must have largely owed the Charter to his influence. He lived in Blackfriars and called himself a "Pharmacopœius," but we also read of him as an importer of drugs, and it is probable that he traded as a merchant. That he was a man of position is evident from the fact that on one occasion he fetched the Queen, Anne of Denmark, from Norway.
Gideon de Laune was born at Rheims in 1565, and was brought to England as a boy by his father, who was a Protestant pastor. A Nonconformist writer of the same surname who got into trouble in the reigns of Charles II and James II, and was befriended by De Foe, referring to Gideon as a relative, says of him that when he died at the age of 97 he had near as many thousands of pounds as he had years; that he had thirty-seven children by one wife; and that his funeral was attended by sixty grandchildren. It has been ascertained, however, that his children only numbered seventeen, and that he died at the age of 94; so that the later De Laune who wrote in 1681 cannot be implicitly relied upon when figures are concerned. Another thing he tells us of Gideon is that "his famous pill is in great request to this day notwithstanding the swarms of pretenders to pill-making."
The Grocers' Company warmly resented the secession of the apothecaries who had been their subordinate partners so long, but their formal petition of complaint called forth a cruel snub from the King. Grocers were but merchants, said James, the business of the apothecaries was a mystery; "Wherefore I think it fitting they should be a corporation of themselves." The grocers, however, got some of their own back a few years later when James demanded a subsidy from the city for the relief of the Palatinate. The grocers and
