TAYLOR, JOHN (158o-1653), English pamphleteer, com monly called the "Water-Poet," was born at Gloucester on Aug. 24, I580. After fulfilling his apprenticeship to a waterman, he served (2596) in Essex's fleet, and was present at Flores in 1597 and at the siege of Cadiz. On his return to England he became a Thames waterman, and was at one time collector of the per quisites exacted by the lieutenant of the Tower. He was an expert in the art of self-advertisement, and achieved notoriety by a series of eccentric journeys. With a companion as feather brained as himself he journeyed from London to Queenborough in a paper boat, with two stockfish tied to canes for oars. The Pennyles Pilgrimage, or the Moneylesse Perambulation of John Taylor . . . how he travailed on foot from London to Eden borough in Scotland . . . 1618, contains the account of a journey perhaps suggested by Ben Jonson's celebrated undertaking, though Taylor emphatically denies any intention of burlesque. He went as far as Aberdeen. At Leith he met Jonson, who good-naturedly gave him 2 2 shillings to drink his health in England. Other travels
undertaken for a wager were a journey to Prague, where he is said to have been entertained (162o) by the queen of Bohemia, and those described respectively in A very merry, wherry ferry voyage, or Yorke for my money, and A New Discovery by sea with a Wherry from London to Salisbury (1623). At the out break of the civil war Taylor began to keep a public-house at Oxford, but when the Royalists surrendered the city he returned to London, where he set up a similar business at the sign of "The Crown" in Phoenix Alley, Long Acre. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields on Dec. 5, 1653.
Sixty-three of Taylor's "works" appeared in one volume in 2630. This was reprinted by the Spenser Society in 1868-69, being followed by other tracts not included in the collection (187o-78). Some of his more amusing productions were edited (1872) by Charles Hindley as The Works of John Taylor. They provide some very entertaining reading. Mr. Hindley edited other tracts of Taylor's in his Miscellanea Antigua Anglican (2873).