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, knight, of the ancient family of the Baskervilles in Herefordshire, an excellent scholar and eminent physician, famous for his skill in anatomy, and successful practice in the time of king James I. and king Charles I. was born at Exeter 1573. His lather Thomas Baskerville, an apothecary of that city, observing an early love of knowledge and thirst after learning in him, gave him a proper education for the university, to which he was sent when about eighteen years old, entering him of Exeter college, in Oxford, on the 10th of March 1591, putting him under the care of Mr. William Helm, a man no less famous for his piety than learning; under whose tuition he gave such early proofs of his love of virtue and knowledge, that he was on the first vacancy elected fellow of that house, before he had taken his bachelor’s degree in arts, which delayed his taking it till July 8, 1596, to which he soon after added that of M. A. and when he was admitted, had particular notice taken of him for his admirable knowledge in the languages and philosophy. After this, viz. 1606, he was chosen senior proctor of the university, when he bent his study wholly to physic, became a most eminent proficient, and was then in as great esteem at the university for his admirable knowledge in medicine, as he had been before for other parts of learning, taking at once, by accumulation (June 20, 1611), both his degrees therein, viz. that of bachelor and doctor. After many years study and industry, he came to London, where he acquired great eminence in his profession; being a member of the college of physicians, and for some time also president. His high reputation for learning and skill soon brought him into vogue at court, where he was sworn physician to James I. and afterwards to Charles I. with whom, Mr. Wood tells us, he was in such esteem for his learning and accomplishments, that he conferred the honour of knighthood upon him. By his practice he obtained a very plentiful estate, and shewed in his life a noble spirit suitable to the largeness of his fortune. What family he left besides his wife, or who became heir to all his great wealth, we cannot find. He died July 5, 1641, aged sixty-eight, and was buried in the cathedral church of St. Paul. No physician of that age could, we imagine, bave better practice than he, if what is reported of him be true, viz. that he had no less than one hundred patients a, week; nor is it strange he should amass so great wealth as to acquire the title of sir Simon Baskerville the rich.

, that illustrious benefactor to literature, from whom the public library at Oxford takes its name, was the son of Mr. John Bodley, of Exeter, and of his wife Joan, daughter and heiress of Robert Home, esq. of Ottery St. Mary, near Exeter. By his father’s side he descended from the ancient family of the Bodleys, or Bodleighs, of Dunscomb, near Crediton, in Devonshire. He was born at Exeter, March 2, 1544, and was about twelve years of age when his father was obliged to leave England on account of his religion, and settle at Geneva, where he lived during the reign of queen Mary. The English church at Geneva consisted, as he himself informs us, of some hundred persons; and here, the university having been newly erected, he frequented the public lectures of Chevalerius on the Hebrew tongue, of Beroaldus on the Greek, and of Calvin and Beza on divinity, and had also domestic teachers in the house of Philibertus Saracenus, a physician of that city, with whom he boarded, and where Robert Constantine, author of the Greek Lexicon, read Homer to him. Under such masters, we cannot doubt his proficiency, although we have no more particular detail of his early studies upon record. Whatever else he learned, he appears to have imbibed an uncommon love of books, to have studied their history, and to have prepared himself, although unconscious of the result, for that knowledge which, it is evident from his correspondence, he was perpetually increasing, and which at length, when the political prospects which once flattered his ambition were closed, enabled, as well as incited him, to re-found the public library at Oxford.

, an English dissenting minister, was born at Exeter, Sept. 16, 1697. His grandfather was 9, clergyman at Kettering in Northamptonshire; but his father, being educated by an uncle who was a dissenter, imbibed the same principles, and was afterwards by trade a tucker, or fuller, in Exeter. He was sent early to the free school in that town, where the foundation of a friendship between him and Dr. Conybeare, afterwards bishop of Bristol, is said to have been laid; and thence was removed to an academy in the same city, where he finished his studies. He there displayed pre-eminent natural abilities, a quick apprehension, a solid judgment, a happy memory, and a free commanding elocution.

