[Sidenote: Sir William Dugdale (1605-1686).]
Next to Wood, the most important antiquary of the age was Sir William Dugdale, of little account as author, but whom his industry and the assistance he was successful in enlisting from various quarters, enabled to achieve several works, any one of which would have sufficed to gain him immortal renown as an antiquarian. These were his monumental _Monasticon Anglicanum_ (1655-1673), a gigantic work, but founded in great part upon the collections of Roger Dodsworth; his _Antiquities of Warwickshire_ (1656), an immense improvement upon everything that had previously been effected in the department of county history, and the model of all that has been accomplished since; his _History of St. Paul's Cathedral_ (1658), and his _Baronage of England_ (1675-1676). He was also the author of several other works. So eminent a genealogist was naturally a Cavalier, and, when he lost his appointment as Chester herald during the Civil Wars, is said to have made his living by the deaths of persons of quality, whose funerals he conducted _secundum artem_. Private patrons and employers helped him on until the Restoration, when, as successively Norroy and Garter King-at-Arms, he attained great prosperity, making numerous visitations, and approving himself a terror to heraldic pretenders. He died at eighty, of a fever contracted 'by attendance too much on his worldly concerns.' His son-in-law, Elias Ashmole, was an eminent antiquary of a different order, although his principal work, _Institution, Laws, and Ceremonies of the Order of the Garter_, might well have proceeded from Dugdale's pen. His turn, however, was rather for the collection of curiosities, 'the greatest virtuoso and curioso that ever was known or read of in England before his time.' In this capacity he collected the Ashmolean Museum, which has preserved his name more effectually than anything he wrote or was capable of writing. He was also an astrologer, the friend of Lilly and Booker, and in his younger days an alchemist. This latter pursuit was so far serviceable, that it led him to preserve by printing twenty-nine rare old alchemical books. After his history of the order of the Garter, his principal work is his diary, which briefly but amusingly records the vicissitudes of his generally prosperous life; his gain of estate and loss of quiet by his second marriage; his acquaintance with old Mr. Backhouse, the Rosicrucian, 'who told me, in syllables, the true matter of the philosopher's stone;' his prosperity under Charles II. as Windsor herald and holder of several other offices; his third marriage, with the daughter of his friend Dugdale; above all, his acquisition of the Tradescant antiquities, which formed the nucleus of the Ashmolean Museum. This and his collection of manuscripts were bequeathed to the University of Oxford; the catalogue of the latter forms a goodly volume.