Tristram Risdon
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Tristram Risdon (c. 1580 – 1640) was an English
antiquarian An antiquarian or antiquary () is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient artefacts, archaeological and historic si ...
and
topographer Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the landforms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps. Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary scienc ...
, and the author of ''Survey of the County of Devon''. He was able to devote most of his life to writing this work. After he completed it in about 1632 it circulated around interested people in several manuscript copies for almost 80 years before it was first published by
Edmund Curll Edmund Curll (''c.'' 1675 – 11 December 1747) was an English bookseller and publisher. His name has become synonymous, through the attacks on him by Alexander Pope, with unscrupulous publication and publicity. Curll rose from poverty to wealth ...
in a very inferior form. A full version was not published until 1811. Risdon also collected information about genealogy and heraldry in a note-book; this was edited and published in 1897.


Biography

Risdon was born at Winscott, in the parish of
St Giles in the Wood St Giles in the Wood is a village and civil parish in the Torridge district of Devon, England. The village lies about 2.5 miles east of the town of Great Torrington, and the parish, which had a population of 566 in 2001 compared with 623 in 1901, ...
, near
Great Torrington Great Torrington (often abbreviated to Torrington, though the villages of Little Torrington and Black Torrington are situated in the same region) is a market town in Devon, England. Parts of it are sited on high ground with steep drops down to ...
in
Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...
, England. He was the eldest son of William Risdon (d.1622) and his wife Joan (née Pollard).Mary Wolffe
''Risdon, Tristram (c. 1580–1640)''
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Accessed 7 February 2011. (Subscription required)
William was the younger son of Giles Risdon (1494–1583) of Bableigh, in the parish of
Parkham Parkham is a small village, civil parish and former manor situated 5 miles south-west of the town of Bideford in north Devon, England. The parish, which lies within the Kenwith ward in the Torridge district, is surrounded clockwise from the n ...
, where Tristram Risdon stated that the family had been seated since before 1274.Risdon (1811), p. 243 Risdon also stated that the family originated in Gloucestershire, where during the reign of King
Richard I Richard I (8 September 1157 â€“ 6 April 1199), known as Richard the Lionheart or Richard CÅ“ur de Lion () because of his reputation as a great military leader and warrior, was King of England from 1189 until his death in 1199. He also ru ...
(1189–1199) they were
lords of the manor Lord of the manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England and Norman England, referred to the landholder of a historical rural estate. The titles date to the English Feudalism, feudal (specifically English feudal barony, baronial) system. The ...
of Risdon. After a local education, Tristram Risdon studied either at
Broadgates Hall Pembroke College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford, is located on Pembroke Square, Oxford. The college was founded in 1624 by King James I of England and VI of Scotland, using in part the endowment of merchant Thomas Tesdale ...
or at Exeter College in Oxford, though he left the university without taking any degree. This was supposedly because of the death of his half-sister, Thomazin Barry, upon which he inherited the family estate at Winscott, which required his personal attention. He married Pascoe Chafe, the daughter of Thomas Chafe of Exeter, on 2 December 1608 and they had four sons and three daughters. From about 1605 to the 1630s he devoted his time to the study of antiquities, especially those of Devon, and the result of his labours was his ''Survey of the County of Devon''. He died at Winscott in 1640 and was interred in St Giles's Church; his mother (died 1610) is commemorated by a monumental brass in the same church.


The ''Survey''

