of Saumar, and brought with him his academical certificate, which became an heirloom in the refugee family. In 1691 William III. made him one of the gentlemen of the Privy Chamber. Thereafter he served at sea as secretary to three British Admirals successively, namely, Edward, Earl of Orford, Sir George Rooke, and Sir Cloudesley Shovel. In H.M.S. Association, he, with his chief and all on board, perished by shipwreck, 22nd October 1707. In an official document he was called “Mr. Jourdain.” His reverend son gives this explanation:— “My father came over, a young man, to England with his father, mother, uncle, two aunts, and two sisters, about 1687. He was made one of the gentlemen of the Privy Chamber in 1691 by the name of Renatus Jortin; I have his patent. After this, and before I was born, he took a fancy to change his name to Jordain, to give it an English appearance, being fond (I suppose) of passing for an Englishman, as he spoke English perfectly and without any foreign accent. This gave me some trouble afterwards when I went into Deacon’s Orders under Bishop Kennet, for the registrar of St. Giles-in-the-Fields wrote my name (as it stood there) Jordain; I gave the bishop an account of how it came to pass. After my father’s death, my mother thought it proper to assume the true name of Jortin; and she and I always wrote it so.”
John Jortin was born on 23rd October 1698. When his mother became a widow, she removed to the neighbourhood of the Charterhouse, where he passed his schooldays with distinction, being a remarkable linguist; he went to Cambridge in 1715. Dr. Styan Thirlby recommended him to Pope as a coadjutor in compiling notes to Homer. Jortin furnished to the poet all his translations from the commentary of Eustathius. “When that part of Homer came out in which I had been concerned,” says Jortin, “I was eager (as it may be supposed) to see how things stood, and much pleased to find that he had not only used almost all my notes, but had hardly made any alteration in the expressions. I observed, also, that in a subsequent edition he corrected the place to which I had made objections. I was in some hopes in those days (for I was young) that Mr. Pope would make inquiry about his coadjutor and take some civil notice of him, but he did not; and I had no notion of obtruding myself upon him. I never saw his face.”
John Jortin became B.A. in 1719, Fellow of Jesus College in 1721, and M.A. in 1722. The fellowship was vacant by the death of another descendant of a French refugee, William Rosen, who had held it since 1710. The following is the entry in the books of Jesus College:—
1710. Gul. Rosen, Londinensis, A.B., e Galliâ oriundus, in cujus demortui locum successit (1721) Joan. Jortin, A.B., Londinensis, sed e Galliâ hic quoque oriundus — A.M. 1722 — taxator academiae 1723 — presentatus ad vicariam de Swavesey 1726 — per matrimonium cessit (1727) Georgio Lewis, A.M.
The phrase taxator academiae means the university office of taxer, which Jortin discharged in 1723. His vicarage of Swavesey was in Cambridgeshire; his marriage (in 1727) was to Anne Chibnall of Newport Pagnell. About 1730 he removed to London, and settled there as the minister of a chapel in New Street, St. Giles-in-the-Fields (his native parish). In 1731 and 1732, he edited a new periodical entitled, Miscellaneous Observations on Authors Ancient and Modern. (On its discontinuance, Burmann’s Miscellanae Observationes . . . . ab eruditis Britannis inchoatae succeeded it.) In 1737 he became Vicar of Eastwell in Kent, but soon returned to London, and his friend, Rev. Dr. Zachary Pearce, made him the minister of a chapel of ease in his parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Dr. Pearce being, in 1747, made Bishop of Bangor, his consecration sermon was preached by Mr. Jortin. At this time Archbishop Herring had come to the See of Canterbury, and he heard the sermon with such admiration that he at once became his friend and patron. The Primate once said to Jortin, “I will be to you what Warham was to Erasmus;” and he kept his word both by uniting with Bishop Sherlock (of London) in recommending him for the Boyle Lectureship in 1749, and by presenting him to the Rectory of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-East in 1751. Also, in 1755, in virtue of his powers as Archbishop of Canterbury, he conferred on him the degree of D.D. In 1762 Dr. Osbaldeston became Bishop of London, and immediately made Dr. Jortin his chaplain, and a Prebendary of St. Paul’s, translated him to the Vicarage of Kensington, and, in 1764, made him Archdeacon of London.
The Rev. Thomas Birch inducted him to his new vicarage. Dr. Jortin’s letters to this clerical friend give us some insight into his every-day life. On “Monday, 22nd April 1751,” he wrote:—
