William Harvey, the immortal discoverer of the Circulation of the Blood, was the eldest son of Thomas Harvey and Joan Halke, of Folkstone, in Kent, where he was born on the 1st of April, 1578.[3] Of the parents of Harvey, little is known. His father, in our printed accounts, is generally designated Gentleman,[4] and must have been in easy circumstances; inasmuch as he had a numerous family, consisting of seven sons and two daughters, all the males of which he felt himself competent to launch upon life in courses that imply the possession of money wealth. William, the first-born, adopted the profession of physic. Five of his brothers,--Thomas, Daniel, Eliab, Michael, and Matthew--were merchants, and not merchants in a small and niggardly way--non tenues et sordidi, as Dr. Lawrence has it in his Life of Harvey,[5] but of weight and substance--magni et copiosi, trading especially with Turkey or the Levant, then the main channel through which the wealth of the East flowed into Europe. The Harveys were undoubtedly men of consideration in the city of London, and several of them, in the end, became possessed of the most ample independent fortunes.[6] The son, whose name does not appear in the list given above, was John, the immediate junior to William. He, too, was a man of note in his day, having been one of the King’s receivers for Lincolnshire, having sat as member of parliament for Hythe, and for some time held the office of King’s footman. Of the two sisters--Sarah died young; of the fate of Anne, or Amy, nothing is known. Great men seem, in almost all authenticated instances, to have had noble-minded women for their mothers. We have not a word of his age or generation to assist us in forming an estimate of Harvey’s male progenitor; but the inscription on his mother’s monumental tablet, in Folkstone church, assures us that she, at least, was a woman of such mark and likelihood, that it was held due to her memory to leave her moral portrait to posterity in these beautiful words, penned, it may be, by her illustrious eldest son: “A.D. 1605, Nov. 8th, dyed in yᵉ 50th yeere of her age, JOAN, Wife of THO: HARVEY. Mother of 7 Sones & 2 Daughters. A Godly harmles Woman: A chaste loveing Wife: A charitable quiet Neighbour: A co~fortable frendly Matron: A p~ovident diligent Huswyfe: A careful te~der-harted Mother. Deere to her Husband; Reverensed of her Children: Beloved of her Neighbours: Elected of God. Whose Soule Rest in Heaven: her Body in this Grave: To Her a Happy Advantage: to Hers an Unhappy Loss.” Epitaphs may not always be authorities implicitly to be relied on; but we unhesitatingly accept of everything to the credit of William Harvey’s mother as a portion of our faith.