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OBITUARY.
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To the Editor of the Monthly Repository * Sir , You have expressed a wish ( p . 370 ) , that some record of the principal events in the jfe , as well as some traces of the character , of my father , should be preserved in the Monthly Repository . I have heard this wish also from several of his friends ,
md although I deeply feel my inability to : onvey to those who did not know him a true and faithful portraiture of the one , and although the quiet and peaceful tenor of the other cannot present much to interest many of your readers , yet I would hope that even this imperfect sketch may not be without its use . It may serve to stimulate those who shall hereafter bear
his name , to emulate his active benevolence , his rational and fervent piety , his cheerful and constant resiguation to the will of God , and his unwearied exertions to promote whatever had for its aim the good of his fellow-creatures . Till within the last year I had never been separated
from him ; he had early led me to take an interest in those pursuits and those iustitutions to which he had devoted so much of his time and thoughts , and hence has devolved upon me a duty which would otherwise have been more fitly discharged by one of my elder brothers .
The following is the record of his birth in the Register belonging to the Presbyte * rian Congregation at Norwich : " John , Son of Richard Taylor and Margaret his wife , of St . George , Colegate , in this City , was boru July 30 , 1750 , aud baptized by roe , " John Taylor . "
His father was the only surviving sou of Dr . John Taylor , aud carried on the business of a manufacturer at Norwich . His maternal ancestors had long been resident in that city , and for more than
two hundred years had lived in the parish above mentioned . They appear to have been without exception steady and consistent defenders of the rights of the people against the arbitrary and unconstitutional attacks of the Stuarts . The
name of Mr . John Hall ( his great grandfather ) stands at the head of a list of niueteeeti of the Common Council of Norwich who were , by an arbitrary order of James II ., expelled from the Corporation in the very year ( 1687 ) iu
which the original Presbyterian Meeting was erected there . The following year the banishment of that tyrant , and the election of William to be King , restored the rightful members of the Corporation to their places . Mr . Hall afterwards served the office ot Mayor twice . First
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iu the year 1701 , soon after the accession of George I . To this office he was elected by his fdlow-citizeiis , hi consequence of the steady and powerful support which he gave to the . Hanoverian succession ; aud a very unusual mark of their confidence was * shewn iu his being again
chosen to fill that office in 1720 . In 1724 , my father ' s grandfather , Mr . Phi * lip Meadows , ( whose ancle , of the same name , had been Ambassador to the Court of Lisbon and to Denmark , under the Commonwealth , * and whose father , Mr .
John ^ Meadows , had been ejected from the living of Ousden , iu Suffolk , f ) was elected Sheriff of Norwich , and Mayor in 1734 . He was the Treasurer to the Hospitals , an office which he discharged with exemplary fidelity . He left one son and two daughters . The former settled
as an Attorney at Diss , m Norfolk . The eldest daughter married ray grandfather , and the youngest , Mr , David Martineau , of Norwich , a worthy descendant of one of the victims of that wicked and foolish policy which led to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantz , and drove so many valuable and honest men to seek that
liberty of conscience in England , which was denied them in their native land . Dr . Taylor removed in 1733 from Kirstead , in Lincolnshire , to Norwich , and it was during his connexion with the congregation there that nearly all those works which have so deservedly
established his reputatiou as a scripture critic were written . In 1753 , the congregation at Norwich determined to erect a > new Meeting , in consequence of the dccaved state of the old building . The sum
of i ? 5000 was raised by them , and the present spacious and elegant building , of which Dr . Taylor laid the firSt stone , was opened by him May 12 , 1756 . This , I have heard my father say , was one of the earliest of his recollections . I have
heard him describe the childish interest he took in watching the progress of a building , where it was through after life his greatest delight to worship , and to the interests of the society assembling in which , he was inpst happy to devote his talents . This substantial evidence of
the prosperity of a society whose immsrter was among the very few who had the courage to attack the Calviuistic system
—* See Miltou ' s Letters of State , and Tlmrloe . f Their ancestors , as far back as the reign of Henry 11 ., held lands iu that neighbourhood , which are still in the possession of the family .
Obituary.
OBITUARY .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1826, page 482, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2551/page/38/
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