According to John Prince, who had used the ''Survey'' as a source for his ''Worthies of Devon'', Risdon started work on the ''Survey'' in 1605 and completed it in 1630. Internal evidence shows, however, that it was not completed until 1632 at the earliest. Risdon was one of a number of authors who wrote about the topography of Devon between the 17th and early 19th centuries. These authors regularly copied content from earlier works, and Risdon admitted that he had taken much of his ''Survey'' from his friend
Sir William Pole Sir William Pole (1561–1635) of Colcombe House in the parish of Colyton, and formerly of Shute House in the parish of Shute (adjoining Colcombe), both in Devon, was an English country gentleman and landowner, a colonial investor, Membe ...
's manuscript ''Collections towards a description of the country of Devon''. Risdon did, though, make considerable additions and improvements of his own and he acknowledged his debt to Pole "from whose Lamp I have received Light in these my Labours". However, in organising his survey Risdon chose not to follow Pole's method, which was by the units of county government, and he also rejected the system adopted by
Thomas Westcote Thomas Westcote (c. 1567 – c. 1637) (''alias'' Westcott) of Raddon in the parish of Shobrooke in Devon, was an English historian and topographer of Devon. Biography He was descended from the Lyttelton family. He was baptised at Shobrooke in Dev ...
, another friend, in his ''A View of Devonshire'' of 1630, which was based on the courses of the rivers. Instead he decided to begin "...In the east part of the county, and with the sun, to make my gradation into the south, holding course about by the river Tamer, to visit such places as are offered to be seen upon her banks. Lastly, to take notice of such remarkable things as the north parts afford". Unlike his antiquarian contemporaries, Risdon's work does not overly concern itself with genealogy and reads more like a travel book, apparently describing parishes in the same order as he visited them. Concerning his literary style, the opinion of Joyce Youings, former Professor of English Social History at Exeter University, was that although his general description has echoes of John Hooker's writing, "The three hundred pages of topographical detail which follow make extremely tedious reading, unredeemed by
homas In Indian religions, a homa (Sanskrit: होम), also known as havan, is a fire ritual performed on special occasions. In Hinduism, by a Hindu priest usually for a homeowner ("grihastha": one possessing a home). The grihasth keeps different ...
Westcote's style."Youings (1996) pp. 60–61 According to
Gordon Goodwin Gordon L. Goodwin (born December 30, 1954) is an American pianist, saxophonist, composer, arranger, and conductor. He is the leader of Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band. He has won three Daytime Emmy Awards, four Grammy Awards, and 25 Grammy nomina ...
, writing in the 1900
Dictionary of National Biography The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...
, Risdon was the first documentary source of several old Devonshire stories: of Elflida and Ethelwold, Childe the Hunter, Budockside and his daughter, and the Tiverton fire. In its turn, Risdon's ''Survey'' has been used as a source for later topographies. For example, apart from John Prince's ''Worthies of Devon'' mentioned above, the Lysons brothers credit it and Pole's collections for the details of the descent of the principal landed property in the Devon volume of their ''
Magna Britannia ''Magna Britannia, being a concise topographical account of the several counties of Great Britain'' was a topographical and historical survey published by the antiquarians Daniel Lysons and his brother Samuel Lysons in several volumes between 180 ...
'' (1822).


Publication

After the completion of the ''Survey'', many copies of the manuscript entered into public circulation, none of them exactly agreeing with the others, each having something redundant or deficient.Moore (1829) Volume 2, pp. 370–373 Ten copies of the manuscript are known to survive. The ''Survey'' was first published in 1714 by
Edmund Curll Edmund Curll (''c.'' 1675 – 11 December 1747) was an English bookseller and publisher. His name has become synonymous, through the attacks on him by Alexander Pope, with unscrupulous publication and publicity. Curll rose from poverty to wealth ...
, the infamous London bookseller, who extracted the parts he thought would best suit his purpose, and printed them. But shortly before publication, the proposed book appears to have been shown to John Prince, who, being well acquainted with the original, persuaded Curll to publish the remainder as a continuation of the parts already printed. Curll did this in the same year, but it remained a very imperfect version.Risdon (1811) Preface, pp. v–vii. In 1785 William Chapple published the first part of his ''Review of Risdon's Survey of Devon''. It contained the general description of the county, but Chapple died before he could complete the work. The first complete edition of the ''Survey'' appeared in 1811 and included many additions by uncredited editors. Its full title is:
The chorographical description, or survey of the county of Devon, with the city and county of Exeter; containing matter of history, antiquity, chronology, the nature of the country, commodities and government thereof; with sundry other things worthy observation. Collected by the travail of Tristram Risdon, of Winscott, Gent. For the love of his Country and Countrymen, in that Province.
This publication was based on the copy of Risdon's manuscript which belonged to John Coles of Stonehouse which after having been compared with others appeared to the editors be the most correct. No work has been done to compare the various manuscript and print versions, and Youings has said that until this is done it will remain unknown exactly what Risdon himself wrote.


The ''Note-Book''

Risdon also left a note-book in which he had collected genealogical and heraldic information, mostly about the prominent families of South West England and particularly of Devon. Consisting of 188 foolscap leaves, many left blank, it was transcribed and edited by James Dallas and Henry Porter and published in London in 1897. In the introduction to the book the editors date the majority of its compilation to between 1608 and 1628, making it contemporaneous with his writing of ''The Survey''. The original note-book is in Exeter Cathedral Library.


Notes


References


Sources

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Further reading

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Risdon, Tristram 1580s births 1640 deaths People from Great Torrington Historians of Devon Topographers of Devon English travel writers 17th-century English writers 17th-century English male writers 17th-century English antiquarians 17th-century geographers 17th-century English scientists