Wakehurst Place
Ardingly, West Sussex, England

Wakehurst Place:
The Culpeper Connection
(Continued)

Nicholas Culpepper, the Herbalist

The reputation of Nicholas Culpeper, the herbalist, does not always do credit to the man himself. Herbs are associated with warmth and scent and sunlight and somewhere in this cozy association we place the herbalist. In fact he was a rebel: a self-appointed doctor who practiced in the east-end of London and fought as stoically for the rights of everyone, however poor, to a decent standard of medical treatment, as he did against the Royalists and those physicians of his day who accepted the pay-or-perish principle of their profession with alacrity. He was not the homely soul of our imaginations, but a man of his day, and of the people. The Civil War brought segregation and confusion to society; fear and mistrust between families; poverty and ill-health. He died before reaching forty, overworked and still suffering from the wound he had received as a soldier in Cromwell's army.

Soon after his christening at Ockley, Nicholas's mother took him back to her father's home, the rectory at Isfield, which is where Nicholas grew up. The Rev. William Attersoll was a puritan, the author of many biblical commentaries and treatises and wholly committed to the salvation of his flock who, on the contrary, were initially wary of him, believing him to be too scholarly to make the sort of preacher they were used to. However the two local dignitaries, Sir John Rivers and Sir John Shurley, were on his side and through their patronage and the help of another of his supporters, Sir Henry Fanshaw, he held the living (i.e., was given a home and paid to serve the church) for just on forty years. Attersoll's plans for his grandson's future were that he should receive good preliminary education and then go to Cambridge, where he himself had been, and then enter the church. Nicholas got as far as Cambridge, where he is said to have obtained a good knowledge of Latin and Greek, but in his second year there, love intervened. His romance makes in extraordinary tale and was related in a short biography written by his amanuensis (secretary), William Reeves, in an edition of one of Nicholas's works, Culpeper's School of Physick, which was published after his death. The following is a relevant extract:

One of the first diversions that he had amongst some smaller transactions and changes... was that he had engaged himself to the love of a beautiful lady; I shall not name her for some reasons; her father was reported to be one of the noblest and wealthiest in Sussex. This fair lady after many generous treatments, as Mr. Culpeper might clearly perceive entertained the tenders of his service, so far as to requite him with her entire and sincere affections; and though the strictness of parents have often too severe eyes over their children, yet when heart are once united, lovers use to break through all difficulties.

The riches of the lady (which might have enchanted inferior spirits) in respect of the virtuous inclinations of her mind and person, had no power over him, so that like a true lover, the language of his eyes and his heart were the same, insomuch that the languishing sincerities of these suffering Inamorato's, put them to the extremity of the determination, some way to set a period to their martyrdoms.

Mr. Culpeper having then supplied himself with two hundred pounds from his mother, during his abode at Cambridge, his fair mistress and he by letters and otherwise, plotted secretly with the assistance of a gentlewoman that waited on her, to pack up such rich jewels, and other necessities as might best appertain to a journey, and so secretly to make their escape near to Lewes in Sussex; where they intended to marry; and afterwards for a season to live privately till the incensed parents were pacified; but this happiness was denied them by the malevolence of Mars, and some other envious planets, as you shall find in his nativity.

Not to vex the expectations of the reader any longer, but rather to epitomize so sad a story, Mr. Culpeper hastes from Cambridge, his mistress with those that she durst trust, were gone part of the way to meet him at the appointed place, but it pleased the great disposer of terrene affairs to order it otherwise; the lady and her servants being suddenly surprised with a dreadful storm, with fearful claps of thunder, surrounded with flames of fire and flashes of lightening, with some of which Mr. Culpeper's fair mistress was so stricken, that she immediately fell down dead, exchanging her marriage on earth for one in heaven.

A great deal can be read into this, and it leaves out wondering if Nicholas, despite the disclaimer and true to the tradition of several of his forebears, was attracted to the lady's fortune as well as to her charms. It is interesting that William Reeves, who must have got the information from Nicholas himself, goes on to mention that "this lady had two thousand pounds in personal estate, and five hundred pounds a year". But the obvious question is: Who was she? Unfortunately we don't know. An historical novel, based on Nicholas's life, gives no names and coyly pretends that she was a secret ward of the sinister Sir Thomas Shurley, who in any case is wrongly identified as head of his family at that time. Sir John Shurley did have several daughters but these are all accounted for. The present curate at Isfield suspects that she might have been one of Sir John Rivers' family but there is no direct evidence to support this and her true identity may have to remain guesswork unless more proof can be unearthed.

