John Harington, English courtier and author (born 1561)

Sir John Harington, of Kelston, Somerset, England, but born 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. He was the author of the description of a flush-toilet forerunner installed in his Kelston house, appearing 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.