Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/210

 parts, with notes and observations relating to Natural History … by Samuel Dale,’ 4to, London, 1730. A second edition, or rather a second title-page, bears date 1732. The manuscript had been previously made use of by Bishop Gibson for his edition of Camden's ‘Britannia,’ by Newcourt for ‘Repertorium Ecclesiasticum,’ and by Cox for ‘Magna Britannia.’ The only work Taylor himself published was ‘The History of Gavel-Kind, with the etymology thereof … With some observations upon many … occurrences of British and English History. To which is added a short history of William the Conqueror, written in Latin by an anonymous author,’ i. 2 pts. 4to, London, 1663 (the Latin tract had been communicated to Taylor from the Bodleian by Dr. Thomas Barlow, the then librarian). In this essay the author assigns both the name and custom of gavelkind to an earlier period than that fixed by his predecessor in the same field, William Somner. In all important points he mostly agrees with Somner, who has answered Taylor's objections in marginal notes on a copy of the other's book, which, with a corrected copy of his own, is preserved in the library of Canterbury Cathedral (, British Topography, i. 450). From his father Taylor inherited a fine taste for music, and was intimate with the Playfords, the elder Purcell, and Matthew Lock. ‘He hath composed many things, and I have heard anthems of his sang before his majestie, in his chapell, and the K. told him he liked them. He had a very fine chamber organ in those unmusicall dayes’ (, Lives of Eminent Men, vol. ii. pt. ii. pp. 555–7, of Letters written by Eminent Persons, 8vo, London, 1813). Two of his compositions were published in John Playford's ‘Court Ayres,’ obl. 4to, London, 1655, Nos. 199–201 and Nos. 216–18. Pepys, who befriended him, speaks of Taylor as ‘a good understanding man,’ ‘a good scholler,’ and ‘a great antiquary,’ one ‘that understands musique very well and composes mighty bravely.’ He afterwards pronounces an anthem performed in the Chapel Royal to be ‘a dull, old-fashioned thing, of six and seven parts, that nobody could understand; and the Duke of York, when he came out, told me that he was a better storekeeper than anthem-maker, and that was bad enough too’ (Diary, ed. Bright, iii. 143–4, 322, v. 316). From the same authority we learn that Taylor left a manuscript play with Pepys for his opinion. ‘It is called “The Serenade, or Disappointment,” which I will read, not believing he can make any good of that kind’ (ib. vi. 75–6). Taylor's express to Sir William Coventry, dated ‘Harwich, 5 June 1666, about 8 at night,’ giving on the authority of Captain Blackman of the Little Victory a glowing account of a great victory over the Dutch, threw London into a state of the utmost excitement and rejoicing. A few hours later it was found that the nation had suffered serious loss. The letter is preserved in Addit. MS. 32094, f. 135.

A family named Taileur, alias Danvill, was resident at Windsor in the middle of the seventeenth century, to which Wood might have supposed Silas Taylor to have belonged (pedigree in Genealogist, vi. 97–8.).

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 1175–8; Dale's Preface to Taylor's Hist. of Harwich; Cal. State Papers (Dom. 1657–8) p. 186, (Dom. 1667) p. 85, and passim; Egerton MS. 2231, ff. 256, 259; Pepys's Diary, ed. Bright, i. 51, ii. 483, iii. 143–4, 147–8, 322, 466, v. 247, 316, 328, vi. 75–6 (he is confounded in the notes and index with Captain John Taylor, navy commissioner at Harwich); Gough's British Topography, i. 409, 416, 450; Allen's Bibl. Herefordiensis, p. vii; Chalmers's Biog. Dict., art. ‘Taylor.’] 

DON, DAVID (1800–1841), botanist, was born at Doo Hillock, Forfarshire, 21 Dec. 1800, and not, as sometimes stated, in 1779. He was the second son of George Don, who was for some time curator of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, but who retired to a nursery-garden at Doo Hillock, the family consisting in all of fifteen children. On leaving his father's nursery David was employed at Messrs. Dickson's of Broughton, near Edinburgh, and in 1819 came to London with an introduction from his father's friend, Dr. Patrick Neill, secretary to the Wernerian Society, to Robert Brown (1773–1858) [q. v.] Don was next employed in the Apothecaries' Company's garden at Chelsea, but was soon appointed keeper of the library and herbarium of A. B. Lambert, and in 1821 accompanied Dr. Neill to Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Humboldt and Cuvier. In 1822 he succeeded Brown as librarian to the Linnean Society, which post he retained until his death, and in 1823 he became an associate, and subsequently a fellow, of the society. In 1836 he was appointed professor of botany at King's College, London. He died, after eight months' illness, at the Linnean Society's house in Soho Square on 8 Dec. 1841, and was buried at Kensal Green on the 15th. He is accredited with fifty-two papers in the Royal Society's Catalogue, the first consisting of ‘Descriptions of several New or Rare Native Plants, found in Scotland,’ chiefly by his father, communicated to the Wernerian Society in 1820. Numerous valuable monographs of genera were contributed to the