she had received the wrong medicines. She died on the 28th. According to another account (Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, vii. 435–6), Radcliffe mistook the smallpox for measles. Burnet is in error in suggesting that Radcliffe was among those first called in; and he shows his bias by calling the doctor ‘an impious and vicious man, who hated the queen much, but virtue and religion more. He was a professed Jacobite, and by many thought a very bad physician; but others cried him up to the highest degree imaginable.’ It is said that the queen fancied when she was dying that Radcliffe had given her a popish nurse (Ralph, ii. 540).
Radcliffe soon afterwards offended the Princess Anne by neglecting to visit her when sent for, and saying that her distemper was nothing but the vapours; and Dr. Gibbons became her physician in his place. Later in 1695 he attended the Earl of Albemarle, who was suffering from fever in the camp in Belgium, and the king paid him 1,200l. for this service, and offered him a baronetcy, which was declined. By 1695 he was in friendly intercourse with Arbuthnot, and in 1697 Aldrich, the dean of Christ Church, was staying at his house (Aitken, Life of Arbuthnot, pp. 13, 15, 17). In 1697 Radcliffe relieved the king in a serious illness, and in 1699 he was again called in to see the young Duke of Gloucester; but he at once said the prince would die next day, and expressed contempt of the doctors who had been in attendance. The king was ill again at the end of this year, when Radcliffe, after seeing William's swollen ankles, said he would not have the king's two legs for his three kingdoms. This gave such offence that William never saw him again, though he used the doctor's diet-drinks. When Anne came to the throne Godolphin made vain efforts to reinstate the doctor in her favour. He was, however, often consulted privately by the queen's physicians.
Radcliffe was mentioned only incidentally, but respectfully, in Codrington's verses prefixed to Garth's ‘Dispensary,’ 1699, and in the ‘Dispensary Transversed,’ 1701 (cf. Addit. MS. 29568, ff. 27–30). In March 1703 Radcliffe was dangerously ill, and made a will; but he unexpectedly recovered, and was said to become very devout. In 1704, under an assumed name, he settled 50l. a year for ever upon the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts; and he gave 500l., with a request that it might be kept secret, to Dr. William Lloyd, nonjuring bishop of Norwich, for distribution among fifty poor clergy. In 1705 he was called in to see Pope, then a lad of seventeen, and the adoption of his advice to study less and ride more restored his patient's health (Spence, Anecdotes, 1856, p. 6). In the same year he bought an estate near Buckingham with a view to settling it upon University College; but for various reasons the transfer was delayed. According to a scurrilous pamphlet, ‘A Letter from a Citizen of Bath to his Excellency Dr. R——at Tunbridge,’ 1705, Radcliffe had vilified the Bath waters, and was once more patronising Tunbridge Wells, though he had lately taken a freeman's oath to do all the good he could for Bath. This fickleness was attributed to his base birth and brutish temper. In 1706 Radcliffe assisted James Drake [q. v.], who was accused of writing against the government in his ‘Memorial of the Church of England,’ and he subscribed liberally towards improvements at Oxford. By 1707 he was worth 80,000l., and, besides lending money to Arthur Mainwaring or Maynwaring [q. v.], he contributed, though not in his own name, to the relief of the episcopal clergy in Scotland. He declined to become a governor of Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospitals on the ground that his duties as a governor of St. Bartholomew's Hospital occupied all his available time. In 1708 Radcliffe bought, besides property in Northamptonshire and Yorkshire, the perpetual advowson of Headbourne-Worthy, Hampshire, which he bestowed on Dr. Joseph Bingham [q. v.], fellow of University College.
Prince George of Denmark became dangerously ill in October 1708, and the queen sent for Radcliffe; but the dropsy had reached such a stage that the doctor could hold out no hope, and the prince died in six days. In 1709 Radcliffe, after passing for years as a misogynist—the result of a disappointment in 1693—fell in love with a patient, one Miss Tempest. Steele ridiculed him in the ‘Tatler’ for 21 and 28 July, and 13 Sept., under the name of ‘Æsculapius,’ for setting up a new coach and liveries in order to please the lady. Some said that Radcliffe was in love with the Duchess of Bolton (Wentworth Papers, p. 97) [see under Paulet or Powlett, second Duke of Bolton]; in any case he did not marry. In 1710, after a serious illness, he thought of retiring, but was persuaded to continue his practice by Dr. Sharp, archbishop of York, whose life he was soon afterwards the means of saving. He aided Sacheverell, and was invited to be a member of parliament for Buckingham, an offer which he declined for the time. In 1711 he was much depressed by the death of
