Robert Plot,
ANTIQUARY AND NATURALIST,
Was born at Sutton Baron in the parish of Borden, in 1640. He was educated at the Free School of Wye, and at Magdalen Hall, Oxford. In 1677 he was chosen fellow, and in 1682 one of the secretaries of the Royal Society, and he contributed to the Philosophical Transactions, Nos. 143 to 166. In 1683 he was appointed the first keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford; and became at the same time the first reader in chemistry at that University. In 1688, he received the title of Historiographer to James 11., and in 1694 he was nominated by Henry Howard, Earl Marshal, Mowbray Herald-extraordinary. He died April 30, 1676. His favourite pursuit was Natural History, and his knowledge of the study is displayed in his Natural Histories of Oxfordshire and Staffordshire, published in 1677 and 1686 respectively. He left at his death several MSS. containing large materials for the Natural History of Kent and Middlesex.
[See Wood's "Athenæ Oxon," by Bliss; "Hasted's Kent," Biographia Britannica," and Gentleman's "Magazine" for 1805.]