Memorials of the counties of England

Memorials of old Derbyshire

It has been a great pleasure to accept the request of the General Editor of this Memorial Series to edit a volume on my native county of Derby. In proportion to its size and population, more has been written and printed on Derbyshire than on any other English county. But in these days, when, year by year, the national stores of information in Chancery Lane are becoming better arranged and more fully calendared, when there is more generous access to muniments in private possession, and when the spirit of critical archology is becoming more and more systematised, there is no sign whatever that the history of the county is in any way near exhaustion. Nor will that be the case even when the four great volumes of the Victoria County History are completed. So abundant are the historical records of Derbyshire, and so rich are the archological remains, that there would be no difficulty, I think, in the speedy production of a companion volume to this of equal interest and of as much originality, should the General Editor and the publishers desire such a sequel. I say this as an apology for omissions of which I am fully conscious; and, as it is, the publishers have kindly allowed the present[viii] pages to exceed in number those of any other volume of the series. There is one sad subject in connection with the production of this workI allude to the death of that distinguished antiquary, the late Earl of Liverpool. Many years ago, in the seventies of last century, it was owing to his suggestion and friendly encouragement that I first undertook and persevered in the attempt to write on all the old churches of Derbyshire; and when he was known as Mr. Cecil Foljambe, we often visited together such churches as Tideswell, Bakewell, and Chesterfield. Immediately the idea of this volume had been formed, I wrote to Lord Liverpool, and at once received his cordial assent to prepare an article on the Foljambe monuments of the county. In the course of his letter he wrote:I accept your proposal all the more willingly as I have recently unearthed certain strong confirmatory evidence as to the two Tideswell effigies, claimed of late years to belong to the De Bower family, and rashly lettered, being in reality Foljambes (see p. 103). We exchanged several letters on the subject, then his health began to fail, and he begged me to undertake the work, promising to revise it carefully and to give additional matter; but, alas! death intervened before even this could be accomplished. All the articles between these covers have been specially written, and for the most part specially illustrated for the book, with one exception, namely, the delightfully vivid chapter by Sir George R. Sitwell, on the country life of a Derbyshire squire of the seventeenth[ix] century. To almost all the readers of the book, this essay will also be entirely novel. It is reproduced, in a somewhat abbreviated form, by the writers kind and ready permission, from the introductory chapter to Sir George Sitwells privately issued Letters of the Sitwells and Sacheverells, of which only twenty-five copies were printed. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 69017
Author: Cox, J. Charles (John Charles)
Release Date: Sep 20, 2022
Format: eBook
Language: English
Publication Date: 1907
Publisher Country: United Kingdom

Contributors

Editor: Cox, J. Charles (John Charles), 1843-1919