Sir John Harrington KB
(1561-1612)

Died aged c. 51

Sir John Harington (4 August 1561 – 20 November 1612), of Kelston, Somerset, England, but baptised in London, was an English courtier, author and translator popularly known as the inventor of the flush toilet. He became prominent at Queen Elizabeth I's court, and was known as her "saucy Godson", but his poetry and other writings caused him to fall in and out of favour with the Queen. The description of a flush-toilet forerunner installed in his Kelston house appears in A New Discourse of a Stale Subject, called the Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596), a political allegory and coded attack on the monarchy, which is nowadays his best-known work.

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