Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dugdale, William
DUGDALE, Sir WILLIAM (1605–1686), Garter king-of-arms, was born at Shustoke, near Coleshill, Warwickshire, 12 Sept. 1605, ‘at which time was a swarm of bees in his father's garden, then esteemed by some a happy presage on the behalf of the babe’ (Wood, Fasti, ii. 13). His father, John Dugdale, of a Lancashire family, having accompanied some pupils to Oxford, remained at the university for his own purposes, at thirty matriculating at St. John's College, studying civil law, succeeding a kinsman of the same surname as bursar and steward of his college, and after fourteen years' residence selling what property he had in Lancashire to settle at Shustoke (cf. Wood in Hamper, p. 6 n., Dugdale, ib. pp. 6–7, and Raine, pp. 5–6). Dugdale was sent at the age of ten to Coventry, where he remained at school for five years, and then returning home was set by his father to read ‘Littleton's “Tenures” and some other law-books and history.’ He married in his eighteenth year to please his father, who was old and infirm, and after whose death he bought Blythe Hall, near Coleshill, which remained to the end of his days his country home. Here he made the acquaintance of William Burton (1575–1645) [q. v.], author of the ‘Description of Leicestershire,’ and through him of Sir Symon Archer [q. v.], who was collecting material for a history of Warwickshire, and who, finding in Dugdale a love of antiquarian research, procured his co-operation in the task. Accompanying Archer on a visit to London, Dugdale was introduced by him to Sir Henry Spelman, who made him acquainted with Sir Christopher (afterwards Lord) Hatton, and comptroller of the household of Charles I, and strongly advised him to co-operate with Roger Dodsworth [q. v.], then collecting documents illustrative of the antiquities of Yorkshire and of the foundation of monasteries there and in the north of England. Dugdale gained through Hatton access to the records in the Tower, and to the Cottonian collection among other repertories of manuscripts. Dugdale was not rich, but Hatton's liberality enabled him to undertake the completion of a work on the antiquities of Warwickshire independently of Sir Symon Archer. Through Hatton's and Spelman's united influence Dugdale was appointed a pursuivant extraordinary with the title of Blanch Lyon in September 1638. In March 1639 he became Rouge Croix pursuivant, with rooms in the Heralds' College and a yearly salary of 20l. Hatton is said to have foreseen very early the fall of the church of England, and he commissioned Dugdale to proceed with a draughtsman, both of whose expenses he paid, and have drawings made of the monuments and armorial bearings, and copies taken of the epitaphs, in Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's, and a number of provincial churches. Their mission seems to have been performed in 1641 (cf. Dugdale, Life, by himself, in Hamper, p. 14, and Epistle Dedicatory to History of St. Paul's).
Dugdale was summoned as a pursuivant to attend the king at York on 1 June 1642, and when the civil war broke out he was employed in the delivery of royal warrants demanding the submission of garrisons holding towns and fortified places for the parliament. He accompanied Charles I to Oxford when it became the royalist headquarters, October 1642, and in the following month he received from the university the degree of M.A. He was created Chester herald on 16 April 1644. His estate being among those sequestrated, and the allowance granted him by the king remaining unpaid, he seems to have supported himself for some time on what he received for arranging and marshalling the elaborate funerals of persons of station (Life, p. 21; Wood, Fasti, ii. 18). During his stay in Oxford he frequented assiduously the Bodleian and other libraries, collegiate and private, to collect materials for his ‘Warwickshire,’ for the work which developed into the ‘Monasticon,’ and for one on the history of the English peerage (see the preface to his Baronage), a scheme also projected and in part executed by Roger Dodsworth [q. v.] On the surrender of Oxford to Fairfax, 20 June 1646, Dugdale proceeded to London and compounded for his estate, the whole amount of his payments being 168l. In the summer of 1648 he spent three months in Paris with his exiled friends the Hattons, and derived some information respecting alien priories in England from an examination of the collections on the history of French monasteries left by the well-known André Duchesne. In 1649–50 Dugdale was busy with the ‘ Warwickshire’ and the ‘Monasticon.’ In August 1651, speaking of the ‘Monasticon’ as Dodsworth's ‘work of monastery foundations’ (Correspondence in Hamper, p. 264), Dugdale says that it is ‘ready for the press,’ but in January 1652 (ib. p. 266) that he had been some eight months away from home in London, ‘so great a task have I had to bring Mr. Dodsworth's confused collections into any order, and perfect the copy from the Tower and Sir Thomas Cotton's library.’ The London booksellers having declined the first two volumes of the ‘Monasticon’ for a sum sufficient to cover the cost of the transcripts made for them, according to Dugdale (Life, by himself, p. 24), he and Dodsworth ‘joined together and hired several sums of money’ to defray the expense of publication. Rushworth, of the ‘Historical Collections,’ contributed so liberally for this object that the work, Dugdale acknowledges (Correspondence, p. 284), could not have been published without him. Only a tenth part of the first volume had gone through the press, but the remainder of both volumes was ready for it, when Dodsworth died, August 1654. The proportion in which Dodsworth and Dugdale contributed to the first two volumes has been a subject of dispute (cf. Gough, Anecdotes of British Topography, p. 55, Hunter, pp. 247–9, Wood, Fasti, p. 24, and Raine, pp. 16–19). In the first draft of Sir John Marsham's Προπύλαιον, prefixed to vol. i., Dugdale's share in the work seems to have been ignored (Somner to Dugdale, Correspondence, p. 282). But in it when printed, and while ascribing to Dodsworth the chief honour of the work, Marsham spoke of Dugdale as one ‘qui tantam huic operi supellectilem contulit, ut authoris alterius titulum optime meritus sit.’ Both volumes were undoubtedly edited by Dugdale, who, writing a short time before the appearance of vol. i., says: ‘It hath wholly rested on my shoulders; nay, I can manifest it sufficiently that a full third part of the collection is mine’ (Correspondence, p. 284), and he adds that Rushworth, who had done financially so much for the work, ‘would not by any means but that I should be named with Mr. Dodsworth as a joint collector of the materials.’
The first volume of the monumental work was issued in 1655, with the title ‘Monasticon Anglicanum, sive Pandectæ Cœnobiorum Benedictinorum, Cluniacensium, Cisterciensium, Carthusianorum, à primordiis ad eorum usque dissolutionem, ex MSS. Codd. ad Monasteria olim pertinentia; archivis Turrium Londinensis, Eboracensis, Curiarum Scaccarii, Augmentationum; Bibliothecis Bodleianâ, Coll. Reg. Coll. Bened., Arundellianâ, Cottonianâ, Seldenianâ, Hattonianâ, aliisque digesti per Rogerum Dodsworth Eborac., Gulielmum Dugdale Warwic.’ The volume consists largely of charters of foundation, donation, and confirmation (in the last two cases frequently abridged) granted to monastic establishments, the Latin translations of those in Anglo-Saxon being executed by Somner. In editing them Dugdale often showed a lack of critical discernment (see Sir Roger Twysden's letter to him, Correspondence, p. 335). It contains also a vast mass of information respecting the history and biography of English monachism, and of cathedrals and collegiate churches. Of the numerous architectural and other plates (see catalogue of them in Lowndes, ii. 684), several are by Hollar, and inscriptions on many of them record that these were executed at the expense of the persons whose names and armorial bearings are given. The publication of the volume excited the ire of many puritans, but it was cordially welcomed by the quasi-puritan Lightfoot, then vice-chancellor of Cambridge, (Correspondence, p. 290). It was rather largely purchased by the English Roman catholic gentry, and for the libraries of foreign monasteries, and thus it gradually became scarce. Accordingly, in 1682, appeared a second edition of it, ‘editio secunda, auctior et emendatior, cum altero ac elucidiori indice,’ a reprint of the first edition, with a few insignificant additions and omissions (see collation of it in the catalogue of the Grenville Library, Brit. Mus., pt. i. p. 213).
