Francis Blomefield
It includes detailed accounts of the City of Norwich, the Borough of Thetford and all parishes in the southernmost Hundreds of Norfolk, but he died before completing it.
He was described by the Norfolk historian Walter Rye as "a gentleman of independent means" and held a share of the advowson of Fersfield, to which he presented his son in 1729.
[1][8] He was ordained a priest on 27 July 1729 by Thomas Tanner, then Chancellor of the Diocese of Norwich,[9] later Bishop of St Asaph.
[3] As a boy of 15, Blomefield began recording monumental inscriptions from churches he visited in Norfolk, Suffolk and later Cambridgeshire.
By 1736, he was ready to begin putting the results of his researches into type,[3] assisted by his friend Charles Parkin, Rector of Oxborough.
[1] He was two-thirds through his third volume of the history of Norfolk and had covered about 40 per cent of the county, when he contracted smallpox on a visit to London and died in Fersfield in January 1752.
[3] According to Rye, writing for the Dictionary of National Biography in 1886, Blomefield's volumes are "an enduring monument of hard disinterested work, for it was wholly a labour of love, and as far as the facts chronicled it is usually very trustworthy."
However, Rye also noted that Blomefield believed – and published – the fabricated accounts in a series of family histories, and that the work contained numerous errors, lacked details and failed to provide accurate etymological definitions.
[1] David Stoker, writing for the revised Oxford Dictionary of National Biography in 2004, felt that Rye had treated Blomefield's reputation "shabbily", emphasising his personal failings and the inevitable errors and misinterpretations in his history.
"[2] An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk containing a description of the towns, villages and hamlets, with the foundations of monasteries, churches, chapels, chantries, and other religious buildings, and an account of the ancient and present state of all the rectories, vicarages, donatives and impropriations, their former and present patrons and incumbents with their several valuations in the king's books whether discharged or not; likewise, an historical account of the castles, seats and manors, their present and ancient owners together with the epitaphs, inscriptions, and arms, in all the parish churches and chapels with several draughts of churches, monuments, arms, ancient ruins and other relicks of antiquity collected out of ledger books, registers, records, evidences, deeds, court rolls and other authentick memorials.