Not surprisingly, Nicholas was 'cast into a deep melancholy' at the loss of his 'Jewel' as he called her, but instead of returning to Cambridge, chastened by his folly, he stubbornly refused to go back there and announced that he would rather study astrology and occult philosophy than for the Church. William Attersoll, who took his scriptures so extremely seriously, must have been appalled.

Occult philosophy was based on the Hermetica, writings by the fabled Hermes Trismegistus, and the Cabala. It was an explosive mixture of magic and secrecy with a dark side to it that suggested Satanism to the Church. Astrology was more tolerated. Although it was in opposition to the doctrine of freewill, since Saint Aquinas had pointed out that, though the stars do not determine mortal behavior, they do influence it - the stars impel but do not compel - the Church did not entirely refute the notion of astrological intervention. Saint Aquinas had also accepted that the power of the planets could be directed through the plants and minerals which they governed; a very old and deeply entrenched concept which was the mainstay of Nicholas's own credo with regard to the cosmos. At least William Attersoll could say his grandson was not a heretic on that count - merely a fool.

What was William Attersoll to do with his errant grandson? Although he must have been very much affronted by Nicholas's behavior, his decision was not unkind. Through contacts he had in London, he arranged for Nicholas to start as an apprentice to an apothecary in Temple Bar, and with fifty pounds, which was liable for his fees, he was dispatched to the capital.

Nicholas joined Daniel White, his first master, in November 1634, but did not serve his full term with him. According to William Reeves, White went bankrupt eighteen months later and fled to Ireland with the remainder of Nicholas's apprenticeship fees. This account does not tally with the records in the Court Book of the Society of Apothecaries which state that it was three years later, after White's death, that Nicholas passed on to another master, Francis Drake, an apothecary in Threadneedle Street. Here Nicholas taught Drake Latin in return for his keep and when Drake died, two years later, he and his fellow-apprentice, Samuel Leadbeaters, were both turned over to Stephen Higgins who was Master of the Society at that time.

William Reeves does mention Mr. Drake but his account of the story is that when Drake died, after remaining with Samuel Leadbeaters for a spell, Nicholas took over Drake's shop in Bishopsgate and stayed there for a time, studying medicine. However, he omits the period with Stephen Higgins, and it was actually Samuel Leadbeaters who took over the Bishopsgate business. Nicholas only acted as an occasional journeyman for him over the next few years and here 'act' is the operative word for a journeyman is a qualified craftsman and Nicholas never finished his apprenticeship.

In the autumn of 1639, having, according to Reeves, "fixed his eyes upon the firmament, where Venus, the star of his own affections governed", he surrendered himself to the virtues and beauty of the fifteen-year-old Alice Field. Marriage automatically obliged him to forfeit his apprenticeship and as it had only two remaining years to run, the obvious thing would have been to postpone the nuptials. Nicholas, however, had little respect for convention as he had already proved, and if he felt that five years training in the apothecaries' art was sufficient, then the fact that another two were officially required, would have meant nothing to him. But something else, besides unconventionality, made him decide to quit when he did - as Reeves indirectly suggests - for "besides her (Alice's) richer qualities, her admirable discretion, and excellent breeding, she brought him a considerable fortune.

On 30 May 1640, six months after Nicholas's marriage, William Attersoll died. The news of his grandfather's death was brought to Nicholas by two executors who also gave him his inheritance - a sum total of forty shillings. As Attersoll had left four hundred pounds to each of his other grandchildren, this was a telling gesture but one which, in his newly prosperous circumstances, Nicholas was able to brush off with a smile and the comment that "He had courted two mistresses that had cost him dear, but it was not the wealth of kingdoms should buy them from him." He was not, of course, referring to any real life mistresses but to his first loves, astrology and occult philosophy. And they did indeed 'cost him dear', but just for a while, at the start of the 1640s Nicholas must have believed his troubles were over. He had a pretty wife, a new home in rural surroundings at Spitalfields, money and, as a free man, plenty of time to court his 'two mistresses' to his heart's content.

