Messenger Monsey

[1] Monsey, son of Robert Monsey, a non-juror cleric, and Mary (daughter of Roger Clopton, rector of Downham),[2] was born at Hackford with Whitwell, Norfolk, and educated at home, then at Woodbridge School and Pembroke College, Cambridge (BA, 1714), before studying medicine under Sir Benjamin Wrench MD of Norwich (died 1747).

[2] Godolphin – taken with Monsey's skill, raucous sense of humour and insolent familiarity – persuaded him to move to London, where he introduced him to patients such as the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, Lord Chesterfield and other prominent Whigs.

Monsey was a free-thinker in religious matters, or as Munk put it, "he shook off the manacles of superstition [and] he fell into the comfortless bigotry of scepticism.

Monsey's copy of Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees survives in the library of Sir John Soane's Museum, London, to which he presented it in 1781.

[3] An extensive medical and personal correspondence between Monsey and the noted Norwich physician and philanthropist Benjamin Gooch survives in the British Library.