After the battle at Cheriton-Down, March 29, 1644, lord Hopton drew on his army to Basing-house, and Fuller, being left there by him, animated the garrison to so vigorous a defence of that place, that sir William Waller was obliged to raise the siege with considerable loss. But the, war hastening to an end, and part of the king’s army being driven into Cornwall, under lord Hopton, Fuller, with the leave of that nobleman, took refuge at Exeter, where he resumed his studies, and preached constantly to the citizens. During his residence here he was appointed chaplain to the infant princess Henrietta Maria, who was born at Exeter in June 1643; and the king soon after gave him a patent for his presentation to the living of Dorchester in Dorsetshire. He continued his attendance on the princess till the surrender of Exeter to the parliament, in April 1646; but did not accept the living, because he determined to remove to London at the expiration of the war. He relates, in his * Worthies,“an extraordinary circumstance which happened during the siege of Exeter” When the city of Exeter, he says, was besieged by the parliament forces, so that only the south side thereof towards the sea was open to it, incredible numbers of larks were found in that open quarter, for multitude like quailg in the wilderness; though, blessed be God, unlike them in the cause and effect; as not desired with man’s destruction, nor sent with God’s anger, as appeared by their safe digestion into wholesome nourishment. Hereof I was an, eye and mouth-witness. I will save my credit in not conjecturing any number; knowing that herein, though I should stoop beneath the truth, I should mount above belief. They were as fat as plentiful; so that being sold for two-pence a dozen and under, the poor who could have no cheaper, and the rich no better meat, used to make pottage of them, boiling them down therein. Several causes were assigned hereof, &c. but the cause of causes was the Divine Providence; thereby providing a feast for many poor people, who otherwise had been pinched for provision.“While here, as every where else, he was much courted on account of his instructive and pleasant conversation, by persons of high rank, some of whom made him very liberal offers; but whether from a love of study, or a spirit of independence, he was always reluctant in accepting any otters that might seem to confine him to any one family, or patron. It was at Exeter, where he is said to have written his” Good Thoughts in Bad Times,“and where the book was published in 1645, as what he calls” the first fruits of Exeter press.“At length the garrison being forced to surrender, he came to London, and met but a coid reception among his former parishioners, and found his lecturer’s place filled by another. However, it was not Ions: before he was chosen lecturer at St. Clement’s near Lombard-street and shortly after removed to St. Bride’s, in Fleet-street. In 1647 he published, in 4to,” A Sermon of Assurance, fourteen years agoe preached at Cambridge, since in other places now, by the importunity of his friends, exposed to public view.“He dedicated it to sir John Danvers, who had been a royalist, was then an Oliverian, and next year one of the king’s judges; and in the dedication he says, that” it had been the pleasure of the present authority to make him mute; forbidding him till further order the exercise of his public preaching.“Notwithstanding his being thus silenced, he was, about 1648, presented to the rectory of Waltham, in Essex, by the earl of Carlisle, whose chaplain he was just before made. He spent that and the following year betwixt London and Waltham, employing some engravers to adorn his copious prospect or view of the Holy Land, as from mount Pisgah; therefore called his” Pi*gah-sijht of Palestine and the confines thereof, with the history of the Old and New Testament acted thereon,“which he published in 1650. It is an handsome folio, embellished with a frontispiece and many other copper- plates, and divided into five books. As for his” Worthies of England,“on which he had been labouring so long, the death of the king for a time disheartened him from the continuance of that work:” For what shall I write,“says he,” of the Worthies of England, when this horrid act will bring such an infamy upon the whole nation as will ever cloud an4 darken all its former, and suppress its future rising glories?“He was, therefore, busy till the year last mentioned, in preparing that book and others; and the next year he rather employed himself in publishing some particular lives of religious reformers, martyrs, confessors, bishops, doctors, and other learned divines, foreign and domestic, than in augmenting his said book of” English Worthies“in general. To this collection, which was executed by several hands, as he tells us in the preface, he gave the title of” Abel Redivivus,“and published it in 4to, 1651. In the two or three following years he printed several sermons and tracts upon religious subjects. About 1654 he married a sister of the viscount Baltinglasse; and the next year she brought him a son, who, as well as the other before-mentioned, survived his father. In 1655, notwithstanding Cromwell’s prohibition of all persons from, preaching, or teaching school, who had been adherents to the late king, he continued preaching, and exerting his charitable disposition towards those ministers who were ejected by the usurping powers, and not only relieved such from what he could spare out of his own slender estate, but procured many contributions for them from his auditories. Nor was his charity confined to the clergy; and among the laity whom he befriended, there is an instance upon record of a captain of the army who was quite destitute, and whom he entirely maintained until he died. In 1656 he published in folio,” The Church History of Britain, from the birth of Jesus Christ to the year 1648;“to which are subjoined,” The History of the University of Cambridge since the conquest,“and” The History of Waltham Abbey in Essex, founded by king Harold.“His Church History was animadverted upon by Dr. Hey 1 in in his” Examen Historicum;" and this drew from our author a reply: after which they had no further controversy, but were very well reconciled *. About this time he was invited, accord ing to his biographer, to another living in Essex, in which he continued his ministerial labours until his settlement at London. George, lord Berkeley, one of his noble patrons, having in 1658 made him his chaplain, he took leave of Essex, and was presented by his lordship to the rectory of Cranford in Middlesex. It is said also that lord Berkeley took him over to the Hague, and introduced him to Charles if. It is certain, however, that a short time hefore the restoration, Fuller was re-admitted to his lecture in the Savoy, and on that event restored to his prebend of Salisbury. He was chosen chaplain extraordinary to the king; created doctor of divinity at Cambridge by a mandamus, dated August 2, 1660; and, had he lived a twelvemonth longer, would probably have been raised to a bishopric. But upon his return from Salisbury in August 1661 he was attacked by a fever, of which he died the 15th of that month. His funeral was attended by at least two hundred of his brethren; and a sermon was preached by Dr. Hardy, dean of Rochester, in which a great and noble character was given of him. H was buried in his church at Cranford, on the north wall of the chancel of which is his monument, with the following inscription:

