John Arbuthnot

NAME John Arbuthnot

WHAT FAMOUS FOR John Arbuthnot was a Scottish physician, mathematician, and satirist, best known for creating the character John Bull—the enduring personification of the English nation. His wit and intellect made him a central figure in early 18th-century London literary life and a key member of the Scriblerus Club alongside Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope.

BIRTH Arbuthnot was baptised on April 29, 1667, in the village of Arbuthnott near Inverbervie in Kincardineshire (now Aberdeenshire), Scotland.​

FAMILY BACKGROUND His parents were the Reverend Alexander Arbuthnot, an Episcopalian minister of Arbuthnott kirk, and Margaret Lammie, daughter of the minister of Farnell and dean of Brechin. 

The family was descended from the noble Arbuthnot family of Scotland. Alexander Arbuthnot was well educated, having studied at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and likely gave his son a good grounding in Latin and Greek. 

John was the eldest of seven surviving children, with two younger brothers, Robert (born 1669) and Alexander (born 1675), as well as four sisters.

After his wife Margaret died, Alexander Arbuthnot remarried Catherine Ochterlony, and they had one son George (born 1688).​

CHILDHOOD The family's adherence to Episcopalian and high church principles marked John's early life.​

Following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Arbuthnot's father was ejected from his benefice as a nonjuror, having refused to take the oaths to William and Mary. He retired to a small paternal estate, and Robert and George fled to France, where Robert became a banker in Rouen and George a wine merchant. John Arbuthnot stayed with his father and was there to take care of his father's affairs when he died in 1691. After this, Arbuthnot moved to London.

EDUCATION Arbuthnot entered Marischal College, Aberdeen, in 1681 at age fourteen, studying the standard arts course which contained mathematics and natural philosophy. He graduated in 1685 with what may have been an arts degree. There is no record of his activities for the next six years. 

In 1696, he received his medical degree (M.D.) from the University of St Andrews on September 11, apparently being awarded the doctorate on the strength of seven theses on medicine presented on the day of enrollment, without needing to take the course.​

CAREER RECORD 1691–c.1705: Arbuthnot taught mathematics in London and was a private tutor to Edward Jeffreys.

c.1696–1735: Established a successful private medical practice in London, concentrating on prominent citizens.

1705 Appointed Physician Extraordinary to Queen Anne

1709 Appointed Physician in Ordinary to Queen Anne, a position he held until her death in 1714. This post gave him lodging in St. James's Palace.

c 1712 Co-founded the Scriblerus Club

APPEARANCE Contemporaries described Arbuthnot as dignified but approachable, with a genial expression and a stocky build typical of 18th-century gentlemen.  The only specific description of his physical person available is a note from Jonathan Swift, who said "the only fault an enemy could lay upon him was a slight waddle in his walk."

Sir Godfrey Kneller's portrait of Arbuthnot is considered the best-known likeness of him and stands alongside Kneller’s other iconic portraits, such as those of Isaac Newton. 

Portrait of John Arbuthnot by Godfrey Kneller -

FASHION Kneller’s portrait of John Arbuthnot indeed presents him seated, wearing a scholar’s turban and a banyan (a loose, comfortable robe) over a white shirt, highlighting the informal and intellectual side of early 18th-century fashion among men of learning. The banyan, originating from Asian-inspired dress, was adopted by English academics and professionals for its comfort and association with scholarly pursuits; it signified a life more devoted to study and contemplation than to outward display or courtly protocol.​

The turban further underscores Arbuthnot’s learned persona, reflecting both a cosmopolitan awareness and a nod to intellectual circles where such garments were popular for informal portraiture. This attire distinguished him from those painted in more formal wigs and frock coats, marking him as a physician and man of letters who valued comfort and intellectual seriousness.

CHARACTER Arbuthnot was celebrated for his warmth, integrity, and quicksilver wit. Intellectually formidable yet personally kind, he was admired by his friends for his humour, modesty, and good nature. Jonathan Swift called him “the most universal genius I ever knew” and “the Queen’s favourite physician,” while Samuel Johnson praised his “great brilliancy of wit” and “noble ardour of religious zeal.” Those who knew him best spoke of his humanity, convivial spirit, and deep humility.

He was funny and generous, the kind of man whose company everyone sought. At meetings of the Scriblerus Club, Arbuthnot’s ease and empathy made him one of its sharpest—and funniest—members, his conversation both facetious and agreeable. Alexander Pope and others lamented that he never took enough credit for his own brilliance, too ready to give away ideas to friends. In the end, Arbuthnot’s legacy rested not only on his learning but on the charm and warmth that made him, in every sense, a universal genius

SPEAKING VOICE Accounts suggest he spoke with gentle authority, his Scottish accent softened by years in London. His speech was peppered with dry humour and an easy intelligence.

SENSE OF HUMOUR  Arbuthnot possessed a celebrated wit and was considered one of the sharpest and funniest members of the Scriblerus Club. His humor manifested in satirical writings characterized by direct sentences, clear vocabulary, and a feigned frenzy of lists and taxonomies—a style he shared with Swift. 

