Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hoy, Thomas
HOY, THOMAS (1659–1718), physician and poet, born on 12 Dec. 1659 (School Reg.), was son of Clement Hoy of London. He was admitted into Merchant Taylors' School in 1672, and was elected a probationary fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, in 1675. He graduated B.A. 1680, M.A. 1684, M.B. 1686, and M.D. 1689. He was appointed regius professor of physic at Oxford in 1698. Hearne, whose opinion of 'a ranck low church whigg' is not likely to be impartial, says that he owed his appointment to the influence of Dr. Gibbons with Lord Somers, and that he scandalously neglected the duties of his office. According to Wood he practised as a physician 'in and near the antient Borough of Warwick,' but in 1698 Evelyn, writing from Wotton, speaks of Dr. Hoy as 'a very learned, curious, and ingenious person, and our neighbour in Surrey.' He died, it is said, in Jamaica in or about 1718. Besides contributing to the translations of Plutarch's 'Morals,' 1684, of Cornelius Nepos, 1684, and of Suetonius's 'Life of Tiberius,' 1689, he published: 1. Two essays, the former 'Ovid de arte Amandi, or the Art of Love,' book i.; the latter 'Hero and Leander of Musæus from the Greek,' London, 1682. 2. 'Agathocles, the Sicilian Usurper;' a poem, London, 1683, fol.
[Rawlinson MS. 533; Munk's Coll. of Phys. i.459; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iv. 712; Hearne's Collections, i. 230, 322, &c.; Evelyn's Diary; Robinson's Reg. of Merchant Taylors' School, i. 277.]