Life

His father was Joshua Mapletoft, vicar of Margaretting

Margaretting

Margaretting is a small village in the Chelmsford District, in the English county of Essex.- Location :The village is located on the B1002 road approximately four miles from Chelmsford and two miles from the small town of Ingatestone. It is near the River Wid...

 and rector of Wickford

Wickford

Wickford is a town in the south of the English county of Essex, with a population of more than 32,500. Located approximately 30 miles east of London, it falls within the District of Basildon along with Basildon, Billericay, Laindon and Pitsea....

, Essex

Essex

Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...

, and his mother Susanna, daughter of John Collet by Susanna, sister of Nicholas Ferrar

Nicholas Ferrar

Nicholas Ferrar was an English scholar, courtier, businessman and man of religion. Ordained deacon in the Church of England, he retreated with his extended family to the manor of Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, where he lived the rest of his life.-Early life:Nicholas Ferrar was born in London,...

 of Little Gidding

Little Gidding, Cambridgeshire

Little Gidding is a parish and small village in Huntingdonshire , England, near Sawtry and north west of Huntingdon.-History:The parish of Little Gidding is small, consisting of only 724 acres...

. She afterwards married James Chedley, and, dying on 31 October 1657, was buried at Little Gidding. John was born at Margaretting on 15 June 1631. On the death of his father in 1635 he was taken to Little Gidding, where he was brought up by Nicholas Ferrar, his godfather.

In 1647 he was sent by his uncle, Robert Mapletoft

Robert Mapletoft

Robert Mapletoft was an English churchman and academic, Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge and Dean of Ely.-Life:He was son of Hugh Mapletoft, rector of North Thoresby, Lincolnshire, was born there on 25 January 1609, and educated at the grammar school at Louth. He was admitted a sizar of...

, to Westminster School

Westminster School

The Royal College of St. Peter in Westminster, almost always known as Westminster School, is one of Britain's leading independent schools, with the highest Oxford and Cambridge acceptance rate of any secondary school or college in Britain...

, was entered as a pensioner at Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

, on 21 May 1648, and was elected to a Westminster scholarship there in 1649. He graduated B.A. in January 1652, M.A. in 1655, and became fellow of his college on 1 October 1653. He was incorporated B.A. at Oxford on 11 July 1654. On 12 May 1652 he was admitted a student of Gray's Inn. From 1658 to 1660 he was tutor to Jocelyne, son of Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland

Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland

Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland, 4th Baron Percy, KG was an English military leader and a prominent supporter of constitutional monarchy.-Family background:...

. He then went abroad to study physic. His fellowship expired in 1662, and in 1663 he re-entered the earl's family in England. In 1667 he took his M.D. degree at Cambridge, and was incorporated M.D. at Oxford on 13 July 1669.

While practising in London he made the acquaintance of many of the noted men of the time, both physicians and theologians, and came much into contact with the Cambridge latitudinarian

Latitudinarian

Latitudinarian was initially a pejorative term applied to a group of 17th-century English theologians who believed in conforming to official Church of England practices but who felt that matters of doctrine, liturgical practice, and ecclesiastical organization were of relatively little importance...

s at the house of his kinsman, Thomas Firmin

Thomas Firmin

Thomas Firmin was an English businessman and philanthropist, and Unitarian publisher.-Early life:Firmin was born to Puritan parents, Henry and Prudence Firmin in Ipswich. Henry Firmin was a parishioner of Samuel Ward, the Puritan incumbent of St. Mary-le-Tower, by whom in 1635 he was accused of...

. With John Locke

John Locke

John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...

, whom he had known at Westminster School, he was for many years on terms of great intimacy. He is said to have introduced him to both Thomas Sydenham

Thomas Sydenham

Thomas Sydenham was an English physician. He was born at Wynford Eagle in Dorset, where his father was a gentleman of property. His brother was Colonel William Sydenham. Thomas fought for the Parliament throughout the English Civil War, and, at its end, resumed his medical studies at Oxford...

 and John Tillotson

John Tillotson

John Tillotson was an Archbishop of Canterbury .-Curate and rector:Tillotson was the son of a Puritan clothier at Haughend, Sowerby, Yorkshire. He entered as a pensioner of Clare Hall, Cambridge, in 1647, graduated in 1650 and was made fellow of his college in 1651...

