Doctor Cope's rampant daughter
In June the Heritage Centre launched our
Lives of the Presidents project, asking volunteers to contributed short biographical sketches of the 141 President of the College. As a result of putting together the research packs for the volunteers, I’ve been finding out many interesting titbits about former Presidents, including Doctor Cope’s ‘
rampant’ daughter.
Henry Cope was born about 1686, and studied medicine in Leyden and Dublin. He was State Physician, governor and physician of Dr Steevens’ Hospital, and President of this College twice; first in 1728 and again in 1740. It was between these two occasions in 1735 that his ‘rampant’ daughter was to cause him troubles.
In a letter dated 16 June 1735 Jonathan Swift informed his friend the Reverend Doctor Sheridan that
‘Here have been five and forty devils to do about Doctor Cope’s daughter who ran away with a rogue one Gibson, and the Doctor caught them in a field with a hedge parson in the act of coupling’
It appears Doctor Cope’s daughter was not the only romantic escapade that month as Swift recorded in the same letter that ‘one Mr. Hatch’s niece is run away with a hedge attorney’s clerk’ and two men were likely to fight a duel ‘for an ugly rich trollop, one Widow Dixon’.
Sheridan, in his reply to Swift, doesn’t have much sympathy for Doctor Cope who he believes was
‘a fool to trouble himself about his rampant daughter; for he may be assured, although he secures her from the present lover, since the love fit is upon her, she will try either his butler or coachman.’
Unfortunately, there are no further references to Doctor Cope’s daughter in Swift’s letters and I’ve not been able to find out what happened to her. Her father, at least, managed to outlive the scandal. He was elected Regius Professor of Physic in Trinity College three years later, a post he held until his death in January 1742.
Dr Cope wasn’t the only Fellow of this College to have a troublesome daughter. A century later Dr Robert Travers’ daughter Mary was to create a
cause célèbre through her affair with Sir William Wilde, and the ensuing liable case against his wife. (
You can find all the lurid details here)
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All the quotes are taken from volume 5 of The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift edited by F Elrington Ball (1915) , pages 194-199.