Thomas, physician, was born at Canterbury about the year 1460, and there educated under the learned William Selling: thence he removed to Oxford, and in 1484 was chosen fellow of All-Souls college. Tilly, alias Selling, his former instructor, being at this time appointed ambassador from King Henry VII. to the court of Rome, Mr Linacre accompanied him to Italy, where he attained the highest degree of perfection in the Greek and Latin languages. At Rome, he applied himself particularly to the study of Aristotle and Galen, in the original. On his return to Oxford, he was incorporated doctor of physic, and chosen public professor in that faculty. But he had not been long in England, before he was commanded to court by King Henry VIII. to attend the young prince Arthur as his tutor and physician. He was afterwards appointed physician to the king, and after his death, to his successor Henry VIII. Dr Linacre founded two medical lectures at Oxford, and one at Cambridge; but that which most effectually immortalized his name among the faculty, is his being the first founder of the college of physicians in London. He beheld with vexation the wretched state of physic in those times; and, Linacre by an application to Cardinal Wolsey, obtained a patent in 1518, by which the physicians of London were incorporated. The intention of this corporation was to prevent illiterate and ignorant medicares from practicing the art of healing. Dr Linacre was the first president, and held the office as long as he lived. Their meetings were in his own house in Knight-rider street, which house he bequeathed to the college. But our doctor, when he was about the age of 50, took it into his head to study divinity; entered into orders; and was collated, in 1509, to the rectory of Merham. In the same year he was installed prebendary of Wells, in 1518 prebendary of York, and in the following year was admitted precentor of that cathedral. This, we are told, he resigned for other preferments. He died of the stone in the bladder in October 1524, aged 64; and was buried in St Paul's. Thirty-three years after his death, Doctor John Caius caused a monument to be erected to his memory, with a Latin inscription, which contains the outlines of his life and character. He was a man of great natural sagacity, a skilful physician, a profound grammarian, and one of the best Greek and Latin scholars of his time. Erasmus in his epistles speaks highly of the Doctor's translations from Galen, preferring them even to the original Greek. His works are, 1. De emendata structura Latinae sermonis, libri sex; London, printed by Pynfon, 1524, 8vo, and by Stephens, 1527, 1532. 2. The Rudiments of Grammar, for the use of the princess Mary, printed by Pynfon. Buchanan translated it into Latin; Paris, 1536. He likewise translated into very elegant Latin several of Galen's works, which were printed chiefly abroad at different times. Also Procli Diadachi sphaera, translated from the Greek; Venet. 1499, 1500.