of 200l., and recognisances as before. His friends raised a subscription for him in September 1832. A visitor describes him as over the middle size, inclined to be stout, and of gentlemanly manners; he referred in conversation to Charles François Dupuis (1742–1809) as his predecessor in astro-theological studies. He had a fine voice, closely resembling that of Charles Kemble [q. v.], and a powerful delivery. His ill-arranged writings are of no original or scientific value; so far as they have a consistent purpose, it is to expound Christianity as a scheme of solar myths. His philology is helpless word-play. The attraction of his discourses was in his jocose manner; they exhibit no real humour, but his taunts are smart. His drollery, though of a low type, is never impure.
Released from gaol in 1833, Taylor retired from public view. He married an elderly lady of property; the marriage was a happy one, but it exposed Taylor to an action for breach of promise on the part of Miss Richards, to whom a jury awarded 250l. To escape paying this, Taylor removed to France, practising as a surgeon at Tours, where he died in September 1844. His portrait was engraved in 1827 from a drawing by W. Hunt.
He published: 1. ‘The Holy Liturgy: or Divine Service on the Principles of Pure Deism’ [1826?], 8vo (has catechism appended). 2. ‘The Trial … upon a Charge of Blasphemy,’ 1827, 8vo (portrait). 3. ‘The Judgment of the Court of King's Bench,’ [1828], 8vo (Nos. 2 and 3 are on the basis of the shorthand writer's report). 4. ‘Syntagma of the Evidences of the Christian Religion,’ 1828, 8vo (against John Pye Smith [q. v.]). 5. ‘The Diegesis … a Discovery of the Origin … of Christianity,’ &c., 1829, 8vo, Boston (Mass.), 1832, 8vo. 6. ‘First Missionary Oration,’ 1829, 8vo. 7. ‘Second Missionary Oration,’ 1829, 8vo. 8. ‘Swing: or who are the Incendiaries? A Tragedy,’ 1831, 12mo (the British Museum copy was presented by Taylor to Charles Kemble to show him ‘what the drama should be’). 9. ‘The Devil's Pulpit,’ 1831–2, 2 vols. 8vo; last edition, 1881, 8vo. He is not included in Smith's ‘Bibliotheca Anti-Quakeriana,’ 1873, but no writer has more roughly aspersed the Society of Friends.
[Taylor's Works; Memoir (autobiographical, but arranged by Carlile) prefixed to Devil's Pulpit, 1831–2; Lloyd's Two Letters, 1818; Lloyd's Reply, 1819; Monthly Repository, 1818 p. 754, 1824 p. 381, 1827 p. 77, 1828 p. 214; The Lion, 1828–9; Annual Register, 1831, pp. 93 sq., 1844 p. 273; Gent. Mag. 1844, ii. 550; Notes and Queries, 25 Nov. 1876 p. 429, 17 March 1877 p. 213, 25 Jan. 1885 p. 78; Secular Review, 15 Feb. 1879.]
TAYLOR, ROWLAND (d. 1555), martyr, was born at Rothbury, Northumberland, near the birthplace of Ridley and Dr. William Turner (d. 1568) [q. v.] (Turner to Foxe in Ridley, Works, pp. 489–90). In his early years he lived on terms of intimacy with Turner, and, like him, was educated at Cambridge. He was ordained exorcist and acolyte at Norwich on 20 Dec. 1528. He graduated LL.B. at Cambridge in 1530 and LL.D. in 1534, and on 3 Nov. 1539 was admitted an advocate. About 1531 he became principal of Borden hostel. While at Cambridge Turner secretly procured for him a copy of the well-known protestant manual ‘Unio Dissidentium,’ which had been proscribed by Tunstal in 1527, and induced him to attend Latimer's sermons. These had such an effect upon him that he ‘entered with readiness into our doctrine’ (ib.) Before 1540 Cranmer appointed Taylor his domestic chaplain; in that year he was a member of convocation (State Papers, Henry VIII, i. 634). In 1543 he was one of the two commissioners appointed to inquire into the charges brought against Cranmer by the prebendaries of Canterbury, and in 1544 the archbishop presented him to the living of Hadleigh, Suffolk.
Taylor is said by Strype to have been one of the ecclesiastical visitors appointed in 1547, but this is apparently a confusion with Dr. John Taylor [q. v.], afterwards bishop of Lincoln. On Tuesday in Whitsun week, however, Rowland Taylor preached ‘a notable sermon’ at St. Paul's (Wriothesley, Chron. ii. 3), and in the same year he was presented to the third stall in Rochester Cathedral (Shindler, Registers of Rochester Cathedral, p. 74). In 1549 he was placed on the commission against anabaptists, and in 1551 he was appointed chancellor to Bishop Ridley of London and one of the six select preachers at Canterbury. On 22 Oct. in that year he was made a commissioner for the reformation of the ecclesiastical laws (Council Warrant Book in Royal MS. C. xxiv. f. 150), the appointment being renewed in February 1551–2 (Lit. Remains of Edward VI, pp. 398–9). On 10 Jan. 1551–2 he was one of the two selected to exercise episcopal jurisdiction in the vacant see of Worcester. In 1552 he was also appointed archdeacon of Exeter by Miles Coverdale.
Taylor must have made himself peculiarly obnoxious to Mary, possibly by abetting Northumberland's schemes, for on 25 July
