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, eminent for being the first who formed a plan for a natural history of England, the son of Robert Plot, esq. captain of the militia, in the hundred of Milton, in Kent, was born in 1640, at Sutton Baron, in the parish of Borden, in that county, and educated at the free -school of Wye, in the same county. In March 1658, he went to Magdalen-hall, in Oxford, where Josiah Pullen was his tutor took a bachelor of arts degree in 1661, a master’s in 1664, and both the degrees in law in 1671. He removed afterwards to University-college, where he was at the expence of placing the statue of king Alfred over the hall-door. His general knowledge and acuteness, and particularly his attachment to natural history, procured his being chosen, in 1677, a fellow of the royal society and in 1682, elected one of the secretaries of that learned body. He published their “Philosophical Transactions,” from No. 143, to No. 166, inclusive. In 1683, Elias Ashmole, esq. appointed him the first keeper of his museum and about the same time he was nominated by the vicechancellor the first reader in chemistry in that university. In 1687, he was made secretary to the earl-marshal, or court of chivalry, which was then renewed, after it had lain dormant from the year 1641. In 1690, he resigned his professorship of chemistry, and also his place of keeper of the museum; which he then augmented by a very large collection of natural curiosities, being such as he had figured and described in his Histories of Oxfordshire and Staffordshire, and there distinguished by the names of “Scrinium Plotianum Oxoniense,” and “Scrinium Plotianum Staffordiense.” In 1688 he received the title of Historiographer to James II. which he could not long retain, as this was just before the abdication of that sovereign. In 1694-5, Henry Howard, earl-marshal, nominated him Mowbray herald extraordinary; and two days after, he was constituted registrar of the court of honour. He died of the stone, April 30, 1696, at his house in Borden, and was buried in the church there, where a monument was afterwards erected to his memory. He left two sons by his wife Rebecca, widow of Henry Burman, to whom he was married in August 1690.