CONTENTS
Biography
Genealogy
Works
Ann Gilbert (nee
Gee)
Isaac
Taylor (1759-1829)
Isaac Taylor
(1787-1865)
Jane Taylor
Charles H. Hinton
William H. Hinton
Writers on
the Taylors
|
An English literary family
of the
18th
and 19th centuries
By
Stephen Painter
EARLY in 1811, the Rev Isaac
Taylor moved with his wife and family to Ongar, a village in
Essex,
where he spent the rest of his life. Rev Taylor had
previously lived in
London and at Lavenham, a small village in Suffolk, and
Colchester. In
Lavenham he had become a deacon of the Independent Church,
which in
1831, after Rev Taylor's time, became known as the
Congregational Union
of England and Wales (commonly known as the Congregational
Church). He
had moved to Colchester on January 20, 1796, to become
minister of an
Independent congregation in that town. He had been
ordained
as a
minister there in April 1796.
By the time Rev Taylor moved to
Ongar, several
of his children were
young adults, and he, his daughters Ann and Jane, and a son,
Isaac, had
begun writing for publication, mainly poems, nursery rhymes
and other
literature for children. By 1814, Ann, Rev Taylor's wife,
had also
begun publishing, mainly books of advice for mothers and
young women.
Later, another son, Jefferys, also became a writer of
children's
literature. To distinguish them from another literary family
of the
time, the
Taylors of Norwich, Rev Taylor's family became known as the
Taylors of
Ongar.
Rev Taylor was an engraver, a trade he had been taught by
his father,
also Isaac Taylor, who in turn had learned something of that
art at the
brass foundry of his father, William Taylor, in Worcester.
Isaac Taylor
senior (1730-1807) became a very well-known engraver in
London,
particularly of illustrations for books. He knew some
notable
personalities of his time such
as the playwright Oliver Goldsmith and the engravers Thomas
Bewick and
Francesco Bartolozzi. Bewick was a student of Isaac Taylor,
and
Taylor's sons Isaac and Charles may have studied under
Bartolozzi.
Rev Taylor and his wife Ann, their daughters Ann and Jane,
and their
sons Isaac and Jefferys are generally considered to be the
Taylors of
Ongar. Earlier and later generations of the family also
wrote, and were
involved in other artistic and creative occupations and
activities, and
most of the important family links were set out in 1895 by
Henry
Taylor, in a chart titled The Pedigree of the Taylors of
Ongar. The
association with Ongar continued after the death of Rev
Taylor and Ann,
as their son, Isaac Taylor, lived nearby at Stanford Rivers,
and Josiah
Gilbert, son of Ann Taylor, later lived at Marden Ash, near
Ongar.
The best-known artists and writers in the extended Taylor
family
are: Isaac Taylor (1759-1829) and his brother
Charles (1756-1823), Isaac's wife Ann Taylor (Martin)
(1757-1830), Rev
Taylor's children Isaac (1787-1865), Ann (Mrs
Gilbert) (1782-1866), Jane (1783-1824) and Jefferys
(1792-1853). The
family's pursuit of literary activity continued into a third
generation
through Canon
Isaac
Taylor (1829-1901), Helen Taylor (1818-1885)
and Josiah Gilbert (1814-1892).
After the six writers who make up the Taylors of Ongar,
Charles Taylor
was the most prolific of the Taylors. An engraver, printer,
bookseller,
writer, librarian and translator, he spent 15 years
translating,
editing, annotating and illustrating Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible
from French. He also edited Literary
Panorama and wrote on topics including the history
of
baptism.
Errors in Taylor
genealogy
There are two widely circulated errors on the genealogy of
the Taylors
of Ongar and their relatives. One is repeated in the
otherwise
excellent work by the Canadian scholar Christina Duff
Stewart, The Taylors of
Ongar: An
Analytical
Bio-bibliography (limited edition, 1975, Garland
Publishing,
New York and London): "The
first
Isaac Taylor (bookseller, publisher and, according to some
the
finest copper-plate engraver of his day) married the
great-grand-niece
and namesake of Milton's mother, Sarah Jefferys." In fact,
there is no
evidence that Sarah Hackshaw Jefferys (1733-1809), wife of
the first
Isaac Taylor, had any connection with the
family of Milton, and such a connection is extremely
unlikely. The
error seems to have
arisen from an unsuccessful genealogical effort by one of
the Taylors.