, a dissenting clergyman, was born at Exeter in 1692, and educated under the care of Mr. Pierce, who was assistant to his father Mr. Hallet, minister of a congregation of protestant dissentars in that city. Joseph was ordained in 1713, and in 1722 he succeeded his father as joint-minister with Mdf. Pierce. Prior to this event he had engaged in the controversy, then warmly carried on in the west of England, concerning the Trinity; and in 1720, adopted the principles of Dr. Clarke, which he demonstrated in a treatise entitled “The Unity of God not inconsistent with the Divinity of Christ; being remarks upon Dr. Waterland’s Vindication, relating to the Unity of God, and the Object of Worship.” He published other pieces on the same subject; but his reputation is chiefly founded on his work entitled “A free and impartial Study of the Holy Scriptures recommended, being notes on some peculiar texts, with discourses and observations,” 1729 1736, 3 vols. published at different times. Our author published many other works, which being of the controversial kind, are now forgotten. Those which merited most general approbation were his “Discourse of the nature, kinds, and numbers of our Saviour’s Miracles” his “Immorality of the Moral Philosopher,” and his “Consistent Christian,” against the infidel writers, Woolston, Morgan, and Chubb. Mr. Hallet died in 1744.

an English historian, was born at Exeter, about the year 1524. His father Hobert Hooker, a wealthy citizen, was in 1529 mayor of that city. Dr. Moreman, vicar of Menhinit in Cornwall, was his tutor in grammar, after which he studied at Oxford, but in what college Wood was not able to discover. Having left the University, he travelled to Germany, and resided some time at Cologn, where he studied the law; and thence to Strasburgh, where he heard the divinity lectures of Peter Martyr. He intended also to have visited France, Spain, and Italy, but a war breaking out, he returned to England, and, residing at his native city, Exeter, was elected chamberlain in 1554, being the first person who held that office; and in 1571 he represented Exeter in parliament. He died in 1601, and was buried in the cathedral of Exeter. His works are, 1. “Order and usage of keeping of Parliaments in Ireland.” The ms. of this is in Trinity-college-library, Dublin. He had been sent into Ireland by sir Peter Carew to negotiate his affairs there, and was elected burgess for Athenry in the parliament of 1568. This tract is printed with his Irish Chronicle in Holinshed. 2. “The events of Comets, or blazing stars, made upon the sight of the comet Pagonia, which appeared in November and December 1577.” Lond. 1577, 8vo. 3. “An addition to the Chronicles of Ireland from 1546 to 1568,” in the second volume of Holinshed. 4. “Catalogue of the bishops of Exeter,” and “a Description of Exeter,” in the third volume of Holinshed. 5. A translation of the history of the conquest of Ireland from Giraldus Cambrensis, in the second volume of Holinshed, and some other pieces not printed. This gentleman was uncle to the celebrated Richard Hooker.