In the following year, 1656, was issued Dugdale's archæological and topographical masterpiece, on which so many county histories have been modelled—his ‘Antiquities of Warwickshire. Illustrated from Records, Leiger-Books, Manuscripts, Charters, Evidences, Tombes, and Armes. Beautified with maps, prospects, and portraictures,’ with a dedication to Lord Hatton and an address ‘to the Gentry of Warwickshire,’ in which Sir Symon Archer's labours are gratefully acknowledged. Most of the plates are by Hollar, though on many of them his name does not appear (see catalogue of all of them in Upcott, p. 1247, &c.). The county is described hundred by hundred, and the topography follows as nearly as possible the course of the streams. The bulk of the volume consists of pedigrees and histories of county families, in conjunction with accounts of the places where they were settled, and of religious and charitable foundations and their founders, all of them remarkable for general accuracy, and accompanied by constant references to authorities. Jeremy Taylor, acknowledging a presentation copy, spoke of the volume as ‘very much the best of anything that ever I saw in that kind;’ and Anthony à Wood (Life, by himself, p. xxiv) could not find language adequate to describe how his ‘tender affections and insatiable desire of knowledge was ravished and melted down by the reading of that book.’ In 1718 was issued a second edition, ‘printed for John Osborn and Thomas Longman at the Ship in Paternoster Row,’ revised from Dugdale's own corrected copy, the editor, the Rev. Dr. William Thomas, continuing the work to the time of publication, and adding sundry maps and views (see collation of it in Upcott, p. 1259, &c.). In 1763–5 a third and hitherto the latest edition was issued in numbers by a Coventry printer, being a verbatim reprint of the original edition with maps, &c., from Thomas's. An interleaved copy of this third edition in the library of the British Museum contains much additional printed and manuscript matter, some of it from the author's original manuscript, and inserted by Hamper, the diligent and competent editor of Dugdale's autobiography, diary, and correspondence.
In or about 1656 there came into Dugdale's hands a mass of documents relating to old St. Paul's, and working on this and other material he produced in 1658 ‘The History of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. From the foundation until these times. Extracted out of original Charters, Records, Leiger-Books, and other manuscripts. Beautified with sundry prospects of the Church, figures of tombs and monuments,’ some of them destroyed during the puritan régime. The volume was appropriately dedicated to Lord Hatton. Most of the plates are by Hollar (see catalogue of them in Upcott, p. 695). The work is extremely valuable, from the descriptions and drawings of St. Paul's before its destruction by the fire of London. Dugdale left a copy of it corrected, enlarged, and continued as if for a new edition, and the discovery of this led to the publication by the Rev. Dr. Maynard of a second edition (1716). Dugdale's continuation, printed here, extending to 1685, gives lists of the subscribers to and subscriptions for both a restoration of the old fabric just before the fire of London, and for the erection of the new fabric after it, with copious financial details of the latter operation. Maynard added Dugdale's autobiography, and, under a wrong impression that it was Dugdale's, ‘An Historical Account of the Northern Cathedrals,’ &c., which was omitted in the third, the last and the best, edition of the ‘History of St. Paul's,’ that of 1818, by the late Sir Henry Ellis, ‘with a continuation’—embracing the modern history of St. Paul's—‘and additions, including the republication of Sir William Dugdale's own life from his own manuscript.’ The plates were throughout engraved chiefly by Finden, and to faithful copies of most of those in the original work were added many illustrative of the present cathedral.
