Having taken his degree at Pembroke College, Cambridge, he was appointed a travelling bachelor on the Worts foundation, and, proceeding to Germany, formed the acquaintance with Samuel Taylor Coleridge for which, apart from his merely local celebrity, he is now principally remembered.

After completing his medical studies at Edinburgh and London, he settled in his native town, where he spent a long life of active beneficence.

He was five times mayor of Truro, and was chiefly instrumental in the erection of the handsome memorial to Richard Lander, which is so great an ornament to the town.

His autobiography, published under the title of 'Early Years and Late Reflections,' in 4 vols., between 1836 and 1858, is in parts exceedingly tedious, but is valuable for the numerous interesting particulars of Coleridge, Davy, and other men of eminence known to the writer.

His 'Observations on the Endemic Typhus Fever of Cornwall' (1827) are esteemed, and effected much good in a sanitary point of view.