William Camden - Final Years

Final Years

In 1609, Camden moved to Chislehurst in Kent. Though often in ill health, he continued to work diligently. In 1622, he founded an endowed lectureship in History at Oxford - the first in the world - which continues to this day as the Camden Chair in Ancient History. That same year, he was struck with paralysis. He died in Chislehurst on 9 November 1623, and was buried at Westminster Abbey.

Camden left his library to his closest friend, Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. His circle of friends and acquaintances included Lord Burghley, Fulke Greville, Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, John Stow, John Dee, Jacques de Thou and Ben Jonson, who was Camden's student at Westminster and who dedicated an early edition of Every Man in His Humour to him.

Among Camden's other works are a Greek grammar, which remained a standard school textbook for many years; Remaines of a Greater Worke, Concerning Britaine (1605), a more popular English-language companion to Britannia, comprising a collection of themed historical essays; the official account of the trial of the Gunpowder Plotters; and a catalogue of the epitaphs at Westminster Abbey.

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