Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/437

 London till he shall knowe further the kinges majesties pleasour’ (State Papers, Hen. VIII, i. 866). A fortnight later they wrote: ‘Doctour Taylour hath faithfully promised to acknowledge playnly, openly, and ernestly his errour, and with condempnacion of himself, travaile to releve the people that have by occasion of him fallen into errour’ (ib. i. 878).

Under Edward VI Taylor was at liberty to assert his real opinions, and in the first year of the reign he was appointed a royal visitor. He was prolocutor of the convocation which met in November 1547 (, Chron. i. 187), and in that capacity supported its declaration in favour of the marriage of priests. On Sunday, 26 Feb. 1547–8, he preached at court, and in the same year was one of the commissioners appointed to draw up the first Book of Common Prayer. On 16 March 1548–9 he was installed in the prebend of Corringham in Lincoln Cathedral; in that year he was placed on the commission appointed to examine anabaptists, and on 6 Oct. 1551 and again on 10 Feb. 1551–2 he was nominated one of the commissioners for the reformation of ecclesiastical law. On 18 June 1552 he was appointed by letters patent bishop of Lincoln, and he was consecrated by Cranmer at Croydon on the 26th. On the meeting of Queen Mary's first parliament on 5 Oct. 1553, Taylor took his seat in the House of Lords, but withdrew at the celebration of mass. He was not allowed to resume it, and in March 1553–4 he was deprived of his bishopric on the ground that his appointment by letters patent was invalid and that his consecration was null. Taylor died in December following at Ankerwick in the house of his friend Sir (1513–1577) [q. v.] He left 6l. 13s. 4d. to St. John's College.



TAYLOR, JOHN (d. 1555), martyr. [See .]

TAYLOR, JOHN (1580–1653), the ‘water poet’ as he called himself, born of humble parentage at Gloucester on 24 Aug. 1580, was sent to the grammar school there, but getting ‘mired’ in his Latin accidence, as he tells us in his ‘Motto,’ was apprenticed to a London waterman. He was subsequently pressed into the navy, and served in the fleet under the Earl of Essex, being present at the siege of Cadiz in 1596, and at Flores, in the Islands' or Azores' voyage, in 1597. According to his own account (Pennyles Pilgrimage) he made prior to 1603 sixteen voyages in the queen's ships during the ‘seven times at sea I served Eliza queen.’ On retiring from the service, with a ‘lame leg,’ he became a Thames waterman. For about fourteen years he was a collector of the perquisite of wine exacted by the lieutenant of the Tower from all ships which brought wines up the river, but was discharged from the place some time before 1622 because he refused to buy it (Taylors Farewell). His good humour, ready wit, and keen intelligence made him popular with his brethren, whose rights he was always ready to defend, even to the length of petitioning the king in person, or approaching the formidable Long parliament. For a few years he managed to pick up a living on the river, but about the middle of James I's reign he complains in various pamphlets that his ‘poor trade’ was being ruined from the excessive number of watermen, the increasing use of coaches, which he calls ‘hired hackney-hell carts,’ and the removal of the theatres from the Surrey side of the river. Taylor therefore sought to increase his earnings by turning to account his knack of easy rhyming. He was ready at the shortest notice and on the most reasonable terms to celebrate any one of the three principal events in human life—with a birthday ode, epithalamium, or funeral elegy. Various wagering journeys were also undertaken by him with the same object, and as he was an acute observer of character, custom, and incident, and could express himself in rollicking prose as well as rhyme, his descriptive tours were largely subscribed for when issued in book form. Previous to starting on any journey it was Taylor's custom to issue a vast number of prospectuses, or ‘Taylor's bills’ as he called them, announcing the conditions under which he travelled, in the hope of inducing his friends either to pay down a sum of money at once, or to sign their names as promising to do so on the completion of the ‘adventure.’ Most of his brochures were printed at his own cost, and were ‘presented’ by him to distinguished persons. In this way he acquired not only money but numerous patrons of all degrees. Ben Jonson, Nicholas Breton, Samuel Row-