4 ROBERT POCOCK. 



Street, in honour of St. Thomas of Canterbury, and after- 

 wards as School Street, and probably under James 

 Giles, sen., who died on the 9th December, 1 780, aged 

 61 (and who was one of thewitnesses to his father's will), 

 or else under his son, such store of erudition as a boy of 

 fourteen years of age can accumulate was acquired. 

 This is confirmed by the kind notice which Pocock makes 

 of them both in his " History of Gravesend," where he 

 writes under the head of " Literary Persons : " 



' f Mr. James Giles, although not to be reckoned a 

 literary person, yet was such a character as no paro- 

 chial historian should pass unnoticed. Mr. Giles, in 

 the early part of his life, was bred to the business of 

 shoe-making, which he quitted, and, untutored, en- 

 gaged himself to the study of arithmetic ; this brought 

 him to be somewhat acquainted with the more abstruse 

 branches of the mathematics, and upon the Rev. Mr. 

 Locker's leaving the free school in Milton, Mr. Giles 

 was appointed to succeed him. 



" Mr. James Giles, son of the above, succeeded his 

 father, and from his classical abilities many bright lads 

 have been sent forth from the free school. Mr. Giles 

 was also the constructor of the curious sun-dial at 

 Milton Church, and of an orrery; and besides being 

 an electrician was the author of an elaborate work 

 called ' English Governing ; or, Parsing Recommended 

 to School-masters and Private Teachers of Grammar 

 as the most easy method of attaining a thorough 

 knowledge of that science : Nothing of this sort had 

 ever appeared in Print/ " 



Pocock does not mention it, but he was himself the 

 publisher of this useful work. Thus he was an early 

 pioneer of the " Society for the Diffusion of Useful 

 Knowledge " of later times. 



