Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/140

 whose leg had been pierced by an arrow as he walked near the butts; a fifth was one of Sir Francis Drake's sailors who had been shot by a poisoned arrow on the coast of Brazil; a sixth was a merchant wounded on his own ship by a pirate at the mouth of the Thames. Clowes cared little for critics, favourable or unfavourable—‘Scornfull scanners, their commendations I disdayne’—but he always speaks with generosity of his professional contemporaries Goodrouse, Banester, Bedon, and Baker, the surgeons; Gerard, the author of the ‘Herbal;’ Dr. Lopez, Dr. Wotton, Dr. Foster, and Dr. Randall, and Maister Rasis, the French king's surgeon. He had met all of them in consultation. He did not conceal that he had secret remedies—‘my unguent,’ ‘my balm,’ ‘of my collection’—but he never made bargains for cures, and never touted for patients as some surgeons did at that time. He gives several amusing accounts of his encounters with quacks, and prides himself on always acting as became ‘a true artist.’ He figures a barber's basin among his instruments of surgery, and says he was a good embalmer of dead bodies, and knew well from practice how to roll cerecloths. Besides a power of ready expression in colloquial English, he shows a vast acquaintance with proverbs, and a fair knowledge of French and of Latin. His books were all printed in London in black letter and 4to, and are:
 * 1) ‘De Morbo Gallico,’ 1579.
 * 2) ‘A Prooved Practise for all young Chirurgians concerning Burnings with Gunpowder, and Woundes made with Gunshot, Sword, Halbard, Pike, Launce, or such other,’ 1591.
 * 3) ‘Treatise of the French or Spanish Pocks, by John Almenar,’ 1591 (a fresh edition of 1).
 * 4) ‘A Profitable and Necessary Book of Observations,’ 1596 (a fresh edition of 2).
 * 5) ‘A Right Frutefull and Approved Treatise for the Artificiall Cure of the Struma or Evill, cured by the Kinges and Queenes of England,’ 1602. In 1637 reprints of his ‘De Morbo Gallico’ and ‘Profitable Book of Observations’ were published. Letters by him are printed in Banester's ‘Antidotarie’ (1589), and in Peter Lowe's ‘Surgery’ (1597).



CLOWES, WILLIAM, the younger (1582–1648), surgeon, son of the elder (1540?–1604) [q. v.], surgeon to Queen Elizabeth, studied his art under his father. He was admitted a member of the Barber-Surgeons' Company 22 Jan. 1605. In 1616 he was surgeon to the Prince of Wales (, Issues of Exchequer), and became surgeon to Charles I on his accession. In 1625 he was chosen renter warden of his company, but protested against a king's surgeon being appointed to so low an office, and declined to serve. On 21 Aug. 1626, being then sergeant surgeon to the king, he was elected master of the Barber-Surgeons, and on 16 Aug. 1638 he was a second time elected master. It was the duty of the king's sergeant surgeon to examine all persons brought to be cured by the royal touch (, The Criterion, ed. 1820, p. 479), and in this capacity Clowes complained of one Leverett, a gardener, who took on himself to cure the king's evil. Leverett was brought before the lords at the Star-chamber 20 Oct. 1637, and Clowes was by them directed to lay the matter before the College of Physicians. Leverett accordingly appeared at the college 3 Nov. 1637, and stated that he cured, by touch alone, king's evil, dropsy, fevers, agues, internal diseases, and external sores, and that, though he did not lay much stress on it, he was a seventh son. A patient with a strumous knee-joint and other cases were given him to experiment on, and on his failure Clowes presented, 28 Nov. 1637, a memorial recounting that Leverett slighted his majesty's sacred gift of healing, enticed great lords and ladies to buy the sheets he had slept in, and deluded the sick with false hopes. He produced certificates from Thomas Clowes and two other surgeons in the city as to Leverett's impostures, and finally, by an extract from the register of St. Clement, Eastcheap, proved that James Leverett was a fourth and not a seventh son, and that his father had but six sons in all. The college thereupon reported to the lords that Leverett was an impostor and deceiver. The last appearance of Clowes in the Barber-Surgeons' Company was on 14 Sept. 1648, and he died a few months later.



CLOWES, WILLIAM, the elder (1779–1847), printer, was born 1 Jan. 1779, at Chichester, where his father kept a school, and where he was apprenticed to a printer of the name of Seagrave. He came to London in 1802, and, after working as a compositor with Mr. Teape of Tower Hill, commenced business in the following year on a small scale on his own account in Villiers Street, Strand. He then married a cousin of Mr. Winchester, a stationer in the Strand, through whom he obtained a share of the government printing work. After some years' residence in Villiers