BLOMEFIELD'S HISTORY OF NORFOLK
The
Reverend Francis Blomefield's An essay towards a topographical
history of the county of Norfolk had one of the most prolonged and complex publishing
histories of any work produced in the eighteenth century, but it is also one for
which there is a great deal of surviving evidence relating to the circumstances
of its production.' The five folio volumes were printed in parts over a forty
year period, in three different places in Norfolk, with the engraved
illustrations printed also in London. They now survive with combinations of ten
different title pages, and parts of the same typesetting also appear in a
number of different guises as separately published works. The purpose of this
paper therefore is to clarify the two ESTC entries for the work (ESTC 025740 and
025742) and explain their relationship to five other eighteenth-century
publications.
The
original idea for a comprehensive topographical history of Norfolk lay with
Peter Le Neve, Norroy King of Arms, who devoted the greater part of his adult
life to collecting the necessary source materials, and in particular to
abstracting Norfolk references in the Public Records and in the manuscripts of
the College of Arms. At his death in 1729, at the age of sixty-eight, Le Neve
had written almost nothing, but had built up the `the greatest fund of
antiquities for his native county that ever was collected'. It was this
collection, loaned to Francis Blomefield by Thomas Martin, one of Le Neve's
executors, that formed the basis of the history.
Blomefield's
printed proposals for the work were issued in July 1733 and envisaged two quarto
volumes, published in monthly parts, over a two year period beginning March 1734
(ESTC 078674). Each part was to consist of eight sheets and cost one shilling.
These proposals were however issued before the author had gained any costings
for the printing and publication of his work, and indeed before he had even
compiled anything but a tiny fraction of his text. It was not until the date
scheduled for the start of publication that Blomefield even requested from
London, and failed to receive, satisfactory estimates for the cost of
production. Soon afterwards he fell seriously ill and so all thought of finding
a publisher was deferred for more than a year.
When
next Blomefield mentions the project in a letter dated July 1735, he was on the
point of making the momentous decision to set up his own printing office in a
barn at his rectory in the south Norfolk village of Fersfield, employ his own
journeyman printer, and arrange for the publication and distribution of his work
himself.4 The planned work had also grown considerably in scale
partly as a result of replies to a printed questionnaire, which had been
circulated to incumbents throughout the country (ESTC 073307).6 The
author had also now decided to change the format from quarto to folio, so that
it might do justice to the engraved plates that he hoped would be financed by
some of his wealthier subscribers.
After
many tribulations during the winter of 1735/6, Blomefield and his first printer
Nicholas Hussey6 eventually succeeded in equipping the press and
arranging for paper supplies. They began printing the first part of the history
for distribution to subscribers in March 1736. But inevitably the progress of
the work was held up on a number of occasions and so the twenty-eight parts of
the first volume were printed at Fersfield over a period of forty-five months up
to December 1739.
One
early reason for the delay was the need to reprint the first part on two
occasions (although the type appears only to have been reset once). Blomefield's
correspondence shows that he was originally supplied with some faulty paper from
the Thetford paper mill, which soon cracked and had therefore to be replaced.
The second reason for a reprint was the totally unexpected popularity of the
work when it first appeared, with the result that the first part was soon sold
out and therefore promissary notes were issued to new subscribers guaranteeing
that the reprint would be supplied to them before the volume was completed. Two
states of the first part of volume 1 (incorporating the introduction and sheets
A-H) have been identified, one of which is clearly the latter because it
corrects the errata listed in the former
(ESTC
025740 contains the earlier setting and ESTC 025742 the latter). The remainder
of the volume, incorporating sheets J-9T, exists only in one state.
However,
during the course of the printing of the second and third number, Blomefield
re-printed sheets N-T, with new pagination and signatures to be issued as a
separate work entitled The history of the town of Fersfield in the hundred
of Diss and County of Norfolk (Fersfield, 1736). In 1769, some years after
Blomefield's death, the King's Lynn publisher William Whittingham bought up the
surviving unsold parts of the work from Blomefield's widow, and apparently made
use of some copies of these sheets to complete otherwise imperfect sets of the
full history. Similarly, he also reprinted Blomefield's original title page for
the same purpose (ESTC 025742).9
Another
probable reason for the delay with the first volume was the author's inability
to keep pace with his press. Blomefield had intended to enlist the help of his
friend the Reverend Charles Parkin, who was better equipped to deal with the
hundreds in the west of the county, near his home at Oxborough, but this was
originally planned to be at a comparatively late stage in the proceedings.'°
By the end of 1737, the history was about to begin with the borough of Thetford,
after which Blomefield's prepared text was apparently exhausted. Probably it was
at this point that the author changed his plans and decided to incorporate
Parkin's account of Grimeshoe hundred. However whilst he was waiting for his
colleague's work to be completed, he kept his press busy during 1738 by
re-issuing the texts of sheets 5B-6B as The
history of the ancient city and Burgh of Thetford (Fersfield
1739, ESTC t036462). On this occasion however, Blomefield did not merely reprint
the relevant sheets with new pagination, but appears to have changed the measure
and reformatted the existing setting of type from a folio into a quarto.
