Dr Robert, a learned antiquary and philosopher, was born at Sutton-Barn, in the parish of Borden, Kent, in the year 1641. He studied in Magdalen Hall, and afterwards in University College, Oxford. In 1682 he was elected secretary of the Royal Society, and published the Philosophical Transactions from No. 143 to No. 166 inclusive. The next year Mr Elias Ashmole appointed him first keeper of his museum, and about the same time the vice-chancellor nominated him primarius professor of chemistry in the university of Oxford. In 1687 he was made secretary to the earl marshal; and the following year received the title of historiographer to James II. In 1690 he resigned his professorship of chemistry, and likewise his place of keeper of the museum, to which he presented a very large collection of natural curiosities, which he had described in his histories of Oxfordshire and Staffordshire; the former published at Oxford in 1677, folio, and reprinted with additions and corrections in 1705, and the latter printed of the same size in 1686. In January 1694-1695, Henry Howard, earl marshal, nominated him Mowbray-herald extraordinary; two days after which he was constituted register of the court of honour; and, on the 20th of April 1696, he died of the stone, at his house at Borden.

As Dr Plot delighted in natural history, the above works were designed as essays towards a Natural History of England; and he had actually formed a design of travelling through England and Wales for that purpose. He accordingly drew up a plan of his scheme, in a letter addressed to Bishop Fell, which is inserted at the end of the second volume of Leland's Itinerary, in the edition of 1744. Amongst several manuscripts which he left behind him were large materials for the Natural History of Kent, Middlesex, and the city of London. Besides the above works, he published De Origine Fontium Tentamen Philosophicum, 8vo, and nine papers in the Philosophical Transactions.