He made fun of opera impresario Heidegger and the warring divas of London opera, despite being one of Handel's earliest friends in London. His satirical approach generally attacked the same targets as Swift but without as much viciousness or nihilism. 

One of his memorable aphorisms was: "Biography is one of the new terrors of death". Another political quip that survives is: "All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies".​

RELATIONSHIPS Arbuthnot married Margaret, whose maiden name was probably Wemyss. Their children included Anne, Margaret, George, and the Reverend Charles Arbuthnot. 

He had intimate acquaintance and warm friendship with the most celebrated literary characters of his time, particularly Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and John Gay, with whom he formed the Scriblerus Club. The correspondence between Swift and Pope reveals that they held Arbuthnot in the highest regard. 

The Scriblerus Club members meeting in early 18th century London

In July 1734, when Arbuthnot wrote to Pope informing him of his terminal illness, Pope responded with the "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot," calling it "the best memorial I can leave, both of my friendship to you, and of my character".​

He was also closely connected with Isaac Newton and Edmond Halley in the Royal Society. His friendship with the composer Handel was significant. 

MONEY AND FAME Arbuthnot earned his living through his medical practice, which became eminent after his appointment to the royal household. He had lodgings at St. James's Palace during his service to Queen Anne. His status as Queen Anne’s physician ensured social prominence.

While he achieved considerable literary fame during his lifetime, particularly for the John Bull pamphlets, he zealously refused to take credit for much of his work and insisted on anonymity for many publications. His humility meant he often did not capitalize financially on his literary achievements. 

He was known to have delighted in waging money on card games in coffee houses.

FOOD AND DRINK Arbuthnot was an expert on diet and the care of the self in terms of nutrition. He published An Essay Concerning the Nature of Aliments (1731) and Practical Rules of Diet in the Various Constitutions and Diseases of Human Bodies (1732), which examined the different effects, advantages, and disadvantages of animal and vegetable diets according to different constitutions of human bodies. Ironically, despite his expertise on diet and care of the body, he took no exercise.​

He enjoyed convivial dinners with his literary friends and, as a physician, believed in moderation and sensible diet—though he was known to enjoy wine in company.

MUSIC AND ARTS Arbuthnot was one of Handel's earliest friends in London. He contributed to the libretto of Handel's Acis and Galatea, collaborating with poets John Gay, Alexander Pope, and John Hughes. Despite this friendship, he delighted in making fun of the opera impresario Heidegger who managed the opera house, as well as the antics of the warring divas recruited by Handel.​

LITERATURE Arbuthnot was one of those quietly indispensable people who seemed to hold an entire age together. In the raucous, coffee-scented world of early 18th-century London, he stood at the very heart of the Augustan literary scene — a founding member of the Scriblerus Club, that gleefully mischievous gathering of Swift, Pope, Gay, and Parnell. Together they dreamed up Martinus Scriblerus, a sort of fictional learned fool through whom they could poke fun at the pretensions of scholars, politicians, and humankind in general.

Arbuthnot’s fingerprints are all over the age’s best mischiefs. He helped shape The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, slipped ideas that surfaced in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Pope’s Peri Bathous, and possibly even had a hand in The Dunciad. His own The History of John Bull (1712) became an instant hit — the name “John Bull” still shorthand for the bluff Englishman.

Politically, Arbuthnot’s pen had bite. He wrote a flurry of satirical pamphlets skewering Whig war policy during the War of the Spanish Succession, often so effectively that readers assumed Swift must have written them. Pope thought highly enough of his friend’s humour to include several of his pieces in the Miscellanies of 1727.

Tragically — and rather endearingly — much of Arbuthnot’s work didn’t survive, not because of neglect by history but because he literally let his small children play with and burn the manuscripts. It’s hard not to like a man who could write like an angel, satirize like a demon, and yet still shrug as his masterpieces went up in smoke on the nursery hearth.

NATURE Arbuthnot admired nature for its order and rational design. He viewed the natural world as evidence of divine harmony.

He published a satirical reply to Dr. John Woodward's 1695 work, An essay towards a natural history of the earth, though his response was primarily one of logic and argument rather than a scientific counter-theory.

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Arbuthnot delighted in waging money on card games in the coffee houses and taverns of St. Martin's Lane. The subject of probability, which he studied, was illustrated through the game of dice. The John Bull character he created loved his "Diversion."

SCIENCE AND MATHS Arbuthnot was not just a wit with a quill — he was also a mathematician of uncommon curiosity, the kind of man who could spot divine order in a set of baptism records. In 1692, he translated Christiaan Huygens’s De ratiociniis in ludo aleae into English, calling it Of the Laws of Chance. It was the first book on probability ever published in English, and, wonderfully, the first time the word probability appeared in print in that language.

