T A Y 



1-21 



T A Y 



there is seen at the present clay. Although the fruit of 

 the yew is not poisonous, th?re are many well-authenti- 

 cated instances of the leaves producing death. Deer and 

 goats are said to feed upon them with impunity, but to 

 cows and horses they prove an active poison. The yew 

 has not been at any time used generally as a medicine, 

 although its effects on the system have been represented 

 as similar to those of digitalis, and as being more manage- 

 able and less liable to accumulate in the system than 

 that medicine. Professor Wiborg of Copenhagen states 

 that the leaves of the yew are only poisonous to animals 

 when they are eaten alone, but that if eaten with three or 

 four times the quantity of other food they are innocuous. 



There are several remarkable specimens of old yews 

 existing in this country. Those at. Fountains Abbey are 

 said to have sheltered the monks whilst that magnificent 

 pile was erecting. The Tythcrley, Fortingal, Arlington, 

 and Loch-Lomond yews are remarkable for their size and 

 age. Many of them, if we estimate their age in the mode 

 proposed by De Candolle, must exceed considerably a 

 thousand years. 



The wood of the yew is used extensively in cabinet- 

 making. It is very hard, compact, and of a fine close 

 grain, which arises from the smatlness of its annual layers, 

 280 being sometimes found in a piece not more than 20 

 inches in diameter. It is also much used by the turner 

 for making snuff-boxes, musical instruments, &c. 



There are several varieties of the common yew ; the most 

 remarkable is the Irish yew, which Professor Lindley has 

 made a distinct species, Ttuus faatighitn. It is distin- 

 guished by its upright mode of growth, and by its leaves 

 not being arranged in ranks, but scattered. It was first 

 discovered at Florence Court, on the mountains of Fer- 

 managh, and has since been observed in other parts of 

 In-hind. Other varieties are described, produced by dif- 

 ference in cultivation, soil, &c. The Canada or North 

 American yew is described as a species, T. Cmntdfiisis. 

 The leaves are narrower and smaller than those of the 

 common yew, and are revolute at. the margin, and the 

 male flowers are solitary in the axis of the leaves. It is 

 found native in Canada, and on the banks of a river 

 in Man-land. 



In trie cultivation of the yew, a moist soil should always 

 be selected ; but it thrives best on clays and loams, on 

 rocks, and in shady places. It is best propagated by seeds, 

 which, if gown as soon as they are gathered in autumn, 

 surrounded by the pulp of the "fruit, will come up the next 

 or following spring ; but if dried, will not come up till the 

 third year. Where the object is to form a fence, cuttings 

 may be employed. Before transplanting, whether they 

 be raised from" seeds or cuttings, the plants should be 

 three or four feet high. 



For further information concerning the yew, see Lou- 

 ilon's Arhwtum ft I'nttiri'tum Britan/iicum.) 



TAV, River. [PBRTHSBntt.] 



TAY, LOCH. [PERTHSHIRE.] 



TAYGKTUS. [LvcoxiA.] 



TAYLOR. ROWLAND, LL.D., was a clergyman emi- 

 nent for his learnins; and piety, who was burnt at the stake 

 in the reign of Queen Mary. He is said by Hishop Heber 

 to have been an ancestor of Jeremy Taylor. He was 

 lain to Archbishop Cranmer, by whom he was ap- 

 pointed rector of Hadleigh, in Suffolk, where he went to 

 reside. 



