William Camden, son of Samson Camden, a paper-stainer, was born in London, 2nd May 1551. He was educated at Christ’s Hospital and at St. Paul’s School; and in 1566 proceeded to Magdalen College, Oxford. He successively removed to Broadgate Hall (Pembroke College) and Christ Church, was refused a bachelor’s degree when he left the university in 1570, but took it on his return to Oxford in 1573. In 1575 he became second master of Westminster School. Soon after this Camden began to collect materials for a great work on the antiquities of England, which resulted, in 1586, in the publication of his “Britannia.” He became head-master of Westminster in March 1593, an office which he resigned in 1597 on being made Clarenceux King-at-Arms. In 1603 he published at Frankfort a collection of the works of the ancient English historians. In 1607 a fall from his horse invalided him for many months, and in 1609 his health was further impaired by a dangerous indisposition. In spite of these and successive severe illnesses, Camden continued his indefatigable labours. In 1622 he founded the Camden professorship of Ancient History at Oxford. He died in his house at Chiselhurst, in Kent, on 9th November 1623, and was buried with full heraldic honours in Westminster Abbey.

General

	Cambden! the nourice of antiquitie
	And lanterne unto late succeeding age,
	To see the light of simple veritie
	Buried in ruines, through the great outrage
	Of her own people led with warlike rage:
	Cambden! though Time all moniments obscure,
	Yet thy just labours ever shall endure.

  The rat is not so contemptible but he may help the lion, at a pinch, out of those nets wherein his strength is hampered; and the words of an inferior may often carry matter in them to admonish his superior of some important consideration; and surely, of what account soever I might have seemed to this learned man, yet, in respect to my profession and courteous offer, (I being an officer-of-arms, and he then but a schoolmaster), might well have vouchsafed the perusal of my notes…. His incongruity in his principles of heraldry—for which I challenge him!—for depriving some nobles of issue to succeed them, who had issue, of whom are descended many worthy families: denying barons and earls that were, and making barons and earls of others that were not; mistaking the son for the father, and the father for the son; affirming legitimate children to be illegitimate, and illegitimate to be legitimate; and framing incestuous and unnatural marriages, making the father to marry the son’s wife, and the son his own mother.

  He lies buried in the South cross-aisle of Westminster Abbey, his effigies ¹/₂ on an altar, with this inscription:—

	Qui fide antiqua et opera assidua
	Britannicam antiquitatem indagavit
	Simplicitatem innatam
	honestis studiis excoluit
	Animi solertiam candore illustravit
	Gulielmus Camdenius
	ab Elizabetha regina ad regis armorum
	(Clarentii titulo) dignitatem evocatus
	Hic
	Spe certa resurgendi in Christo
	S. E.
	Qui obiit anno Domini 1623, 9 Novembris,
	Aetatis suae 74:

in his hand a booke, on the leaves whereof is writt BRITANNIA.

  The glory of this queen’s reign, as well as her successor’s, and the prince of our English antiquaries, was Mr. Camden, whose life has been written at large by Dr. Smith, Mr. Wood, and Dr. Gibson. So that I need not here mention any of its particulars. His Britannia is the book which chiefly respects the subject of this chapter; and may honestly be stiled the common sun, whereat our modern writers have all lighted their little torches.

  Camden’s “History of Queen Elizabeth” may be esteemed good composition, both for style and matter. It is written with simplicity of expression, very rare in that age, and with a regard to truth. It would not, perhaps, be too much to affirm, that it is among the best historical productions which have yet been composed by any Englishman. It is well known that the English have not much excelled in that kind of literature.

  This English Pausanius, as he has been called, took unwearied pains to celebrate all that was worthy, valiant, and great in the annals of his country; and, at the same time he excited emulation in young minds, he formed them for great undertakings; for he was master of Westminster school, whence have issued so many divines, lawyers, warriors, and statesmen. His opinions were proudly looked up to, and his learning, his judgment, his universal knowledge, and the discharge of his professional duties, procured him the protection of his sovereign, the association of the great, and the admiration of the literari, who dignified him by the appellation of the great Camden.

