His
"Miscellanies," which appeared in 1696, seem to have owed their
publication to these influences; and in the Dedication of that work to
his patron the Earl of Abingdon, Aubrey thus expressly mentions
Tanner:- "It was my intention to have finished my Description of
Wiltshire (half finished* already), and to have dedicated it to your
Lordship, but my age is now too far spent for such undertakings.† I
have therefore devolved that task on my countryman Mr. Thomas Tanner,
who hath youth to go through with it, and a genius proper for such an
undertaking."
* [The work alluded to still remains "half finished," being a
Description of the " North Division" only of the county. It has
been printed by Sir Thomas Phillipps from the MS. in the Ashmolean
Museum. 4to. 1821-1838.]
† [He was then in his 71st year.]
A chapter of the "Natural History" (being "Fatalities of Families
and Places"), was at this time detached from the original manuscript
to furnish materials for the remarks on "Local Fatality," in the
"Miscellanies."
John Aubrey died suddenly in the first week in June 1697, and was
buried in the church of St. Mary Magdalen at Oxford, and from the time
of his decease the original draught of his Wiltshire History has been
carefully preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, as the fair
copy of 1690 has also in the Library of the Royal Society in London.
Until the "Natural History of Wiltshire" was briefly described in my
own "Memoir" of its author, very little was known of it beyond the
mere fact of the existence of the two manuscripts.
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