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 monarch determined in 1617 to incorporate the Society of Apothecaries, 114 apothecaries, being his majesty's ‘natural subjects,’ were nominated as members. With them a few foreigners were associated, and Delaune became a member of the court of assistants. He served the office of junior warden in 1624, that of senior warden in 1627, and was master in 1637. He was appointed an alderman of Dowgate Ward 17 Jan. 1625–6, and was discharged as an alien a week later. Thomas Delaune (Present State of London, ed. 1681, p. 329), in an account of the Apothecaries' Company, says: ‘Among many worthy members [was] Dr. Gideon de Laune, apothecary to King James, a man noted for many singularities in his time, a great benefactor to the public, and particularly to the foundation of the Apothecaries' Hall in Black-Fryars, where his statue in white marble is to be seen to this day, and to whom I have the honour to be nearly related, which is not the reason that I mention him, but to perpetuate his memory as well as others, as is due to his desert. He lived piously to the age of ninety-seven years, and worth (notwithstanding his many acts of publick and private charity) near as many thousand pounds as he was years, having thirty-seven children by one wife, and about sixty grandchildren at his funeral. His famous pill is in great request to this day, notwithstanding the swarms of pretenders to pill-making.’ This account is in some respects erroneous. He had only seventeen children, most of whom were stillborn or died in infancy, and his grandchildren were fewer than thirty in number. These facts are proved by his will, dated 19 June 1654, and proved 20 June 1659, and by his funeral certificate in the College of Arms, both of which documents give his age as ninety-four at the time of his death.

He was a great benefactor to the Apothecaries' Company, having been ‘a principal means for the procuring of the said company to be made a corporation,’ and for the purchase of Apothecaries' Hall, where a massive marble bust of him is preserved. For many years this bust occupied such a position as to be virtually excluded from sight; but in 1846 it was placed on a bracket at the upper end of the hall. There is also in the hall a portrait of him in oil, supposed to have been painted by Cornelius Jansen. He possessed an estate at Roxton, Bedfordshire, the manor of Sharsted, Kent, where some of his descendants still reside, a mansion in Blackfriars, London, and extensive property in Virginia and the Bermudas.

By his wife, Judith Chamberlaine, he had issue a son Abraham, who married Anne, daughter of Sir Richard Sandys of Northbourne Court, Kent; and a daughter, Anne, married to Sir Richard Sprignell, bart., of Coppenthorpe, Yorkshire.

[Cooper's Lists of Foreign Protestants, 78; Gent. Mag. new ser. xxviii. 477; Munk's Coll. of Phys. 2nd ed. i. 170; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. xii. 498, 5th ser. xii. 53, 6th ser. i. 46; Sloane MS. 2149, p. 60.]  DELAUNE, PAUL (1584?–1654?), an eminent physician, a native of London, was related, probably, to Gideon Delaune [q. v.], the wealthy apothecary, and by marriage to Dr. Argent, who was eight times president of the College of Physicians, and who died in 1642. Delaune was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he proceeded A.M. about 1610. He graduated as M.D. at the university of Padua on 13 Oct. 1614, and at the university of Cambridge on 4 Nov. 1615 (Regist. Acad. Cantab.). He was examined before the censors' board of the Royal College of Physicians on 8 Sept. 1615, admitted a candidate of the College of Physicians 25 June 1616, and became a fellow on 21 April 1618. When Lord Falkland was appointed lord deputy of Ireland, Delaune accompanied him as his physician, and resided for some years in Dublin. On 24 May 1642 he was made an elect, and in 1643 senior censor, of the College of Physicians. On 13 June 1643, after the withdrawal of Dr. Winston to the continent, Delaune was appointed professor of physic in Gresham College, through the influence of Thomas Chamberlane, a member of the Mercers' Company. For upwards of nine years he discharged the duties of his chair with efficiency and success. On 27 June 1643 he was recommended by the college, in compliance with an order of Lenthall, speaker of the House of Commons, as one of three physicians to the parliamentary army under the Earl of Essex. In 1652 Dr. Winston returned to England and was restored to the Gresham professorship (20 Aug.) For some time after his compulsory resignation of the chair of physic Delaune was in straitened circumstances. Ultimately he accepted from Cromwell the appointment of physician-general to the fleet, which he accompanied first to Hispaniola, and afterwards to Jamaica. He was probably present at the capture of this island in 1653, but nothing further is known of his history or fate. According to Hamey, his death took place in December 1654.

[Ward's Lives of the Professors of Gresham College, ii. 268–9; Munk's Coll. of Phys. i. 170–2; Hamey's Bustorum Aliquot Reliquiæ, containing ‘Vita Doctoris Pauli de Laune.’] 