Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/144

  successor in the abbacy, Thomas Ramridge, no less than from the simple entries in Wallingford's own register, it is clear that he was efficient and thoroughgoing, an excellent administrator, and a diligent defender of his abbey. He voluntarily paid 1,830l. of debts left by his predecessor. He built a noble altar-screen, long considered the finest piece of architecture in the abbey. Upon this he spent eleven hundred marks, and another thousand marks in finishing the chapter-house. He built also, at the cost of 100l., a small chantry near the altar on the south side, in which he built his tomb, with his effigy in marble. His tomb bears the inscription: Gulielmus quartus, opus hoc laudabile cuius Extitit, hic pausat: Christus sibi præmia reddat. (, Funerall Mon. p. 556). Two fine windows, a precious mitre, and two rich pastoral staves were other gifts the abbey owed to his munificence. When he died in or about 1488 he left the abbey entirely freed from debt.

The main interest of Wallingford's abbacy lies in the fact that the art of printing, brought into England a few years before by Caxton, was then introduced into the town of St. Albans. The whole subject of the relation of the St. Albans press to other presses is obscure, and even the name of the St. Albans printer and his connection with the abbot unknown (, Typogr. Antiq. ed. Dibdin, vol. i. p. civ). All that is certain is that between 1480 and 1486 this unknown printer issued eight works, the first six in Latin, the last two in English. The most important and last of these was the famous ‘Boke of St. Albans’ [see ]. All that is clearly known of the St. Albans printer is that in Wynkyn de Worde's reprint of ‘St. Albans Chronicle’ the colophon states: ‘Here endith this present chronicle, compiled in a book and also emprinted by one sometime schoolmaster of St. Alban.’ There is no clear proof of any closer relation between Wallingford and the ‘schoolmaster of St. Alban’ than between John Esteney, abbot of Westminster, and William Caxton, who worked under the shadow of Westminster Abbey. Yet the probabilities of close connection in a little place like St. Albans between the abbot, who was keenly interested in education, and the ‘schoolmaster,’ who was furthering education by the printing of books, are in themselves great, and are confirmed by the fact that two of the eight books printed between 1480 and 1486 bear the arms of the town of St. Albans (see for the discussion of the subject Mr. W. Blades's introduction to his Facsimile Reprint of the Boke of St. Albans, London, 1881, pp. 17–18, and Early Printed Books, p. 140. Mr. Blades is of opinion that no connection between the schoolmaster and the abbey can be established).

[Nearly all that is known of Wallingford is to be found in his Register, which, with that of his predecessors, Whethamstede and Albon, is printed in Mr. Riley's Registra Johannis Whethamstede, Willelmi Albon et Willelmi Walingforde, in the Rolls Series; Wallingford's Register is printed in ii. 140–290.]

 WALLINGTON, NEHEMIAH (1598–1658), puritan, born on 12 May 1598, was the tenth child of John Wallington (d. 1641), a turner of St. Leonard's, Eastcheap, by his wife Elizabeth (d. 1603), daughter of Anthony Hall (d. 1597), a citizen and skinner of London.

A little before 1620 Nehemiah entered into business on his own account as a turner, and took a house in Little Eastcheap, between Pudding Lane and Fish-street Hill. In this abode he passed the remainder of an uneventful life. His puritan sympathies caused him occasional anxiety. In 1639 he and his brother John were summoned before the court of Star-chamber on the charge of possessing prohibited books. He acknowledged that he had possessed Prynne's 'Divine Tragedie,' Matthew White's 'Newes from Ipswich,' and Henry Burton's 'Apology of an Appeale,' but pleaded that he no longer owned them. For this misdemeanour he was kept under surveillance by the court for about two years, but suffered no further penalty.

Wallington has been preserved from oblivion by three singular compilations of contemporary events. In 1630 he commenced his 'Historical Notes and Meditations, 1583-1649,' a quarto manuscript volume, now in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 21935). It consists of classified extracts from contemporary journals and pamphlets, which he enlarged with hearsay knowledge and enriched with pious reflections. The work is chiefly occupied with political affairs. The latest event recorded is the execution of Charles I. In December 1630 he commenced a record of his private affairs, under the title 'Wallington's Journals,' in ' a quarto volume, preserved in the Guildhall Library. It was formerly in the possession of William Upcott [q. v.], who indexed its contents. In 1632 he commenced a third quarto, now in the British Museum (Sloane MS. 1157), in which be recorded numerous strange portents which had occurred in various