Letter 2434

Charlett has been waiting for a response from Sloane for ten days. He wants to know what he should do about the Physic Garden, which is currently being taken care of by ‘a Regular MD, Fellow of Wadham Coll’. Charlett asks whether a catalogue of the contents of the Museum should be compiled. He and several other ‘Fellows of this College’ are going to use the funds from Dr Radcliffe’s estate to fund ‘two travelling Physitians’. Charlett was elected Master of University College at Oxford in 1692 and held that post until his death in 1722. Charlett used the mastership to gain influence, especially through persistent letter-writing to numerous correspondents, sharing the latest literary, political, and scholarly gossip (R. H. Darwall-Smith, Charlett, Arthur (16551722), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5158, accessed 1 June 2011]).