. With Sydenham Mapletoft was for seven years closely associated in medical practice.

In 1670 he attended Arthur Capell, 1st Earl of Essex

Arthur Capell, 1st Earl of Essex

Arthur Capell, 1st Earl of Essex PC , whose surname is sometimes spelled Capel, was an English statesman.-Early life:...

 in his embassy to Denmark, and in 1672 was in France with the Dowager Duchess of Northumberland. In 1675 he was chosen Professor of Physic at Gresham College, and in 1676 was again in France with the dowager duchess, then the wife of the Hon. Ralph Montague

Ralph Montagu, 1st Duke of Montagu

Ralph Montagu, 1st Duke of Montagu was an English courtier and diplomat.-Life:He was the second son of Edward Montagu, 2nd Baron Montagu of Boughton and Anne Winwood, daughter of the Secretary of State Ralph Winwood...

. He retained his professorship at Gresham College till 10 October 1679, when he retired from medical practice and prepared himself for ordination. He had some scruples about subscribing to the Thirty-nine Articles

Thirty-Nine Articles

The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion are the historically defining statements of doctrines of the Anglican church with respect to the controversies of the English Reformation. First established in 1563, the articles served to define the doctrine of the nascent Church of England as it related to...

, and consulted his friend Simon Patrick

Simon Patrick

Simon Patrick was an English theologian and bishop.-Life:He was born at Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, on 8 September 1626, and attended Boston Grammar School. He entered Queens College, Cambridge, in 1644, and after taking orders in 1651 became successively chaplain to Sir Walter St. John and vicar...

. But on 3 March 1683 he took both deacon's and priest's orders, having previously been presented to the rectory of Braybrooke

Braybrooke

Braybrooke is a small village in north west Northamptonshire, England. It is situated about halfway between Market Harborough and Desborough. It lies in a valley between two ridges one of which is surmounted by the A6 trunk road...

 in Northamptonshire. This living he held until 1686, and though non-resident was a benefactor to the place. On 4 January 1685 he was chosen lecturer at Ipswich

Ipswich

Ipswich is a large town and a non-metropolitan district. It is the county town of Suffolk, England. Ipswich is located on the estuary of the River Orwell...

, and on 10 January 1686, on his resigning Braybrooke, vicar of St. Lawrence Jewry in London, where he continued to preach till he was over eighty years of age. He also held the lectureship of St. Christopher for a short time from 1685. In 1689-90 he took the degree of D.D. at Cambridge, and henceforth devoted his life to religion and philanthropy.

Mapletoft was an original member of the Company of Adventurers to the Bahamas (4 September 1672), but, being abroad at the time, transferred his share to Locke. In the same year he was using his influence and purse in support of Isaac Barrow's scheme for building a library at Trinity College. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on 10 February 1676, was member of council in 1677, 1679, 1690, and 1692, and as long as he practised the medical profession took part in the discussions and experiments. He joined the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in July 1699, early in the second year of its existence. In this connection he was brought into contact with Robert Nelson

Robert Nelson (nonjuror)

Robert Nelson was an English lay religious writer and nonjuror.-Life:He was born in London on 22 June 1656, the only surviving son of John Nelson, a merchant in the Turkey trade, by Delicia, daughter of Lewis and sister of Sir Gabriel Roberts, who, like John Nelson, was a member of the Levant...

, with whom he corresponded for some years. He was an original member and active supporter of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (incorporated by charter in 1701), a benefactor to the library and buildings of Sion College

Sion College

Sion College, in London, is an institution founded by Royal Charter in 1630 as a college, guild of parochial clergy and almshouse, under the 1623 will of Thomas White, vicar of St Dunstan's in the West....

