time, and was fined at least once for illegal preaching during the time he was a prisoner. He was also permitted to hold quaker meetings in the prison. He got leave to visit London again in 1685, and was there when Charles II died. He was set at liberty in March 1686, when, after spending a short time with his wife, he made a religious journey through the greater part of England and Wales, and until 1695 he was almost ceaselessly occupied in making ministerial visits in England and Scotland. During this year he visited Ireland, where he stopped five months. After this journey ill-health compelled him to give up regular journeys. Early in 1707 he disposed of his estate at Monyash, and went to reside with his son, Joseph Gratton, at or near Farnsfield in Nottinghamshire, where in December of that year his wife died at the age of sixty-eight. Another religious journey led to an illness, and he finally settled with his daughter, Phœbe Bateman, at Farnsfield, where, after much suffering, he died on 9 March 1711–12. He was buried by the side of his wife in the quaker burial-ground at Farnsfield. Gratton was a man of high character, pious, unassuming, and charitable. He once travelled to London to procure employment for the son of a rough gaoler. His ‘Journal’ (published 1720) has been frequently reprinted; it gives valuable descriptions of village life in a pleasing style.
Gratton's chief works are:
- ‘John Baptist's Decreasing and Christ's Increasing witnessed’ (a treatise on baptism), 1674; reprinted in 1693 and 1695.
- ‘The Prisoner's Vindication, with a Sober Expostulation and Reprehension of Persecutors’ (written in Derby gaol in 1682), published 1683.
- ‘A Treatise concerning Baptism and the Lord's Supper,’ &c., 1695.
- ‘The Clergy-Man's Pretence of Divine Right to Tythes examined and refuted, being a Full Answer to W. W.'s Fourth Letter in his Book intituled “The Clergy's Legal Right to Tithes asserted, &c.,”’ 1703.
[Gratton's Journal; Phœbe Bateman's, Whiting's, and other Testimonies; Muggleton, Veræ Fidei Gloria est Corona Vitæ; Smith's Catalogue of Friends' Books.]
GRAUNT, EDWARD. [See Grant.]
GRAUNT, JOHN (1620–1674), statistician, son of Henry Graunt, a Hampshire man, who carried on business at the sign of the Seven Stars in Birchin Lane, London, and Mary, his wife, was born there on 24 April 1620, and baptised on 1 May in the church of St. Michael, Cornhill (Register of that parish, printed by the Harleian Soc. p. 114). He received a sound English education, and was bound apprentice to a haberdasher of small wares, ‘which trade he mostly followed, though free of the Drapers' Company.’ He gained such esteem by his integrity that when only thirty years old he was able to procure for his friend Dr. (afterwards Sir) William Petty the professorship of music in Gresham College (Wood, Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iv. 215). After passing through the ward offices of the city, he was elected a member of the common council, where he remained two years. He was also captain of the trained band for several years, and afterwards major for two or three more. Eventually he resigned all his public appointments in consequence of his change of religion. He had been bred a puritan, and for several years took notes of sermons ‘by his most dextrous and incomparable faculty in short-writing,’ and for some time he professed himself a Socinian, but in his latter days he joined the Roman catholic church, of which he remained a member until his death.
He had, as he tells us, paid attention to the bills of mortality for several years before he had any intention to publish his discoveries. Dr. Campbell states that his ‘Observations’ first appeared in 1661, but the earliest edition in the British Museum was issued in 1662 as ‘Natural and Political Observations mentioned in a following Index, and made upon the Bills of Mortality, by John Graunt, Citizen of London. With reference to the Government, Religion, Trade, Growth, Ayre, Diseases, and the several Changes of the said City,’ London, 1662. The dedication to John, lord Roberts, baron of Truro, is dated from Birchin Lane, 25 Jan. 1661–2, and there is a second epistle dedicatory to Sir Robert Moray, president of the scientific society which was soon incorporated as the Royal Society. The author, though a shopkeeper, was on 9 Feb. 1661–2 at once proposed as a candidate and admitted a member of the society on the 26th of that month. The ‘Observations’ laid the foundation of the science subsequently styled ‘Political Arithmetic’ by Sir William Petty. After their publication the most exact register of births and burials then existing in Europe was established in France; and Charles II specially recommended Graunt to be chosen an original member of the newly incorporated Royal Society, advising the society ‘that if they found any more such tradesmen, they should be sure to admit them all, without any more adoe’ (Sprat, Hist. of the Royal Society, p. 67). An order of the council of the Royal Society was passed on 20 June 1665 for publishing the third edition of the ‘Observations,’ which appeared the same year.