Dr. Taylor was summoned, in the year 1553, to appear 

 in London before Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, who was 

 then lord chancellor, for resisting the performance of mass 

 in his church at Hadleigh. He was strongly persuaded to 

 .', but refused, and presented himself before Gardiner, 

 by whom, after a long conference, in which he defended 

 hi- fiinsc with unshrinking firmness, he was committed to 

 tin- kin^'-, Bench prison. There he remained till the 22nd 

 (if January, 1555, when he and other prisoners were cited 

 .Gardiner, and the bishops of London, Norwich. Salis- 

 bury, and Durham, who were joint commissioners with the 

 .-liii'icellor. The chief offence of which Dr. Taylor was 

 -ed was his marriage ; but he defended the fight 

 of priests to marry with so much learning, that no sentence 

 of (1, pronounced, though he was deprived of his 



benefice. At the end of January the prisoners were again 

 broiiLCht before th- ciminii -ioncrs, by whom they were 

 sentenced to death. Dr. Taylor was committed to the 

 Poultry ('..mpl-r. v.hore, on the 4th of February, he was 

 P. C., No. 1503. 



visited by Bonner, bishop of London, who went there for 

 the purpose of making him put on the dress of a Roman 

 Catholic priest. Dr. Taylor resisted with his usual cou- 

 rage, and the dress was put upon him by force : he treated 

 the whole proceeding with the utmost contempt, as a piece 

 of mummery, and Bonner would have struck him witn his 

 crosier if he had not been restrained by his chaplain. On 

 the following day the procession set forth which was to 

 conduct him to the place of execution. In the course of 

 the journey much persuasion was used by the sheriff and 

 others to induce him to recant, but without making the 

 smallest impression upon him. The procession passed 

 through Hadleigh, where he was consoled and cheered by 

 the blessings and prayers of his parishioners. The exe- 

 cution took place on the 8th of February, 1555, on Aldham 

 Common, near Hadleigh. A stone, with the following in- 

 scription, perhaps still remains to mark the spot : ' 15:55. 

 Dr. Tayler in defending that was gode at this plas left his 

 blode.' 



Bishop Heber, in his ' Life of Bishop Jeremy Taylor,' 

 says, ' There is nothing indeed more beautiful in the whole 

 beautiful Book of Martyrs than the account which Fox 

 has given nf Rowland Taylor, whether in the discharge of 

 his duty as a parish priest or in the more arduous moments 

 when he was called on to bear his cross in the cause of re- 

 ligion. His warmth of heart, his simplicity of manners, 

 the total absence of the false stimulants of enthusiasm or 

 pride, and the abundant overflow of better and holier feel- 

 ings, are delineated, no less than his courage in death and 

 the buoyant cheerfulness with which he encountered it, 

 with a spirit only inferior to the eloquence and dignity of 

 the "Phaedon."' 



(Fox's Acts and Monuments.'] 



TAYLOR JEREMY, was born at Cambridge in 1613, 

 where he was baptized on the 15th August in that year. 

 His ancestors had been wealthy and respectable, one of 

 whom, Dr. Rowland Taylor, is mentioned in Fox's ' Book 

 of Martyrs ' as bringing upon himself the persecution of 

 the popish party in the reign of Mary, not only by the 

 popularity of his character and talents, but also his 

 wealth. Taylor's father was a barber, a calling generally 

 united in those clays with surgery. At an early age Tay- 

 lor was sent to Perse's grammar-school in Cambridge, and 

 in his fourteenth year ne was entered at Cains College as 

 a sizar, an order of students which, Bishop Heber informs 

 us, were then what the 'servitors' still continue to be in 

 some colleges in Oxford, and what the ' lay brethren ' are 

 in the convents of the Romish church. At little more 

 than twenty years of age, having taken the degree of 

 master of arts, and been admitted to holy orders, he 

 attracted the notice of Laud, then archbishop of Canter- 

 bury, before whom he was invited to preach at Lambeth. 

 Laud appreciated his elocmence and his talents, which he 

 encouraged in the most judicious manner by having him 

 settled at Oxford, where he was admitted to the degree of 

 master of arts, and by the powerful interposition of the 

 archbishop, in 1G3G, nominated to a fellowship. Taylor 

 does not appear to have remained long or uninterruptedly 

 at Oxford. In 1G37-8 he was presented by Juxon, bishop 

 of London, to the rectory of Uppingham in Rutlandshire. 

 About tliis time an acquaintance which, in common with 

 Land, he maintained with a learned Franciscan friar, 

 Francis a Sancta Clara, exposed him to the suspicion of a 

 concealed attachment to the Roman church a suspicion 

 to which the character of his mind, which tended to asce- 

 ticism in religion, and to an extravagant veneration for 

 antiquity, and which cherished a love of the gorgeous and 

 imposing in the ceremonial of worship, gave some plausi- 

 bility. At a later period in life however Taylor solemnly 

 denied that there had ever been any solid ground for ques- 

 tioning the sincerity of his Protestantism. 



In the civil wars he followed the fortunes of Charles, 

 whose chaplain he was, and in 1642, when the king was 

 at Oxford, he published there his ' Episcopacy asserted 

 against the Acephali and Aerians New and Old,' in which 

 he sought, to maintain a cause that had then however, 

 unfortunately, passed from the controversy of the pen to 

 that of arms. Charles rewarded Taylor in the only way 

 which it remained in his power to do, by commanding his 

 admission to the degree of doctor of divinity. This honour 

 v.as diminished by the indiscriminate manner in which it 

 ! was conferred upon many other loyalists at the same lime, 

 ' so as to provoke an expression of dissatisfaction from the 



VOL. XXIV. 11 



