with slight variations, the text of the printed work. The first copy ends with the year 1582, and no doubt it was the rest of this transcript that was sent to De Thou. The second copy breaks off in the middle of 1586. Throughout the work there is no alteration of the main lines on which the history was first laid down. The latter part (1586-8), where the transcripts fail, and especially the account of Mary's trial and execution, is supplied by the drafts, a perusal of which clearly indicates that the revision which they underwent was exactly of the same nature as that which is seen in the transcripts of the earlier portion. The second transcript appears to have been finally revised in 1613, and the text thus received the form in which it was published before it was submitted to the king.
Camden's biographers, from Smith downwards, tell us that on account of these censures he determined that the second part of his 'Annals' should not see the light during his lifetime. However, it appears from one of his letters (ep. 287), written on the submission of the manuscript to the king, that at that time his feelings were neutral. While careless as to the publication of the Latin original, he was decidedly opposed to the appearance of an English translation: 'As I do not dislike that they should be published in my lifetime, so I do not desire that they should be set forth in English until after my death, knowing how unjust carpers the unlearned readers are.' He finished the compilation in 1617, and, keeping the original, he sent a copy to his friend. Pierre Dupuy, the historian, who undertook to publish it after the author's death. It was accordingly issued at Leyden in 1625, and in London in 1627.
The materials from which Camden compiled his 'Annals' exist to the present day in great part in the Cottonian Library. Godfrey Goodman, bishop of Gloucester, once a pupil of Camden's at Westminster, and nephew of his old friend the dean, asked for such materials as a legacy, but Camden had already bequeathed them to Archbishop Bancroft, on whose death he transferred the bequest to the succeeding primate, Abbot. Bishop Gibson has suggested that the papers so bequeathed were only such as more immediately concerned ecclesiastical matters. Whatever they may have been, it is supposed that they were lost on the pillage of Laud's library, as Bancroft could find no trace of them.
Camden continued to write short memoranda of events in the course of the reign of James I: 'a skeleton of a history, or bare touches to put the author in mind of greater matters, had he lived to have digested them in a full history' (Wood), which were printed by Smith at the end of his 'Camdeni Epistolæ'. Wood is the authority for the story of the original manuscript having been carried off, after Camden's death, by John Hacket, afterwards (1661) bishop of Lichfield, 'who, as I have been divers times informed, did privately convey it out of the library of the author.' It is now in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Camden spent the latter years of his life in retirement at Chislehurst. He describes himself to Ussher, in July 1618 (ep. 195), as 'being retired into the country for the recovery of my tender health, where, portum anhelans beatitudinis, I purposed to sequester myself from worldly business and cogitations;' and, constant to his place of retreat, he declined the invitation, made in 1621 by Sir Henry Savile, to take up his quarters in his house at Eton, where, says his friend, 'you might make me a happy man in my old age without any discontent' (ep. 251). In February 1620 he had a severe vomiting of blood (Memorabilia), and remained ill till the following August, his constitution rallying, however, even after further blood-letting by Dr. Giffard.
During 1619 his letters show that he had some dispute with his brother kings-of-arms, Garter and Norroy, concerning his appointment of deputies to serve on his visitations (see a list of counties visited by his deputies in The Visitation of co. Huntingdon, Camd. Soc., 1849, p. vi). Indeed, down to the very time of his death this matter continued to cause him trouble, there being still extant (Cotton MS. Julius C. iii. f. 151 b; Letters of Eminent Literary Men, Camd. Soc. p. 126) on this subject a letter signed, with painful effort, 22 Oct. 1623, after he had received the stroke which shortly preceded his death. In another letter, dated simply 26 Oct., probably 1623, he refers to the office of Clarenceux having been given to another, and continues that 'they proposed to leave me 600l. presently, and an hundred mark a year' (Cotton MS. Faustina E. i. f. 131).
Early in 1621 he was summoned to court to exercise his office of king-of-arms on the creation of Lord-chancellor Bacon as Viscount St. Albans; and in June of the same year he was present at the degradation of Sir Francis Mitchell (Apparat Annal. Jac. I, pp. 65, 72).
At the end of August 1621 he had a return of the blood-vomiting. He had long had the design of founding a history lectureship at Oxford, and now he executed a deed of gift,
