Taylor was elected city librarian of Bristol, which then had four free libraries. In June 1885 a branch for Redland and West Clifton was opened, and in January 1888 one for Hotwells. He died at Wordsworth Villa, Redland, on 9 April 1893. He left a widow, three sons, and three daughters. His eldest son, Lancelot Acland Taylor, became librarian of the Museum Reference Library, Bristol.
Taylor combined with efficiency in all the technical parts of a librarian's work a genuine zeal for literary study. He wrote chiefly on the history and antiquities of Bristol and the west country. To his initiative was due the foundation of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archæological Society (Athenæum, 25 July 1896, p. 133). He was author of:
- ‘Tintern Abbey and its Founders,’ Bristol, 1867; 2nd edit. enlarged, 1869.
- ‘Guide to Clifton and its Neighbourhood,’ 1868.
- ‘A Book about Bristol … from original research,’ 1872.
- ‘Bristol and Clifton, Old and New’ [1877].
- ‘Ecclesiastical History’ [of Bristol], 1881, 4to; forms the second volume of ‘Bristol Past and Present.’
- ‘The earliest Free Libraries of England,’ St. Helens, 1886.
- (with F. F. Fox) ‘Some Account of the Guild of Weavers, chiefly from MSS.,’ Bristol (privately printed), 1889, 4to.
- ‘Antiquarian Essays contributed to the “Saturday Review,” with a Memoir and Portrait,’ Bristol (printed for the subscribers only), 1895, 8vo.
[The present writer's Memoir of Taylor, prefixed to his Antiquarian Essays.]
TAYLOR, JOHN EDWARD (1791–1844), founder of the ‘Manchester Guardian,’ was born at Ilminster, Somerset, on 11 Sept. 1791. His father, John Taylor, had, after acting as classical tutor in Daventry academy, become a minister of the English presbyterian church, but at Ilminster adopted the tenets of the Society of Friends, in connection with which he afterwards took up schoolwork at Bristol and Manchester. His wife, Mary Scott, was an intimate friend and correspondent of Anna Seward [q. v.] She printed a poetical review of eminent female writers, entitled ‘The Female Advocate’ (1774), and intended to supplement ‘The Feminead’ of John Duncombe [q. v.] She also wrote an epic, ‘The Messiah,’ in two books (1788), and other verse (Miss Seward, Letters, 1811, i. 133, 185, 294, ii. 88, 118, 228, 344, iii. 93, 310).
Their son, John Edward, was educated at his father's classical school in Manchester. He was apprenticed to a Manchester cotton manufacturer named Shuttleworth, who took him into partnership before the expiration of the term of his indentures. He had in the meantime carried on his private studies, inter alia acquiring a familiarity with German. His connection through his father with the Society of Friends accounts for the keen interest taken by him in the early educational movement, in which Joseph Lancaster [q. v.] was the most prominent figure; and in 1810 he accepted the secretaryship of the Lancasterian school in Manchester. He was also one of the founders of the Junior Literary and Philosophical Society, in rivalry with the senior Manchester society of that name. Soon afterwards he began to take some part in politics, which from 1812, when the Luddite disturbances spread to Lancashire, had assumed a most acutely controversial character in Manchester and its neighbourhood. Besides writing in the London papers, he was a frequent contributor to the ‘Manchester Gazette,’ a liberal paper owned and edited by William Cowdroy till his death in 1815. Taylor's articles are said to have nearly quadrupled its circulation.
In 1818–19 party feeling rose to its height in Manchester. At a meeting of the commissioners of police for Salford held in July 1818 for the purpose of appointing assessors, John Greenwood, a conservative manufacturer, took exception to Taylor's appointment on the ground that he was ‘one of those reformers who go about the country making speeches,’ and added an insinuation that Taylor was ‘the author of a handbill that caused the Manchester Exchange to be set on fire’ in 1812 (the charge was first made in a printed song, entitled ‘The Humours of Manchester Election,’ in regard to an anonymous handbill superscribed ‘Now or Never’). Taylor's name was accordingly passed over, and, Greenwood refusing to explain his words, Taylor addressed him a letter denouncing him as ‘a liar, a slanderer, and a scoundrel;’ and, having again received no reply, published the letter in Cowdroy's ‘Gazette.’ In consequence he was indicted for libel, and the trial took place at the Lancashire assizes on 29 March 1819, before Baron Wood. James Scarlett (afterwards first Baron Abinger) [q. v.] led for the prosecution, and Taylor conducted his own defence. He resolved on a line which no counsel could have been induced to take, and called witnesses to prove the truth of the alleged libel. According to the existing view of the courts, the truth of libel could not be pleaded in justification, although it might be urged in mitigation of the offence when the defendant came up for judgment. Scarlett offered no objection, probably because he had
