Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Willis, Francis
WILLIS, FRANCIS (1718–1807), physician, born on 17 Aug. 1718, was third son of John Willis, one of the vicars of Lincoln Cathedral, and his wife Genevra, daughter of James Darling of Oxford. He matriculated from Lincoln College, Oxford, on 30 May 1734, migrated to St. Alban Hall, and proceeded B.A. on 21 March 1738–9, and M.A. on 10 Feb. 1740–1 from Brasenose College, of which he was fellow and subsequently vice-principal. In obedience to his father he took holy orders, but he had so strong an inclination for medicine that even while an undergraduate he studied it and attended the lectures of Nathan Alcock [q. v.], with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. In 1749 he married Mary, youngest daughter of the Rev. John Curtois of Bramston, Lincolnshire, and took up his residence at Dunston in that county. He is said to have at first practised medicine without a license, but in 1759 the university of Oxford conferred on him the degrees of M.B. and M.D. In 1769 he was appointed physician to a hospital in Lincoln which he had taken an active part in establishing. For the six following years he never ceased to attend it regularly twice a week, though distant nearly ten miles from his own home. In the course of this work he treated successfully several cases of mental derangement, and patients were brought to him from great distances. To accommodate them he removed to a larger house at Gretford, near Stamford.
When George III experienced his first attack of madness, Willis was called in on 5 Dec. 1788. He encountered considerable opposition from the regular physicians, being ‘considered by some not much better than a mountebank, and not far different from some of those that are confined in his house’ (Sheffield, Auckland Correspondence, ii. 256). From the first he maintained that the king would recover, and insisted that the patient should be more gently treated and allowed greater freedom than heretofore (Grenville, Buckingham Papers, ii. 35; Jesse, iii. 92). He soon became popular at court. Mme. D'Arblay describes him as ‘a man of ten thousand; open, honest, dauntless, light-hearted, innocent, and high-minded’ (Diary, 1892, iii. 127); while Hannah More calls him ‘the very image of simplicity, quite a good, plain, old-fashioned country parson’ (Memoirs, ii. 144).
After the king's recovery in 1789 Willis returned to his private practice, but his reputation now stood so high that he was obliged to build a second house at Shillingthorpe, near Gretford, in order to accommodate the large number of patients who wished to be attended by him. He died on 5 Dec. 1807, and was buried at Gretford, where a monument to his memory was erected by his surviving sons. His first wife died on 17 April 1797, and not long before his death he married Mrs. Storer, who survived him.
Willis had five sons by his first wife; of these John (1751–1835), with his father, attended George III in 1788, and again in 1811 alone; Thomas (1754–1827) was prebendary of Rochester, rector of St. George's, Bloomsbury, and of Wateringbury, Kent; Richard (1755–1829) was admiral in the royal navy; and Robert Darling (1760–1821) became physician-in-ordinary to the the king, whom he attended during his second attack of madness, wrote ‘Philosophical Sketches of the Principles of Society and Government,’ London, 1795, 8vo, and was father of Robert Willis (1800–1875) [q. v.]
[Report from the Committee appointed to examine the Physicians who have attended his Majesty during his Illness touching the state of his Majesty's Health, London, 1788, 8vo, in A Collection of Tracts on the proposed Regency, 1789, 8vo, vol. i.; A Treatise on Mental Derangement, by Fra. Willis, M.D., 2nd edit., London, 1843, 8vo, p. 86; Wraxall's Memoirs, iii. 197; Jesse's Life and Reign of King George the Third, vol. iii. passim; Life of Charles Mayne Young, by his son, i. 343–50; inscription on the monument in Gretford church; private information.]Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.281
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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