, son of the preceding, was born at Exeter, in 1664; but his father being taken chaplain to Ireland, he received the early part of his education at Trinity college, Dublin; and afterwards was a student at Queen’s college, Cambridge, where he took the degree of B. A. in 1688. The rebellion breaking out in Ireland in that year, he returned thither, and exerted his early valour in the cause of his country, religion, and liberty. When public tranquillity was restored, he came again into Elngland, and formed an acquaintance with gentlemen of wit, whose age and genius were most agreeable to his own. In 1694 he published some “Epistolary Poems and Translations,” which may be seen in Nichols’s “Select Collec-' tion;” and in 1695 he shewed his genius as a dramatic writer, by “Pyrrhus king of Egypt,” a tragedy, to which Congreve wrote the epilogue. He published also in that year, “The History of Love,” a connection of select fables from. “Ovid’s Metamorphoses,” 1695; which, by the sweetness of his numbers and easiness of his thoughts, procured him considerable reputation. With Dryden in particular he became a great favourite. He afterwards published the “Art of Love,” which, Jacob says, “added to his fame, and happily brought him acquainted with the earl of Dorset, and other persons of distinction, who were fond of his company, through the agreeableness of his temper, and the pleasantry of his conversation. It was in his power to have made his fortune in any scene of life; but he was always more ready to serve others than mindful of his own affairs; and by the excesses of hard drinking, and too passionate an addiction to women, he died a martyr to the cause in the thirty-sixth year of his age.” Mr. Nichols has preserved in his collection an admirable hymn, “written about an hour before his death, when in great pain.” His “Court-Prospect,” in which many of the principal nobility are very handsomely complimented, is called by Jacob “an excellent piece;” and of his other poems he adds, “that they are all remarkable for the purity of their diction, and the harmony of their numbers.” Mr. Hopkins was also the author of two other tragedies; “Boadicea Queen of Britain,” 1697; and “Friendship improved, or the Female Warrior,” with a humourous prologue, comparing a poet to a merchant, a comparison which will hold in most particulars except that of accumulating wealth. The author, who was at Londonderry when this tragedy came out, inscribed it to Edward Coke of Norfolk, esq. in a dedication remarkably modest and pathetic. It is dated Nov. 1, 1699, and concludes, “I now begin to experience how much the mind may be influenced by the body. My Muse is confined, at present, to a weak and sickly tenement; and the winter season will go near to overbear her, together with her household. There are storms and tempests to beat tier down, or frosts to bind her up and kill her; and she has no friend on her side but youth to hear her through; If that can sustain the attack, and hold out till spring comes to relieve me, one use I shall make of fa<ther life shall be to shew how much I am, sir, your most devoted humble servant, C. Hopkins.”

, a learned divine of the church of England, was born at Exeter in 1621, and became a servitor of Exeter college, Oxford, in 1638. In 1642 he took the degree of B. A. but soon after left the university, and obtained the vicarage of St. Lawrence Clist, near Exeter. After the restoration he was, per literas regias, created B. D. and made prebendary of Exeter, which he held until the revolution, when refusing to take the oaths to the new government, he was ejected. He died in 1700. Wood characterizes him as “well read in the fathers, Jewish and other ancient writings,” and he appears also to have made himself master of all the controversies of his time in which subjects of political or ecclesiastical government were concerned, and took a very active part against the various classes of separatists, particularly those whose cause Mr, Baxter pleaded.

, an eminent mechanist, was born at Exeter, September 1715. He was the second son of the rev. Zachariah Mudge, prebendary of Exeter, and vicar of St. Andrew’s, Plymouth, who died April 3, 1769, and was honoured by Dr. Johnson with a very elegant testimony of respect, which was inserted in the London Chronicle at that time, and may be seen in Mr. Boswell’s Life of the doctor. Mr. Z. Mudge had three other sons besides the subject of this article. The eldest, Zachariah, was a surgeon and apothecary at Taunton, and afterwards surgeon on board an East Indiaman; he died in 1753 on ship-board, in the river Canton in China. The third, the rev. Richard Mudge, was officiating minister of a chapel of ease at Birmingham, and had a small living presented to him by the earl of Aylesford. He was not only greatly distinguished by his learning, but by his genius for music. He excelled as a composer for the harpsichord; and as a performer on that instrument is said to have been highly complimented by Handel himself. The fourth son, John, was originally a surgeon and apothecary at Plymouth, but during the latter part of his life practised as a physician with great success. Like his brother Thomas, he had great mechanical talents; and, until prevented by the enlargement of his practice, he found time to prosecute improvements in rectifying telescopes. In 1777 the Royal Society adjudged to him Sir Godfrey Copley’s gold medal, for a paper which he presented to that learned body on the best methods of grinding the specula of reflecting telescopes. He also considerably improved the inhaler, an ingenious contrivance for the curing of coughs, by inhaling steam. In 1777 he published “A Dissertation on the inoculated Small-pox;” which was followed, some years after, by “A Treatise on the Catarrhous Cough and Vis Vitae.” He died in 1792. It was to this gentleman, Mr. Boswell informs us, that Dr. Johnson, during his last illness, addressed many letters on his case.