A second error has been widely circulated in Ellice
Hopkins's Life and
Letters of James Hinton:
"On his father's side, he sprang from the same stock as the
Taylors of
Ongar, Mr Howard Hinton's mother being Ann Taylor, daughter
of Josiah
Taylor, the engraver, and aunt to Isaac Taylor, the
well-known author
of The History of
Enthusiasm,
and his sisters Ann and Jane Taylor." In fact, this Ann
Taylor's father
was Isaac Taylor (1730-1807),
not
his
brother, Josiah (1761-1834), who was a
well-known and
prosperous publisher, but had no children, as is shown in
his will.
Ellice Hopkins recounts a meeting between the young Ann
Taylor (later
Hinton) and John Howard, the well-known prison reformer:
John Howard
Hinton, father of Dr James Hinton, "owed his name to the
philanthropist
John Howard, who was an intimate friend of Josiah Taylor,
the
grandfather, and who, just before starting for Russia,
whence he was
never to return, said to his friend's daughter, in sorrowful
allusion
to the blight which had fallen on his own happiness while
seeking to
alleviate the woes of others: 'I have now no son of my own;
if ever you
have one, pray call him after me,' a request which was held
sacred."
Ellice Hopkins may be mistaken about the source of John
Howard's
acquaintance with Ann Taylor (Hinton), as the connection may
have come
about through their common dissenting connection. Isaac
Taylor, Ann's
father, was not a dissenter.
Ann Taylor (Gilbert), grand-daughter of the elder Isaac
Taylor,
writes of the same
incident in her autobiography, published in 1874 as The Autobiography and Other
Memorials of
Mrs Gilbert: "The most important work executed by
this
Isaac
Taylor
was a large plate, the Flemish Collation, after Ostade.
Howard the
philanthropist
took such notice of one of his daughters,
when a child, that in later years she named a
son after him — Howard Hinton, an eminent Baptist minister
lately deceased. Of the three sons of Isaac Taylor, Charles,
Isaac,
and Josiah, the second was the father of the subject of
these
Memorials."
The Hintons
The impact on English writing of descendants of Isaac Taylor
and Sarah
Hackshaw Jefferys did not end
with the elder Isaac's sons Charles and Isaac, and their
descendants. Ann Taylor (1766-1832), sister of Charles and
Isaac,
married Rev James Hinton (1761-1823), a Bapist minister.
Their sons,
John Howard Hinton (1791-1873)
and Isaac Taylor Hinton (1799-1847) were noted Baptist
ministers,
theological writers and cartographers, and their
grandchildren included
Dr James Hinton (1822-1875), a well-known writer on medical
and
philosophical matters. Dr James Hinton's son, Charles
Howard
Hinton (1853-1907), was a mathematician, teacher and
writer,
whose works include Speculations
on
the
Fourth
Dimension and some early science fiction. Charles
married Mary Ellen
Boole (1856-??),
daughter of George
Boole
(1815-1864) (a mathematician after whom
Boolean logic is
named) and their descendants include the
nuclear physicist Joan Chase Hinton (1922-) and William
Howard
Hinton (1919-2004), writer of Fanshen
and Shenfan,
descriptions of
life in a Chinese village during the Cultural Revolution.
Dr James Hinton's life and work is the subject of books by
Ellice
Hopkins (Life and
Letters of James
Hinton, London, 1878) and Edith
Havelock Ellis, James
Hinton: A
Sketch, Stanley Paul, London, 1918). James Hinton's
philosophical writings included material on morality and
sexuality, and
his work
was
known to the later sexuality researcher and writer Henry
Havelock
Ellis,
husband of Edith Havelock Ellis, although Henry Havelock
Ellis said
that he disagreed with many of James Hinton's opinions and
was not
influenced by his work.
A circle of people influenced by James Hinton's views were
later
influential in the formation of the Fabian Society.
Independent Church
Rev Taylor and his family were members of the
Independent
Church, a minority denomination that was sometimes
persecuted in
England at that
time. Earlier generations of Independents and other
Protestant
dissenters had been actively persecuted, but after the
Religious
Toleration Act of 1689, under
William III (William of Orange), dissenting Christians other
than
Catholics were guaranteed freedom of worship, and
persecution was
largely limited to sporadic outbursts, such as the mob
incident in
Lavenham during the Napoleonic wars, described in The Family Pen and
the Autobiography of Mrs Gilbert.