  Camden possessed one of those strongly directed minds which early in life plan some vast labour, while their imagination and their industry feed on it for many successive years; and they shed the flower and sweetness of their lives in the preparation of a work which at its maturity excites the gratitude of their nation. His passion for our national antiquities discovered itself even in his school-days, grew up with him at the University; and, when afterwards engaged in his public duties as master at Westminster school, he there composed his “Britannia,” “at spare hours, and on festival days.” To the perpetual care of his work, he voluntarily sacrificed all other views in life, and even drew himself away from domestic pleasures; for he refused marriage and preferments, which might interrupt his beloved studies! The work at length produced, received all the admiration due to so great an enterprise; and even foreigners, as the work was composed in the universal language of learning, could sympathise with Britons, when they contemplated the stupendous labour. Camden was honoured by the titles (for the very names of illustrious genius become such), of the Varro, the Strabo, and the Pausanias of Britain.

  William Camden, now scarcely thought of except as an antiquary, was in truth a trained and ripe scholar, and an intelligent student of history. England has more reason to be proud of him than of many whose names are more familiar to our ears. The man who won the friendship of the president De Thou, and corresponded on equal terms with that eminent historian, as also with Casaubon and Lipsius abroad, and Usher and Spelman at home, must have possessed solid and extraordinary merits…. In 1604 he published his “Reliquiæ Britannicæ,” a treatise on the early inhabitants of Britain. In this work, undeterred by the sham array of authorities which had imposed upon Holinshed, he “blew away sixty British kings with one blast.” Burleigh, the great statesman of the reign of Elizabeth, the Cavour of the sixteenth century, singled out Camden as the fittest man in all England to write the history of the first thirty years of the Queen’s reign, and intrusted to him, for that purpose, a large mass of state papers. Eighteen years elapsed before Camden discharged the trust. At last, in 1615, his “History, or Annals of England during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth” made its appearance…. His history must be taken as a vindication, but in a more moderate tone than was then usual, of the Protestant policy of England since the accession of Elizabeth. Its value would be greater than it is, but for his almost uniform neglect to quote his authorities for the statements he makes. This fact, coupled to the discovery, in our own times, of many new and independent sources of information, to him unknown, has caused his labours to be much disregarded.

  Camden, who has been described as the Strabo of England, is charged by Birch with suppressing and colouring the events of Elizabeth’s reign; but Camden’s high reputation as a historian requires no vindication against the false statements of the Puritan, Thomas Birch. If Camden is not always correct, he certainly has not made any intentional misrepresentation of facts.

  Camden appears to have been of a peculiarly happy temperament. His gentleness of disposition made and kept him many friends. He was active in body, of middle height, of a pleasant countenance, and as his portraits, taken when he was well advanced in life, present him, of a ruddy complexion. He was careless of ordinary personal distinction, and refused knighthood. “I never made suit to any man,” he writes in his letter to Ussher in 1618 (ep. 195), “no, not to his majesty, but for a matter of course, incident to my place; neither, God be praised, I needed, having gathered a contented sufficiency by my long labours in the school.” And again, his own words, “My life and my writings apologise for me” (ep. 194), might have been adopted as his motto. Among his intimate friends Smith enumerates Sir Robert Cotton, Bishop Godwin, Matthew Sutcliffe, Sir Henry Savile, Sir Henry Wotton, Archbishop Ussher, Sir Henry Bourghchier, Sir Henry Spelman, and John Selden. In addition, his printed correspondence connects him with Thomas Savile, who died early (1592), Degory Wheare, John Johnstone of St. Andrews, Sir William Beecher the diplomatist, and many other Englishmen; and Ortelius, James Gruter, the librarian of the Elector Palatine, the historian and statesman, Jaques de Thou, Casaubon, Peter Sweerts, Peiresc, Jean Hotman, once Leicester’s secretary, and others.

  Yet although Camden is one of the glories of Oxford, of Westminster, and of all England, it does not appear that he can very safely be claimed as one of the glories of English prose. In a work like the present, which deals rather with the development of English prose style than with anything else, it may indeed be doubtful whether an Englishman who wrote splendidly, but wrote almost exclusively in Latin, has any claim to appear at all. If we give him a small niche here, it is mainly complimentary, and to avoid the apparent solecism of entirely omitting him…. Very little can be conjectured from the fragments of Camden as to the manner in which he would have used the English language if he had chosen to make it the habitual instrument for his thought.