Letter 3307

William Stukeley to Hans Sloane – December 6, 1726


Item info

Date: December 6, 1726
Author: William Stukeley
Recipient: Hans Sloane

Library: British Library, London
Manuscript: Sloane MS 4048
Folio: ff. 231-232



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Transcription

[fol. 232] Worthy & dear Sr The real pleasure I always took in the business of my profession, was one cause of my quitting London because I could not meet with it there in such manner & measure & upon such terms as were agreeable to my humor. The passionate love I ever had for the country, where true happiness only is to be met with, & the very agreeable situation I am now in, engages me absolutely to abandon any thoughts of returning thither, therefore I have been casting about in my mind to lay a scheme for such sort of business as my best reward me, & encourage my pains in being useful to the world in practise. I have at present a prospect of being chiefly concernd in the best familys. The Duke of Rutland is not yet engag’d to any physician, & I beg of you as I perceive you now & then write to him, to take an opportunity to put in a word for me, which I apprehend will no way interfere with your correspondence. my brother is at present his apothecary. At the Dukes seat lately, in an old stable which was the chappel of the Monastery, they dug up a considerabl piece of Antiquity, the coffin of the founder of the family, the castle & the monastery, & I wish you would desire of the duke to have it preserved some way or other, for tis wholly expos’d. the inscription on the top stone is this. Robert de Todenei le fundeur. his bones lye in the stone trough underneath. he was one of Wm the Conqrs concomitants. there are other such stones on both sides, but not yet uncovered. I am just preparing my instruments for observation of the weather & quantity of rain &c. I shall send you my [v. 23] memoirs of them, when ready. I wrote to Dr West to know how I must ward off a foolish pretence they have got here of sessing me to the Tax for my office as they call it, meaning my practise. but I have not yet had his answer. & I would not suffer the profession to loose of its priviledges thro my neglect. I am Sr with wishes of your health Your most obedient humble servant Wm Stukeley Grantham Dec. 6. 1726.

William Stukeley was an antiquary and natural philosopher. He studied medicine at Corpus Christi, Cambridge and practiced medicine in London and Boston before setting up a practice in Grantham in 1726. Stukeley was acquainted with Dr Richard Mead, Sir Hans Sloane, Edmond Halley, and other prominent intellectuals and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1718. He published several medical treatises and important texts on the stone circles at Stonehenge and Avebury (David Boyd Haycock, Stukeley, William (16871765), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/26743, accessed 19 Aug 2013]).




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