John Taylor the water-poet

John Taylor (24 August 1578 – 1653) was an English poet who dubbed himself "The Water Poet".

He was born in Gloucester, 24 August 1578.

After his waterman apprenticeship he served (1596) in Essex's fleet, and was present at Flores in 1597 and at a siege of Cadiz.

He spent much of his life as a Thames waterman, a member of the guild of boatmen that ferried passengers across the River Thames in London, in the days when the London Bridge was the only passage between the banks. He became a member of the ruling oligarchy of the guild, serving as its clerk; it is mainly through his writings that history is familiar with the watermen's disputes of 1641–42, in which an attempt was made to democratize the leadership of the Company. He details the uprisings in the pamphlets Iohn Taylors Manifestation ... and To the Right Honorable Assembly ... (Commons Petition), and in John Taylors Last Voyage and Adventure of 1641.

Taylor discusses the watermen's disputes with the theatre companies (who moved the theatres from the south bank to the north in 1612, depriving the ferries of traffic) in The True Cause of the Watermen's Suit Concerning Players (written in 1613 or 1614).

He also addresses the coachmen, in his tracts An Arrant Thief (1622) and The World Runnes on Wheeles (1623) (its text); recent development of horsedrawn carriages with spring suspension, and use of them for hire on land, had taken much trade away from the watermen. An Arrant Thief says:

Taylor was also the first poet to mention the deaths of William Shakespeare and Francis Beaumont in print, in his 1620 poem, "The Praise of Hemp-seed". Both had died four years earlier.

He was a prolific, if rough-hewn writer (a wit rather than a poet), with over one hundred and fifty publications in his lifetime. Many were gathered into the compilation All the Workes of John Taylor the Water Poet (London, 1630; facsimile reprint Scholar Press, Menston, Yorkshire, 1973); augmented by the Spenser Society's edition of the Works of John Taylor ... not included in the Folio edition of 1630 (5 volumes, 1870–78). Although his work was not sophisticated, he was a keen observer of people and styles in the seventeenth century, and his work is often studied by social historians. An example is his 1621 work Taylor's Motto, which included a list of then-current card games and diversions.

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