Arbuthnot's ill-luck, however, was quite out of the ordinary rule. Fuller says (1662), "Physic hath promoted many more, and that since the reign of King Henry VIII. Indeed, before his time, I find a doctor of physic, father to Reginald, first and last Lord Bray. But this faculty hath flourished much the three last fifty years; it being true of physic, what is said of Sylla, 'suos divitiis explevit.' Sir William Butts, physician to King Henry VIII., Doctor Thomas Wendy, and Doctor Hatcher, Queen Elizabeth's physician, raised worshipful families in Norfolk, Cambridge, and Lincolnshire, having borne the office of Sheriff in this county." Sir William Butts was rewarded for his professional services by Henry VIII. with the honour of Knighthood, and he attended that sovereign when the royal confirmation was given, in 1512, to the charter of the barber-surgeons of London. Another eminent physician of the same period, who also arrived at the dignity of knighthood, was John Ayliffe, a sheriff of London, and merchant of Blackwell-Hall. His epitaph records:-- "In surgery brought up in youth, A knight here lieth dead; A knight and eke a surgeon, such As England seld' hath bred. "For which so sovereign gift of God, Wherein he did excell, King Henry VIII. called him to court, Who loved him dearly well. "King Edward, for his service sake, Bade him rise up a knight; A name of praise, and ever since He Sir John Ayliffe hight." This mode of rewarding medical services was not unfrequent in those days, and long before. Ignorance as to the true position of the barber in the middle ages has induced the popular and erroneous belief that the barber-surgeon had in olden times a contemptible social status. Unquestionably his art has been elevated during late generations to a dignity it did not possess in feudal life; but it might be argued with much force, that the reverse has been the case with regard to his rank. Surgery and medicine were arts that nobles were proud to practise for honour, and not unfrequently for emolument. The reigns of Elizabeth and her three predecessors in sovereign power abounded in medical and surgical amateurs. Amongst the fashionable empirics Bulleyn mentions Sir Thomas Elliot, Sir Philip Paris, Sir William Gasgoyne, Lady Taylor and Lady Darrel, and especially that "goodly hurtlesse Gentleman, Sir Andrew Haveningham, who learned water to kill a canker of his own mother." Even an Earl of Derby, about this time, was celebrated for his skill in _chirurgerie_ and _bone-setting_, as also was the Earl of Herfurth. The Scots nobility were enthusiastic dabblers in such matters; and we have the evidence of Buchanan and Lindsay as to James IV. of Scotland, "quod vulnera scientissime tractaret," to use the former authority's words, and in the language of the latter, that he was "such a _cunning chirurgeon_, that none in his realm who used that craft but would take his counsel in all their