760.  Cuthbert, Archbyshope of Canterbury, procured of the Pope, that in cities and townes there should be appoynted church yards for buriall of the dead, whose bodies were used to be buried abrode, & cet.]

Their meetings had hitherto been private; but to give stability to them, they petitioned for a charter of incorporation, under the title of the Academy for the Study of Antiquity and History, founded by Queen Elizabeth.  And to preserve all the memorials of history which the dissolution of the monasteries had scattered about the kingdom, they proposed to erect a library, to be called “The Library of Queen Elizabeth.”  The death of the queen overturned this honourable project.  The society was somewhat interrupted by the usual casualties of human life; the members were dispersed or died, and it ceased for twenty years.  Spelman, Camden, and others, desirous of renovating the society, met for this purpose at the Herald’s-office; they settled their regulations, among which, one was “for avoiding offence, they should neither meddle with matters of state nor religion.”  “But before our next meeting,” says Spelman, “we had notice that his majesty took a little mislike of our society, not being informed that we had resolved to decline all matters of state.  Yet hereupon we forbore to meet again, and so all our labour’s lost!” Unquestionably much was lost, for much could have been produced; and Spelman’s work on law terms, where I find this information, was one of the first projected.  James the First has incurred the censure of those who have written more boldly than Spelman on the suppression of this society; but whether James was misinformed by “taking a little mislike,” or whether the antiquaries failed in exerting themselves to open their plan more clearly to that “timid pedant,” as Gough and others designate this monarch, may yet be doubtful; assuredly James was not a man to contemn their erudition!

The king at this time was busied by furthering a similar project, which was to found “King James’s College at Chelsea;” a project originating with Dean Sutcliff; and zealously approved by Prince Henry, to raise a nursery for young polemics in scholastical divinity, for the purpose of defending the Protestant cause from the attacks of catholics and sectaries; a college which was afterwards called by Laud “Controversy College.”  In this society were appointed historians and antiquaries, for Camden and Haywood filled these offices.

The Society of Antiquaries, however, though suppressed, was perhaps never extinct; it survived in some shape under Charles the Second, for Ashmole in his Diary notices “the Antiquaries’ Feast,” as well as “the Astrologers’,” and another of “the Freemasons’."[278] The present society was only incorporated in 1751.  There are two sets of their Memoirs; for besides the modern Archaeologia, we have two volumes of “Curious Discourses,” written by the Fathers of the Antiquarian Society in the age of Elizabeth, collected from their dispersed manuscripts, which Camden preserved with a parental hand.