Harvey, William, 1578-1657; Physicians -- England -- Biography
The battle was undecided, and Harvey, like the other personal
attendants upon the King, must for a while have felt the keenest
anxiety for the safety of his master. The King remained for a time at
the top of the hill, but when the battle began in earnest he could not
be restrained from mixing with the troops, sharing their danger and
adjuring them to show mercy to such of the enemy as fell into their
hands. Perhaps too Harvey saw one of the most picturesque acts of
the battle. The Royal Standard, carried by Sir Edmund Verney at the
beginning of the fight, had waved over the King's Red Regiment--the
Royal Foot Guards. Verney slain, and the Guards broken, it passed
to the Parliamentary army, and was committed to the charge of the
secretary of the Earl of Essex, the Commander-in-chief. Captain
Smith, a Catholic officer in the King's Life Guards, hearing of
the loss, picked up from the field the orange scarf which marked a
Parliamentarian and threw it over his shoulders. Accompanied by some
of his troop, similarly attired, he slipped through the ranks of the
enemy, found the secretary holding the standard, and telling him that
so great a prize was not fitly bestowed in the hands of a penman,
snatched it from him. Then, protected by the scarf, he made his way
once more through the hostile force and laid his trophy at the feet of
the King, who knighted him upon the spot.
The battle over, Charles pushed on towards London. Banbury surrendered
on the 27th of October, and on the 29th he entered Oxford in triumph.
Harvey attended the King to Oxford where he was at once received as a
_persona grata_. His position in London, his attachment to the King,
and his fame as a scientific man, must have combined to render his
entrance to the most exclusive Common Rooms a matter of ease. In
Oxford he very soon settled down to his accustomed pursuits, unmindful
of the clatter of arms and of the constant marching and countermarching
around him, for the city remained the base of operations until its
surrender in July, 1646. Aubrey says that he first saw Harvey at Oxford
"in 1642, after the Edgehill fight, but [I] was then too young to be
acquainted with so great a doctor. I remember he came several times to
our College [Trinity] to George Bathurst, B.D., who had a hen to hatch
eggs in his chamber, which they opened daily to see the progress and
way of generation." Two years later Bathurst was killed in defending
Faringdon, but he was a distinguished Fellow of his College, and it was
doubtless, with the aid and by the advice of such a friend, that Harvey
was incorporated Doctor of Physic at Oxford on the 7th of December,
1642.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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