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.]
