Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/147

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blished 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 The edition of the ‘Monasticon’ which has practically superseded all the others is the magnificent one in 6 vols.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