Gregory King

Gregory King (15 December 1648 – 29 August 1712) was an English officer of arms, engraver, cartographer and statistician.

Life Gregory King was born at Lichfield, England. His father was a surveyor and landscape gardener. Gregory was a bright boy, and his father used him as an assistant in his surveying work. At 14 Gregory became a clerk to William Dugdale, the antiquary and herald. King later (1667–69) worked for Lord Hatton, who was forming a collection of the arms of the nobility. When this project collapsed, he went to work for the dowager Lady Gerard at Sandon, Staffordshire as steward, auditor and secretary (1670–72). She was the widow of Charles Gerard, 4th Baron Gerard, and remarried in 1673.

In 1672 King moved to London to work as an engraver for the printer John Ogilby; he also did surveying work and engraved maps. In 1677 he was appointed Rouge Dragon Pursuivant of Arms in Ordinary in the College of Arms. He became Lancaster Herald of Arms in Ordinary in 1688 and held that post until his death in 1712. These positions in the ceremonial branch of the state were lucrative and on three occasions he was sent abroad to confer the Order of the Garter on foreign princes.

By 1695 King was started on a second official career in the business branch of the state. He was a commissioner in charge of a new tax on marriages, births and burials and later Secretary to the Commission of Public Accounts and Secretary to the Controllers of Army Accounts; in 1708 he was one of the three commissioners appointed to state the debts of the late King William.

Works "The first great economic statistician", as Richard Stone calls him, came a generation after John Graunt and William Petty and continued their work. Their work was mainly published, but King's was not: he was a confidential advisor to the government. Material from his manuscripts appeared in the writings of his friend Charles Davenant and—a century later—in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (Book I, Chapter VIII), and in An Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Britain by George Chalmers.

In the 19th century Whewell and Jevons re-expressed the estimate as an equation. The estimate raises several questions. To whom should it be attributed, Davenant or King? How was it constructed? How accurate is it? Stone reviews the considerable literature on these questions.

Writings Two Tracts by Gregory King.(a) Natural and Political Observations and Conclusions upon the State and Condition of England. (b) Of the Naval Trade of England Ao. 1688 and the National Profit then arising thereby. Edited with an introduction by George E. Barnett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1936.

The Natural and Political Observations appear with some of King's unpublished writings in a volume edited by Peter Laslett.

The Earliest classics [facsimile reprints of] John Graunt, Natural and political observations made upon the bills of mortality, 1662 [and] G. King, Natural and political observations and conclusions upon the state and condition of England 1696 [from the 1804 printing] [and] 'The L.C.C. Burns Journal', a manuscript notebook containing workings for several projected works, composed c.1695-1700 with an introduction by Peter Laslett. Farnborough UK : Gregg, 1973.