On this day in 1628, a letter was written to the Company by the Lords of the Privy Council at Whitehall requesting the impressment of 16 surgeons for service at La Rochelle “best experienced in the care of wounds made by gunshott.”
The previous November, several surgeons of the Company had been summoned to Portsmouth “for the cureing of the wounded souldiers that come from the Isle of Rea in ffrance which are nowe remayneing wounded and sicke at Portsmouth.” These wounded were casualties of the largest English offensive naval venture to that date. Over 100 ships and nearly 7,000 soldiers were sent by Charles I under his favourite George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham to encourage Protestant rebellion against Louis XIII of France and his chief minister Cardinal Richelieu in the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle, a well-fortified port on the Atlantic coast. The failed campaign saw heavy casualties.
Among the Portsmouth surgeons had been Peter Thorney, admitted to the Company in 1603 having served his apprenticeship to his uncle Thomas. He had been fined for his ‘absence from lectures’ in 1607, but by 1609 gained his licence to practice surgery from the Dean of St Paul’s and had progressed to the Court by 1627. On July 6 1628 the Court Minutes indicate that Thorney was “by this Court desired to goe Surgeon-general for the Army that goes by Land” for the third attempt by the English to relieve La Rochelle.
Thorney’s preparations for his departure included the making of his will on 25 July, in which he wrote:
“I commend my bodie to bee buried where it shall please god or my freindes, if I come not home from the Sea this voiage I intended for the releife of Rochell.”
His bequests included those to “George Peren, Citizen and BarberSurgeon of London… my yearball knowne by the name of Gerards yearball” and to “Edward Griffith which was my Servant all my manuscripts belonginge to surgerie and all my instruments belonging to Surgery except my plaster box and salvatory and instruments in the boxe and my silver seringe, and likewise unto the said Edward all my medicines whatsoever I give him wth my bookes of Surgery whatsoever in my Studdie.”
Thorney did not survive the final, failed attempt to relieve La Rochelle; the city surrendered on October 28 1628 and probate was granted to his heirs the following month.
The Court Minutes for 23 January 1629 recorded the election of an Assistant ‘by reason of the death of Peter Thorney in the Kings service.’