Sir William Paddy

Sir William Paddy (1554–1634) was an English royal physician.

He was born in London, and entered Merchant Taylors' School in 1569, with schoolfellows Lancelot Andrewes, Giles Tomson, and Thomas Dove. In 1571 he entered as a commoner at St. John's College, Oxford, and graduated B.A. in July 1573. On 21 July 1589 he graduated M.D. at Leyden, and was incorporated on that degree at Oxford on 22 October 1591. He was elected a fellow of his college, where he was contemporary with his friend Matthew Gwinne.

He was examined at the College of Physicians of London on 23 December 1589, admitted a licentiate on 9 May 1590, and a fellow on 25 September 1591. He was elected a censor in 1595, and again from 1597 to 1600, and was four times president of the college (1609, 1610, 1611, and 1618). James I appointed him his physician in the first year of his reign, and knighted him at Windsor on 9 July 1603. When James I was at Oxford on 29 August 1605, Paddy argued before him against two medical theses, 'Whether the morals of nurses are imbibed by infants with the milk,' and 'Whether smoking tobacco is favourable to health.'

In 1614 the College of Physicians appointed him to plead the immunity of the college from arms-bearing before the lord mayor, Sir Thomas Middleton, and the recorder, Sir Henry Montagu. He pointed out the acts 14 and 32 Henry VIII, which state the privileges of physicians; he also maintained that physicians are by their science surgeons without further examination. The recorder decided in favour of the claim of the College. Paddy attained to a large practice, and enjoyed the friendship of Sir Theodore Mayerne and of Dr. Baldwin Hamey. Mayerne praises him in his preface to his edition of Thomas Muffett's Insectorum Theatrum (1634).

On 7 April 1620, with Matthew Gwinne, he was appointed a commissioner for garbling tobacco.Raphael Thorius alluded to this role in his Latin eulogy on Paddy in 1626.

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