Thetford,’ printed in Hearne's ‘Antiquities of Glastonbury,’ 1722, p. 225. 3. ‘An Account of some Antiquities in the County of Kent,’ printed in Nichols's ‘Bibliotheca Topographica,’ vol. i. A copy of Plot's ‘History of Staffordshire’ in the British Museum Library contains several manuscript notes by the author.
[Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iv. 772–9; Noble's College of Arms, 1804, p. 326; Erdeswick's Survey of Staffordshire, 1844, p. liii; Hasted's Kent, ii. 565; Aubrey's Bodleian Letters, 1813, i. 74; Letters of Eminent Literary Men (Camden Soc.); Pulteney's Progress of Botany, i. 351; Gent. Mag. 1795, ii. 897, 996, 1089; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ix. 202, 408, 547, 775, 781, and Lit. Illustr. iii. 234, 644, iv. 224, 645, 654, vi. 668; Biogr. Brit.; Chalmers's Biogr. Dict.; Granger's Biogr. Hist. of England, iv. 85; Archæologia Cantiana, ix. 60 n.; Nicolson's Engl. Hist. Libr. 1776, p. 17; Wood's Life and Times (Oxford Hist. Soc.), vols. i. ii. and iii. passim; Hearne's Collections, ed. Doble (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), vols. i. ii. and iii. passim; Notes and Queries, 6th ser. i. 230, 292; Wheatley and Cunningham's London, ii. 406; Thomson's Hist. of the Royal Soc. App.; Evelyn's Diary, 1852 ii. 99, 164, iii. 264, 321, 335; Chambers's Book of Days, i. 553; Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. Hill, iii. 94; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Bodleian Libr. Cat.; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
PLOTT, JOHN (1732–1803), miniature-painter, was born at Winchester in 1732. In early life he was employed by an attorney, and in 1756 acted as clerk of the accounts for the maintenance of French prisoners quartered near Winchester. He then turned to art, and, after receiving some instruction in landscape from Richard Wilson, became a pupil of Nathaniel Hone, whom he assisted in his miniatures and enamels. Plott practised miniature-painting with success both in London and Winchester, exhibiting with the Incorporated Society from 1764 to 1775, and at the Royal Academy from 1772 to the end of his life. Having a taste for natural history, he also executed a number of beautiful water-colour drawings of that kind, including a series for a projected work on ‘Land Snails,’ which remained unfinished at his death. Late in life Plott became a member of the corporation of Winchester, and he died there on 27 Oct. 1803. He was an intimate friend of George Keate [q. v.], and some of their correspondence is now in the possession of Mr. G. B. Henderson of Bloomsbury Place; it appears from one of the letters that Plott was twice a candidate for a librarianship in the British Museum. Plott painted a miniature of Keate, which was engraved by J. K. Sherwin as a frontispiece to his ‘Poems,’ 1781. A portrait of Plott, scraped in mezzotint by himself, is mentioned by Bromley (Cat. of Engraved Portraits) and in the Musgrave catalogue, but is not otherwise known.
[Edwards's Anecdotes of Painting; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760–1880; Chaloner Smith's British Mezzotinto Portraits; information from G. B. Henderson, esq.]
PLOUGH, JOHN (d. 1562), protestant controversialist, son of Christopher Plough of Nottingham, and nephew of John Plough, rector of St. Peter's, in the same town was born there and educated at Oxford, where he supplicated for his B.C.L. in 1543–4. In the same year he became vicar of Sarratt, Hertfordshire, and subsequently succeeded his uncle as rector of St. Peter's, Nottingham. During Edward VI's reign he made himself prominent as a reformer, and on Mary's accession fled to Basle, where he remained throughout the reign. While there he engaged in controversy with William Kethe [q. v.] and Robert Crowley [q. v.], two of the exiles at Frankfort. About 1559 he returned to England, presented a declaration of protestant doctrines to Elizabeth, and was presented by his fellow-exile, Grindal, to the rectory of East Ham, Essex, in 1560. In the same year he was granted the living of Long Bredy, Dorset, by letters patent. He died before November 1562.
Wood ascribes to Plough several works which he had never seen, and none are now known to be extant. The titles are: 1. ‘An Apology for the Protestants,’ written in reply to ‘The Displaying of the Protestants,’ by Miles Huggarde [q. v.] It was composed and published at Basle, and Strype gives the date as 1558. 2. ‘A Treatise against the Mitred Men in the Popish Kingdom.’ 3. ‘The Sound of the Doleful Trumpet.’
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. i. 301–2; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Lansd. MS. 980, f. 265; Strype's Eccl. Mem. III. i. 232, 442; Rymer's Fœdera, xv. 585; Newcourt's Repertorium, ii. 302; Whittingham's Brieff Discours of the Troubles at Frankford; Brown's Nottinghamshire Worthies.]
PLOWDEN, CHARLES (1743–1821), rector of Stonyhurst college, seventh son of William Ignatius Plowden, esq., of Plowden Hall, Shropshire, by his wife, Frances Dormer, daughter of Charles, fifth baron Dormer, of Wenge, was born at Plowden Hall on 1 May or 10 Aug. 1743. His brother, Francis Peter Plowden [q. v.], is separately noticed. At the age of ten he was sent to a school at Edgbaston, and on 7 July 1754 was transferred to the college of the English jesuits at St. Omer. Upon