With the Restoration Dugdale at once and spontaneously resumed his heraldic functions by proclaiming the king at Coleshill, 10 May 1660 (Diary in Hamper, p. 105). On the 14th of the following month he was appointed Norroy through the influence of Clarendon, who appreciated his literary labours. In 1661 was issued, with an adulatory dedication to Charles II, the second volume of the ‘Monasticon,’ ‘Monastici Anglicani Volumen alterum, de Canonicis Regularibus Augustinianis, scilicet Hospitalariis, Templariis, Gilbertinis, Præmonstratensibus & Maturinis, sive Trinitariis, cum appendice ad volumen primum de Cœnobiis aliquot Gallicanis, Hibernicis et Scoticis, necnon quibusdam Anglicanis antea omissis.’ As in vol. i., Dodsworth's and Dugdale's names appear together on the title-page of vol. ii., the issue of which had been deferred until the proceeds of the sale of the other enabled Dugdale to bear the expense of publishing it. He was allowed to import the paper for it duty free. Several of the plates (see catalogue of them in Lowndes, ii. 685) are engraved by Hollar. In 1662 appeared Dugdale's ‘History of Imbanking and Drayning of divers Fenns and Marshes, both in foreign parts and in this Kingdom, and of the improvements thereof’—a work conspicuous for its prolixity as well as for its exhibition of research. It was written at the instance of Lord Gorges, surveyor-general of the great level of the fens, of which it contains a history and minute topographical description, illustrated by maps and plans, and preceded by a vast mass of matter very little relevant to that undertaking. There is an account of the volume, with extracts, in the article ‘Agriculture: Draining’ in the ‘Quarterly Review’ for December 1844. Dugdale received for it from Lord Gorges 150l. Five hundred copies of it having been destroyed in the fire of London (see Dugdale's letter of 15 Oct. 1666, printed in the catalogue of the Grenville Library, Brit. Mus., pt. i. p. 215), the volume became so scarce that a copy of it fetched ten guineas when in 1772 it was reissued, with the spelling modernised, at the expense of the corporation of the Bedford Level, and edited by their registrar, C. N. Cole, partly from the copy used by Dugdale himself. In 1666 (not 1664, the date given by Dugdale in his autobiography) were published two works of Sir Henry Spelman's, edited by Dugdale for Sir Henry's grandson, Charles Spelman: (1) the ‘Glossarium Archæologicum,’ mainly a reissue of part 1 of the ‘Archæologus’ published in 1626, with the addition of part ii., which had remained in manuscript. A groundless charge was brought against Dugdale of having interpolated this work to gratify his political prejudices (cf. Life, by himself, p. 29 n., and Bishop Gibson's Life of Spelman, a. 4); (2) vol. ii. of the ‘Concilia,’ greatly enlarged by Dugdale's contributions, which are marked with an asterisk. Clarendon and Sheldon were contributors to the fund of 316l. subscribed to defray the cost of the publication of both books, the sale of which yielded a profit of 20l., though the ‘greater part’ of the impression, in which Dugdale had a pecuniary interest, was destroyed in the fire of London. His account of the expenditure in the publication of these works contains the curious item (Correspondence, p. 360 n.) of 1l. 9s. 6d. ‘spent in entertainments upon the booksellers when I did receive moneys from them.’ In 1666 was published his ‘Origines Juridiciales, or Historical Memorials of the English Laws, Courts of Justice,’ &c. ‘Also a Chronologie of the Lord Chancellors’ and other holders of judicial offices. The information given respecting the inns of court and chancery is particularly copious and curious. With the exception of a few presentation copies, the whole impression of this volume was destroyed in the fire of London. A second edition of it was published in 1671 and a third in 1680, in both the lists of chancellors, &c., being continued up to date. Abridgments of it, with similar continuations, appeared in 1685 and 1737. A ‘History and Antiquities of the Inns of Court,’ extracted from Dugdale, published with a view to correct abuses in their administration, and said to be edited by John Brayner (Brit. Mus. Cat.), appeared in 1780, and reappeared in the same year as part ii. of ‘History and Antiquities relative to the Origin of Government,’ almost wholly extracted from Dugdale. Both parts were reissued in 1790 as ‘Historical Memorials of the English Laws’ (Upcott, p. 762).
