Protestant Exiles from France/Book First - Chapter 13 - Section II
II. Paul Delaune, M.D.
Dr. Paul Delaune was the youngest and apparently the favourite son of the old Pasteur William Delaune. He was MA. of the University of Cambridge in 1610. He studied medicine abroad, and became M.D. of the University of Padua on 13th October 1614, and was incorporated at Cambridge on 19th January 1616 (n.s.). He was admitted a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London, 21st April 1618, and rose to be Senior Censor in 1643. Several years of his prime he spent in Ireland as physician to the Viceroy, and thus he never gained much ground as a practitioner in London. But as a medical lecturer he was eminent. He read in his turn the Anatomy Lecture at the College of Physicians. A vacancy occurred in the Chair of Physic in Gresham College in a singular manner in the year 1642. Professor Thomas Winston, M.D., foreseeing the triumph of the Parliamentary Party, and fearing (as it was thought) that he might have offended some of its leaders by repeating words which he had overheard, formally asked and obtained leave from the House of Lords to emigrate to France. He went away quietly without resigning his chair, which was after the lapse of six months declared to have become vacant. Partly through the interest of his relative, Mr. Thomas Chamberlan, Dr. Delaune was appointed to the professorship. As Professor of Physic he was a great success, and the college was highly satisfied. In 1652, however, Dr. Winston became homesick, and having satisfied Oliver Cromwell’s government that he never offended the parliament by any public action, he obtained leave to return to England, and obtained the restoration of his property, and along with it the Gresham professorship. Dr. Delaune in his old age (a septuagenarian) found himself destitute, and this through the action of one to whom he had been a true friend in time of trouble, and who through his ample fortune was in no need of a professor’s salary. Cromwell provided for Dr. Delaune in 1654, by appointing him Physician-General to the English Fleet. After that date all that is certainly known is that he sailed for the Pacific Ocean, and was present at the taking of Jamaica. The fleet returned without him; and the general belief was that either the West Indian climate or the yellow fever had occasioned his death in the month of December 1654. (See Munk’s Roll of the Royal College of Physicians, vol. i.)