William Burton (antiquary, died 1645)
William Burton (24 August 1575 – 6 April 1645) was an English antiquarian, best known as the author of the Description of Leicester Shire (1622), the county's first published county history.
Life
Burton was the son of Ralph Burton, and elder brother of
At the age of nine he went to school at
On 20 May 1603 he was
Works
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He wrote in 1596 an unpublished Latin comedy, De Amoribus Perinthii et Tyanthes. In 1597 he published with
His county history, the Description of Leicester Shire, was begun by 1597. It appeared in print in 1622, dedicated to George Villiers, Marquess of Buckingham. Burton then spent years in making large additions and corrections for a new edition. In the summer of 1638 a copy of the intended second edition was sent to London for press. However the whole project was "overtaken by more momentous events – the outbreak of the Civil War – and had to be abandoned".[4] It is not known what became of this manuscript.
Burton began work on a further revised version of the work in 1641. After Burton's death his son Cassibelan presented the materials for this final version to
William Dugdale in his Autobiography acknowledges the assistance which he had received from Burton. In 1612 Thomas Purefoy of Barwell in Warwickshire bequeathed at his death to Burton the original manuscript of John Leland's Collectanea. Anthony Wood says Burton needlessly expanded this work; but Thomas Hearne, in the preface to his edition of the Collectanea, denies that. In 1631 Burton caused part of Leland's Itinerary to be transcribed, and in the following year he gave five quarto volumes of Leland's autograph manuscripts to the Bodleian Library.[2]
Among the manuscripts that he left were:[2]
- Antiquitates de Lindley, which was later in the possession of Samuel Lysons, who lent it to Nichols and is now in the British Library (Additional MS 6046);
- Antiquitates de Dadlington Manerio, com. Leic., which in Nichols's time belonged to Nicholas Hurst of Hinckley;
- Antiquitates de Falde (British Library Additional MS 31917)
- Collections towards a history of Thedingworth.
About 1735 Francis Peck announced his intention of writing Burton's life, but did not do so.[2]
Family
In 1607 Burton married Jane, daughter of Humfrey Adderley of Weddington, in Warwickshire, by whom he had a son, Cassibelan Burton.[2]
References
- ^ University College London website, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621-1651), by Angus Gowland, page 496
- ^ a b c d e f g h . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
- ^ philological.bham.ac.uk, article on John Ross.
- ^ a b Daniel Williams (1975), "William Burton's 1642 revised edition of the Description of Leicestershire", Transactions of the Leicester Archaeological and Historical Society, 50, 30–36
- ^ Staffordshire Records Office, manuscripts D649/4/1 to 3 (Catalogue).
External links
- The description of Leicestershire (1777 edition), University of Leicester
- Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Burton, William (1575-1645)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
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