performed by Mr. César Calandrin, and was registered in the Dutch Church of London. She died at Chelsea, 10th July 1653, and her maerens conjux erected a monument with the following epitaph:
D. O. M. S.
Elizabethae,
equitis Theodori de Mayerne Baronis Albonse filiae,
Marchionis de Cugnac,
patre
Henrico de Caumont, Marchionis de Castel Nauth
et avo
Jacobo Nompar de Caumont, Duce de La Force
(primo Franciae Marescalo, regiorum exercituum
longum imperatore fortissimo fortunatissimo invictissimo),
nati,
Uxori dulcissimae lectissimae charissimae
XVIto post nuptias mense acerbo ereptae fato.
Conjux in amoris inconcussi et irruptae fidei monumentum
moerens posuit.
Obiit Xmo Julii MDCLIII in pago Chelsey juxtà Londinum.
Vixit annos XX., menses VI., dies III.
The youngest daughter, Adriana, was Sir Theodore’s only surviving child and heiress. She and her mother, Isabella de Mayerne, were appointed his executrixes, his nephew, John Colladon, M.D , being assured of the testator’s “confidence of his affection, assistance, and fidelity to my wife and daughter after my decease.” His wife had been provided for by the marriage settlement, as to which the will says:— “whereas by virtue of an agreement between me and my beloved wife, upon contract of marriage, there are many conditions I am engaged to keep and observe, it is my will and pleasure that all the said conditions in the said agreement, by me made and assented unto under my hand and seal, be to her inviolably kept and observed; and I will that no person or persons whatsoever, claiming anything under me or by virtue of any power derived from me, shall molest, trouble, question, or require any account of my said wife concerning the estate by her brought to me, or since fallen to her by the death of her father, of which I have not demanded any account during my life, nor will I that she give any account to any after my decease.” He mentions three nieces, Aymée Colladon (wife of John) _____ Lametaire, and _____ Windsor, and bequeaths £100 to the poor of the French Church in London, £40 to the poor of “Monsieur Espaigne’s” church, £50 to the poor of Chelsea, and £500 to be distributed among his servants. He seems to have been in the habit of laying up sums of money in a box, for charitable uses; for his Will says: “I give to the magistrates of the city of Geneva all the moneys that shall be found in the poor’s box at the time of my decease, towards the building of a pest-house for the benefit of the said city.” [The sum remitted to the hospital, according to the hospital authorities at Geneva, was £200 sterling.]
Sir Theodore was the greatest chemist in his generation, and a discoverer and patentee in the departments of distillation, artists’ colours, &c. On 24th March 1636 (n.s.), there was a grant of a patent to Sir Theodore De Mayerne and Dr. Cadiman, “for distilling strong waters and making vinegars out of cider, perry, and buck;” and on 4th August 1638, Sir William Brouncker was incorporated with them. On 23d September, in consequence of a complaint of the Company of Apothecaries, a petition was presented from Sir Theodore de Mayerne, first physician to the King and Queen, Sir William Brouncker, one of the gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, and Thomas Cadiman, physician to the Queen, praying that the apothecaries should be admonished by their lordships, “to content themselves with their proper trades, to speak with reverence of the Lords, to acknowledge their teachers and superiors — the physicians — after a more respective manner, to think of nothing more than to furnish their shops well, and to use diligence about their patients.” In 1660, Robert Phelipps petitioned Charles II. “for the place of Garbler of Spices and Seeds, as granted by the late King to Sir Theodore Mayerne, and void by his death.” The writings of Sir Theodore were collected in a folio volume, edited by Dr Joseph Browne, printed in 1701. Dr. Munk says, “The printing is extremely incorrect [let us hope it was rectified in the edition of 1703]; the work, however, is most amusing, and affords a good idea of the duties of a fashionable physician in the early part of the seventeenth century.”[1]
In the chancel of St Martin-in-the-Fields, “a fair monument, with a flourishing
- ↑ Faulkner’s Chelsea, vol. i. p. 210.