The trouble-free life didn't last long. At some time in the early days of his marriage he fought a duel that apparently forced him to flee to France for three months while his opponent was treated at Nicholas's own expense. What the quarrel was about is not revealed but it was not uncommon at the time when Civil War was brewing for arguments to flare up and duels to be fought between Royalists and Puritans. An insult directed towards the King, for instance, would automatically oblige a cavalier to demand satisfaction. And then the war itself came. As a Puritan, like his father and grandfather, Nicholas joined the Roundheads and was severely wounded in the chest by a musket shot at the first Battle of Newbury in September 1643 - an injury from which he never fully recovered.

There are no records of his direct involvement in the war after this time, but there are those that indicate that he worked for his friend Samuel Leadbeaters on and off until about June 1644 when Leadbeaters was requested - not for the first time - by the Society of Apothecaries to 'put away' his journeyman. Obviously there was some disapproval of Nicholas's practicing as an apothecary without being fully qualified. From then, until the end of the war and until his first published work brought him Into the limelight - or into notoriety as his critics would have said - can be viewed as Nicholas's ‘study period'. Given the volume of work that came out of this, it must have been intensive.

Science was still disentangling itself from superstition in the seventeenth century. Astronomy had been put more in perspective since Copernicus had knocked the theory of the earth, as center of the universe, off its axis, but this didn't alter the popular concept of 'natural astrology' and the belief in a ‘great chain of being' along which an invisible current of influence ran between the planets and things on earth. Along this route, medicine and astrology were naturally linked, in that plants were believed to be more or less potent, according to whether or not the planet, which governed them, was in favorable aspect. So, when it came to treatment, it mattered at what time specific herbs were gathered as well as if they corresponded astrologically to the part of the body needing attention and the type of disease which affected it. Even diagnosis had more to do with the signs in the heavens than the body itself, so astrological medicine was a complicated business. The ordinary physician however would not have been so concerned with all this and would instead have simply referred to the London Pharmacopoeia for his prescriptions. Nicholas, as we know, was not a conventional practitioner, nor a qualified one, and based his doctoring on what he had learned during his interrupted apprenticeship and a compendium of self-taught and selected ideas.

In spite of his involvement in astrological medicine, Nicholas's work has been said to reflect faithfully the orthodox medicine of his own time but this does not mean to say that he had much respect for the medical profession as a body. Intellectually, he was opposed to the physicians of his day, for he believed that they didn't have an original thought between them: a view, which reflected a traditional rivalry between the apothecaries and the physicians who, at that particular time, were politically opposed as well.

It suited patients, particularly poorer ones, to consult an apothecary and forgo the expense of a physician, while the apothecary was usually more than happy to prescribe treatment and deal with a case, without bothering to consult one. The apothecaries had been given their independence, as a distinct professional body, by Royal Charter in December 1617, but they were still required to mix their medicines according to the law - that is according to the law as laid down by the physicians in their London Pharmacopoeia, first published, and in much haste, in 1618. This is probably why Nicholas's second master had needed tuition in Latin - so that he could understand the Pharmacopoeia. Before this, most apothecaries, like Drake, would have based their formulas on tradition and observation.

The advantage that many an apothecary had over a physician was practical experience. Nicholas's criticism of the physicians was justified in that nearly all their knowledge was theoretical and learned in universities or one of the big continental medical schools. An apothecary, with his day-to-day contact with the man in the street, was often far better equipped to deal with a whole variety of common ailments than the so-called specialists, and part of Nicholas's popularity came from this 'common touch'. He was all for dispensing with the mystery in medicine and so set about the extremely practical, if revolutionary, task of translating the London Pharmacopoeia into the vernacular. He was not, incidentally, the only one who had considered doing this but up until then no one else had dared.

Nicholas's translation of the London Pharmacopoeia was published by Peter Cole in 1649 and entitled A Physicall Directory: A translation of the London Dispensatory made by the College of Physicians in London. Being that book by which all Apothecaries are strictly commanded to make all their Physick. Needless to say the College of Physicians was furious. In the same year, the Royalist periodical, Mercurious Pragmaticus, published a counterblast which stated, among other similar insults, that Nicholas, " as an absolute atheist, and by two years drunken labour, hath gallimawfred the apothecaries book into nonsense'. In fact, Nicholas's translation was quite faithful to the original, although he sarcastically called it the physicians' 'stately piece of wit'. What probably drew forth their venom was his inclusion of all sorts of personal and often humorous asides, particularly in the section on non-vegetable drugs, which he had little time for.

