TAILOR. [See also Tayler and Taylor.]
TAILOR, ROBERT (fl. 1614), dramatist, was author of ‘The Hog hath lost his Pearle. A Comedy divers times publikely acted by certaine London Prentices. By Robert Tailor, London. Printed for Richard Redmer, and are to be solde at the Westdore of Paules at the signe of the Starre,’ 1614, 4to. It appears from a letter written by Sir Henry Wotton to Sir Edmund Bacon that this play was acted without license by ‘some sixteen apprentices’ at the Whitefriars theatre. The sheriffs before the end of the performance carried off six or seven of the actors ‘to perform the last Act in Bridewell.’ This was because the character of the usurer Hog was supposed to allude to Sir John Swinnerton, the lord mayor. This occurred probably on 14 Feb. 1613 (Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, ed. 1685, p. 402). It would appear from the prologue to the play that, after being ‘tossed from one house to another,’ it finally obtained ‘a knight’s license.’ The prologue earnestly denies any seditious or political intent. Otway’s ‘Orphan’ has a similar plot. The play is a valuable storehouse of dramatic allusions. In the prologue occurs a mention of Shakespeare’s ‘Pericles.’ The few scenes possessing merit were extracted by Charles Lamb in his ‘Specimens’ (ed. Gollancz, 1893, ii. 143, 342). The play has been reprinted in all the editions of Dodsley’s ‘Old Plays’ (ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1875, vol. xi.), and in the ‘Ancient British Drama,’ 1810, vol. iii. There has also been attributed to Tailor: ‘Sacred Hymns, consisting of Fifti Select Psalms of David and others, paraphrastically turned In English Verse. And by Robert Tailour set to be sung in five parts, as also to the Viole and the Lute or Orph-arion. Published for the use of such as delight in the exercise of Music in hir original honour. London. Printed by Thomas Snodham by the assignment of the company of Stationers,’ 1615, 4to. The fifty psalms are set to twelve tunes. A ‘Hymn to God’ is prefixed to the volume. The paraphrases have considerable merit. The piety of the serious parts of the play favours the identification of its writer with the paraphraser of the psalms. Some complimentary verses by R. Tailor, dated December 1613, are prefixed to John Taylor's ‘The Nipping or Snipping of Abuses,’ 1614.
[Fleay’s Chronicle of the English Drama, ii. 256–7; Collier’s History of Dramatic Poetry, i. 369–70; Ward’s English Dramatic Literature, ii. 357, and the notes to the play in the reprints.]
TAIRCELL (d. 696, saint and bishop. [See Daircell.]
TAIT, ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL (1811–1882), archbishop of Canterbury, born in Edinburgh on 21 Dec. 1811, belonged to a family that was in the seventeenth century settled in Aberdeenshire as bonnet-lairds or yeomen. The archbishop’s grandfather, John Tait, came to Edinburgh in 1750, joined the house of Ronald Craufurd, writer to the signet, and married in 1763 a Miss Murdoch, who was called Charles, after the Pretender. Their house in Park Place adjoined that of Sir Ilay Campbell [q. v.], the judge; and their only son, Craufurd, married, in 1795, Campbell’s younger daughter Susan. John Tait was a prudent man, and left to his son the estates of Harviestown in Clackmannanshire and Cambodden in Argyllshire. Craufurd, the archbishop’s father, ruined himself by unremunerative agricultural experiments, and had eventually to sell his estates. The family consisted of five sons and three daughters. The eldest son, John (1796–1877), became sheriff successively of Clackmannan and Perthshire; the second, James (1798–1879), was a writer to the signet. The third son, Thomas Forsyth (1805–1859), entered the Indian army as an infantry cadet in 1825, distinguished himself as the commander of ‘Tait’s horse,’ or the 3rd Bengal irregular cavalry, in the Afghan expedition under Nott and Pollock in 1842, and in the Sutlej and Punjab campaigns; he died in the house of his brother when bishop of London, on 16 March 1859, being buried at Fulham (cf. Gent. Mag. 1859, i. 429). The ninth and last child was the future archbishop.
Tait’s mother died in 1814, when he was three years old, and his childhood was passed under the care of his nurse, Betty Morton, whose name cannot be omitted from the number of those who influenced his career. In 1819 he all but died from scarlet fever, which carried off his brother, Kay Campbell. It was soon after this time that, as he records, he experienced his first deep religious impressions ‘as by a voice from heaven,’ which never left him. Tait’s ancestors had originally been episcopalians, but in the eighteenth century had joined the presbyterian church, in which the future archishop was brought up. From 1821 to 1826 he was at the Edinburgh high school, of which
