(cited by Wood; there is, however, another version). Though a warrant was issued for his apprehension on 15 Aug. 1649 ‘for keeping up a correspondence with the enemy,’ and his books and papers were ordered to be seized (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1649–50, p. 544), he was allowed to die here in peace in December 1653, childless and intestate, and was buried on the 5th in the neighbouring churchyard of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields (parish register; letters of administration granted to his widow, Alice, on 21 March 1653–4 in P. C. C. bk. i. f. 97). His widow carried on the public-house in her own name until her death in January 1657–8 (will in P. C. C. 5, Wotton). She was buried with her husband, who refers to her in terms of affection.
A portrait of Taylor is at Watermen's Hall, which shows him, as Wood remarks, to have been of a ‘quick and smart countenance.’ Another picture of him is in the Bodleian Library, to which it was presented in 1655 by the artist, his nephew, John Taylor, a portrait-painter practising at Oxford; this has been engraved. The nephew's portrait, painted by himself, is also in the Bodleian, and has also been engraved. A whole-length portrait of Taylor is before his ‘Memorial of all the English Monarchs,’ 1622; and there is a small oval head of him by Thomas Cockson in the engraved title-page to his ‘Works,’ 1630.
Although Taylor complacently styled himself the ‘king's water-poet’ and the ‘queen's waterman,’ he can at best be only regarded as a literary bargee. As literature his books—many of them coarse and brutal—are contemptible; but his pieces accurately mirror his age, and are of great value to the historian and antiquary.
Taylor published a collective and revised edition of his writings in 1630, with the title, ‘All the Workes of Iohn Taylor the Water Poet, being 63 in number.’ This goodly but disorderly folio, which had to be set up at the presses of four different printers, and has long been a bibliographical rarity, was reprinted by the Spenser Society in three parts, folio, 1868–9. Others of his tracts not comprised in the folio were reprinted by the same society in five parts, quarto, 1870–8. Twenty-one of his more readable pieces were issued in a massive octavo, under the editorship of Charles Hindley, in 1872. A further selection was issued by Hindley in vol. iii. of his ‘Miscellanea Antiqua Anglicana,’ 8vo, 1873. Another popular edition, containing thirteen of his ‘Early Prose and Poetical Works,’ appeared in 1888, 8vo.
Taylor had a host of imitators, and to distinguish his work from theirs is no easy task. Indeed, one of his antagonists, John Booker [q. v.], in an anonymous attack on him called ‘A Rope Treble-twisted’ (1644), insinuated that royalist pamphleteers made use of Taylor's name in order to attract attention to their own lampoons on the roundheads.
In the following bibliography all Taylor's works included in the folio edition of 1630 are distinguished by a capital F at the end of each title, while the other pieces reprinted by the Spenser Society have an asterisk prefixed. Unless otherwise stated all were printed at London: 1. ‘The Scoller … or Gallimawfry of Sonnets, Satyres, and Epigrams,’ 4to, 1612 (with woodcut of Taylor rowing in a boat); another edit. entitled ‘Taylor's Water-Worke,’ 4to, 1614 (F). 2. ‘Greate Brittaine All in Blacke for the … losse of Henry, our late worthy Prince’ (in verse), 4to, 1612 (a portion of the work reprinted in F). 3. ‘Heauens Blessing and Earths Joy,’ 2 pts. 4to, 1613; prose and verse in commemoration of the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth (F); also reprinted in Somers's ‘Tracts’ (4th edit. 1809), vol. iii., and in Nichols's ‘Progresses of James I,’ ii. 527. 4. ‘The Trve Cavse of the Watermens Suit concerning Players,’ 4to [1613?] (F). ‘The Eighth Wonder of the World, or Coriats Escape from his supposed Drowning’ (in verse), 8vo, 1613 (F). 6. ‘Odcomb's Complaint; or Coriat's funerall Epicedium … Dedicated to … Don Archibald Armstrong’ (in verse), 8vo, 1613 (F). 7. ‘The Nipping or Snipping of Abvses’ (in verse), 4to, 1614 (F). *8. ‘Fair and fowle weather’ (in verse), 1615. 9. ‘Taylor's Vrania … with … the thirteene Sieges … of Iervsalem’ (in verse), 2 pts. 8vo, 1616 (F). 10. ‘Laugh and be Fat, or a Commentary upon the Odcombyan Banket’ (in verse and prose), 8vo, 1613? or 1615 (F). 11. ‘Taylors Revenge, or the Rymer William Fennor firkt, ferrited, and finely fecht over the coales’ (in verse), 1615 (F). In the folio edition ‘Fennors Defence’ (in verse) is added. Fennor was a rival wit of Taylor's own rank and fashion, of whom he was comically jealous. 12. ‘A Cast over the Water by John Taylor given gratis to William Fennor, the Rimer’ (in verse), 8vo [1615], (F). 13. ‘The Dolphins Danger and Deliverance’ [1616?] (F). A narrative of a fight at sea between the Dolphin and six Turkish men-of-war. 14. ‘Three Weekes, three daies, and three houres Observations and Travell from London to Hambvrgh in Germanie,’ 4to, 1617 (F); reprinted in Charles
