His branch of the great family of Taylor came from the city of Norwich. If its members were originally of the same stock as the critic and philologer, known as "Taylor of Norwich," they showed very different qualities in life. For generations they were medical men and four of them were conspicuous in the world as oculists. The progenitor of these eye-doctors was John Taylor a general practitioner in that capital of East Anglia. He lived amid the quiet surroundings of a cathedral town, not courting the publicity of life in London. Dr. Monsey who studied medicine at Norwich and was afterwards the shrewd but loose-speaking old physician of Chelsea Hospital, testified from local knowledge to his high character in his profession, and to his reputation, acquired from a "grave and dignified" aspect and demeanor, among his neighbours of supernatural knowledge, so that they consulted him as a conjuror. Great as his knowledge may have been, he could not have formed even a guess at the future career of his elder son, the second John Taylor who called himself and was known to the world as, the Chevalier Taylor. Probably no one was more surprised than the father at his son's erratic course in life.
The Chevalier who was born on the 16th of August, 1703, studied surgery at Sᵗ Thomas's hospital in London under the guidance of William Cheselden, the celebrated operator but soon devoted his especial attention to the diseases of the eye. He began life in the city of his birth, not disdaining the scanty fee of the ordinary surgeon but still continuing his study of the eye. This little society soon became too hot for a man of his vast but wayward energy and he began travelling in quest of practice through his native land. By the time that he was 30 the greater part of the British Isles was familiar ground to him.
Even this enlarged sphere of operations soon became too
