Dugdale, SIR WILLIAM

Dugdale, SIR WILLIAM, antiquary, was born at Shustoke, near Coleshill, Warwickshire, 12th September 1605. He spent more than four years at Coventry free school, and then studied law and history under his father, to please whom, aged and palsied, he married before he was eighteen, and soon after whose death he purchased the neighbouring manor of Blythe (1625). Inspired with the notion of writing a history of Warwickshire, he came in 1635 to London, where, making the acquaintance of Spelman and other antiquaries, in 1638 he was created a pursuivant-at-arms extraordinary, with the title of Blanch Lyon, and in 1640 Rouge Croix pursuivant. During the Great Rebellion he adhered to the royalist cause, and from 1642 to 1646 was at Oxford, the king's headquarters, being made an M.A. and Chester herald, while pursuing his antiquarian researches. 'All the while that the power of the usurpers continued he was compelled to live depressed in a very low estate; but, as the darkest night hath its morning, so,' on the Restoration Clarendon got him the office of Norroy. In 1677 he was promoted to be Garter Principal King of Arms, at the same time receiving the honour of knighthood, 'much against his will, by reason of his small estate.' Evelyn describes him in 1685 as 'having his sight and his memory perfect;' but on 10th February 1686 he died in his chair at Blythe Hall. The Monasticon Anglicanum (3 vols. 1655-61-73), a history of English religious foundations, with their charters, &c., though planned and in part compiled by another antiquary, Roger Dodsworth (1585-1654), was concluded, arranged, indexed, and revised by Dugdale; there is a noble English edition of it by Bandinel, Caley, and Sir Henry Ellis (6 vols. 1817-30). The Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656; 3d ed. 1763-65) has been the model of every subsequent county history; of Dugdale's nine other works the chief are the History of St Paul's Cathedral (1658), History of Imbanking and Drayning (1662), Origines Juridicales (1666), and Baronage of England (3 vols. 1675-76). In Anthony à Wood's words, 'What Dugdale hath done is prodigious. His memory ought to be venerated and had in everlasting remembrance.' See his Life, Diary, and Correspondence, edited by William Hamper (1827).