A.D. 1691

Robert Plot LLD, Fellow-Commoner of University College; Historiographer-Royal to King James II; military secretary to the most illustrious Duke Henry of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of 7 AMS 2: THE BOOK OF BENEFACTORS England; first professor of Chemistry in this great University, first and best curator of this Museum. He was deservedly celebrated for his superior talents and universal erudition, which anyone who has impartially read the Natural Histories of Oxfordshire and Staffordshire which he has published will acknowledge (as well as other works which I pass over). After he had directed the Ashmolean Museum with great commitment and diligence for seven years, he finally gave up that post and moved to London, leaving to future keepers a great example of hard work and of generosity (we hope not a burdensome one). He donated to the museum the great variety of material which he was luckily the first to uncover in Oxfordshire and Staffordshire, and he published fine illustrations and careful descriptions of them a short while ago in his histories of these counties. He also gave many minerals, and ancient objects from the period of the Roman occupation of this island, which he had both excavated in his native county of Kent and acquired elsewhere from all over Britain; and also a fair number of exotic items such as shells, minerals, metals, earths, salts, stones, tufa, sponges, corals and many other things of that kind (he told us to expect more) which are considered to be of great value by students of Natural History. These he willingly donated to the museum and generously dedicated them to advance the cause of the natural sciences.