The third and final volume of the ‘Monasticon’ was issued in 1673 without Dodsworth's name on the title-page, though doubtless it contained material collected by him (Wood, Fasti, ii. 25). The full title is ‘Monastici Anglicani Volumen tertium et ultimum: Additamenta quædam in volumen primum ac volumen secundum jampridem edita: Necnon Fundationes sive Dotationes Ecclesiarum Cathedralium ac Collegiatarum continens: ex archivis Regiis, ipsis autographis, ac diversis codicibus manuscriptis decerpta, et hic congesta per Will. Dugdale Warwicensem.’ In a prefatory address Dugdale acknowledges his obligations to Sir Thomas Herbert and Anthony à Wood, who contributed many charters to the volume. For the copyright Dugdale received 50l. and twenty copies of the volume. An outcry, by no means wholly puritan, was, with its completion, renewed against the work as furnishing details respecting the landed property taken from the Roman catholics during Reformation times, and thus aiding them to claim its recovery when, as was then dreaded by many, their religion should be re-established and re-endowed. The first abridgment of the whole work for English readers was published in 1693, and its title-page represents the ‘Monasticon’ as ‘now epitomised in English page by page. With sculptures of the several religious habits.’ It is an extremely meagre performance, its three volumes containing only some 330 pages, and it has scarcely any value higher than that of a table of contents. The dedication is signed ‘J. W.,’ supposed to be James Wright, the historian of Rutlandshire. According to Granger (Biog. Hist. of England, 2nd ed. iii. 116), the publication of the ‘Monasticon’ ‘was productive of many lawsuits by the revival of old writings,’ and ‘J. W.,’ in an address ‘to the reader,’ mentions the noticeable fact that the work had been admitted in the courts at Westminster as ‘good circumstantial evidence’ when the records transcribed in it could not otherwise be recovered. A second English abridgment, much more worthy of the original, appeared in 1718, ‘Monasticon Anglicanum, or the Histories of the ancient Abbies, Monasteries,’ &c. ‘The whole corrected and supplied with many useful additions by an eminent hand,’ doubtless the Captain John Stevens who in 1722–3 added to Dugdale's work two supplementary volumes containing many charters and the histories of the friaries not given in the ‘Monasticon.’ This abridgment is wholly in English. The edition of the ‘Monasticon’ which has practically superseded all the others is the magnificent one in 6 vols. (in 8) fol. with the imprint 1817–30: ‘Monasticon Anglicanum … a new edition enriched with a large accession of materials now first printed … the history of each religious foundation in English being prefixed to its respective series of Latin charters.’ It was published in fifty-four parts, the first of which was issued on 1 June 1813, under the editorship of the Rev. Bulkeley Bandinel, the chief librarian of the Bodleian. After the issue of part four there were associated with him John Caley, of the augmentation office, and Mr., subsequently Sir Henry Ellis, principal librarian of the British Museum, who seems thenceforth chiefly to have discharged the duties of editorship. What was best in Stevens's additions was incorporated in this edition, which contains accounts of hundreds of religious houses not mentioned by Dugdale. Hollar's chief plates were re-engraved for it, and its 246 illustrations are said to have cost six thousand guineas. The so-called new edition, 8 vols. 1846, is simply a reprint of this (see Notes and Queries, 4th ser. ix. 506, x. 18, 218).
