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. |