lington prevailed upon him to remove to London, where their efforts soon established him in extensive practice, and obtained for him the patronage of Sir Edward Hulse (1682–1759) [q. v.], who was withdrawing from public life. Taylor was admitted a candidate of the College of Physicians on 4 April 1748, and was elected a fellow on 20 March 1749. He was Gulstonian lecturer in 1750, censor in 1751, and Harveian orator in 1755. His oration, which was published in 1756, summarised the opinion of the College of Physicians with respect to inoculation, and was especially valued in foreign countries. It ranks among the most polished in style and the most elaborate in matter of any of the Harveian orations that are in print.
Taylor was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society on 7 Dec. 1752. He held the appointment of physician to the king. A fine mansion at Winthorpe, near Newark, which he was erecting, was unfinished at the time of his death. He died on 15 May 1762, and was buried in South Audley Street chapel, whence his remains were removed in 1778 to Winthorpe. He was twice married: first to Anne, youngest daughter of John Heron (she died in 1757, and was buried at Newark); secondly, on 9 Nov. 1759, to Elizabeth Mainwaring of Lincoln, a lady who had a fortune of 10,000l. His only surviving child, Elizabeth, became the wife of Henry Chaplin of Blankney Hall, Lincolnshire. He and his second wife are commemorated by a monument in Winthorpe church. There is a portrait of Taylor at Blankney in the possession of his descendant, the Right Hon. Henry Chaplin, M.P.
Taylor was the author of:
- ‘Epistola Critica ad O.V.D. Edoardum Wilmot, Baronettum; in qua quatuor Quæstionibus ad Variolas Insitivas spectantibus orbi medico denuo propositis ab Antonio de Haen in Univ. Vindobonensi Professore primario, directe responsum est.’
- ‘Sex Historiæ Medicæ sive Morborum aliquot funestorum et rariorum Commentarius.’ These, with his Harveian oration of 1755, were published together under the title of ‘Miscellanea Medica,’ 4to, London, 1761.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys.; Brit. Mus. Library Cat.; Records of Trinity College, Cambridge.]
TAYLOR, Sir ROBERT (1714–1788), architect, was born in 1714. His father was a London stonemason, who made a considerable fortune, and wasted it by living beyond his means at a villa in Essex. He apprenticed his son to Sir Henry Cheere [q. v.] the sculptor, and sent him to study at Rome. Returning to England on receiving the news of his father's death, Taylor found himself penniless; but he had good friends in the Godfrey family of Woodford, Essex, who enabled him to make a start as a sculptor. The monuments to Cornwall and Guest at Westminster Abbey (1743–6) and the figure of Britannia in the centre of the principal façade of the old Bank of England are his work. So is the sculpture in the pediment of the Mansion House, of which Lord Burlington bitterly observed that ‘any sculptor could do well enough for such a building as that.’ His practice was to hew out his figures roughly from the block, and leave the rest to workmen, with the exception of a few finishing touches. The Mansion House was completed in 1753, and about that time Taylor gave up sculpture for architecture. His first architectural design was a house, formerly No. 112 Bishopsgate Street Within, for John Gore of Edmonton. He then built a house at Parbrook, Hampshire, for Peter Taylor; a house in Piccadilly for the Duke of Grafton; Gopsall Hall, Atherstone, Hertfordshire, for Lord Howe; Chilham Castle, Kent, with a mausoleum, for James Colebrook, 1775; a house at Danson Hill, near Woolwich, Kent, for Sir John Boyd, and Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, 1756. He became architect to the Bank of England, and was occupied in 1776–81, and again in 1783, in making additions to the bank, which included the wings on either side of George Sampson's original façade (1733), the four per cent. reduced annuity office, the transfer office, and the quadrangle containing the bank parlour. The whole of the façade, extending from Prince's Street to Bartholomew Lane, was removed by Sir John Soane [q. v.], who succeeded Taylor in 1789; but the quadrangle remains almost unaltered, showing a very tasteful use of the Corinthian order. Taylor built Ely House, Dover Street, for Edmund Keene [q. v.], bishop of Ely, about 1776, and did some work at Ely Cathedral. He built in 1775–7 the six clerks' and enrolment offices, Chancery Lane; 1776, Long Ditton church, Surrey; 1778–85, Gorhambury, near St. Albans, Hertfordshire, for Lord Grimston. Heveningham Hall, Suffolk, Normanton Hall, Rutland, Harleyford, Buckinghamshire, and Copford Hall, Essex, are among the country seats which he erected. Clumber, near Worksop, Nottinghamshire, built by Taylor for the Duke of Newcastle, was destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1879. About 1780 he built the bridge at Maidenhead, Berkshire, at the cost of 19,000l. Taylor was one of the three principal architects attached to the board of works. He was surveyor to