He went on to do something no one else had quite thought to try: apply mathematics to people. In 1710, he published An Argument for Divine Providence, Taken from the Constant Regularity Observ’d in the Birth of Both Sexes, a paper so charmingly titled you’d never guess it involved meticulous data analysis. Arbuthnot sifted through London christening records from 1629 to 1710 and noticed that, year after year, slightly more boys were born than girls. The difference, he argued, was statistically significant — suggesting some higher order in the universe’s arithmetic. Modern statisticians now credit him with conducting the first known significance test and the first application of probability to social data.

For Arbuthnot, mathematics was more than numbers; it was a kind of mental hygiene. In his 1700 Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, he wrote that “truth delights the understanding as music does the ear and beauty does the eye,” a sentiment that would make even Pythagoras nod approvingly. As a Fellow of the Royal Society, he moved among giants — Newton, Halley, and the like — and was admired by them for bringing reason, humour, and humanity to the cold precision of numbers.

Image by Perplexity

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Arbuthnot was a devout Christian who wrote some of the most hard-hitting satirical pamphlets of his age. He held High Church Episcopalian views and maintained Jacobite sympathies, though he managed to win the confidence of both the Stuart Queen Anne and later the Hanoverian King George II and Queen Caroline. 

His 1710 paper on sex ratios argued that the nearly constant birth ratio greater than one demonstrated divine providence rather than chance, and that polygamy was contrary to the law of nature. He believed that the order observed in birth statistics proved divine providence, not chance, governs the sex ratio at birth. 

Despite his religious devotion, he was capable of writing risqué pamphlets and did not refrain from exposing fellow physicians to ridicule.​

POLITICS Arbuthnot was a Tory in politics and supported the Tory government led by Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford. His John Bull pamphlets, published in 1712, were satirical attacks on Whig war policy during the War of Spanish Succession and supported the Treaty of Utrecht. 

He took a prominent political role after his appointment as Queen Anne's physician. His family background was Jacobite—his brothers fought for King James VII/II in 1689—though John himself managed to navigate the political changes after 1714. He later retained positions of trust under the succeeding Hanoverian regime of King George II and Queen Caroline.

SCANDAL Arbuthnot’s personal life was notably free from scandal—rare for a man in his circles. His reputation for integrity and kindness was widely acknowledged.  However, his satirical writings were controversial and politically charged. He complained in mid-life about Edmund Curll, who commissioned and invented biographies as soon as authors died, leading to Arbuthnot's famous remark that "Biography is one of the new terrors of death". This aversion to biographical scrutiny meant he left few personal records and allowed his children to destroy many of his papers.​

MILITARY RECORD One of his brothers was in the army, and another brother fought for King James VII in 1689, but John pursued academic and medical careers.​

He wrote passionately against unnecessary wars, including his satirical attacks on the Duke of Marlborough’s war profiteering.

MEDICAL CAREER By chance, Arbuthnot was at Epsom when Prince George of Denmark became suddenly ill; his successful treatment led to his appointment as physician extraordinary to Queen Anne on October 30, 1705. He was made physician in ordinary on November 11, 1709. 

Image by Perplexity

After receiving an M.D. from Cambridge on April 16, 1705, he was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians on December 12, 1707. 

After Queen Anne's death in 1714, he briefly went to France before returning to practice medicine among important clients. His later years saw him return to medical writing, publishing works on diet and health.​

In July 1734, he wrote to Pope to inform him that he had a terminal illness, likely asthma or another respiratory condition

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS In his later years, Arbuthnot suffered from asthma and kidney stones and declining health, which he bore with good humour and stoic faith.

HOMES After his appointment as physician extraordinary to Queen Anne in 1705, Arbuthnot took an apartment in St. James's Palace, which became a meeting place for the Scriblerus Club. He also resided at one point in Savile Row, which was then becoming associated with top medical professionals. His lodgings reflected his position as a court physician and member of London's literary and scientific elite.​

He retired to Hampstead in 1734, hoping to find relief from his symptoms, but he died at his house in Cork-street, London.

TRAVEL Arbuthnot travelled between Scotland and England for study and work. After Queen Anne's death in 1714, Arbuthnot went to France for a while before returning to England to practice medicine.

DEATH Arbuthnot died on February 27, 1735 in London at the age of 67. He had been suffering from a terminal illness, likely asthma or another respiratory condition, about which he wrote to Pope in July 1734. He died eight weeks after Pope's "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" poem was published

He was buried at St. James's Churchyard, Piccadilly, in the City of Westminster, London. Despite his prominence and his role as Queen Anne's physician, he was not buried in Westminster Abbey.​

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA Arbuthnot appears as a character painted by William Kent on the spectacular King's Staircase at Kensington Palace, among other figures from George I's court. 

Pope's "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" (1735) immortalized him in English literature.​

John Arbuthnot by Chat GBT

ACHIEVEMENTS Creator of John Bull, the symbol of England.

Early pioneer of probability and statistical reasoning in medicine.

Physician to Queen Anne.

Founding member of the Scriblerus Club, shaping the course of English satire.

Blended science, wit, and morality in a unique and lasting legacy.