, an eminent and pious divine, was born at Exeter in May 1657, and educated in school learning at his native city, whence, at the age of fourteen he was placed at a dissenting academy at Taunton, and afterwards at another at Newington-green, London. Having gone through the usual course of studies in these seminaries, and having decided in favour of nonconformity, he was encouraged by the celebrated Dr. Manton, to preach as a candidate for the ministry before he was quite twenty years of age. Two years after, in 1679, he received ordination from some dissenting ministers, but in a very private way, and his first settlement appears to have been as assistant to Mr. Vincent Alsop, at the meeting Tothill-fields, Westminster. He was also one of those who established a lecture against popery, which was carried on with good success in a large room in Exchange-alley.

, a divine and poet, the sixth son of Mr. John Yalden, of Sussex, was born at Exeter in 1671. Having been educated in the grammar-school belonging to Magdalen college, Oxford, he was, in 1690, at the age of nineteen, admitted commoner of Magdalen Hall, under the tuition of Josiah Pullen, a man whose name is still remembered in the university. He became next year one of the scholars of Magdalen college, where he was distinguished by a declamation, which Dr. Hough, the president, happening to attend, thought too good to be the speaker’s. Some time after, the doctor, finding him a little irregularly busy in the library, set him an exercise, for punishment; and, that he might not be deceived by any artifice, locked the door. Yalden, as it happened, had been latelyreading on the subject given, and produced with little difficulty a composition which so pleased the president that he told him his former suspicions, and promised to favour him. Among his contemporaries in the college were Addison and Sacheverell, men who were in those times friends, and who both adopted Yalden to their intimacy. Yalden continued throughout his life to think, as probably he thought at first, yet did not lose the friendship of Addison. When Namur was taken by king William, Yalden made an ode . He wrote another poem, on the death of the duke of Gloucester. In 1700 he became fellow of the college, and next year entering into orders, was presented by the society with the living of Willoughby, in Warwickshire, consistent with his fellowship, and chosen lecturer of moral philosophy, a very honourable office. On the accession of queen Anne he wrote another poem; and is said, by the author of the “Biographia,” to have declared himself one of the party who had the distinction of high-churchmen. In 1706 he was received into the family of the duke of Beaufort. Next year he became D. D. and soon after he resigned his fellowship and lecture; and, as a token of his gratitude, gave the college a picture of their founder. The duke made him rector of Chalton and Cleanville, two adjoining towns and benefices in Hertfordshire; and he had the prebends, or sinecures, of Deans, Hains, and Pendles, in Devonshire. In 1713 he was chosen preacher of Bridewell Hospital, upon the resignation of Dr. Atterbury. From this time he seems to have led a quiet and inoffensive life, till the clamour was raised about Atterbury’s plot. Every loyal eye was on the watch for abettors or partakers of the horrid conspiracy; and Dr. Yalden, having some acquaintance with the bishop, and being familiarly conversant with Kelly his secretary, fell under suspicion, and was taken into custody. Upon his examination he was charged with a dangerous correspondence with Kelly. The correspondence he acknowledged; but maintained that it had no treasonable tendency. His papers were seized; but nothing was found that could fix a crime upon him, except two words in his pocket-book, f< thorough- paced doctrine.“This expression the imagination of his examiners had impregnated with treason; and the doctor was enjoined to explain them. Thus pressed, he told them that the words had lain unheeded in his pocket-book from the time of queen Anne, and 'that he was ashamed to give an account of them; but the truth was, that he had gratified his curiosity one day by hearing Daniel Burgess in the pulpit, and these words were a memorial hint of a remarkable sentence by which he warned his congregation to” beware of thorough-paced doctrine, that doctrine, which, coming in at one ear, paces through the head, and goes out at the other.“Nothing worse than this appearing in his papers, and no evidence arising against him, he was set at liberty. It will not be supposed that a man of this character attained high dignities in the church; but he still retained the friendship, and frequented the conversation of a very numerous and splendid body of acquaintance. He died July 16, 1736, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. Of his poems which have been admitted into Dr. Johnson’s collection, his” Hymn to Darkness“seems to be his best performance, and is, for the most part, imagined with great vigour, and expressed with great propriety. His” Hymn to Light" is not equal to the other. On his other poems it is sufficient to say that they deserve perusal, though they are not always exactly polished, though the rhymes are sometimes very ill sorted, and though his faults seem rather the omissions of idleness than the negligences of enthusiasm.