, of which he was president in 1707, and one of the commissioners of Greenwich Hospital

Greenwich Hospital

Greenwich Hospital can refer to:*Greenwich Hospital , USA*Greenwich Hospital , UK...

.

The last ten years of Mapletoft's life were spent with his daughter, partly in Oxford and partly in Westminster. His mental and bodily health remained excellent till nearly the end. He died in Westminster on 10 November 1721, in the ninety-first year of his age, and was buried in the chancel of the church of St. Lawrence Jewry.

Works

Mapletoft's published works, apart from single sermons, include:

• Select Proverbs (anon.), London, 1707.
• The Principles and Duties of the Christian Religion . . . with a Collection of suitable Devotions [also issued separately], London, 1710, 1712, 1719.
• Wisdom from Above (anon.), London, 1714, 2nd part, 1717.
• Placita Principalia, seu Sententiae perutiles e Dramaticis fere Poetis, London, 1714.
• Placita Principalia et Concilia, seu Sententiae perutiles Philosophorum, London, 1717, 1731.

The last two are selections from Greek authors with Latin translations, and were reprinted in 1731. In Appendix xv. to John Ward

John Ward (academic)

John Ward was an English teacher, supporter of learned societies, and biographer, remembered for his work on the Gresham College professors, of which he was one.-Life:...

's 'Lives' (p. 120) are printed three Latin lectures by Mapletoft on the origin of the art of medicine and the history of its invention, under the title Praelectiones in Collegio Greshamensi, Anno Dom. 1675. He wrote the epitaph for the monument to his friend Isaac Barrow

Isaac Barrow

Isaac Barrow was an English Christian theologian, and mathematician who is generally given credit for his early role in the development of infinitesimal calculus; in particular, for the discovery of the fundamental theorem of calculus. His work centered on the properties of the tangent; Barrow was...

 in Westminster Abbey.

The extent of his share in Sydenham's works has been debated. He is said to have translated from English into Latin his friend Sydenham's Observationes Medicae, published in 1676 (which was dedicated to him by the author), and everything in the edition of Sydenham's works published in 1683, with the exception of the treatise De Hydrope.

Family

On 18 November 1679 Mapletoft married Rebecca, daughter of Lucy Knightley of Hackney, a Hamburg merchant, and younger brother of the Knightleys of Fawsley

Fawsley

Fawsley is a hamlet and civil parish in the Daventry district of the county of Northamptonshire, England. The population at the 2001 census was 32....

 in Northamptonshire

Northamptonshire

Northamptonshire is a landlocked county in the English East Midlands, with a population of 629,676 as at the 2001 census. It has boundaries with the ceremonial counties of Warwickshire to the west, Leicestershire and Rutland to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshire to the south-east,...

. His wife died on 18 Nov. 1693, the fourteenth anniversary of their wedding-day. By her he had two sons and one daughter: Robert, born in 1684, became fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge (LL.B. 1702, LL.D. 1707), advocate of Doctors' Commons (12 July 1707), and commissary of Huntingdon; died on 3 Dec. 1716, and was buried in St. Edward's Church, Cambridge. John, born in 1687, became rector of Broughton in Northamptonshire in 1718, and of Byfield in November 1721, holding both livings till 1753, when he resigned Broughton in favour of his son Nathaniel; he married, on 23 November 1721, Ann, daughter of Richard Walker of Harborough, and died at Byfield on 25 May 1763. Elizabeth, married, 20 August 1703, Francis Gastrell

Francis Gastrell

Francis Gastrell was bishop of Chester and a writer on deism. He was a friend of Jonathan Swift, mentioned several times in A Journal to Stella, and chaplain to Robert Harley, when Harley was speaker of the House of Commons.-Life:...

, bishop of Chester

Bishop of Chester

The Bishop of Chester is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Chester in the Province of York.The diocese expands across most of the historic county boundaries of Cheshire, including the Wirral Peninsula and has its see in the City of Chester where the seat is located at the Cathedral...

, and died on 2 February 1761.