Nicholas's next book, A Directory for Midwives, 1651, was also published by Peter Cole, and what almost certainly prompted him to write this guide for women, besides his concern for the tragically common cases of child mortality and deaths during childbirth, was his private grief over the deaths of his own children. Of his seven children, only a daughter, Mary, survived him, and she is thought to have died only a few years after him. A contemporary expert has suggested that Alice was probably suffering from toxemia of pregnancy, a condition that is not even today fully understood, although she did have a son by her second husband, the astrologer John Heyden, who survived into adulthood.

The celebrated 'Herbal' was published the following year in 1652. It was entitled The English Physician: or an astrological Discourse of the Vulgar Herbs of this Notion. Being a Compleat Method of Physick, whereby a man may preserve his Body in Health; or cure himself being sick for three pence charge, with such things only as grow in England, they being most fit for English Bodies. In this title Nicholas reveals a favorite opinion of his; that English herbs do best for English bodies. Nicholas liked to consider himself an original thinker, but on this particular point he did not have priority. John Parkinson, ‘King's Botanist’ in the reign of Charles I and apothecary to James I, had written Paradisus Terrestris, published in 1629, which described "all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English air will permit to be nursed up" He also wrote A Universal and Complete Herbal, which was published in 1640 and was a great deal more scholarly than Nicholas's own - if lacking much of the latter's flair. Both these books by Parkinson had propounded the theory that natives of any country are best treated by indigenous drugs. Parkinson's friend and former student, Thomas Johnson, said the same. In the second printing of his improved and enlarged edition of Gerard's Herbal (originally published in 1597) which appeared in 1636, he had written: "I verily believe that the divine providence had care in bestowing Plants in each part of the Earth, fitting and convenient to the fore-knowne necessities of the future Inhabitants; and if wee thoroughly knew the Vertues of these, we needed no Indian nor American Drugges."

With his English Physician Nicholas's popularity and reputation among the 'common folk' was established. They loved him but their clamorings for his medical attentions did his own poor health little good. He frequently attended to as many as forty patients 2 day and survived for only two years after the publication of his book. The official diagnosis of his death was tuberculosis exacerbated by overwork and his old wound but a comment of William Reeves suggests something more: "the destructive Tobacco Mr. Culpeper too excessively took; which by degrees: first deprived him of his stomach, and after other evil effects, in the process of time, was one of the chief hasteners of his death." It would be ironic if, for all his condoning simple native herbs, it were a foreign drug, which killed him.

Culpeper's Herbal has endured because it was written out of Nicholas's concern for his fellow men, with honesty and with considerable charm. He wrote of it: "I consulted with my two brothers Dr. Reason and Dr. Experience and took a voyage to my Mother Nature, by whose advice, together with the help of Dr. Diligence, I at last obtained my desire; and being warned by Mr. Honesty, a stranger in these days, to publish it to the world, I have done it."

He died on 10 January 1654 aged 38, after instructing his wife: "My dearest Girl live as I have done and then thou will die as I do ... in the presence of God and his angels, I did by all persons as I would they should do by me: I was always just in my practice: I never gave a patient two medicines when one would serve."

According to his widow, Nicholas left seventy-nine unpublished works in her care, twenty-six of which were subsequently published, but only a dozen of his works appeared in his lifetime. Much of his work was translation or commentary but for those who are interested in his writings, a bibliography and appraisal of all his books was written by F. N. L. Poynter, former Librarian of the Welcome Historical Library and published in the Journal of the History of Medicine, January 1962.

Red Lion Street in Spitalfields, where Nicholas's home was from the time of his marriage until his death, was obliterated when Commercial Road was built. New Bethlehem Churchyard, where he requested to be buried, was very quickly and cleverly calculated by the Librarian of Bishopsgate Library to be now somewhere under platform eleven of Liverpool Street station. The old rectory at Isfield, where he grew up, was, however identified in 1988 by a Swedish professor of medicine while working on Nicholas's biography. The present owner and her late husband spent many years cultivating an unusual and impressive garden there and quite unaware of its former occupant, the owner herself some years ago, laid out a herb garden in it. Coincidence or influence depends on one's point of view.