In Memoriam John Edward Jackson, F.8.A. 357 



of the county in which his lot was cast. The manner in which 

 those materials were collected was characteristic of the man. 

 Nothing- connected with Wiltshire in the past came amiss to him— 

 a bit of family history — a monumental inscription — a discovery of 

 Roman remains— an entry in an ancient deed or will— or the mention 

 of some interesting* event in a local paper— he might have had at 

 the moment no intention of writing anything about the particular 

 parish or district with which any of these things were connected, 

 but still it might come in useful some day, and accordingly a note 

 was made of it on half-a-sheet of note paper, the white side of a 

 circular, or the back of an envelope, and was carefully deposited in 

 the particular portfolio devoted to that particular parish or district, 

 so that at any moment he could refer to all the odd scraps of infor- 

 mation available for any special locality. (This collection of material, 

 together with other papers bearing on Wiltshire, has since his 

 death been given to the Society of Antiquaries.) 



It was this systematic collection and arrangement of materials, 

 carried on for fifty years, that enabled him to delight the Members 

 of our Society year after year, wherever the annual meeting might 

 be, with a constant succession of papers, each of which seemed to 

 deal with the antiquarian history of the immediate locality as though 

 that was the special point on which the Canon's thoughts and in- 

 vestigations had been fixed for the past twelve months. For from 

 the year 1853, when he took a leading part in the first foundation 

 of the Society and became one of its first Secretaries and the Editor 

 of the Magazine, up to within the last two years he continued to be 

 the most popular of readers at the Annual Meetings, and the 

 most valued of contributors to the pages of the Magazine. The 

 professed antiquarian as well as the less ardent member of the public 

 who had, possibly, after the labours of a long day's excursion, 

 slumbered fitfully through other important business, alike regained 

 the fullest consciousness when Canon Jackson rose to read. He had 

 a way of catching your attention. There was a humorous twinkle 

 in his eye and a turn about the corners of his mouth which made 

 people feel that he had something good to tell them by and bye, 

 and they had better listen carefully or they might lose it ; so that 



