then goes through diseases and injuries beginning with the head, and ends with an antidotarium or treatise on remedies. It contains some remarks on cooking, and innumerable prescriptions, many of which are superstitious, while others prove to be common-sense remedies when carefully considered. Thus the sealskin girdle with whalebone buckle which he recommends for colic is no more than the modern and useful cholera belt of flannel. He cared for his gains, and boasts of getting a large price from the Barber Surgeons' guild for a prescription of which the chief ingredient is tree frogs (Rosa, ed. Pavia, p. 120). His disposition, his peculiarities, and his reading are so precisely those of the ‘Doctour of Phisik’ in Chaucer's prologue that it seems possible that Gaddesden is the contemporary from whom Chaucer drew this character. He is mentioned in line 434:
- Bernard and Gatesden and Gilbertyn.
Many manuscripts of the ‘Rosa Medicinæ’ are extant. They usually begin with a calendar (as in Breviar. Bartholomei MS. Pembr. Coll., Oxford), which is absent in the printed editions. It was first printed at Pavia in 1492, again at Venice, 1502, and at Pavia, 1517, and for the last time at Augsburg in 1595 (two volumes). It was translated into Irish, and a manuscript written by Doctor Cormac Mac Duinntshleibhthe in 1450 contains part of this version (British Museum MS. Harleian 546).
Gaddesden was in priest's orders, and was appointed to the stall of Wildland in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, on 1 Aug. 1342. He died in 1361.
The best account of his writings is in Freind's ‘History of Physick,’ 1726, ii. 277. This account contains the error, repeated by Aikin's ‘Biographical Memoirs of Medicine,’ 1780, p. 11, that he held the stall of Ealdland. The John de Gatesdone who held this stall was another person, and died before 1262.
[Rosa Medicinæ, ed. 1502, Venice, ed. 1492, Pavia, Dr. Mead's copy in library of Medico-Chirurgical Society of London; Le Neve's Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ, ii. 382, 448; Hist. of the Royal Family, London, 1713; Harl. MS. 546, A.D. 1450; British Museum Addit. MS. 15582, A.D. 1563; Pembroke College, Oxford, MS. Breviarium Bartholomei, circa 1380.]
GADSBY, WILLIAM (1773–1844), particular baptist minister, the son of a labourer, was born at Attleborough in the parish of Nuneaton, Warwickshire, in January 1773. He went to Nuneaton Church school and to another school, and at thirteen was apprenticed to a ribbon weaver. As a lad he had the gift of public speaking, and often harangued his fellow workmen, ending with ‘preaching to them hell and damnation.’ In 1793 he met with a baptist minister named Aston from Coventry, and on 29 Dec. that year was formally baptised at the Cow Lane chapel, Coventry. Until he was twenty-two he worked as a ribbon weaver, and then went to Hinckley, Leicestershire, as a stocking weaver. In 1796 he married Elizabeth Marvin, and began business on his own account. Two years afterwards he commenced preaching regularly at Bedworth and Hinckley, but he continued his business, and used to carry his wares to market in a pack. At this time he was referred to as ‘a very tried man, bearing very blessed marks and evidences of divine teaching within, though clownish and illiterate, almost to the extreme.’ He settled at Manchester in 1805 as the pastor of the Back Lane baptist chapel, situate in George's, now Rochdale, Road, where he remained till his death. At first he met with considerable opposition, but gradually his sterling qualities were appreciated, and he attained great popularity. He had ready wit and quaint humour, and was an earnest and persuasive speaker, though he would often startle his hearers with some eccentric remark. ‘He was called an antinomian, and probably he did not speak with sufficient discrimination or exactness on the nature of moral obligation, but no minister in Manchester lived a more moral life, or presented to his hearers a more beautiful example of christian discipline or self-control’ (Halley). It is calculated that in the exercise of his ministry he travelled sixty thousand miles, and preached nearly twelve thousand sermons.
Between 1806 and 1843 he wrote frequently on religious subjects, and published a number of pamphlets, most of which were afterwards issued in a collective form in two vols. (1851) by his son, John Gadsby, who also in 1884 edited and published a volume of Gadsby's ‘Sermons, Fragments of Sermons, and Letters.’ Gadsby wrote many prosaic hymns and other verses, and published them in ‘A Selection of Hymns,’ 1814, in ‘The Nazarene's Songs,’ 1814, and elsewhere. He died at Manchester on 27 Jan. 1844, and was buried in the Rusholme Road cemetery. There is a tablet to his memory in his chapel, and a good portrait of him was engraved by W. Barnard after F. Turner.
[Memoir by his son, John Gadsby, 1844, new edit. 1870; Halley's Lancashire, its Puritanism and Nonconformity, 1872, p. 527; Procter's Bygone Manchester, p. 144; Manchester City News, 24 and 31 March 1888; Brit. Mus. Cat. of Printed Books; John Dixon's Autobiog. 1866, contains reminiscences of Gadsby.]