After
completing his first volume and issuing the title page in December 1739,
Blomefield waited more than a year before beginning his second volume. During
this period he made some further fundamental changes of plan. Up to this point
he had devoted 800 folio pages to the coverage of only five out of the
thirty-one hundreds, and only the smallest of the four boroughs in the county.
There was not the remotest possibility that he could encompass the remainder of
the county in one more volume. He therefore decided to abandon his original
plans and rather devote the whole of his second volume to the city of Norwich.
From the outset in April 1741, the second volume was therefore planned and
advertised as two separate works: as part of the History of Norfolk, and also as
a discrete History of the city and county of Norwich. The
author/publisher now maintained separate lists of subscribers, and printed
preliminary matter for each group.
Blomefield
issued a number of alternative title-pages for his second volume. The title page
for the history of Norwich was issued to subscribers at the outset of
publication in 1741 with a Fersfield imprint,11 whereas that for the second
volume of the history of Norfolk was issued at the completion of the work in
1745, with a Norwich imprint (ESTC t125740). Blomefield had also decided to
print more copies of the parts than he had subscribers, and in 1745 many of
these were sold as complete works, with new preliminaries, and another new title
page for the History of Norwich, this
time with a Norwich imprint (ESTC t125741). Similarly, when in 1769 William
Whittingham was making up sets of unsold parts, he also printed a new title page
for the second volume, this time reverting to the Fersfield imprint but giving
the misleading date of 1739 (ESTC t125742). Thus the text of volume 2 can exist
with one of five possible title pages.
The
texts and indexes of the second volume (and the history of Norwich) were issued
in thirty parts between April 1741 and June 1745, but the accompanying engraved
map of Norwich was probably not issued to subscribers until mid-1746. Each sheet
exists in only one state printed during Blomefield's lifetime, although it
appears that sheet A alone was reprinted by William Whittingham in 1769 to make
up incomplete sets (ESTC t125742, see also note 9 below). At the beginning of
the publication the press was still at Fersfield, but sometime between March
1743 and May 1745 it was moved to Norwich, for reasons unknown.
Once
again Blomefield waited a year between the completion of volume 2 and the
commencement of volume 3, the first part of which was distributed to subscribers
in December 1746. He now reverted to his original method of working through the
rural area of the county, hundred by hundred, but progress on this volume was
even slower than on the first, although once again he incorporated another of
Charles Parkin's hundreds - South Greenhoe - ahead of time. By December 1751 the
third volume was eighty per cent complete and nearly covered six hundreds, when
Blomefield contracted smallpox during a visit to London, and soon afterwards
died. It then became apparent that the clergyman had almost bankrupted himself
and his family by this publishing venture. 12
Nearly
nineteen years had elapsed since the publication was first announced; and many
of the original subscribers had died or lost interest. Others now felt that the
project had reached an untimely end, and decided to go ahead and bind such
material as they ii had for volume 3, even though it finished in mid sentence
and had no title page. Although the matter now appeared to rest, Thomas Martin,
the custodian of the Le Neve manuscripts, was quite determined to see the
history of Norfolk completed. He set about persuading Parkin to take over
Blomefield's task, and by July 1752 the latter agreed to write the remainder of
the account of South Erpingham hundred, which was left incomplete at
Blomefield's death - this would at least provide a completed, if slightly
shorter third volume. However, Martin admitted to the antiquary Wiliam Cole that
`my endeavour shall be us'd to have him finish the whole'.14
Parkin
eventually agreed to complete the whole work, although there was never any
question of him also taking over Blomefield's role of publisher. Parkin was then
in his mid sixties and so realised that if he were ever to finish it he would
have to compile a somewhat less detailed and laborious account of each village
than Blomefield had attempted. Thus by the time he died in August 1765 aged
seventy-six, Parkin had written an account of the remaining eighteen hundreds
and the borough of Kings Lynn, which was only about seventy per cent of the
lenghth of that which Blomefield had already published. (It is not known whether
or not Parkin ever completed an account of the borough of Yarmouth, but if so it
was lost, and the account subsequently published under his name was written by
another hand.)
