BRIDGE — BIFRONS
The Brook Tazlors
The Taylor family lived at Bifrons after the
Bargraves and before the Conynghams took possession
f /in 1820 and two of the family are recorded on pla-
" nes on the walls on the right at the entrance to
eatrixbourne Church, Herbert and his brothers who
were the sons of the Reverend Edward Taylor, vicar
of Patrixbourne from 173% - 1739. His grandfather
John had bought the estate in 1720, and the family
can be traced back a generation before when
Nathaniel Taylor represented Bedfordshire at West~
minster under Cromwell's Government. John's son
Brook was a considerable mathematician of his gen-
eration and worked with Kepler on the laws of
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Ihe Brook Taylors (Cont'd.)
planetary motion and invented Taylor's Theory which is
a calculus theory on finite differences still used to~
day in higher mathematics; he travelled extensively in
France and having been made a Fellow of the Royal Society
Visited Paris and worked with d'Alembert on the theory
of refraction; he succeeded to his fatherk estate in
1720 but he is buried at St. Anne's Church, Soho; he
has been described as one of the great mathematicians
after Newton of his period. His son was in the Diplo-
matic Service and acted as British Minister to the Court
of Hesse Cassel, Wurtemburg and Munich and was Ambassador
_at Berlin from 1828 ~ 1831; ironically his portrait was
Jstroyed in an English air raid on Berlin in the last
war; however the brother Herbert rose to even greater
heights and after a long career in the Army - he was at
the battle of Tournai in 1795, the seige of Antwerp. A
year later he became private secretary to Queen Charlotte
and represented Windsor in parliament and became Sec~
retary to the Duke of wellington; he ended his career
under Lord Palmerston as under secretary of State for
war and he was given a State pension of £1,000 per year;
he retired to Cannes in the South of France and died at
Home in 1840 and his embalmed body was brought back to
the Chapel of St. Katherine's Hospital, Regents's Park
where he had been Master.
None of the family live in the district now. A
branch of the family made a considerable fortune in
railways in the Argentine and one of them was not an
inconsiderable actor in the 1920's with Claude Hulbert
and those who are avid watchers of BBC 2, will know
"gel Brook Taylor's late night review.
Sources: United Services Journal,
Edinburgh Review, October, 1838,
Foreign Office.
J. J. Williamson
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