Francis Blomefield

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"Blomefield" redirects here. For the surname, see Blomefield (surname).

Blomefield depicted in the frontispiece to volume 1 of the quarto edition of An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk (1805)

Francis Blomefield (23 July 1705 – 16 January 1752) was an English antiquarian, who published a county history of Norfolk. During his lifetime, he compiled and published detailed accounts of the city of Norwich, the borough of Thetford and the southern hundreds of the county, but died before the work could be completed.

Life and career[]

Francis Blomefield was born in the village of Fersfield in the south of the English county of Norfolk on 23 July 1705.[1] The eldest son of Henry Blomefield (described by the Norfolk historian Walter Rye as "a gentleman of independent means"), and his wife Alice, the daughter and heiress of John Batch, of Lynn.[2] He was educated at the grammar schools at Diss and Thetford.[2] In April 1724 he was admitted to Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1727 and a Master of Arts degree in 1728.[2][3] On leaving university in 1727, he was ordained a priest, appointed Rector of the Norfolk parish of Hargham in 1729, and shortly afterwards Rector of Fersfield, his father's family benefice in the county.[1] On 1 September 1732, he married Mary Womack, the daughter of a former rector of Fersfield. They had three daughters, two of whom survived into adulthood.[2]

As a boy of 15, Blomefield began recording monumental inscriptions from churches he visited in Norfolk, Suffolk and later Cambridgeshire.[2] Whilst at college, he also kept genealogical and heraldic notes relating to local families. Soon after leaving university, he was collecting materials for an account of the antiquities of Cambridgeshire, but in 1732, this project was deferred when he was given access to the antiquary Peter Le Neve's collection of materials for the history of Norfolk by Le Neve's executor "Honest Tom" Martin.

In July 1733, Blomefield published his proposals for publishing An Essay towards a Topographical History of Norfolk. While collecting information for his history, he discovered some of the Paston Letters.[1] By 1736, he was ready to begin putting the results of his researches into type,[1] assisted by his friend Charles Parkin, Rector of Oxborough.[citation needed] At the end of 1739, the first volume of Blomefield’s History of Norfolk was completed; it was printed using his press at Fersfield, acquired specially for the purpose.[1] The second volume, consisting of a detailed history of Norwich, was begun in 1741 and completed by 1745.[1] The production of this volume took more than four years, and Blomefield seems to have lived in the city while the volume was being printed.[2]

In 1751, Blomefield published Collectanea Cantabrigiensia, his Cambridgeshire notes. A fire is said to have destroyed the press and printing room, along with all the copies of his first volume, forcing Blomefield to start his work again.[2]

He encountered many problems with his printers and engravers, and temporarily lost his notes for the volume about Diss Hundred when they were sent away for correction.[2] He was two-thirds through his third volume of the history of Norfolk and had covered about 40 per cent of the county, when he contracted smallpox on a visit to London, and died in Fersfield in January 1752.[1]

In 1871, Blomefield's property – worth more than £7000 – was inherited by a distant cousin, clergyman and naturalist Leonard Jenyns. It came with 140 acres (57 hectares) near the Norfolk town of Diss. As a condition of the inheritance, Jenyns had to change his name to Blomefield.[citation needed]

Rye related that although no portrait of him was known to exist, Blomefield closely resembled the English astronomer John Flamsteed—whose portrait was used to depict Blomefield on the frontispiece of a volume of The History of Norfolk.[2]

Completion of the History of Norfolk[]

The history of the remaining areas of Norfolk was completed by Blomefield's friend, the Reverend Charles Parkin, between 1753 and 1765, albeit not in Blomefield's detailed and accurate manner. The remainder of volume 3 and two further volumes were published in King's Lynn between 1769 and 1775. The entire work was subsequently reprinted in 11 quarto volumes by the London publisher William Miller in London between 1805 and 1810.[4]

According to Rye, Parkin died before the volumes were sent to be published, and they had to be completed by "some bookseller's hack" in King's Lynn.[2]

Assessment[]

Blomefield's History of Norfolk was both detailed and largely reliable and comparable with the best county histories of the period. There is little doubt that in compiling his book Blomefield had frequent recourse to the existing historical collections of the antiquary Peter Le Neve, John Kirkpatrick of Norwich and the Bishop of St Asaph, Thomas Tanner, his own work being to some extent one of expansion and addition, despite some extensive collections of his own.[1]

According to Rye, writing for the Dictionary of National Biography in 1886, Blomefield's volumes are "an enduring monument of hard disinterested work, for it was wholly a labour of love, and as far as the facts chronicled it is usually very trustworthy." However, Rye also noted that Blomefield believed — and published — the fabricated accounts in a series of family histories, and that the work contained numerous errors, lacked details and failed to provide accurate etymological definitions.[2]

David Stoker, writing for the revised Oxford Dictionary of National Biography in 2004, felt that Rye had treated Blomefield's reputation "shabbily", overemphasising both his personal failings and the inevitable errors and misinterpretations in his history. Stoker concludes that,

... given the period and circumstances in which [Blomefield] was at work, and the immensity of his task, his was a great achievement. His weakness was in underestimating what he had taken on. There has as yet been no other history of Norfolk on a comparable scale, and it remains the standard work.[5]

Hassell Smith and Roger Virgoe in 1994 considered Blomefield's History "one of the great county histories and... still the only major history of Norfolk.... [T]he volumes on Norwich still remain the fullest account of the development of the institutions and antiquities, secular and ecclesiastical, of the city."[6]

Notes[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h Chisholm 1911.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i j k Rye 1886, p. 226–228.
  3. ^ "Blomefield, Francis (BLMT724F)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  4. ^ Stoker 2019, pp. 224–230.
  5. ^ Stoker 2004.
  6. ^ Smith & Virgoe 1994, pp. 282–283.

Sources[]

  • Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Blomefield, Francis". Encyclopædia Britannica. 4 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 76.
  • Rye, Walter (1886). "Blomefield, Francis". Dictionary of National Biography. 5. pp. 226–228.
  • Smith, Hassell; Virgoe, Roger (1994). "Norfolk". In Currie, C. R. J.; Lewis, C. P. (eds.). English County Histories: a guide. Stroud: Alan Sutton. pp. 280–90. ISBN 0-7509-0289-2.
  • Stoker, David (2004). "Blomefield, Francis (1705–1752)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/2663. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  • Stoker, David (2019). "Reprinting Blomefield's 'History of Norfolk'". Norfolk Archaeology. 48: 224–230.

External links to works[]

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