William Camden (1551-1623).
[564]Mr. William Camden, Clarencieux—vide Fuller's Holy State where is something of his life and birth, etc.: vide England's Worthies: quaere at the Heralds' Office when he was made Clarencieux.
Mr. Edward Bagshawe (who had been second schoole-master of Westminster schoole) haz told me that Mr. Camden had first his place and his lodgeings (which is the gate-house by the Queen's Scholars' chamber in Deanes-yard), and was after made the head schoole-master of that schoole, where he writt and taught Institutio Græcae Grammatices Compendiaria: in usum Regiae Scholae Westmonasteriensis, which is now the common Greeke grammar of England, but his name is not sett to it. Before, they learned the prolix Greeke Grammar of Cleonard.
He writt his Britannia first in a large 8º.
Annales reg. Elizabethae.
There is a little booke in 16mo. of his printed, viz.: A Collection of all the Inscriptions then on the Tombes in Westminster Abbey.
'Tis reported, that he had bad eies[565] (I guesse lippitude) which was a great inconvenience to an antiquary.
Mr. Nicholas Mercator has Stadius's Ephemerides, which had been one of Mr. Camden's; his name is there (I knowe his hand) and there are some notes by which I find he was astrologically given.