A perambulation of Kent: conteining the description, hystorie, and customes of that shire / Written in the yeere 1570, by William Lambarde, of Lincolnes inne, gent: first published in the year 1576, and now increased and altered from the author's owne last copie.

  • William Lambarde
Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A perambulation of Kent: conteining the description, hystorie, and customes of that shire / Written in the yeere 1570, by William Lambarde, of Lincolnes inne, gent: first published in the year 1576, and now increased and altered from the author's owne last copie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    lished afterwards, with Bede’s “ Ecclesiastical History,” in 1644, by Abraham Wheelock, who commends highly the elegance of Lambarde’s interpretation. In 1570 he appears to have resided at Westcombe, near Greenwich, of the manor of which he was possessed, and devoted agreat share of his labours to the service of the county of Kent, but without giving up his profession of the law, or his connection with Lincoln’s-inn, of which society he was admitted a bencher in 1578. He had finished his “‘ Peram- bulation of Kent” in 1570, which after being inspected by archbishop Parker, and the lord treasurer Burleigh, was published inti576. From a letter of his to his friend Thomas Wotton, esq. it appears that his design and researches extended much farther, and that he had already collected materials for a general account of Great Britain, of which this was but the specimen, and that he was prevented from proceeding in his plan by discovering that Camden was engaged in one similar. His materials, however, were pub- lished from the original MS. in 1730, 4to, under the title of ‘« Dictionarium Anglie, Topographicum et Historicum :” to which was prefixed a very fine likeness of him, engraved by Vertue, from which the portrait is copied which is attached to this edition of tlhe Perambulation. Camden, in praising his <¢ Perambulation,” and acknowledging his obligations to it, calls the author “ eminent for learning and piety ;” by the latter quality alluding probably to his founding an hospital for the poor at East-Greenwich, in Kent, said to have been the first founded by a protestant. The queen (Elizabeth) granted her letters patent for the foundation of this hospital in 1574 ;
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