the admiralty, and laid out the property of the Foundling Hospital, of which he was a governor. He succeeded James (‘Athenian’) Stuart as surveyor to Greenwich Hospital, and was surveyor and agent to the Pulteney and many other large estates. According to Thomas Hardwick (Memoir of Sir William Chambers, 1825, p. 13), Taylor and James Paine the elder ‘nearly divided the practice of the profession between them, for they had few competitors till Mr. Robert Adam entered the lists.’ Taylor was sheriff of London in 1782–3, when he was knighted.
He died at his residence, 34 Spring Gardens, London, on 27 Sept. 1788, and was buried on 9 Oct. in a vault near the north-east corner of the church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. He left an only son, Michael Angelo Taylor [q. v.] The bulk of his fortune of 180,000l. was left for a foundation at Oxford for teaching the modern European languages. Owing to certain contingencies the bequest did not take effect till 1835. The lecture-rooms and library which compose the Taylorian buildings were built in 1841–5, in combination with the university galleries, from the design of Charles Robert Cockerell [q. v.]
Thirty-two plates of Taylor's designs, drawn and engraved in aquatint by Thomas Malton, were published in 1790–2. He is commemorated by a tablet in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey. An anonymous half-length portrait of Taylor belongs to the Institute of British Architects (Cat. Third Loan Exhib. No. 886). An anonymous stipple portrait of Taylor, printed in colours, is in the Crowle Pennant in the print-room at the British Museum, vol. xii. No. 93.
[Gent. Mag. 1788, ii. 842, 930, 1070; Builder, 1846, iv. 505; criticism by J. Elmes in the Civil Engineer, 1847, x. 340; Dict. of Architecture; Blomfield's Hist. of Renaissance Architecture in England, ii. 260.]
TAYLOR, ROBERT (1784–1844), deistical writer, sixth son of John and Elizabeth Taylor, was born at Walnut Tree House, Edmonton, Middlesex, on 18 Aug. 1784. His father, a prosperous ironmonger in Fenchurch Street, London, died when he was young, leaving him under the guardianship of his uncle, Edward Farmer Taylor of Chicken Hall, Bridgnorth, Shropshire. Having been at school under John Adams at Edmonton, he was articled as house pupil to Samuel Partridge [see under Partridge, Richard], then house surgeon at the Birmingham general hospital. In 1805 he walked Guy's and St. Thomas's hospitals under Sir Astley Paston Cooper [q. v.] and Henry Cline [q. v.], and was admitted a member of the College of Surgeons in 1807. The influence of Thomas Cotterill, perpetual curate of Lane End, Staffordshire, led him to study for the church. In October 1809 he matriculated at St. John's College, Cambridge, as Queen Margaret's foundation scholar. At Cambridge he attached himself to Charles Simeon [q. v.], who reckoned him one of his best scholars in the art of sermon-making. He was specially complimented on his university career by the master of St. John's, William Craven, D.D. (1730–1814); by his own account he was never second in a competition, his compeer being Sir John Frederick William Herschel [q. v.] He commenced B.A. in January 1813, ‘purposely refusing his chance of the inferior honours of the tripos.’ Simeon selected him as curate in charge for Richard Lloyd (d. 1834) [q. v.] at Midhurst, Sussex, and he was ordained deacon on 14 March 1813 at St. James's, Westminster, by John Buckner (d. 1824), bishop of Chichester. He preached his maiden sermon the same day at St. Dunstan's, Fleet Street. Ordained priest in due course, he remained curate at Midhurst till the summer of 1818, holding also the neighbouring perpetual curacy of Easebourne, which he calls ‘a brown-coat rectory,’ the chief revenue going to the lay patron. An attack was made (1817) on his ministerial efficiency by John Sargent [q. v.]; Lloyd warmly defended him.
Early in 1818 a Midhurst tradesman, whom Taylor calls ‘an infidel,’ lent him books which raised sceptical doubts in his mind. On Trinity Sunday he preached a sermon which gave offence. He resigned his preferment (July), a step which Buckner thought quixotic, and advertised in the ‘Times’ (30 July) for four pupils to be taught (at Midhurst) English, classics, and French, and ‘the principles of the religion of reason and nature.’ In the ‘Times’ of 5 Aug. he inserted an advertisement in Latin, asking for employment, and giving an account of his views, not very decently expressed. Out of consideration for his mother's feelings, he published a Latin recantation (dated from Church Street, Edmonton, 7 Dec.) in the ‘Times’ on 11 Dec. ascribing his previous advertisement to mental aberration. He put a similar advertisement in the ‘Hampshire Telegraph,’ burned his deistical books, and sent a penitent circular to the Midhurst parishioners. George Gaskin [q. v.], rector of Stoke Newington, took him up, and he officiated at Edmonton, Tottenham, and Newington. Promised preferment not coming as soon as he expected, he applied to William Howley
