24 Facts About William Camden

1.

William Camden was an English antiquarian, historian, topographer, and herald, best known as author of Britannia, the first chorographical survey of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Annales, the first detailed historical account of the reign of Elizabeth I of England.

2.

William Camden's father Sampson Camden was a member of The Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers.

3.

William Camden attended Christ's Hospital and St Paul's School, and in 1566 entered Oxford.

4.

William Camden returned to London in 1571 without a degree.

5.

In 1577, with the encouragement of Abraham Ortelius, William Camden began his great work Britannia, a topographical and historical survey of all of Great Britain and Ireland.

6.

William Camden's stated intention was to "restore antiquity to Britaine, and Britain to his antiquity".

7.

Rather than write a history, William Camden wanted to describe in detail the Great Britain of the present, and to show how the traces of the past could be discerned in the existing landscape.

8.

William Camden continued to collect materials and to revise and expand Britannia throughout his life.

9.

William Camden drew on the published and unpublished work of John Leland and William Lambarde, among others, and received the assistance of a large network of correspondents with similar interests.

10.

William Camden travelled throughout Great Britain to view documents, sites, and artefacts for himself: he is known to have visited East Anglia in 1578, Yorkshire and Lancashire in 1582, Devon in 1589, Wales in 1590, Salisbury, Wells and Oxford in 1596, and Carlisle and Hadrian's Wall in 1599.

11.

William Camden even learned Welsh and Old English for the task: his tutor in Old English was Laurence Nowell.

12.

William Camden held the post for four years, but left when he was appointed Clarenceux King of Arms.

13.

William Camden successfully defended himself against the charges in subsequent editions of the work.

14.

William Camden considered having the 1586 Britannia printed in the Low Countries, and although that did not happen, the third edition of 1590, in addition to its London printing, was published the same year in Frankfurt, and reprinted there in 1616.

15.

William Camden's Remaines of a Greater Worke, Concerning Britaine was a collection of themed historical essays, conceived as a more popular companion to Britannia.

16.

William Camden's Remaines is often the earliest or sole usage cited for a word in the Oxford English Dictionary; and further significant early usages have since been identified.

17.

In 1600 Camden published, anonymously, Reges, reginae, nobiles et alii in ecclesia collegiata B Petri Westmonasterii sepulti, a guidebook to the many tomb monuments and epitaphs of Westminster Abbey.

18.

In 1609 William Camden moved to Chislehurst in Kent, now south-east London.

19.

William Camden left his books to his former pupil and friend Sir Robert Cotton, the creator of the Cotton library.

20.

William Camden's Britannia remained a standard and highly regarded authority for many years after his death.

21.

The lectureship in history at Oxford endowed by William Camden survives as the William Camden Chair in Ancient History.

22.

The William Camden Society, named after William Camden, was a text publication society founded in 1838 to publish early historical and literary materials.

23.

The Cambridge William Camden Society, which took its name from William Camden, was a learned society founded in 1839 by undergraduates at Cambridge University to promote the study of Gothic architecture.

24.

The family owned and developed land to the north of London, and so, by this circuitous route, William Camden's name survives in the names of Camden Town and the London Borough of Camden.