Bedford, Hilkiah

, of Sibsey, in Lincolnshire, a quaker, came to London, and settled there as a stationer between the years 1600 and 162.5. He married a daughter of Mr. William Plat, of Highgate, by whom he had a son, Hilkiah, a mathematical instrument maker in Hosier-lane, near West-Smithfield. In this house (which was afterwards burnt in the great fire of London, 1666), was born the famous Hilkiah, July 23, 1663; who was educated at Bradley, in Suffolk, and in 1679 was admitted of St. John’s college, Cambridge, the first scholar on the foundation of his maternal grandfather, William Plat. Hilkiah was afterwards elected fellow of his college, and patronized by Heneage Finch earl of Winchelsea, but deprived of his preferment (which was in Lincolnshire), for refusing to take the oaths at the revolution, and afterwards kept a boarding-house for the Westminster scholars. In 1714, being tried in the court of king’s-bench, he was fined 1000 marks, and imprisoned three years, for writing, printing, and publishing “The hereditary Right of the Crown of England asserted,” 1713, folio; the real author of which was George Harbin, a nonjuring clergyman, whom his friendship thus screened; and on account of his sufferings he received 100l. from the late lord Weymouth, who knew not the real author. His other publications were, a translation of “An answer to Fontenelle’s History of Oracles,” and the translation of the life of Dr. Barvvick, as noticed in the life of that gentleman. He died Nov. 26, 1724, and was buried in the church-yard of St. Margaret’s Westminster, with an epitaph. ²