Doctor Lambe, the Duke's Devil

"[Doctor] Lambe Stinkes worse than Mackerall or Haddocke," 
wrote one master of Jacobean light verse.  

I present to satisfy your curiosity, dear readers, the tale of the seventeenth-century astrologer-magician-physician John Lambe, a self-styled "Doctor" who numbered among his clients the most powerful man in England, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, favorite of Stuart kings James I and Charles I.  

Born around 1545, little is known of Lambe's life before he came to London to ply his trade as conjurer-at-large.  He seems to have been a tutor to gentlemen's sons in Worcestershire, afterwards studying medicine.  But, as young medical students are wont to do, Lambe soon fell prey to "other mysteries, as telling of fortunes, helping of divers to lost goods, shewing to young people the faces of their husbands or wives that should be in a crystal glass."

Lambe was arrested in 1608 in Worcestershire for practicing his new profession, charged with disabling the physical and mental strength of and "generalley givving bad Vybes" to Thomas, Lord Windsor, and accused of invoking and entertaining "certain evil and impious spirits."  While being held, he proved to several visitors that he could cause apparitions to proceed from his crystal ball. He also prophesied death with fatal success, with some forty people that had been present in court dying within two weeks of the trial (probably just an outbreak of gaol fever, now called typhus :( ).  

Worcesterites successfully, and understandably, lobbied for Lambe's transfer to London's King's Bench prison, where he lived there in easy confinement, occupying two rooms, employing servants, and practicing "medicine" as before.  Indeed, in his heyday as a physician in London, Lambe claimed he could conjure spirits, find missing items with his crystal ball, treat maladies, exorcise witchcraft, and "do dirtey Deedes" cheaply.  

One of his client-visitors at the prison was Buckingham, always on the lookout for an easy anecdote when his fortunes waned at the Royal court. On June 12, 1626, London was hit by an unexpected storm, after which a mist hung over the River Thames near York House, Buckingham's residence. The superstitious, and Buckingham-haters, discerned ominous shapes in the fog, including a skull, a horse, and a giant lace collar. Lambe had appeared on the river earlier in the day, and many attributed these fearful meteorological disturbances to his conjuring. Buckingham's mother, though to be practitioner of the "cunning arts" herself, said she saw in Lambe's crystal ball the shadowy figure of a large man holding a dagger, poised to kill her son.  Needless to say, things didn't look good for either of our boys.  

John Lambe's patron, the Duke of Buckingham, who reputedly had his astrologer summon angels, naked children, and Greek sea gods for his enjoyment.  

Because of his perceived control of Buckingham, Lambe was slandered widely, in alehouses and in print. Broadsheets of the day called him things like the "Foole Lambe, that lewde Impostar," and Lambe was known widely as "the Duke's Devil."  A popular chant (and lullaby) went thus: "Who rules the Kingdom? The King. Who rules the King? The Duke. Who rules the Duke? The Devil!"

Public opinion against Lambe and the Duke became so negative that, by 1628, the octogenarian feared for his life.  Curiously enough, Lambe began his last evening, Friday the 13th (!) of June, attending an entertainment at an open-air theater called the Fortune (!) playhouse. There, he noticed a gang of "never-do-weles" and young punks making threats on his life and giving him the stink-eye.  The angry crowd followed him to dinner at a tavern, despite the sailor-bodyguards he had hired for the evening. He ducked into the Windmill Tavern, then hid a friend's house nearby. His naysayers surrounded both hideouts, demanding with thrown stones that Lambe be released to them. Eventually, kicked out onto the street, the crowd had their way with the old conjurer, assaulting him with stones and beating him with cudgels until no part of his body "was left to receive a wound," according to one witness.  Lambe was carried to the nearby Counter prison, where, despite desperate attempts at magical intervention, he died the next morning.  

Constables failed to locate any of the murderous mob, and no one was ever punished for Lambe's death. Many alleged this slight of justice, and law enforcement's failure to prevent the crowd setting upon the hated physician, was intentional. London mobs chanted, "Let [King] Charles and George [the Duke] do what they can, the Duke shall die like Doctor Lambe!" Lambe's patron was assassinated less than two months later by one of his former officers while dining in a Bristol tavern on the eve of his military expedition to France.  

A woodcut from the front of the broadside ballad The Tragedy of Doctor Lambe (1628). I'm guessing that's an evil demon, incubus, spirit, succubus, or the like conjured by Lambe on the lower-right.  

From the back of the same.  Apparently, Lambe was a Catholic monk who liked hiding under tables.

Crowds came (and paid) to see Lambe's body at the Counter prison. It was reported that Lambe had a strange assortment of items on his person when he died, as befitting an astrologer-physician. These everyday needs included a sword, knives, a crystal ball, a gold nightcap, twelve silk pouches, forty shillings, and eight small engraved portraits, including that of the Countess of Somerset, a favorite at court, an alleged witch and pardoned murderess.  


England was flooded with printed satiric commemorations, anti-tributes, and scandal-rags in prose and verse after Lambe's murder, remaining as popular a topic for discussion in death as he was in life. One balladeer, in The Tragedy of Doctor Lambe (1628), wrote of Lambe's death:

"Neighbours cease to moan,

And leave your lamentation,

For Doctor Lambe is gone,

The Devil of our Nation."

Another eulogized, in An Epitaph on Dr Lambe:

"Here Dr Lambe, the conjurer lyes,

Against his will untimely dies.

