Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/234

 398, 3rd ser. xi. 314; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), ii. 298, iii. 36, Fasti. ii. 12.]  BLOMEFIELD, FRANCIS (1705–1752), topographer of Norfolk, who was born at Fersfield, Norfolk, on 23 July 1705, was the son of Henry Blomefield of the same place, a gentleman of independent means, by his wife Alice, the daughter and heiress of John Batch, of Lynn. He was the fifth in descent from Henry Blomefield, of Fersfield, and each of his four ancestors having married an heiress or coheiress, he was the possessor of ample means with which to gratify his literary tastes. When only fifteen he began collecting material for his future work, and from 1720 to 1733 he records that he spent 175l. 16s. in journeying about making church notes and in buying some few manuscripts. He was educated at Diss and Thetford schools, and when under nineteen proceeded to the Norfolk college of Gonville and Caius at Cambridge, on All Fools' Day 1724. While at Cambridge he is said to have published a thin quarto ‘Collectanea Cantabrigiensia;’ but the only copy we have seen purports to have been printed at Norwich in 1750. He took his B.A. degree in 1727, and was ordained deacon on 17 March in the same year, the next year being licensed preacher by Dr. Thomas Tanner, the well-known antiquary and author of the ‘Notitia.’ In July 1729 he was ordained priest, and was immediately instituted rector of Hargham. Two months later he was presented to his father's family living of Fersfield, which he held, with the rectory of Hargham, till January 1730. He then resigned Hargham, which he only held as the temporary predecessor of the Rev. John Hare, the brother of the patron.

On 27 May 1732 his father died, and on 1 Sept. he married Mary, daughter of the Rev. Laurence Womack, rector of Caistor by Yarmouth, and cousin and heir of the Bishop of St. David's, one of a family who had long been parsons of Blomefield's native place. By her he had three daughters, of whom two survived him. In October 1733 he began to put forward proposals for his history of Norfolk, which were very well received; Tanner, who had just been made bishop of St. Asaph, especially encouraging him. In the spring of 1735 he was recovering from a violent fever, and had the good fortune to obtain access to the evidence room of the late Earl of Yarmouth, the head of the Paston family, at Oxnead, and lived among the parchments for a fortnight. To Blomefield is due the credit of being the discoverer in that interval of the well-known ‘Paston Letters,’ which he describes as ‘innumerable letters of good consequence in history.’ It is a significant fact that these same Paston letters afterwards came into the hands of ‘honest (?) Tom Martin;’ and as we know that this unscrupulous topographer possessed himself of many of Blomefield's manuscripts after his death, it may be that the Paston letters were among them, and that in this instance Martin was only ‘from the robber rending his prey.’

By the early part of 1736 Blomefield had come to the conclusion that he was ready to begin his great work, and that he would print it in his own house. He bought a press and some type—apparently old and of different and insufficient founts, for his indexes are printed in all sorts of type, one after another—and hired a workman at 40l. a year. His troubles with his printers and engravers were endless, and to them was added the temporary loss of the whole of his collection for Diss Hundred, which miscarried when sent to Tanner for approval and correction. Then a fire is said to have consumed his press and printing office, and all the copies of his first volume. However, he gradually brought out number after number, and the work was so well received that he actually had to reprint his first part twice. His first folio volume was completed at Christmas 1739, just after he had received the gift of the rectory of Brockdish. The accounts of Thetford, which formed part of his first volume, and of Norwich, which took up the whole of the second volume, were separately published in 4to and folio respectively. ‘Norwich’ (913 pp. fol.) was advertised by him separately at 1s. a number of eight sheets, and its publication extended over more than four years, the date of its completion being 31 May 1745. He apparently took up his abode permanently at Norwich while his Norwich volume was in the press. Directly he began to advertise his Norwich volume, Thomas Kirkpatrick, the brother of the well-known John Kirkpatrick, issued a counter-advertisement in the local papers, complaining that Blomefield had stated that whatever occurred in John Kirkpatrick's original collections would be incorporated in the new work, and alleging that all such collections were in his own custody, and that neither Blomefield nor any one else had ever copied a line of them. To this Blomefield replied in a very temperate advertisement, that he would show any one (who would call on him at Fersfield) Tanner's, Le Neve's, and Kirkpatrick's collections. He added that Kirkpatrick always collected notes on loose papers, and that, when he had transcribed these papers into