Sir Charles Scarborough

  Notes:

Charles Scarburgh was admitted to Caius College, Cambridge, England, 4 Mar 1634. He received a B.A. in 1637 and a M.A. in 1640. M.D., Merton College, Oxford, 1646. Fellow of Caius, 1642-49, when he was expelled by Parliament on account of his avowed Royalist sympathies. Physician in ordinary to (Kings) Charles II., James II., and William III. An original F.R.S. Knighted 14 Aug 1669. M.P. for Camelford, Cornwall, 1685-87. He was the author of a treatise on anatomy, "Syllabus Musculorum," which was long used as a text-book at Cambridge. His son Edmund published in 1705 and edition of his father's mathematical works; a catalogue of his mathematical library appeared in 1695. For further information see Munk's Roll; Venn's Biog. Hist. of Caius College; Wood's Ath. Oxon; and the Dict. of Nat. Biography (Col. John Wise, His Ancestors and Descendants).

Sir Charles Scarburgh (1615\endash 1694), physician and natural philosopher, son of Edmund Scarburgh, gentleman, of the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and Hannah Butler(sic), was born in London on 29 December 1615 and was sent to St Paul's School. He entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, as a sizar on 4 March 1633 and graduated BA in 1637 and MA in 1640, at which time he was elected a fellow and concentrated on medicine and mathematics. He studied the latter with Seth Ward, then at Emmanuel College. They chose William Oughtred's Clavis mathematica as their text, and Oughtred was pleased by their visiting him at Albury in Surrey to ask an explanation of difficulties they had encountered with his text. Scarburgh, a royalist, was ejected from his Cambridge fellowship about 1644 during the civil war and entered Merton College, Oxford, where he probably intended to serve in a royalist regiment. At Merton he befriended another Caius alumnus, William Harvey, who was then Merton's warden. According to John Aubrey, Harvey told Scarburgh: 'Prithee leave off thy gunning and stay here … I will bring thee into (medical) practice' (J. Aubrey, Brief Lives, 1.299). By June 1645 Scarburgh was assisting Harvey in writing his De generatione animalium. Supported by letters from Harvey, Scarburgh was created MD by the chancellor of Oxford University on 23 June 1646, one day before Sir Thomas Glenham surrendered Oxford to General Fairfax and parliament. (In 1660 Scarburgh's MD was incorporated at Cambridge.) About 1647 he moved to London, joined a group of natural philosophers organized by John Wallis known as the '1645 Group', and was admitted as a candidate by the College of Physicians on 25 January 1648. He maintained ties with his Oxford colleagues, arranging in 1649 with the ejected Savilian professor of astronomy, John Greaves, for Seth Ward, his mathematical friend from Cambridge, to be appointed Greaves's successor despite Ward's high-church and royalist convictions. On 8 October 1649 Scarburgh was elected anatomical reader at Surgeons' Hall, where he engaged Christopher Wren, then between Westminster School and matriculating at Oxford, as his assistant in demonstrating and making anatomical experiments. Scarburgh's association with William Oughtred and John Wallis, a founder of the Royal Society, included a shared interest in placing astrology on a solid mathematical footing, a desire that reflects the lack of a definite boundary between astrology and mainline natural philosophy and medicine in seventeenth-century England.

Scarburgh was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians on 26 September 1650 and served as censor in 1655, 1664, and 1665; elect in 1677 (in place of Francis Glisson); and consiliarius in 1684, 1685, 1686, 1688, and 1689. In 1656 Harvey chose him as his successor as Lumleian lecturer in the college. Harvey bequeathed 'my velvet gowne to my lovinge frined, Mr. Dr. Scarburgh', as well as 'all my little silver instruments of surgerie' (Munk, Roll). When Harvey's friend and patient Henry Pierrepont, first marquess of Dorchester and a virtuoso of natural philosophy, was admitted as a fellow of the college in 1658 Scarburgh introduced him with a well-received Latin speech. Scarburgh delivered the Harveian oration in 1662. On 28 February 1663 Samuel Pepys recorded that he went with Scarburgh to the dissection of a seaman hanged for robbery. Scarburgh also read the anatomy lectures 'with great applause' (Munk, Roll) at the Barber\endash Surgeons' Hall for many years. Early in the Restoration Charles II appointed him first physician, and knighted him on 15 August 1669. He attended the king in his final illness and left an account in manuscript (S. Antiquaries, Lond., MS 206), which was transcribed and translated in Raymond Crawfurd's Last Days of Charles II (1909). He also served as physician to James II, before and after his accession, to the Tower of London, to Prince George of Denmark, and to William and Mary. He was MP for Camelford, Cornwall, from 1685 to 1687.

Scarburgh published a short guide to human dissection, Syllabus musculorum (1676), which was a textbook for many years. He was also a member of the earl of Roscommon's 'literary academy' and wrote an elegy on the poet Abraham Cowley, who had been a member of Harvey's circle at Oxford; he stood bail of £1000 for Cowley in 1656. Scarburgh left materials for an English edition of Euclid, which his son Charles published in folio in 1705. Scarburgh also accumulated a valuable library concentrated on mathematical texts. According to John Evelyn's Diary for 10 March 1695, the earl of Sunderland showed me his library, now again improved by many books bought at the sale of Sir Charles Scarburgh, an eminent physician, which was the very best collection, especially of mathematical books, that was, I believe, in Europe; once designed for the King's library at St James's; but the Queen dying, who was a great patroness of that design, it was let fall, and the books were miserably dissipated. A catalogue of Scarburgh's library was issued in 1695.
Scarburgh died in London on 26 February 1694 and was buried at Cranford, Middlesex, where his monument, erected by his widow, was set on the north side of the chancel.