Matthew Prior

Matthew Prior (21 July 1664 – 18 September 1721) was an English poet, statesman, and diplomat, who played a crucial role in securing the Treaties of Utrecht, serving as Minister Plenipotentiary to France from 1712 to 1715. He is also known as a contributor to The Examiner.

Prior was born in Wimborne Minster, Dorset, where he lived with his father George, a Nonconformist joiner. His father moved to London, and sent him to Westminster School, under Dr Richard Busby. After his father's death, he left school, and was cared for by his uncle, a vintner in Channel Row. Here, Lord Dorset found him reading Horace, and set him to translate an ode. He did so well that the Earl offered to contribute to the continuation of his education at Westminster.

One of his schoolfellows and friends at Westminster was Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax. It was to avoid being separated from Montagu and his brother James that Prior accepted, against his patron's wish, a scholarship recently founded at St John's College, Cambridge. He took his B.A. degree in 1686, and two years later became a fellow. In collaboration with Montagu, he wrote in 1687 the City Mouse and Country Mouse, in ridicule of John Dryden's The Hind and the Panther.