Thomas Linacre - Life

Life

He was born at Brampton, Chesterfield, in Derbyshire, descended from an ancient family recorded in the Domesday Book. He received his early education at the Canterbury Cathedral school, under the direction of William Tilly of Selling, who became prior of Canterbury in 1472. It was from Selling that Linacre must have received his first incentive to the study of Classics. Linacre entered Oxford in about 1480, and in 1484 was elected a fellow of All Souls College. Shortly afterwards he visited Italy in the train of Selling, who was sent by King Henry VII as an envoy to the papal court. Linacre accompanied his patron as far as Bologna. There he became the pupil of Angelo Poliziano, and shared the instruction which Poliziano imparted at Florence to the sons of Lorenzo de Medici. The younger of these princes became Pope Leo X, and later remembered his old companionship with Linacre. Among his other teachers and friends in Italy were Demetrius Chalcondylas, Hermolaus Barbarus, Aldus Romanus the printer of Venice, and Nicolaus Leonicenus of Vicenza. Linacre took the degree of doctor of medicine with great distinction at Padua.

On his return to Oxford, full of the learning and imbued with the spirit of the Italian Renaissance, he formed one of the brilliant circle of Oxford scholars, including John Colet, William Grocyn and William Latimer, who are mentioned in the letters of Erasmus.

Linacre does not appear to have practised or taught medicine in Oxford. In about 1501, he was called to court as tutor of the young Arthur, Prince of Wales. On the accession of Henry VIII in 1509, he was appointed the king's physician, an office at that time of considerable influence and importance, and practised medicine in London, having among his patients most of the great statesmen and prelates of the time, including Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop William Warham and Bishop Fox. After some years of professional activity, Linacre received priest's orders as the rector of Wigan in 1520, though he had for some years previously held several clerical benefices, including the Precentorship of York Minster. His ordination was connected with his retirement from active life. Literary labours, and the cares of the foundation which owed its existence chiefly to him, the Royal College of Physicians, occupied Linacre's remaining years.

The most important service Linacre conferred upon his own profession and science was the foundation by royal charter of the College of Physicians in London, and he was the first president of the new college, which he further aided by bequeathing to it his own house and library. Shortly before his death, Linacre obtained from the king letters patent for the establishment of readerships in medicine at Oxford and Cambridge, and placed valuable estates in the hands of trustees for their endowment. Two readerships were founded at Merton College, Oxford, and one at St John's College, Cambridge, but owing to neglect and bad management of the funds, they fell into uselessness and obscurity. The Oxford foundation was revived by the university commissioners in 1856 in the form of the Linacre professorship of anatomy.