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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: HAN-HEG |
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HARRISON, WILLIAM (15341593) , English topographer and antiquary, was born in London on the 18th of April 1534. He was educated, according to his own account, at St Paul's school and at Westminster under Alexander Nowell. In 1551 he was at Cambridge , but he took his B.A. degree from Christ Church, Oxford, in 156o. He was inducted early in 1559 to the rectory of Radwinter, Essex, on the presentation of Sir William Brooke, Lord Cobham, to whom he had formerly acted as chaplain; and from 1J71 to 1581 he held from another patron, Francis de la Wood
His famous and amusing Description of England was under-taken for the queen's printer, Reginald Wolfe, who designed the publication of " an universall cosmographic of the whole world ... with particular histories of every knowne nation." After Wolfe's death in 1576 this comprehensive plan was reduced to descriptions and histories of England, Scotland and Ireland. The historical section was to be supplied by Raphael Holinshed , the topographical by Harrison. The work
Scotland and Ireland .. . by Raphael Holinshed and others, and was printed in two black-letter folio volumes in 1577. Harrison's Description of England, humbly described as his " foule frizeled treatise," and dedicated to his patron Cobham, is an invaluable survey of the condition of England under Elizabeth, in all its political, religious and social aspects. Harrison is a minute and careful observer of men and things, and his descriptions are enlivened with many examples of a lively and caustic humour which makes the book excellent reading. In spite of his Puritan prejudices, which lead him to regret that the churches had not been cleared of their " pictures in glass " (" by reason of the extreme cost thereof "), and to exhaust his wit on the effeminate Italian fashions of the younger generation, he had an eye for beauty and is loud in his praise of such architectural gems as Henry
Protestant
Harrison also contributed the translation from Scots into English of Bellenden's version of Hector Boece's Latin Description of Scotland. His other works include a " Chronologie," giving an account of events from the creation to the year 1593, which is of some value for the period covered by the writer's lifetime. This, with an elaborate treatise on weights and measures
For the later editions of the Chronicles of England . see HOLI\snED. The second and third hooks of Harrison's Description were edited by Dr F. J. Furnivall for the New Shakspere Society, with extracts from his " Chronologie " and from other contemporary writers, as Shakspere's England (2 vols., 1877-1878). End of Article: HARRISON, WILLIAM (15341593) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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