After
unsuccessfully trying to interest several London publishers in the manuscript,
Parkin's executors eventually sold it, together with his library, to a young
bookseller in King's Lynn named William Whittingham. Hitherto, Whittingham had
no printing or publishing experience and he had bought the library only for
stock, but during 1767 he was persuaded to acquire a press and to publish the
remainder of the history. Once again it appears that Thomas Martin had a hand in
the decision, for he also negotiated the purchase by Whittingham of the
remaining unsold parts of the first three volumes and some unpublished plates
from Blomefield's widow.
Whittingham's
printed proposals for the completion of Blomefield's An
essay towards a topogrphical history of the county of Norfolk were
therefore published in February 1768.1' Subscribers were to receive a
further 48 sheets and a title page to complete volume 3, plus a fourth volume of
about 1000 pages, for the sum of two guineas, half of which was to paid in
advance. A sufficient number of subscriptions were received and publication of
the completion began in November 1769, when subscribers at last received the
remaining material for volume 3. It was at this time that Whittingham reprinted
the title pages of volumes I and 2, and also sheet A of volume 2, in order to
make up sets of Blomefield's parts for sale to new subscribers.
The
first 783 pages of volume 4 of the history were issued in four parts between
March 1770 and July 1773, but as the work progressed, Whittingham became
increasingly aware that like Blomefield before him, he had grossly
underestimated the size of his manuscript due to his lack of experience. By this
time Whittingham had covered only six more hundreds, and there yet remained a
further eleven to cover within his estimated total of 1000 pages. Faced with the
cost of printing twice as much text as he had originally planned, in order to
finish the work, Whittingham could only appeal to the good-will of his
customers. In July 1773 Whittingham suspended work on the fifth part, and
decided to complete volume 4 at this point. This decision involved dividing
sheet 9N so that one leaf of it ended volume 4, and the second became the first,
unsigned leaf of volume 5.
Whittingham
then sent a printed letter to each of his subscribers, explaining his
predicament and asking for their agreement either to increase the subscription
price by a further guinea in return for a fifth volume, or else to accept the
fourth volume alone for the guinea already advanced."' Fortunately, most
subscribers accepted his offer of a fifth volume, which was published in a
further two parts, the last of which was distributed in January 1776. However,
as a result of the divided first leaf, and the fact that a start had already
been made on sheet 90, he was forced to continue the existing pagination and
sheet signature sequences into the next volume, and the catchword on the last
text page of volume 4 refers forward to the first text page of volume 5. It
might therefore be argued that volumes 4 and 5 are one volume in two, except
that Whittingham subsequently produced a separate title page and index for each.
Whittingham
also decided to follow Blomefield's earlier practice of re-issuing those parts
of the history which covered the urban areas within the county, as separate
publications. However in the case of King's Lynn, Parkin's manuscript did not
lend itself to an easy division between the four parishes of this town and the
surrounding area. Therefore in 1772, Whittingham decided rather to re-issue
sheets 8H to 9M with new pagination as a separate publication, The
topography of Freebridge Hundred and Half, in ... Norfolk by
Charles Parkin. The printer of this work however misprinted the date so that it
has the imprint Lynn, 1762 (ESTC t147490).
Finally,
following the eventual completion of the last volume of the history of Norfolk,
Whittingham decided that he would also re-issue the section of the work dealing
with Great Yarmouth which he had fraudulently ascribed to Parkin (ESTC t145507).
In this instance he did not however adapt the existing sheets, but merely
reprinted the text as The history and antiquities of
Great Yarmouth, without an author's name.
Thus
in 1776, almost a century after the idea was first contemplated by Peter Le
Neve, the people of Norfolk at last had a detailed history of their county. As
completed, the work is very varied in quality, the parts for the south and south
west of the county and the City of Norwich published by Blomefield being
excellent, whereas the ultimate treatment of the areas to the east, hurriedly
compiled by Parkin, are rather poor. Had Blomefield lived to complete the
project, and managed to remain solvent, it might have been one of the greatest
monuments to English historical scholarship of the period.
David Stoker
College of Librarianship Wales
Notes