Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/220

 9 Clyde Street, Redcliffe Gardens, S.W., on 3 Aug. 1889. He was buried on the 8th in Kensal Green cemetery.

Selby's career at the Record office was distinguished by unfailing courtesy and minute knowledge of the records under his charge. From 1884 to April 1889 he edited the ‘Genealogist,’ and he was a frequent contributor on literary subjects to the ‘Athenæum,’ ‘Academy,’ ‘Antiquary,’ ‘Antiquarian Magazine,’ and other periodicals. His papers on ‘The Robbery of Chaucer at Hatcham,’ and ‘Chaucer as Forrester of North Petherton, in the County of Somerset,’ were published as Nos. 1 and 3 in the ‘Life-Records of Chaucer,’ which Selby edited for the Chaucer Society, 1875 et seqq. He also compiled ‘The Jubilee Date Book,’ 1887, and edited At the time of his death he was preparing a new edition of ‘The Red Book of the Exchequer,’ which was soon completed by Mr. Hubert Hall, an edition of Queen Elizabeth's manuscript translation of ‘Boethius de Consolatione Philosophiæ,’ and a new index to the ‘Inquisitiones post mortem.’
 * 1) ‘Bond's Book of Dates,’ 1875.
 * 2) ‘Lancashire and Cheshire Records,’ 2 pts. 1882–3.
 * 3) ‘Norfolk Records,’ 1886.



SELDEN, JOHN (1584–1654), jurist, was born on 16 Dec. 1584 at Salvington in the parish of West Tarring, Sussex, and was baptised there on 30 Dec. 1584. His father, John Selden, is described by Selden himself as 'ex familia quæ tunc ibi viguit honesta;' by Aubrey as 'an yeomanly man of about 40l. per annum,' and in the baptismal register of his son as 'the minstrell,' an office which appears from the parish accounts to have involved attendance at the church ales. Selden's mother was Margaret, only daughter of Thomas Baker of Rushington, of a knightly family in Kent. She is said to have been won by the musical talents of her husband, and to have brought him a pretty good estate. The house in which Selden was born is still standing, and has on the door a Latin inscription, perhaps of his composition. After being educated at Chichester free school under [q. v.], he was sent to Hart Hall, Oxford, and matriculated on 24 Oct. 1600; he was committed to the tuition of Anthony Barker, but left without graduating. In 1602 he was entered at Clifford Inn, and in May 1604 was admitted to the Inner Temple, and called to the bar on 14 June 1612.

Selden practised the law in the Temple, occupying chambers at the top of Paper Buildings looking towards the garden. It is probable that he never had any large or general business in the courts, though he appeared with distinction in a few great cases involving special learning; it is probable also that he gave opinions and practised as a conveyancer. In 1624 Selden was fined and disabled from holding any office in his inn for refusing to act as reader; in 1632 he was relieved from disability, and in 1633 elected a bencher. From an early period he acted as steward to, ninth earl of Kent [q. v.], with whom his relations were always close; but study was always his main occupation.

Selden's studies were, even in his early days in London, not confined to the law. As early as 1605 he had made the acquaintance of Ben Jonson, Camden, and probably of Sir [q. v.] the antiquary, who soon offered Selden the hospitality of his house in Palace Yard, and made him free of his invaluable library. Probably no event was so important in determining the course of Selden's studies. Selden and Camden were in 1605 among the guests entertained by Jonson on his release from prison, to which he and Chapman had been committed for insulting Scotsmen in their 'Eastward Hoe.' When Jonson's 'Volpone' was published in 1607, Selden contributed a prefatory 'carmen protrepticon' (cf., Conversations with Drummond, Shaksp. Soc. pp. 10, 20, 36). In 1607, too, he completed a work entitled Analecton Anglo-Britannicon, which is an attempt to give a summary of the history of the inhabitants of this island from the earliest times down to the Norman invasion. The work, which first saw the light in 1615 at Frankfurt in an incorrect and mutilated form, was dedicated to Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. In 1610 he published 'Jani Anglorum Facies altera,' in which he discussed with great learning, but in a somewhat indigested form, the traces of the laws and customs of the Britons, the Saxons, and the Norsemen. A lack of decision in drawing the line between the successive inhabitants of this island injures the work, which was dedicated to Robert, earl of Salisbury, the lord high treasurer. In the same year (1610) appeared 'England's Epinomis,' which is to some extent an English version of the 'Janus;' but the 'Janus' contains passages not in the 'Epinomis,' while on the other hand the latter tract contains a discussion with regard to the laws of Richard I and John not to be found in the Latin. In this same year (1610) appeared the tract entitled 'The Duello or Single Combat: from Anti-