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RICHARD WARNER (1711-1775).
BY THE LATE PROFESSOR G. S. BOULGER, F.L.S., F.G.S.
[The following biographical sketch of the celebrated Woodford botanist,
Richard Warner, author of the Plantae Woodfordienses, was found in MS.
among the late Professor G. S. Boulger's papers after his death. The de-
ceased Professor had contemplated a new edition of the Plantae, and intended
the following account to be an introduction to that edition, to be edited by
himself. From other available evidence it appears certain that the sketch
was mainly written about the years 1883 to 1887, but with additions up till
1898.
The interest felt by Essex botanists in Richard Warner makes it desir-
able that Professor Boulger's careful researches into his life and ancestry
should be preserved in our pages.
Since the sketch was written, Warner's residence, "Harts," has changed
its character, and has become converted from a private residence into a
sanatorium, being purchased by the County Borough of East Ham for the
purpose in October 1919.—Ed.]
SOME glimpses of the life and work of a well-educated
country gentleman of the 18th century are likely to be
of interest; but when that gentleman is a friend or correspond-
ent of Garrick, Bonnell Thornton, Hogarth, Linnaeus, Ellis, Philip
Miller, Sir William Watson, and perhaps of Johnson himself
is a translator of Plautus, and the author of one of the earliest
and best of local Floras, the interest cannot fail to be consider-
able. Such was Richard Warner, of Woodford Row, Essex,
who was born in 1711 and died in 1775.
It so happens that a family of the name of Warner has been
connected with the county of Essex since the time of Edward
III., when it held the manor of Warners, in Great Waltham,
and other land under Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford
and Essex. The arms of this family, or, a bend engrailed between
six cinque/oils or roses, three and three, gules, with barbs vert and
centres or, are carved in several parts of the ceiling of the south
aisle of the church of Great Waltham.1 Its members inter-
married with the families of de Maldon, Newdigate and others,
and a branch of the family settled in Suffolk. An illuminated
genealogy of this family, dated 1629, is in the possession of Sir
Jervoise Clarke Jervoise, Bart., of Idsworth, Hants, the present
representative of Richard Warner, to whom the writer is indebted
for much kind assistance. To it has been added the name and
1 Morant, Hist. and Antiq. of Essex, 1768, vol. ii., p. 84 ; Wright, Hist. of Essex, vol. i, p. 193.