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Roderigo Lopez (also called Ruy Lopes or Roger Lopez; c. 1517 – 7 June 1594) served as physician-in-chief to Queen Elizabeth I of England from 1581 until his death by execution, having been found guilty of plotting to poison the Queen. A Portuguese ''converso'' or New Christian of Jewish ancestry, he is the only royal doctor in English history to have been executed, and may have inspired the character of Shylock in Shakespeare's ''The Merchant of Venice'', which was written within four years of his death. The son of a Portuguese royal physician of Jewish descent, Lopez was raised a Catholic and educated at the University of Coimbra. Amid the Portuguese Inquisition he was accused of secretly practising Judaism, and compelled to leave the country. He settled in London in 1559, joined the Church of England and became house physician at St Bartholomew's Hospital. Gaining a reputation as a careful and skilled physician, he acquired several powerful clients, including the Earl of Leicester and Sir Francis Walsingham, and eventually the Queen of England herself. The Earl of Essex accused Lopez of conspiring to poison the Queen by in January 1594. Insisting his innocence, the doctor was convicted of high treason in February and hanged, drawn and quartered in June, reportedly after averring from the scaffold that "he loved the Queen as well as he loved Jesus Christ"—a statement that, from a man of Jewish background, prompted mocking laughter from the crowd. Elizabeth's three-month delay signing Lopez's death warrant is sometimes interpreted as evidence that she doubted the case against him. In any case she returned almost all of his estate to his widow and children. ==Early life and family== Roderigo (or Rodrigo) Lopez was born into a family of Jewish origin in Portugal around 1517. His father, António Lopes, was physician to King John III of Portugal, and had been baptised into the Roman Catholic Church under coercion in 1497. Lopez was baptised and raised in the Catholic faith as a ''converso'' or New Christian, and educated at the University of Coimbra. He received a BA degree under the name Ruy Lopes on 7 February 1540, then an MA on 4 December 1541; he enrolled for a medical course on 23 December that year. Records do not survive regarding his doctorate, but according to his biographer Edgar Samuel it is probable that he received it in 1544. Amid the Portuguese Inquisition, Lopez was alleged to be a Crypto-Jew or ''marrano''—one of Jewish descent who professed the Christian faith, but secretly adhered to the Judaism of his ancestors—and was compelled to leave Portugal. He settled in England in 1559, anglicising his first name as "Roger", and successfully resumed his practice as a doctor in London. He joined the Church of England. He soon became the house physician at St Bartholomew's Hospital in Smithfield. A colleague there, the surgeon William Clowes, would describe Lopez in 1591 as careful and very skilled in his work. Around 1563 Lopez married Sarah Anes (b. 1550), the eldest daughter of another New Christian refugee from the Portuguese Inquisition, the merchant Dunstan Anes, who had settled in London in 1540. According to Samuel, both the Anes and Lopez households secretly practised Judaism, which was then illegal in England, while outwardly conforming as Anglicans. Other scholars are ambivalent on the matter; Lopez would always insist that he was a Christian. Roderigo and Sarah had four sons and two daughters, of whom at least the eldest five—Ellyn (Elinor), Ambrose, Douglas, William and Ann—were baptised within the hospital precincts at St Bartholomew-the-Less between 1564 and 1579. Lopez's brother Lewis lived with them in Holborn; a second brother, Diego Lopes Aleman, became a merchant in Antwerp and Venice. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Roderigo Lopez」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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