THE BOOK OF DIGNITIES; CONTAINING ROLLS OF THE OFFICIAL PERSONAGES OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE, CIVIL, ECCLESIASTICAL, JUDICIAL, MILITARY, NAVAL, AND MUNICIPAL, FROM THE EARLIEST PERIODS TO THE PRESENT TIME: COMPILED CHIEFLY FROM THE RECORDS OF THE PUBLIC OFFICES: TOGETHER WITH THE SOVEREIGNS OF EUROPE, FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THEIR RESPECTIVE STATES; THE PEERAGE OF ENGLAND AND OF GREAT BRITAIN; AND NUMEROUS OTHER LISTS. 66 BY JOSEPH HAYDN, AUTHOR OF THE DICTIONARY OF DATES," AND COMPILER OF VARIOUS WORKS. LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS. IT It may surprise, but will not, I persuade myself, displease your Lordship that I dedicate this Book to you. Were I to have followed the current usage of authors, I should have previously asked your Lordship's gracious permission for this purpose; but while your condescension would have operated as a favourable introduction of my Work to the Public, and have gratified my vanity, I feared I should detract from the object I have in view, that of shewing, spontaneously and freely, the high respect which I, in common with the community at large, entertain for your Lordship as one of the most enlightened, eloquent, and 7109 zealous ministers that ever directed the Foreign Affairs of Great Britain. My Lord, my humble name may never have reached your Lordship's ear; and my only apology for the liberty I take is, that mine is an Official Book, and therefore not inaptly dedicated to a personage, throughout whose vast department there prevails a system of such efficiency and precision, that even the minutest matters relating to the most distant region, can be at once determined by the records of his Office. I am, My Lord, With profound respect, Your Lordship's most humble Servant, Carey Street, Lincoln's Inn, London, Oct. 1851. JOSEPH HAYDN PREFACE. IN 1786, BEATSON produced his Political Index to the Histories of Great Britain and Ireland, a Work that presented for the first time, in a collective form, rolls of all the high personages in the State from the institution of their respective offices in England. The novelty of his plan, and manifest usefulness of his Work (which was stamped with the commendation of ADAM SMITH), assured his Index an immediate and almost universal popularity; and he was encouraged by a consequent rapid sale to publish in succession three large editions', each of many thousand copies, of which the last edition appeared in 1806, nearly half a century ago. It is a curious fact in the history of his Book, that the third edition of BEATSON (the only one we now find in our great Public Institutions, and in the library of the private gentleman), is, though certainly the most enlarged, yet the most incorrect of the whole. It would seem to have wanted the superintending eye of BEATSON himself, for we cannot otherwise account for the innumerable errors it contains, and the rather slovenly manner in which it is The 1st edition of BEATSON'S Political Index was published in one volume, octavo; the 2d edition in two volumes; and the 3d in three, all of similar size. Dr. ROBERT BEATSON (LL. D.) F.R.S. lived until 1818: he died Jan. 24, in that year, aged 76. Besides the Political Index, Dr. Beatson was the author of A Chronological Register of both Houses of Parliament, Naval and Military Memoirs of Great Britain, and various other works, chiefly of a scientific character. |