In 3hmoriam James Waylen. 803 



Nonconformist, the temporary triumph of Puritanism under Crom- 

 well and the subsequent history of Nonconformity should be the 

 most interesting subject which the whole field of history could offer, 

 and it is small blame to him that he writes, though by no means 

 in a bitter spirit, yet always with a certain bias to his own side, 

 when treating of events, which, although so distant now, still excite 

 keen party spirit, and have never yet been described impartially by 

 any historian, with the exception of Ranke and Gardiner. A more 

 serious blot in Mr. Waylen's work is his too frequent neglect to 

 give the authorities for his statements, with the result that the 

 reader is sometimes left in doubt as to whether he has before him 

 the actual words or extracts of documentary evidence, or Mr. 

 Waylen's inferences from them. But for all that Wiltshire has 

 much cause to thank him for his pleasant gossiping sketches of 

 men and things in the county for the last two hundred and fifty 

 years. They are never dry, and never dull, and a vast amount of 

 interesting matter, biographical and genealogical, is preserved in 

 his pages, which would otherwise have been certainly lost and 

 forgotten. 



His skill as an artist was better shown in his oil portraits — of 

 which our Museum possesses a really good one of the old Lord 

 Lansdowne, painted apparently from memory and a photograph, 

 and of which others exist in Devizes — than in the illustrations which 

 he designed for his books. 



The writer of this notice had not the privilege of his personal 

 .acquaintance ; with those who had that privilege his memory lives 

 as that of a man of retiring modesty and great kindliness of dis- 

 position, who was always ready generously to assist others from the 

 large stores of knowledge he had himself acquired in a long life of 

 study. 



A Bibliographical List of Mr. Waylen's Principal Works. 



The Chronicles of the Devizes, being a History of the Castle, Parks, 

 and Borough of that name, with notices Statistical, Parliamentary, 

 Ecclesiastic, and Biographical, by James Wayleu. London : 



