358 In Memoriam John Edward Jackson, F.8.A. 
year after year his paper came to be looked on as one of the special’ 
treats of the Meeting. Endowed himself with the power of seeing 
the humorous side of things he used that power to give life to what 
in other hands—as learned, perhaps, as his own—would have 
remained to the end nothing but the dry bones of genealogical or 
topographical research. 
Of his published works the most important was, of course, his 
annotations to the Topographical Collections of Aubrey. In this 
thick volume the results of years of labour and research are contained, 
the annotations being not only of far greater bulk but also of 
greater value than the text on which they are based. But his other 
monographs and papers, which may be found in every volume of the 
Magazine, as well as those which—like the History of Grittleton 
and of the two Churches of St. Mary’s and St. George’s, Doncaster 
—were published separately, were one and all of them really 
valuable, the greater number of them complete in themselves and 
containing all the information which could be brought to bear upon 
the subject in hand. Much of his most valuable matter he gleaned 
from the MSS., deeds, and documents hidden in the libraries and 
muniment rooms of the great houses of the county, notably from 
those of Longleat, among which he was often at work ; some of 
the most interesting of his communications to the Magazine being 
founded on materials disinterred from that storehouse of valuable 
documents. 
It has often been regretted that he did not undertake that task 
which still awaits fulfilment, the writing of the History of Wiltshire 
—and he was, perhaps, the only man of the present time who 
could have done it. But the time for it was scarcely ripe, the 
materials were not ready to his hand, and he spent his life in 
gathering and sifting the facts with which the future historian of 
the county must build his history. He had a horror of doing 
anything incompletely or inaccurately. When he excused himself 
from reading a paper at the Devizes Meeting last year, it was on the 
plea that he had so many things to finish up and put in order that 
he could not now undertake any fresh work ; and only a few months 
before his death he said, looking at the volumes of Hungerfordiana, 