A commission, dated 2 July 1662 (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1662, p. 427), had directed Dugdale, as Norroy, to make a visitation of his province—there had been none for fifty years or so—and there ‘to reform and correct all arms unlawfully borne or assumed,’ often at the suggestion and with the sanction, especially during the Commonwealth times, of deputies of former heralds as well as of other less authorised persons whose right to exercise heraldic functions Dugdale denied. His province comprised the counties of Derby, Nottingham, Stafford, Chester, Lancaster, York, the bishopric of Durham, Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland, and during his visitations, 1662–70, he dealt severely with those whom he regarded as interlopers usurping his authority and intercepting the emoluments of his office. He tore down the hatchments which they had set up, he denounced and resisted their attempts to marshal funerals, and one of them whose heraldic authority had been very generally accepted in Cheshire and Lancashire, the third Randle Holme or Holmes [q. v.], he also prosecuted at Stafford assizes, recovering from him 20l. damages with costs. So stringent was his procedure that a lady of rank in Cumberland is found appealing to Joseph Williamson, then under-secretary of state, and expressing her fear that an approaching funeral would be disturbed by Dugdale, from whom a menacing letter had been received (ib. 1664–1665, p. 272). Of his accounts of visitations the following have been published: 1. ‘The Visitation of the County of Yorke, begun 1665, and finished 1666,’ printed by the Surtees Society 1859, and said to be edited by R. Davies; an index to it by G. J. Armytage appeared in 1872. 2. ‘The Visitation of the County Palatine of Lancaster, made in 1664–5,’ 1872, &c., being vols. lxxxiv. lxxxv. lxxxviii. of the Chetham Society's publications, Canon Raine, the editor, prefixing to vol. lxxxviii. an excellent memoir of Dugdale. Vol. xxiv. of the same society's publications contains ‘A Fragment illustrative of Dugdale's Visitation of Lancashire,’ 1851. 3. ‘The Visitation of Derbyshire taken in 1662,’ 1879. Dugdale was created Garter king-of-arms on 24 May 1677, with a salary of 100l. a year and an official residence (much dilapidated) at Windsor. He built himself a residence in the College of Arms. On being made Garter he was knighted.
In 1675–6 had appeared Dugdale's important work, ‘The Baronage of England, or an Historical Account of the Lives and most Memorable Actions of our English Nobility. Deduced from public records, antient historians, and other authorities,’ 3 vols. fol. His researches went back to the Saxon times, and his record covers all the peerages of the period between them and the years of publication. Authorities are constantly cited in the margin. In the preface, giving the history and plan of the work, he acknowledges his debt to the manuscript collections of Robert Glover, the Somerset herald, and to ‘the elaborate collections from the Pipe Rolls made by Mr. Roger Dodsworth, my late deceased friend’ for a baronage never completed. Preceded only by such meagre performances as Brooke's ‘Catalogue of Nobility,’ Dugdale's genealogical, historical, and biographical account of the English peerage was the first work worthy of its subject. His notices of the numerous extinct peerages have secured it from being superseded by the great work of Arthur Collins among others, and of the portions of Dugdale's volumes relating to them extensive use has been made by Thomas Christopher Banks [q. v.] in his ‘Dormant and Extinct Baronage of England.’ Of course in a first performance on the scale of Dugdale's there were many errors. Anthony à Wood, who furnished Dugdale with numerous corrections for a second edition, says that the officers of the College of Arms found that they could not rely on Dugdale's pedigrees (Fasti, ii. 26). Specialists in isolated sections of peerage history have pointed out serious mistakes in the work, none with more acrimony than the author of ‘Three Letters containing remarks on some of the numberless errors and defects in Dugdale's “Baronage,”’ &c., 1730–8, attributed in the ‘Biographia Britannica’ (art. ‘Dugdale’)—where characteristic extracts from it are given—to a certain Charles Hornby, secondary of the pipe office, but by the Gloucester bookseller who reprinted them in 1801 to Rawlinson the antiquary. On the merits of the ‘Baronage,’ and what through more recent research have become its deficiencies, there are judicious remarks in the article ‘The Ancient Earldoms of England’ in vol. i. (p. 1 et seq.) of Nichols's ‘Topographer and Genealogist’ (1846), where stress is laid on the good example set by Dugdale, and not always followed by some even of the best of his successors, in rejecting ‘legendary fictions and cunningly devised fables to flatter either the fond fancies of old families or the unwarranted assumptions of new.’ Dugdale received permission to import for vols. ii. and iii. of the ‘Baronage’ paper duty free, so that the amount remitted should not exceed 400l. From the booksellers to whom he sold the copyright of the ‘Baronage’ he was to receive twenty-four copies of the work in quires and ten shillings a sheet, which would yield a little more than 150l. The year after the publication of the last volume they told him that few copies remained unsold, and that a new edition would be brought out ‘ere long’ (Correspondence, p. 413), but no second edition of the ‘Baronage’ has ever appeared. Dugdale's own corrections and additions are printed in vols. i. and ii. of Nichols's ‘Collectanea Historica et Topographica’ (1834–1843), in vols. iv–viii. of which work are also given nearly all of those, much more numerous, which were left in a finished state by Francis Townsend, Windsor herald (d. 1819), who made them for his projected new edition of the ‘Baronage.’
