Sir Francis Crane Kt. and Dr. William Davison; patient and doctor in Paris in 1636.

THIS DUAL biographical essay concerns two outstanding men of the seventeenth century, an Englishman and a Scotsman. They made their reputations in very different walks of life and in different countries. Both were proteges of royalty; Sir Francis Crane of James I and Charles I, and William Davison of Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria, as well as of the kings of France and Poland, to whom he was successively appointed physician. Crane was a courtier, administrator, and man of the world; Davison was a chemist, botanist, and Paracelsian physician. The two were briefly brought together in Paris in 1636 as patient and doctor. Both died in Paris; Crane in 1636 and Davison in 1669. Nothing is known of the parentage or ancestry of Sir Francis Crane (Fig. 1); neither the date and place of his birth nor his exact age at death are recorded. This is all the more remarkable because he and his relations were prominent people holding appointments in the Court, royal households and State. Thus his only brother, Richard Crane (d. 1645), was Captain and Gentleman of the Privy Chamber in the reign of Charles I and was created a baronet in 1642. His cousin, John Crane (15761661) of Loughton, Bucks., was an Officer of the Admiralty and Surveyor General of Victuals for all ships. He had been a servant of Queen Elizabeth I before becoming Chief Clerk of the Green Cloth to James I, Charles I, and Charles II. Another cousin was John Crane (1571-1652), the Cambridge apothecary and philanthropist who was High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire in 1641 and bore the arms of the Cranes of Suffolk. Nor is anything known about the early life of Sir Francis before 1606 when it is stated that he was granted the office of Clerk of the Parliaments for life.1 But Bond points out that he was only granted a reversion of the office and never succeeded to it because he relinquished the reversion in 1613.2 He became Secretary to Charles, Prince of Wales, in 1612, was knighted at Coventry in 1617, and sat as Member of Parliament for Penrhyn in 1614 and for Launceston in 1624. In 1628 he became the sixteenth Chancellor of the Order of the Garter but, as was then the custom, he was