Francis Drake (antiquary)

Francis Drake was an English surgeon and antiquary, born in Pontefract in January 1696, the son of the town's vicar. While still an adolescent he was apprenticed to a York surgeon, Christopher Birbeck, and when Birbeck died in 1717 the 21-year-old Drake took over the practice. About ten years later he was appointed city surgeon of York, a prestigious office. In 1741 he became honorary surgeon to the new York County Hospital, a post he held until 1756, apart from a break in 1745 and 1746 when he was relieved of it because of his Jacobite sympathies. Medicine was his livelihood, but his lasting reputation rests on history: his folio Eboracum, published in 1736, was an influential history and antiquities of York. He was elected to the Society of Antiquaries of London and to the Royal Society in 1736, and died at Beverley on 16 March 1771.