Dugdale's other and subsequently published works are: 1. ‘A Short View of the late Troubles in England … As also some parallel thereof with the Barons' Wars in the time of K. Henry III. But chiefly with that in France called the Holy in the reigns of Henry III and Henry IV, late Kings of the Realm. To which is added a perfect narrative of the Treaty of Uxbridge in 1644’ (published anonymously), 1681. This work is written throughout in a strain of vehement animosity to all who took the anti-royalist side, and has little historical value, though as a chronicle and from the copiousness and precision of its dates it may be useful for reference. The narrative of the Treaty of Uxbridge is merely a reprint of a pamphlet printed at Oxford in 1645, which contained the text of communications between the king and the parliament, with the manifestos of both, and which Dugdale may or may not at the time of its issue have seen through the press. 2. ‘The Ancient Usage in bearing of such Ensigns of Honour as are commonly call'd Arms, with a Catalogue of the present Nobility of England … Scotland … and Ireland,’ 1682. This, mainly a compilation, includes lists of knights of the Garter, of baronets to 1681, and of the shires and boroughs in England and Scotland returning members to the parliaments of the two countries, these last, according to Anthony à Wood (Fasti, ii. 27), having been drawn up by Charles Spelman. The edition of 1812 has been noticed under Banks, Thomas Christopher. 3. ‘A perfect copy of all Summons of the Nobility to the Great Councils and Parliaments of this realm from the xlix of Henry the IIId until these present times,’ 1685, a contribution of some value to peerage literature. In the preface Dugdale argues in an anti-democratic spirit against certain statements of the claims to antiquity of popular representation in parliament. A verbatim reprint was issued in 1794 (?) at Birmingham (Lowndes, ii. 693). 4. ‘The Life of … Sir William Dugdale … published from an original manuscript,’ 1713. This, one of Edmund Curll's publications, was the first appearance in print of Dugdale's autobiography. 5. ‘Directions for the Search of Records and Making Use of them, in order to an Historicall Discourse of the Antiquities of Staffordshire,’ written for Dr. Plot, the historian of that county, printed in Ives's ‘Select Papers, chiefly relating to English Antiquities,’ 1773, and interesting from its account of the local distribution of the public records in Dugdale's time. The letters between Dugdale and Sir Thomas Browne, published in the latter's posthumous works, are given in the correspondence in Hamper's work.
