Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/91

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Ducarel
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Ducarel

requested the men of Ireland' to come to one place to hold a conference with him. The result was the appointment of a committee of nine to revise the laws. It was composed of three kings, three bishops, and three professors of literature, poetry, and law. Chief among the latter was Dubthach. It became his duty to give an historical retrospect, and in doing so he exhibited 'all the judgments of true nature which the Holy Ghost had spoken from the first occupation of this island down to the reception of the faith. What did not clash with the word of God in the written law and in the New Testament and with the consciences of believers was confirmed in the laws of the brehons by Patrick and by the ecclesiastics and chieftains of Ireland. This is the "Senchus Mor."' It was completed A.D. 441, and is supposed to have been suggested by the revision of the Roman laws by Theodosius the younger. It was put into metrical form by Dubthach as an aid to memory, and accordingly the older parts appear to be in a rude metre. The work was known by various names, 'The Law of Patrick,' 'Noifis, or the Knowledge of Nine,' but more generally as the 'Senchus Mor.'

[Ussher's Works, vi. 400-1; 'Curry's Manuscript Materials, pp. 482-93; Lanigan's Eccl. Hist. i. 273-303; O'Reilly's Irish Writers, pp. xxvii-viii; Calendar of Oengus, pp. 8, xiii; Book of Rights, pp.xxxiv, 236-8; Hogan's Vita Patricii, pp. 104-6; Senchus Mor, Rolls ed. pp. 5-16.]

T. O.

DUCAREL, ANDREW COLTEE, D.C.L. (1713–1785), civilian and antiquary, was born in 1713 in Normandy, whence his father, who was descended from an ancient family at Caen, came to England soon after the birth of his second son James, and resided at Greenwich. In 1729, being then an Eton scholar, he was for three months under the care of Sir Hans Sloane on account of an accident which deprived him of the use of one eye. On 2 July 1731 he matriculated at Oxford as gentleman commoner of St. John's College. He graduated B.C.L. in 1738, was incorporated in that degree at Cambridge the same year, was created D.C.L. at Oxford in 1742, and went out a grand compounder on 21 Oct. 1748 (Foster, Alumni Oxon. i. 390; Addit MS. 5884, f. 81 b). He was admitted a member of the College of Advocates at Doctors' Commons 3 Nov. 1743 (Coote, English Civilians, p. 119). On recovering from a severe illness, in which he had been nursed by his maid Susannah, he married her out of gratitude in 1749, and she proved to be 'a sober, careful woman' (Grose, Olio, 2nd edit. p. 142). He was elected commissary or official of the peculiar and exempt jurisdiction of the collegiate church or free chapel of St. Katharine, near the Tower of London, in 1755. He was appointed commissary and official of the city and diocese of Canterbury by Archbishop Herring in December 1758; and of the sub-deaneries of South Malling, Pagham, and Terring in Sussex, by Archbishop Secker, on the death of Dr. Dennis Clarke in 1776.

From his youth he was devoted to the study of antiquities. As early as 22 Sept. 1737 he was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and he was one of the first fellows of that society nominated by the president and council on its incorporation in 1755. He was also elected 29 Aug. 1760 a member of the Society of Antiquaries at Cortona, was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society of London 18 Feb. 1762, became an honorary fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Cassel in November 1778, and of the Society of Antiquaries of Edinburgh in 1781.

In 1755 he unsuccessfully endeavoured to obtain the post of sub-librarian at the British Museum; but he was appointed keeper of the library at Lambeth 3 May 1757, by Archbishop Hutton, and from that time he turned his attention to the ecclesiastical antiquities of the province of Canterbury. He greatly improved the catalogues both of the printed books and the manuscripts at Lambeth, and made a digest, with a general index, of all the registers and records of the southern province. In this laborious undertaking he was assisted by his friend, Edward Rowe Mores, the Rev. Henry Hall, his predecessor in the office of librarian, and Mr. Pouncey, the engraver, who was for many years his assistant as clerk and deputy librarian. Ducarel's share of the work was impeded by the complete blindness of one eye and the weakness of the other. Besides the digest preserved among the official archives at Lambeth, he formed for himself another manuscript collection in forty-eight volumes, which were purchased for the British Museum at the sale of Richard Gough's library in 1810. In 1763 Ducarel was appointed by the government to digest and methodise, in conjunction with Sir Joseph Ayloffe and Thomas Astle, the records of the state paper office at Whitehall, and afterwards those in the augmentation office. On the death of Secker he unsuccessfully applied for the post of secretary to the succeeding archbishop.

For many years he used to go in August on an antiquarian tour through different parts of the country, in company with his friend Samuel Gale, and attended by a coachman and footman. They travelled about fifteen miles a day, and put up at inns. After dinner, while Gale smoked his pipe, Ducarel tran-