Letter 0315

Barwick asks Sloane to post a letter to Mr Parker on Mr Simpson’s behalf, assuring the latter the Duchess is doing what she can to assist him in his predicament. Barwick hopes Mrs Chapman has a safe voyage to Jamaica. He is sorry to hear ‘Coll Nedeham’ is dead. Barwick and his wife put themselves at the service of the gentry, ‘particularly Mrs Wright and her sister’. He received a letter from the Duke of Newcastle. In a recent newsletter there was a report ‘yt 3 Ruffians broke into’ a house ‘with their swords drawn’. There were rumours ‘yt ye King sent for Col. Ludlow out of Switzerland’. Peter Barwick (1619-1705) was a physician. He served Charles II in 1651 and was censor of the College of Physicians in 1674, 1684, and 1687. Sir Hans Sloane was one of the executors of Barwick’s will (Peter Elmer, ‘Barwick, Peter (1619–1705)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1614, accessed 9 July 2014]).