mont and Fletcher's plays in that year, and he, with the others, subscribed the dedication. In 1652 Taylor and John Lowin published Fletcher's ‘Wild Goose Chase,’ which they failed to obtain five years before for insertion in the folio. The date of Taylor's death is uncertain. Richard Flecknoe in one of his ‘Characters,’ written in 1654, speaks of him as then dead, which fixes his decease between 1652 and 1654. Lysons mentions a tradition that he was buried at Richmond, but no record of his interment has been discovered (Environs of London, i. 466).
On 2 May 1610, at St. Saviour's, Southwark, Taylor married Elizabeth Ingle, the daughter of a widow. By her he had three sons—Dixsye, Joseph, and Robert—and three daughters—Elsabeth, Jone, and Anne—all of whom were baptised at St. Saviour's between 1612 and 1623.
Some commendatory verses by Taylor are prefixed to the first edition of Massinger's ‘Roman Actor,’ published in 1629. The assertion that he was the painter and the first owner of the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare (now in the National Portrait Gallery, London) is supported by no evidence. It is possible that the statement is due to a confusion of the actor with a contemporary portrait-painter, John Taylor, nephew of John Taylor (1580–1653) [q. v.], the water poet, who may possibly be the painter of the portrait.
[Collier's Memoirs of the Principal Actors in the Plays of Shakespeare (Shakespeare Soc.), pp. 249–61; Boswell and Malone's Variorum edition of Shakespeare, 1821, iii. 217–19, 512–13; Collier's History of Dramatic Poetry and the Stage, 1879; Warner's Cat. of MSS. at Dulwich College; Genealogist, new ser. vi. 233.]
TAYLOR, MEADOWS, whose full name was Philip Meadows Taylor (1808–1876), Indian officer and novelist, was born in Liverpool on 25 Sept. 1808. His father, Philip Meadows Taylor, was a merchant in Liverpool, and his grandfather, Philip Taylor, was grandson of John Taylor of Norwich (1694–1761) [q. v.]; his mother was the daughter of Bertram Mitford of Mitford Castle, Northumberland. A few years after his birth his father's affairs became involved, and, after a short and uncomfortable experience as clerk in a mercantile firm, Meadows, at the age of fifteen, was sent out to India to enter the house of Mr. Baxter, a Bombay merchant, with the promise of being made a partner when he should come of age. On arriving he found that the condition of Baxter's affairs had been much misrepresented, and embraced with satisfaction the offer of a commission in the nizam's service, procured for him (in November 1824) by Mr. Newnham, chief secretary to the Bombay government, a relative of his mother's. After a short period of military service he obtained civil employment, and, to qualify himself for the efficient performance of his duties, taught himself surveying, engineering, Indian and English law, botany, and geology. Ere long, however, he was obliged to revert to the army, and was promoted adjutant in the nizam's service in 1830. Much to his regret, his military duties prevented him from anticipating Colonel (Sir William Henry) Sleeman [q. v.] in the detection and suppression of Thuggism, which he had begun to investigate. He turned his inquiries to account, however, in his first novel, ‘The Confessions of a Thug’ (London, 1839, 3 vols. 12mo; 1858 and 1873), which was published on his return to England on furlough, and proved a great success. Returning to India, after marriage in 1840, he acted as a ‘Times’ correspondent in India from 1840 to 1853. Meantime at Hyderabad, in 1841, the great chance of his life came to him. He was commissioned by the resident to pacify the state of Shorapore, where the regent, the widow of the late raja, showed a disposition to set the British government at defiance. Though almost without troops, by a mixture of tact and daring Taylor procured the abdication of the ranee and the instalment of her infant son, he himself being charged with the administration of the principality during the minority. An attempt to remove him was frustrated by the interposition of John Stuart Mill. Under his judicious rule, Shorapore soon became a model state, and so continued until the accession of the raja, a youth of weak dissipated character, in 1853. Taylor was then transferred to one of the five Berar districts recently ceded by the nizam—the smallest, but the most difficult to administer. The revenue was in an unsatisfactory condition, a survey was needed, roads had to be made, and the district was visited by famine. Taylor coped successfully with these difficulties, and all was going on well when, upon the outbreak of the mutiny, he was despatched to the district of Booldana in North Berar. ‘Two millions of people,’ wrote the resident at Hyderabad, ‘must be kept quiet by moral strength, for no physical force is at my disposal.’ Without any troops Taylor kept perfect order in the country, and when at length the British forces reappeared, he was able to supply General Whitlock's Madras division with the means of transport which enabled it to
