Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/63

 in the Irish division of his labours, the work was of immense utility. John Hill Burton, in his ‘Reign of Queen Anne,’ ii. 318–20, writes of the ‘Historical Libraries’ as ‘affording the stranger a guide to the riches of the chronicle literature of the British empire,’ and, while praising its author as the possessor of ‘an intellect of signal acuteness,’ pleads that it is no disparagement of the volumes that they are now superseded by the more detailed undertaking of Sir T. D. Hardy. Nicolson showed his zeal for the preservation of official documents by building rooms near the palace gardens at Derry for the preservation of the diocesan records.

Nicolson wrote many sermons and antiquarian papers. He contributed to Ray's ‘Collection of English Words,’ 2nd edit. 1691, pp. 139–52, a ‘Glossarium Northanhymbricum.’ It was a part only of his contributions, which did not reach Ray until the book had been sent to the press; but a few other words by him were inserted in the preface, pp. iv–vii. Many additions to the account of Northumberland, as well as observations on the rest of the counties in the province of York, were supplied by him to Gibson's edition of Camden's ‘Britannia’ (1695) and in that editor's second edition (1722) of the ‘Britannia’ Nicolson improved the descriptions of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland. In the first of these editions the announcement was made that Nicolson had a volume of antiquities on the north of England ready for the press, and its contents were described at length in the subsequent list of works on English topography; but in 1722 the manuscripts were stated to be in the library of the Carlisle chapter. It was also said that he had drawn up a ‘Natural History of Cumberland.’

In 1705, and again in 1747, there came out ‘Leges Marchiarum, or Border-Laws, containing several Original Articles and Treaties,’ which had been collected by Nicolson. The first essay, appended to John Chamberlayne's ‘Oratio Dominica in diversas omnium fere gentium linguas versa’ (1715), was dated by him from Rose [castle] 22 Dec. 1713, and related to the languages of the entire world. A dissertation by him, ‘De Jure Feudali veterum Saxonum,’ was prefixed to the ‘Leges Anglo-Saxonicæ, Ecclesiasticæ et Civiles’ of David Wilkins; and the Rev. Mackenzie E. C. Walcott inserted in the ‘Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature,’ vol. ix. new ser., a ‘Glossary of Words in the Cumbrian Dialect,’ which was an abridgment of Nicolson's ‘Glossarium Brigantinum,’ 1677, now among the manuscripts in Carlisle chapter library. The second epistle, subjoined to Edward Lhuyd's ‘Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographica’ (1699, pp. 101–5, and 1760, pp. 102–6), was addressed by him to Nicolson. The preface to Hickes's ‘Thesaurus’ (1705) bears witness to his skill in grappling with the difficulties which Hickes had submitted to him. His treatise ‘on the medals and coins of Scotland’ is summarised in the ‘Memoires de Trévoux,’ 1710, pp. 1755–64. White Kennet addressed to him in 1713 ‘a Letter … concerning one of his predecessors, Bishop Merks;’ and the ‘Enquiry into the Ancient and Present State of the County Palatine of Durham’ (1729) was, as regards the first part, drawn up by John Spearman in 1697 at his solicitation.

Two volumes of letters to and from Nicolson were edited by John Nichols in 1809, and his ‘Miscellany Accounts of the Diocese of Carlisle, with the Terriers delivered at his Primary Visitation,’ were edited by Mr. R. S. Ferguson in 1877 for the Cumberland and Westmoreland Antiquarian Society. Thoresby stayed at Salkeld in September 1694, when he inspected Nicolson's curiosities and manuscripts, and Nicolson returned the visit in November 1701. Many communications which passed between them are printed in Thoresby's ‘Correspondence,’ i. 116 et seq. Twenty-one letters from him, mainly on the rebellion of 1715, are included in Sir Henry Ellis's collection of ‘Original Letters,’ 1st ser. iii. 357–396; and some of them are printed at greater length in the ‘Miscellany of the Scottish Historical Society’ (1893), pp. 523–36. Copies of 185 letters to Wake are among the Forster MSS. at the South Kensington Museum. A letter from him is in ‘Hearne's Collections’ (ed. Doble), i. 209; another is in ‘Letters from the Bodleian’ (1813), i. 115–16; and communications from Archbishop Sharp to him on the religious societies of the day are in Thomas Sharp's ‘Life of the Archbishop,’ i. 182–9. Many more letters of Nicolson are in manuscript, especially in the ‘Rydal Papers’ of S. H. Le Fleming (Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. App. pt. vii. p. 163, &c.), and among the ‘Lonsdale Papers’ (ib. 13th Rep. App. pt. vii. pp. 248–9).

Nicolson's collections relative to the diocese of Carlisle, comprised in four folio volumes, and the Machell manuscripts, which were left to him as literary executor, and were arranged by him in six volumes of folio size, are in the cathedral library at Carlisle (ib. 2nd Rep. App. pp. 124–5). Many other papers by him on the northern counties formerly belonged to his relation, Joseph Nicolson ( and, Westmoreland and Cumberland, vol. i. pp. i–iii). Some manuscript volumes of his diary are in the posses-