Evelyn in his ‘Diary,’ 21 May 1685, mentions dining at the table of Henry, second earl of Clarendon, ‘my lord privy seal's,’ in the company of Dugdale, who spoke of himself, then in his eighty-first year, as ‘having his sight and his memory perfect.’ He died ‘in his chair’ at Blythe Hall, 10 Feb. 1686, of fever, according to Anstis (Hamper, p. 41 n.), ‘contracted by tarrying too long in the meadows near his house.’ He had spent a good deal of money in improving his estate, and this explains Anthony à Wood's reference to his death as caused ‘by attendance too much on his worldly concerns.’ Wood's intimacy with Dugdale had been disturbed by at least one serious disagreement, but his verdict on him (Fasti, ii. 28) is much more just than that of Anstis, who, because Dugdale was not only laborious himself but skilful in making use, to all appearance both legitimate and duly acknowledged, of the labours of others, has stigmatised him as ‘that grand plagiary’ (Hamper, p. 497 n.) That Dugdale was a man of helpful disposition there are several indications, such as those in the autobiography of Gregory King [q. v.], the Lancaster herald, who when very young entered his service, and Somner's grateful statement that without his ‘most active and effective assistance’ his ‘Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum’ could never have been published. Almost the only glimpse of Dugdale in private life is given by Anthony à Wood, who spent some days with him (August 1676) among the records in the Tower, and who describes them as dining together daily in jovial company ‘at a cook's house within the Tower.’ In January 1678 Dugdale was allowed to import ‘two tuns of wine’ free of duty (Black, No. 1134, 146 a.) He bequeathed many of his manuscripts to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, founded by his son-in-law, Elias Ashmole [q. v.], and they have been since transferred with its other manuscripts to the Bodleian. The catalogue of them, published by Bishop Gibson in 1692, is reprinted in the appendix (No. II) to Hamper's volume. Others, more or less important, were when Hamper wrote in the possession of a descendant of Dugdale at Merevale, Warwickshire. The collections which he made for Lord Hatton belonged in 1860 to that nobleman's representative, the Earl of Winchilsea (Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. x. 76). Many of his pedigrees and other manuscripts are in the British Museum; among them (Lansdowne MS. No. 722) is a brief diary of one of Dugdale's journeys when he was writing his account of draining in the fen county, ‘Things Observable in our Itinerary begun from London, 19 May 1657.’
Sir William Dugdale's only surviving son, John (1628–1700), born 1 June 1628, was appointed with the Restoration chief gentleman usher to Lord Clarendon on 26 Oct. 1675; Windsor herald Oct. 1676; deputy to his father as Garter, 8 Dec. 1684; and Norroy March 1686, when he was knighted. He was a faithful and affectionate son, and is supposed to have written the continuation of his father's life from 1678, when the autobiography breaks off. Certainly he wrote down from his father's table-talk ‘Some Short Stories of Sir William Dugdale's, in substance as neere his words as can be rememb'red,’ a few extracts from which are given by Hamper. In 1685 was printed, on a single sheet, ‘A Catalogue of the Nobility of England according to their respective precedencies as it was presented to his Majesty by John Dugdale, Esq., … deputy to Sir Wm. Dugdale, on New Year's Day, 1684,’ i.e. 1684–5, ‘to which is added the blazon of their paternal Coats of Arms respectively, and a list of the present Bishops,’ reprinted with additions (Lowndes, ii. 683) in 1690. Sir John Dugdale died at Coventry 31 Aug. 1700.
[Dugdale's Works; The Life (written by himself and continued to his death), Diary, and Correspondence of Sir William Dugdale … with an appendix containing an account of his published writings … edited by William Henry Hamper, 1 vol. 4to, London, 1827; Biographia Britannica (Kippis); Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses, ed. Bliss; Bishop Gibson's Life of Sir Henry Spelman, prefixed to his edition of Sir Henry Spelman's English Works, 1723; Noble's History of the College of Arms, 1804; Upcott's Bibliographical Account of English Topography, 1818; Gough's British Topography, 1780, and Anecdotes of British Topography, 1768; Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual, ed. Bohn; Joseph Hunter's Three Catalogues describing the contents of the … Dodsworth MSS. in the Bodleian, &c., 1838; W. H. Black's Catalogue of the Ashmolean Manuscripts, 1845; Catalogue British Museum Library; authorities cited.]