A Mid-century Miscellany: Thomas Browne, William Burton, and Thomas Fuller

Abstract

Abstract In the 1650s, many royalist gentlemen up and down the country were inclined to take their minds off contemporary discomfiture by thinking about the remote past. Perhaps exclusion from public life gave them more time for their researches, for this was a period that saw the publication of a good deal of antiquarian writing. William Dugdale dominated the decade, and his books advanced knowledge of the past on many fronts: monastic history, architectural history, and regional history were transformed by his voluminous and methodical endeavours. Dugdale ‘s interest in ecclesiastical history was matched at a more popular level by Thomas Fuller ‘s Church History of Britain, which came out in 1655, the same year as the Monasticon. The posthumous publication of Inigo Jones ‘s speculations about Stonehenge in 165 5 brought Ancient Britain and the Romans back into prominence after two decades of relative neglect. The configuration of Roman Britain was the subject of William Burton ‘s Commentary on the Antonine Itinerary (1658), in which he attempted to locate the towns and camps of the third century. Thomas Browne composed his meditations on what he took to be Roman urns, and published them in 1658.