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Updated: May 3, 2025
The House of the Winged Horse has ever had Taylors on its roll, the sign of the Middle Temple, a very fleecy sheep, being perhaps unattractive to the clan, and in 1705 it so happened that not only were there two Taylors, but two Joseph Taylors, entitled to write themselves 'of the Inner Temple, Esquire. Which was the Itinerist? Mr.
I observe in the Itinerary references which point to the Itinerist being a Kentish man, and he mentions more than once his 'Cousin D'aeth. Research among the papers of the D'aeths of Knowlton Court, near Dover, might result in the discovery which of these two Taylors really was the Itinerist.
Cowan rests his case for thinking that the Itinerist can hardly have attained 'the blasted antiquity' of fifty-eight, we must think Mr. Cowan a trifle hasty, or a very young man, perhaps under forty, which is young for an editor. Then on to Scarborough.
Cowan, going by age, thinks that the Itinerist can hardly have been the Joseph Taylor who was admitted to the Inn in 1663, as in that case he must have been at least fifty-eight when he travelled to Edinburgh. For my part, I see nothing in the Itinerary to preclude the possibility of its author having attained that age at the date of its composition.
The Itinerist quotes with gusto the civic proverb that the men of Newcastle pay nothing for the Way, the Word, or the Water, 'for the Ministers of Religion are maintained, the streets paved, and the Conduits kept up at the publick charge. A disagreeable account is given of the brutishness of the people employed in the salt works at Tynemouth.
Their first experience of what the Itinerist calls 'the prodigies of Nature, 'at once an occasion both of Horrour and Admiration, was in the Peak Country 'described in poetry by the ingenious Mr. Cotton. This part of the world they 'did' with something of the earnestness of the modern tourist. But I hardly think they enjoyed themselves.
The graphic account of a famous debate given by, Taylor is worth comparing with the Lockhart Papers and Hill Burton. The date is a little troublesome. According to our Itinerist, he heard the discussion as to whether the Queen or the Scottish Parliament should nominate the Commissioners.
Now, according to the histories, this all-important discussion began and ended on September 1, but our Itinerist had only arrived in Edinburgh the night before the first, and gives us to understand that he owed his invitation to be present to the fact that whilst in Edinburgh he and his friends had had the honour to have several lords and members of Parliament to dine, and that these guests informed him 'of the grand day when the Act was to be passed or rejected. The Itinerist's account is too particular for he gives the result of the voting to admit of any possibility of a mistake, and he describes how several of the members came afterwards to his lodgings, and, so he writes, 'embraced us with all the outward marks of love and kindness, and seemed mightily pleased at what was done, and told us we should now be no more English and Scotch, but Brittons. In the matter of nomenclature, at all events, the promises of the Union have not been carried out.
The Itinerist alone among authors is always sure of an audience. No matter where, no matter when, he has but to tell us how he footed it and what he saw by the wayside, and we must listen. How can we help it?
Nobody can hope to be less known than this our latest Itinerist, for not only is he not in the Dictionary of National Biography, but it is at present impossible to say which of two Joseph Taylors he was.
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