Taylor was a man of some learning and a student of Jacob Boehme. Both before and after his conversion to quakerism he avowed intense hatred of bells, bonfires, maypoles, dancing, and other amusements. His collected works, entitled ‘Truth's Innocency and Simplicity shining through the Conversion,’ London, 1697, 4to, consist chiefly of reprinted addresses, warnings, and exhortations. They include ‘Ignorance and Error reproved,’ 1662, 4to, in answer to John Reynolds, also ‘Baxter's Book entitled the Cure of Church Divisions Answered and Confuted, and He proved a Phisitian of no Value,’ London, 1697.
Christopher Taylor (d. 1686), quaker schoolmaster, brother of the above, said to have been born near Skipton, Yorkshire, might be the Christopher, son of Thomas of Ravenstonedale, who matriculated from Magdalen College, Oxford, on 22 March 1633, aged 18, and who graduated B.A. 1636 (Bloxam, i. 37). He certainly received a classical education at Oxford, and became a puritan minister. In 1652 he was converted by George Fox to quakerism. Soon afterwards he was imprisoned for two years for arguing with Ambrose Rowlands, vicar of Appleby, in the churchyard, about pluralities. In July 1655 he wrote from Appleby gaol ‘A Warning to this Nation,’ London, 1655, 4to, and ‘The Whirlwind of the Lord,’ 1655, 4to; reprinted 1656.
Before 1670 Taylor started a school at Waltham Abbey, Essex, assisted by his wife and by John Matern, a German quaker. On 1 July 1670 Taylor was summoned to appear at Chelmsford quarter sessions for teaching school without a license. He was reported in 1676 as holding a conventicle at Solomon ‘Eagle's’ (Eccles) [q. v.] house at Plaistow (Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. pt. vii. p. 16). The school was moved in 1679 to Edmonton, where John and Edward Penington [see under Penington, Isaac, (1616–1679)] were among Taylor's scholars. Three years later (1682) Taylor resigned it to George Keith [q. v.], and followed William Penn to Pennsylvania. He represented Bucks county in the first assembly of the province, was a member of the council of state until his death, registrar-general of the colony, and a justice of peace. He died at Philadelphia in 1686; his wife Frances, a minister, the same year.
Beside the works mentioned he wrote: 1. ‘A Faithful and True Witness to the Light,’ London, 1675, 4to. 2. ‘An Epistle to Friends in Truth,’ London, 1675, 4to. 3. ‘The Counterfeit Convert Discovered,’ 1676, 4to, in answer to William Haworth's ‘Antidote,’ 1676. 4. ‘Institutiones Pietatis, with the chief Principles of the Latin Tongue,’ 1676, 8vo. 5. ‘Compendium Trium Linguarum’ (Latin, Greek, and Hebrew), London, 1679, 8vo, part by John Matern. 6. ‘Testimony to the Lord's Power in Children,’ 1679, 4to; reprinted same year with additional letters. 7. ‘An Epistle of Caution,’ London, 1681, 4to; and 8. ‘Something in Answer,’ &c., both in answer to an attack by William Rogers, the quaker sectary, in his notorious book ‘The Christian Quaker,’ 1680–2. ‘An Account of a Divine Visitation,’ &c., among Taylor's pupils at Waltham Abbey was published at Philadelphia, 1797, 8vo; republished London, 1799, 12mo.
[Thomas Taylor's Collected Works; Testimonies by Fox and Barrow, who knew Taylor from childhood; Sewel's Hist. of the Rise, i. 76; Besse's Sufferings, i. 206, 308, 309, 651, 652, 653, 746; Fox's Journal, ed. 1891, i. 127, 128, 369, 371, 469, ii. 105; Gough's Hist. of Quakers, ii. 554; Webb's Fells of Swarthmore, pp. 48, 61; Smith's Cat. of Friends' Books, ii. 693–703; Registers and Swarthmore Manuscripts at Devonshire House, where fifteen letters from Thomas Taylor are preserved. For Christopher Taylor see also Whiting's Memoirs, pp. 352–5; Proud's Hist. of Pennsylvania, i. 235, 236 sq.; Mem. concerning Deceased Friends, York, 1824; Appleton's Cyclopædia of Amer. Biogr. vi. 42; Pennsylv. Mag. vii. 355, x. 193, 405; Beck and Ball's Lond. Friends' Meetings, pp. 132, 301, 360.]
TAYLOR, THOMAS (1738–1816), Wesleyan minister, son of Thomas Taylor, a tanner, was born on 11 Nov. 1738 at Royds Green in the parish of Rothwell, Yorkshire. His parents died before he was six years old, and most of his boyhood was passed in an unruly manner. When he was seventeen he heard Whitefield preach, but the good impression received was not lasting. Three years later he was ‘convinced of sin,’ joined the methodists, and began to preach. He met Wesley at Birstall in 1761, and by his advice attended the conference in London that year, when he was appointed the first travelling preacher of the connexion in Wales. A graphic account of his experiences in Glamorganshire and Pembrokeshire, and afterwards in various parts of England, Ireland, and Scotland, is given in his ‘Autobiography.’ Like many other early methodists, he had a full share of hardships and persecutions. He continued an itinerant minister until 1816, a period of fifty-five years. He was president of the conference in 1796 and 1809. On the former occasion Alexander Kilham [q. v.], the founder of the ‘methodist new connexion,’ was expelled from the society. Everett, in his ‘Wesleyan
