Dr. John Arbuthnot, Augustan Age wit and physician to Queen Anne, opined that biography was one of the new terrors of death. Imagine, then, the dread wrought by prosopography, the composite biography of people with something in common. Such a collection of people was the medical staff of the Tudor and Stuart kings and queens of England, who ministered to the health needs of the monarchs from 1485 to 1714. Using the term “royal doctor” broadly to include both officially designated medical personnel and ad hoc iatric consultants, over three hundred men and a handful of women practiced medicine at the highest levels during the twelve distinct regimes of the Tudor-Stuart centuries, chosen from among their peers to receive appointment to the sovereign, to members of the royal family, and to the household. Their separate stories, examined in chapters chronologically arranged according to reign, offer a unique perspective on the fractured state of medicine in early modern England superimposed on a fractious nation-state. The details of their lives illuminate the transitional nature of political and medical science, both fluctuating between medieval and modern impulses, and the varied ways in which practitioners coped with dangerous inconsistencies in both domains. The royal doctors were likewise important as a group, intimately involved with the fundamental well-being of the nation: responsible for the fitness of its dynasts and through the government prompting changes within the profession of medicine. As an anointed monarch, the ruler claimed both inherent sacred gifts that enabled him to cure the sick and exalted prerogatives that gave him mastery over all the medical world. This theme of mutual effect—of individuals and institutions on one another—unfolds throughout the saga of the royal doctors.

Kings could confer with whomever they wished about health problems, but formal assignments, permanent or temporary, were public concerns that had significant ramifications for all involved. While no single pattern for obtaining royal appointments can be traced from the careers of these medicos, several factors made their appointments more likely, if not certain. Royal doctors often knew the monarch before his accession to the throne in a professional, military, or social capacity.