Nevertheless, as a minority, Independents tended to
associate to a
large extent with each other and to intermarry.
Isaac Taylor's memoir of his sister, Jane, makes it clear
that it was
only in early adulthood that Jane became more open-minded
towards other
denominations such as the Methodists, and even the
Established
(Anglican) Church. She even went so far as to observe a
Catholic
ceremony, which was evidently such a novelty for her that
she describes
it in a letter. Already in Jane Taylor's writing it's clear
that
relations had become easier between the Independents and the
Church of
England, as she mentions attending Established Church
ceremonies in
places where no Independent congregation existed. In later
life, around
1850, Isaac Taylor of Stanford Rivers and his brothers
Martin and
Jefferys became Anglicans. Isaac's motivation for this may
have been
discontent with his father's
treatment by some members of the Independent congregation in
Colchester
about 50 years before, but was more likely his study of
early
Christian history.
A generation later, Isaac Taylor (1829-1901), son of Isaac
Taylor of
Stanford Rivers, became a canon of the Anglican Church.
Sarah Taylor
(1829-1919), grand-daughter of Charles Taylor, was
christened in the
Independent Church, but married in the Anglican Church in
1851 and was
a practising Anglican after moving to Australia in 1856.
The Independent connection seems to have begun with Sarah
Hackshaw
Jefferys, who married the elder Isaac Taylor in 1754. Isaac
Taylor was
evidently not a dissenter, as after his death he was buried
in the
Anglican churchyard at Edmonton, north of London, while
Sarah was
interred in the Hackshaw family vault at Bunhill Fields, the
non-conformist burial ground.
Sarah Hackshaw Jefferys was from a family of London
merchants that had
an attachment for several generations to the Independent
Church. Josiah
Gilbert, in his introductory note to the autobiography of
his mother,
Ann Taylor (Mrs Gilbert, 1782-1866), writes: "The Hackshaws
(or
Hawkshaws) were either of Dutch extraction, or
belonged to the Puritan emigration in Holland, for the
father of the
above-named Robert Hackshaw, was purveyor to King William
III, and
came over with him to England. He was called the 'Orange
skipper', from
having been employed, before the Revolution, to carry
despatches
backwards and forwards, concealed in his walking-cane."
Josiah Gilbert appears to be recounting an oral tradition in
his
family, but at eight generations removed its accuracy may be
questionable. There is evidence, however, that Robert
Hackshaw
(1635-1738), merchant and son of a merchant of the same
name, was
arrested and later released on a charge of sedition in
January 1685
following the Rye
House Plot of 1683. This seems to indicate that this
Robert
Hackshaw could have been in contact with Protestants
involved in the
opposition to kings Charles II and James II that led to the
Glorious
Revolution of 1688, which brought to the throne James'
Protestant
daughter and her husband William of Orange.
At this stage there is nothing to indicate that Robert
Hackshaw was of
Dutch descent or belonged to the Protestant emigration in
Holland, as
both he and his father were residents of London. The
Hackshaws did,
however, have extensive ties with Dutch immigrants and
expatriates in
London, mainly merchants. Robert's sister,
Sarah, married a merchant with a Dutch name, Gerard van
Heythuyson,
whose father also Gerard van Heythuyson, appears to have
been
naturalised, along with others, by an act of the British
Parliament in
February 1656. Gentleman's
Magazine
of April 1735
carries a death notice for "Mr John Hackshaw, a Dutch
merchant, by a
fall from his horse", perhaps indicating that a branch of
the Hackshaw
family resided in Holland, but there is no evidence that
this John
Hackshaw was related to Robert Hackshaw. The elder Robert
Hackshaw did
have a brother called John, but that brother would probably
have been
at least 70 years of age by 1735.
It is also known that Robert Hackshaw, great great
grandfather of Sarah
Hackshaw Jefferys was admitted to the Grocer's Company in
London in
1646 after serving an apprenticeship with one Joseph Alfred,
and became
a liveryman of the company. He married Sarah Smart, the
daughter of
another merchant, John Smart. He or his son, also Robert, is
described
as "citizen and grocer of London" in a surviving document of
December
1670.
Sarah Jefferys' father, Josiah
(1709-177), was a
cutler who supplied
his wares to
the royal family. One of Josiah's brothers, Thomas, was a
London map
engraver and
geographer to Frederick Prince of Wales, later King George
III. Another
brother, Nathaniel, was a wealthy London jeweller. |