4.One exception is Burnby J. The early years of an Archbishop. The Derbyshire Archaeological Journal 1992; CXII: 62–68 .
5.For his family tree, see Burnby, art.cit., p. 68 .
6.The younger brother, George (b.1696) became a grocer in Coventry, His son and namesake (b.1724) was ordained, and became a Canon of St Paul’s. He died in the same year as his uncle .
7.Porteus B. A Memoir of the life and character of Thomas Secker, late Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, prefixed to his ‘Works’Vol.1 new ed., London, 1811). The Works were first published in 1775 .
8.Lambeth Palace Library (hereafter LPL) MS. 1729. Published as The Autobiography of Thomas Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury. (Macauley JS and Greaves RW (eds). Lawrence:, University of Kansas Libraries, 1988, p.49 .
9.Escott H. Isaac Watts, Hymnographer. London: Independent Press, Ltd., 1962 .
10.Hall G. The History of Chesterfield (2nd ed. 1839) says that Secker, in fact, served as a temporary minister at the chapel in Bolsover. p.119. This would have been either in the summer of 1714 or the spring of 1715, as in the intervening winter he was in Nottingham .
11.Cope Z. William Cheselden 1688–1752 . London: E & S Livingstone, 1953 .
12.A syllabus or index of the anatomical parts of the human body in thirty-four lectures for use in the anatomical theatre . London, 1711
13.Horace Walpole dates this agnostic period in Secker’s life rather later; improbably to his brief, three-month residence in Leiden. Walpole maintained that Secker had been ‘President of a very free-thinking club’ there, and described him as an ‘atheist’. Walpole, Memoirs , p.5 n.1. Either Walpole is mistaken, or Secker’s period of doubt extended over several years – for most of the period of his medical studies .
14.Burnby, art.cit., p.65 .
15.‘Archbishop Thomas Secker and “The Duties of the Sick”’, Actes due XXXII Congres International d’Histoire de la Medecine (Antwerp, 1991) pp.139–144 .
16.Gelfand T. The “Paris Manner” of dissection; student anatomical dissection in early eighteenth century Paris. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 1972; 45: 99–130 .
17.Maar V. L’autobiographie de J B Winslow (Paris, 1912); Snorrason E. L’Anatomiste J-B Winslow, 1669-1760 (Copenhagen, 1969) .
18.LPL MS.1729 fol.190 .
19.Guillain G and Mathieu P. La Salpetriere . Paris, 1925 .
20.Coury C. L’Hotel Dieu de Paris . Paris, 1969 .
21.John McManners. Death and the enlightenment. Changing attitudes to death in eighteenth-century France . Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985, pp.31, 33 .
22.Ricci JV. The development of gynaecological surgery and instruments .Philadelphia: The Blakiston Company, 1949, p.183 .
23.I am grateful to Dr Roger Rolls of Bath for this information .
24.LPL MS.1729 fol.11. The letter is both wrongly dated and ascribed .
25.Augusta Frederica was born at St James’s Palace on 31 July 1737 .
26.Lindeboom GA. Herman Boerhaave: the man and his work . Methuen: London, 1968 .
27.De Medicina Statica. Archbishop Thomas Secker, A Forgotten English Iatromechanist. Histoire des Sciences Medicales 1982; XVII: 134–137 .
28.I am grateful to Mrs Judith Phillips of Sheffield for providing me with this .
29.De Perspiratione insensibili (Leiden, 1736). The work is dedicated to Boerhaave
30.Also published in Leiden. Secker shows himself to have been familiar with the literature, citing Marcello Malpighi, and his own contempories James Keill, Martin Lister and Frederic Ruysch, among others .
31.Haller, op.cit., p.600 .
32.See my ‘Archbishop Secker as a Physician’. Studies in Church History 1982; 19: 127–135, at p.135. LPL MS.1729, fol.13 .
33.A medicine which, seemingly, was so distasteful that Butler gave it up! .
34.The letters are reproduced in Bartlett T. Memoirs of the life, character and writings of Joseph Butler, DCL, late Lord Bishop of Durham (London, 1839) pp.202–219. However, a previous owner of my copy of this work had clearly compared what is printed by Bartlett with the originals, and found many passages omitted without indication. These he had incorporated into the text in pencil. Some thirty years ago I conducted a ‘historical case-conference’ with members of the Bath Medical History Group, based on Forster and Benson’s letters, in an attempt to reach a ‘retrospective diagnosis’ of the cause of Butler’s death. It was almost certainly the result of irreversible liver failure, as the findings of the post-mortem indicated. Given Butler’s frugal diet and ascetic life-style, acknowledged by his biographers, cirrhosis or hepatitis are contra-indicated; the most likely diagnosis is abdominal tuberculosis, the symptoms of which were beginning to manifest themselves about a year before his death. Spooner WA. Bishop Butler (London, 1901) p.43. See also Baker AE. Bishop Butler (London, 1923) p. 34, and Mossner EC. Bishop Butler and the age of reason (Bristol, repr.1990) pp. 9–12 .
35.Warnock G J. Berkeley (Oxford, repr.1982) p. 224 .
36.See for example his Sermon…before…the Lord-Mayor, the Court of Aldermen, the Sheriffs, and the Governors of the several Hospitals of the City of London . (London, 1738) .
37.See his Sermon before the Governors of the hospital for the smallpox, and for inoculation. (London, 1752) .
38.Sermon before the Governors of the London Hospital…St Lawrence Jewry, 20 February, 1754. Preached on the text of Romans 12: 8, ‘He that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness’. The sermon embraces the context of these words, from chapter 12, which concerns the nature of the Christian life and calling
39.The diagnosis is clear from the evidence of the post-mortem examination .
40.His internal organs were buried in an urn in the adjoining churchyard of St Mary-at-Lambeth; proof, if any was needed, that, as befitted a physician, the body of Secker was subject to post-mortem examination .
41.Underwood EA. Boerhaave’s men at Leyden and after. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1977, p.43 .