The Seventh General Meeting. 107 



fortunate thing, in his opinion, that the records of those parishes 

 had been so well preserved for at least the last three centuries ; 

 and if we went further, we should find in the public records col- 

 lected in London and elsewhere a great deal to throw light upon 

 what had happened in our different parishes. Some years ago, he 

 had occasion to pay a visit at the Rolls Chapel to Sir Francis 

 Palgrave — a name which could never be mentioned at a meeting 

 of this description without honor — and Sir Francis on that occasion 

 said to him, I will undertake to give you something of a contem- 

 poraneous record with regard to every event in English History 

 worth caring about since the Conquest. He (Mr. Estcourt) asked 

 him a question as to something which happened in the time of 

 Henry the Eighth. But his reply was, I know nothing of English 

 history later than the accession of Henry the Seventh, which 

 showed how much his whole attention had been directed to ancient 

 history. The reason why we in England possessed such a magni- 

 ficent and unbroken collection of old records was that no enemy 

 had ever come to spoil us. Whatever there was worth putting by 

 in succeeding generations we had got, and no man had ever laid a 

 revolutionary hand upon it. It was more than could be said of 

 any other capital or nation in the world. Every little addition 

 that could be made to information of this kind, it seemed to him 

 was worthy of the notice of a thinking people. — He believed it 

 was Dr. Johnson who said, in Rasselas, " whatever makes the past 

 or the future predominant in the mind of man over the present, 

 elevates him as a thinking being." No doubt what might be found 

 recorded in an old parochial history might have been considered at 

 the moment of no more value than the incidents of parochial history 

 at the present moment. It was their antiquity which gave them 

 their value. They might have appeared trifling at the moment, 

 but if they enabled us to decipher matter of real moment and real 

 importance they could not but acquire a value in the eyes of 

 thinking persons, of a different description to that which they 

 originally bore. But he claimed for this Society something more. 

 He claimed for it, that it was not merely a theoretical, speculative, 

 or even an intellectual body, but he claimed for its proceedings 



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