It would be truly interesting if the first great discoverer in physiology could be shown to be a descendant of this original thinker on municipal government. The statement depends for the present on the fact that both bore for arms "argent, two bars nebulée sable, on a chief of the last three crosses pattée fitchée; with the crest, a dexter hand appaumée proper, over it a crescent inverted argent," but arms were as often assumed in the reign of Elizabeth as they are in the Victorian era. Thomas Harvey, the father of William, was born in 1549, and was one of a family of two brothers and three sisters, all of whom left children. Thomas married about 1575 Juliana, the eldest daughter of William Jenkin. His wife died in the following year, probably in childbed, for she left him a daughter, Julian or Gillian, who married Thomas Cullen, of Dover, and died about 1639. Thomas Harvey married again on the 21st of January, 1576-1577, his second wife being Joane, the daughter of Thomas Halke, or Hawke, who was perhaps a relative of his first wife on her mother's side. She lived at Hastingleigh, a village about six miles from Ashford in Kent, and to this couple William was born on the 1st of April, 1578, his father being then twenty-nine and his mother twenty-three. William proved to be the eldest of "a week of sons," as Fuller quaintly expresses it, "whereof this William was bred to learning, his other brethren being bound apprentices in London, and all at last ended in effect in merchants." This statement is not strictly true, as only five of the sons became Turkey merchants and there were besides two daughters. Thomas Harvey was a jurat, or alderman, of Folkestone, where he served the office of mayor in 1600. He lived in a fair stone house, which afterwards became the posthouse. Its site, however, is no longer known, though it is the opinion of those best qualified to judge that it stood at the junction of Church Street with Rendezvous Street. Thomas Harvey seems to have been a man of more than ordinary intelligence and judgment, for "his sons, who revered, consulted, and implicitly trusted him, made their father the treasurer of their wealth when they got great estates, who, being as skilful to purchase land," says Fuller, "as they to gain money kept, employed and improved their gainings to their great advantage, so that he survived to see the meanest of them of far greater estate than himself." To this end he came to London after the death of his wife in 1605, and lived for some time at Hackney, where he died and was buried in June, 1623. His portrait is still to be seen in the central panel in one end wall of the dining-room at Rolls Park, Chigwell, in Essex, which was one of the first estates acquired by his son Eliab. "It is certainly," says Dr. Willis, "of the time when he lived, and it bears a certain resemblance to some of the likenesses we have of his most distinguished son."