Natives

Alphege or Aelfeah, b. 954, at Weston near Bath; successively Bishop of Winchester and Archbishop of Canterbury; killed by the Danes, 1011; canonised.

Bacon, Roger, b. about 1214, at or near Ilchester; became a friar of the Franciscan Order; studied natural philosophy and wrote, besides other works, the “Opus Majus” (described as “at once the ‘Encyclopaedia’ and the ‘Organon’ of the 13th century"); d. 1294.

Bagehot, Walter, b. 1826, at Langport; economist and author of “The English Constitution”; d. 1877.

Beckington, Thomas, b. about 1390, at Beckington; successively Bishop of Salisbury and Bishop of Bath and Wells; d. 1465.

Blake, Robert, b. 1599, at Bridgwater; took part in the Great Civil War on the Parliamentary side, and defended Lyme and Taunton; made admiral of the fleet, and fought against Holland and Spain; d. 1657.

Coleridge, Hartley, b. 1796, at Clevedon; poet and biographical writer; d. 1849.

Coryate, Thomas, b. 1577, at Odcombe; travelled, first on the Continent (his journal, entitled “Coryat’s Crudities,” was long the only handbook for Continental travel), and subsequently in the East; d. at Surat, 1617.

Cudivorth, Ralph, b. 1617, at Aller; Professor of Hebrew and Master of Christ’s College, Cambridge; author of “The True Intellectual System of the Universe”; one of the “Cambridge Platonists”; d. 1688.

Dampier, William, b. 1652, at East Coker; explorer and scientific observer; author of “A Discourse on the Winds” (said to have value even now as a text-book); d. 1715.

Daniell, Samuel, b. 1562, probably near Taunton; poet and prose writer (there appears to be no authority for the belief that he succeeded Spenser as poet-laureate); d. 1619.

Dunstan, b. 924, at Glastonbury; successively Abbot of Glastonbury, Bishop of Worcester and London, and Archbishop of Canterbury; d. 988; canonised.

Fielding, Henry, b. 1707, at Sharpham, near Glastonbury; novelist (best known work, “Tom Jones"); d. 1754 at Lisbon.

Hood, Samuel, b. 1724, at Butleigh; admiral (Nelson wrote of him as “the best officer, take him altogether, that England has to boast of"); made a viscount; d. 1816.

Hooper, John, b. 1495 (place unknown); Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester; burnt at the stake, 1555.

Irving, Henry (real name John Henry Brodribb); b. 1838, at Keinton-Mandeville; actor; knighted; d. 1905.

Kinglake, Alexander William, b. 1809, at Taunton; wrote “Eothen” and “Invasion of the Crimea”; d. 1891.

Locke, John, b. 1632, at Wrington; philosopher; author of “Essay on the Human Understanding,” and works on education and the currency; d. 1704.

Norris, Edwin, b. 1795, at Taunton; Oriental scholar; d. 1872.