Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Winterton, Ralph
WINTERTON, RALPH (1600–1636), physician, son of Francis Winterton, was born at Lutterworth, Leicestershire, in 1600. He was sent to Eton, and on 3 June 1617 was elected scholar of King's College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow on 3 June 1620. He matriculated in the university on 5 July 1617, graduated B.A. 1620, M.A. 1624. He suffered from sleeplessness and melancholia, and consulted the regius professor of physic, Dr. John Collins, who advised him to give up mathematics, at which he was then working, and to study medicine, and assured him he might thus erase from his mind the recollection of past ills. ‘I did,’ says Winterton, ‘as he advised, and what he foretold took place’ (Preface to Aphorisms). In 1625 he was a candidate for the professorship of Greek, when Robert Creighton [q. v.], who had for some time been deputy, was elected. He petitioned the visitor of King's College in May 1629, and on 20 Aug. was accordingly formally diverted to the study of physic, which he had already pursued for more than four years. He received the university license to practise medicine in 1631, and on 16 Sept. in that year petitioned King's College to grant him the degree of M.D. under its statutes. His request was refused, but was urged by John Hacket [q. v.], writing from Buckden on 25 Jan. 1632, on behalf of the bishop of Lincoln, and by Bishop John Williams (1582–1650) [q. v.] himself on 28 June 1632, as well as by the Earl of Holland on 28 Nov. 1633, but all without effect. Some conduct in hall on 15 Dec. 1631 and on 7 Aug. 1633 which may perhaps have been of the nature of acrid theological discussion seems to have been the ground for these refusals. A letter in which, on 12 Dec. 1633, W. Bray writes by Archbishop Laud's direction to Samuel Collins, provost of King's, signifies to the provost ‘not his grace's pleasure but his desire that the provost would speedily and without any wayes of delay grant to Mr. Winterton his degree in the house.’ It was granted within a fortnight.
In 1627 Winterton translated John Gerhard's ‘Meditations,’ in which he was encouraged by John Bowle, afterwards bishop of Rochester, and they were printed at Cambridge in 1631, and reached a fifth edition in 1638. His brother Francis was one of six hundred volunteers, commanded by the Marquis of Hamilton, who went to serve under Gustavus Adolphus, and his death at Castrin in Silesia in 1631 depressed Winterton so much that he sought relief by translating the ‘Considerations of Drexelius upon Eternitie,’ which was published at the Cambridge University press in 1636, and of which subsequent editions appeared in 1650 and 1658, 1675, 1684, 1703, 1705, and 1716. In 1632 he also translated and printed at Cambridge ‘A Golden Chaine of Divine Aphorismes’ of John Gerhard of Heidelberg. It contains commendatory verses in English by Edward Benlowes of St. John's College, and by four fellows of his own college, Dore Williamson, Robert Newman, Henry Whiston, and Thomas Page. In 1633 he published at Cambridge an edition of Terence, and an edition of the Greek poem of Dionysius ‘De Situ Orbis,’ with a dedication in Greek verse to Sir Henry Wotton [q. v.], provost of Eton. He had written a Greek metrical version of the first books of the aphorisms of Hippocrates in 1631, and early in 1633 published at Cambridge, with a dedication to William Laud, then bishop of London, ‘Hippocratis Magni Aphorismi Soluti et Metrici.’ Each aphorism is given in the original with the Latin version of John Heurnius of Utrecht, and is rendered into Latin verse and Greek verse. The Latin verses are by John Fryer (d. 1563) [q. v.], president of the College of Physicians in 1549, whose name appears on the title-page (Epigrammata, p. 38). The seven books of aphorisms are followed by epigrams in Latin or Greek in praise of Winterton's work by the regius professors of medicine at Cambridge and Oxford; by the president and seventeen fellows of the College of Physicians, of whom fourteen are Cantabrigians and three Oxonians; by Francis Glisson [q. v.], afterwards professor of physic; by members of every college at Cambridge but one; by the professor of astronomy and members of several colleges at Oxford, concluding with twenty epigrams by members of King's College. Laudatory opinions in prose by the masters of Peterhouse, Christ's, and Trinity, and the president of Queens', and by two professors of divinity are prefixed, so that no medical work at Cambridge has ever received so high a degree of academical commendation. It led to Winterton's appointment as regius professor of physic in 1635, in which year the three regius professors at Cambridge—divinity, law, and physic—were all of King's College.
Winterton discharged the duties of his professorship with great care. The course for the M.D. degree was then twelve years, and improper efforts were often made to obtain incorporation after graduation in other universities. These he put a stop to, as he announces in a letter, dated 25 Aug. 1635, to Dr. Simeon Foxe, then president of the College of Physicians (Goodall). While preparing the Greek aphorisms he also worked at an edition of the ‘Poetæ minores Græci,’ based upon those of Henry Stephen (1566) and Crispin (1600), with observations of his own on Hesiod. He intended to have extended these, but was prevented by his appointment as professor. The book was published at Cambridge in 1635, with a dedication to Archbishop Laud, and subsequent editions appeared in 1652, 1661, 1671, 1677, 1684, 1700, and 1712. He published at Cambridge in 1631 Greek verses at the end of William Buckley's ‘Arithmetica Memorativa,’ and in 1635 verses in ‘Carmen Natalitium,’ and in ‘Genethliacum Academiæ.’
Winterton made his will on 25 Aug. 1636, leaving bequests to his father, mother, brothers John, Henry, and William, and sisters Mary, Barbara, Fenton, and Ruth. To his brother John, who was a student of medicine at Christ's College, and who wrote verses in ‘Carmen Natalitium,’ he gave the medical works of Daniel Sennertus in six volumes, and of Martin Rulandus and the surgery of William Clowes the younger [q. v.], and his anatomy instruments. He died on 13 Sept. 1636 at Cambridge, and was buried at the east end of King's College chapel.
[Works; Extracts from records of King's College, Cambridge, kindly sent by Dr. M. R. James and Mr. F. L. Clarke; Extracts from records at Eton by H. E. Luxmoore; Letter from Rev. J. E. B. Mayor; Goodall's Royal College of Physicians of London, 1684, p. 443.]