The Divell did show himselfe a Glutton

In taking this Lambe before he was mutton."

*     *     *

So, readers fair, here endeth our tale of the notorious life and ignominious death of Doctor John Lambe, infamous conjurer, passable early modern physician, and the face that launched a thousand hackneyed broadsides.  Until next time, the Cabinet is closed!  

The Russian Ben Franklin, Михаи́л Ломоно́сов

In addition to being a poet, astronomer, chemist, and general layabout, Lomonosov mastered the art of the no-look diary entry.  

Hello, Cabinet patrons! In this installment, I bring you the story of Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (1711-65), Russia's answer to Benjamin Franklin and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -- father of Russian science and poetry and all-around Mensch.  

Lomonosov grew up on the shores of the White Sea on Russia's northwest coast, the son of a fisherman and descendant of the Pomor settlers in the region. No quick study at fishing, in 1730, at age nineteen, Lomonosov struck out for the big city, Moscow.  He was admitted to Russia's Harvard, the unfortunately-named Slavic Greek Latin Academy, completing a twelve-year (!) degree in five years.  Later, he was able to study chemistry and mining for two years in Germany at the University of Marburg.  There, Mikhail picked up the German language, picked up a German wife, Elisabeth Zilch, and picked up a svengali, the eminently-named philosopher, Christian Freiherr von Wolfius.  

Lomonosov's chemistry lab/breakfast nook.

(Northwestern Univ.)

Returning to Mother Russia in 1741, Lomonosov taught physicks and chemistry at the Russian Academy of Science, where he encouraged his students to call him "Doc Lommy" and "Teach." He inspired young mind at the RAS until 1755. (Except for a short interlude in 1743, during which he was house arrest for personally insulting several prominent faculty members!)  Lomonosov left the RAS to found the venerable Moscow State University (MSU), now also known as the Lomonosov Memorial Moscow State University.  

Sketches by Lomonosov of the Northern Lights. Reportedly, his students marveled at his chalkboarding expertise.

(Northwestern Univ.)

Lomonosov was a true polymath during a century of great Renaissance (well, not that Renaissance) men (and women).  Here's a sampling of some of his many interests and achievements:

• An enthusiastic amateur astronomer, he hypothesized the existence of Venus' atmosphere, which prompted Czarina Elizabeth to christen the planet "New Siberia."

• He made major improvements to the telescope, co-inventing what is now known as the reflecting or Herschelian telescope, a "window on the West," which, on imperial decree, he used to spy on the various palaces of the absolute monarchs of Europe.  

• He published a catalog of over three thousand minerals in 1745, later a popular source for light readings  and entertainments at St. Petersburg's Paris-style salons.  

• Lomonsov organized an expedition, helmed by Vasily Chichagov, to find the Northeast Passage sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Wisely, Lomonsov avoided actually going on this ice-hampered journey through the Frozen North.  

• He was also a prolific mosaic artist! He set up a glass factory to produce the materials for his forty giant mosaics, most commemorating Great Moments for the Fatherland. 

• A venerable writer, Lomonosov wrote a history of Russia, and reformed Russian poetic language, producing a reformed grammar combining vernacular Russian with Old Church Slavonic, an innovation he used to write several poetic works.  His "Ode to Carolus Linnaeus' New Genus-Species Classification System" was written for performance on his election into the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1761.  

• He was also interested in icebergs, the properties of mercury, organic chemistry, bejeweled eggs, optics, continental drift, and wig design!

Russian empress (and amateur natural scientist and animal husbander) Catherine the Great visits Lomonosov in 1764.  (Ivan Fyodorov, 1884)

Lomonsov is still a big deal in Russia, seen as the man who brought the ideas of the Western European Enlightenment to darkest Russia.  He is to science what Puskin is to Russian literary culture or Rasputin is to well-endowed hemophilia-curing mystics. 

Let's have a trio of huzzahs! (or Ура's!) for Mikhail Lomonsov!  

Welcome to Professor Carmichael's Cabinet of Curiosites

Hwaet!

I bid all welcome my humble "Blogge" post on subjects of a diverse, interesting, and (indeed) wondrous nature. My curiosity cabinet is a virtual room, not unlike those of old, exhibiting, for the willing participant, an encyclopedic collection of knowledge both tangible and intangible. This shall include, will not be limited to, history, natural sciences, and antiquities. Also, alchemy, astrology, pseudoscience ("real science" in Greek), and matters of a metaphysical or speculative nature. And also some stuff that might be made up.


But a little about your humble author. I am a Distinguished Academician at an Institution of Higher Learning. From my panopticon at the top of my ivory tower, I send out my ravens to gather the news of the world each day. Although these birds cost me my depth perception, I cherish the COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE they have allowed me to accumulate. And I read some books, too, I guess.


I will liken my cabinet of curiosities, or Wunderkammer ("Wonder Camera") in Deutsch ("German"), to a memory theater, a microcosm of the world, a Naturwissenschaftwundermicrokosmosgedächtnistheaterneugierkabinett, if you will.


Let us begin!

Prof. Carmichael

Post-script: Make sure to follow my links if you desire to know more about a topic. That is, if you trust other sources on the Internet. Soon these links will not be necessary, however, because I hope to make this Cabinet a sort of Intra-net 'cyclopedia of a self-referential nature.