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 His notices of the numerous extinct peerages have secured it from being superseded by the great work of Arthur Collins among others, and of the portions of Dugdale's volumes relating to them extensive use has been made by Thomas Christopher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
