The valuable treatise which is now for the first time committed to the press is the work of one of the most laborious and judicious antiquaries that the seventeenth century produced. Many of our countrymen, of various ranks and in various branches of learning, were indeed distinguished at that period for a wide and sound erudition, and for a generous devotion to historical inquiry, which have never been surpassed by any generation of scholars. It was the age which comprehended the great names of Coke and Bacon, and Camden, Selden, Somner, Spelman, Evelyn, Digby, D'Ewes, Ash-mole, Dugdale, Junius, Usher, Gill, Cotton, Savile, Whelock, and, though last not least, Twysden. Yet, amidst all this company of earnest, learned, and accomplished men, sir Roger Twysden occupies no secondary place. Like Selden and sir Symonds D'Ewes, he was engaged in the business of active political life, during the most exciting and troublous period of our history: he was a country gentleman, deeply mixed up with the affairs of his county; a careful landlord, responsible for the conduct of a large estate, and the welfare of a numerous tenantry; a justice of peace, and in the commission of oyer and terminer ; a commissioner in the matter of ejected ministers; a deputy lieutenant at a time when lieutenancy was really a military function, and imposed other duties than wearing an uniform at a levee; last of all, he was a husband, and the father of a numerous family ; and it was then not easier than it now is to provide for daughters and younger sons a position consistent with the honour and dignity of the family from which they sprung. Primo-genitura facit appanagium : but courtiers then swallowed up employments which have in later times been a happy resource for the scions of influential county families; and the squire of the seven-teenth century had to provide means for cadets, which a more skilful age has sought in other modes of provision than a careful and frugal economy.
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