SOURCE: Gottfried, Rudolf B. “The Early Development of the Section on Ireland in Camden's Britannia.” ELH 10, no. 2 (June 1943): 117-30.

In the following essay, Gottfried detects an anti-Irish bias in the Britannia, but emphasizes Camden's attention to detail, his thoroughness, and his desire to ensure that each new edition would be more scrupulously accurate than the last.

The almost universal reverence with which William Camden was regarded by his contemporaries needs hardly to be mentioned among students of his period. The praises of Spenser and Ben Jonson are well known; the commendatory verses of his fellow antiquarians, written for the most part in Greek and Latin, adorn his works; his funeral was “honored (besides much other goode and choice companie) with the presence” of Lord Keeper Williams, Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, and Bishop William Laud.¹ But the respect, not to say the extreme admiration, which Camden generally inspired confronts us...