born 0441; 1460, Canterbury, Kent, Eng.
died Oct. 20, 1524, London
English physician and classical scholar.
Elected a fellow at Oxford in 1484, he became one of the first propagators of the humanist "New Learning" in England; his students included Desiderius Erasmus and St. Thomas More . Many prominent Londoners were his medical patients, including Henry VIII , whose approval he obtained in 1518 to found the Royal College of Physicians, which decided who should practice medicine in Greater London and which licensed physicians throughout the kingdom, ending the indiscriminate practice of medicine by barbers, clergymen, and others.