He matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1803, graduated BA in 1806 and received the honorary degree of MA in 1807.

[2] By this time he had become involved with research into the history of Cheshire and to make this task easier he bought Chorlton House and estate, which was four miles from Chester.

[1] The full title of the work is The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester... incorporated with a republication of King's Vale Royal and Leycester's Cheshire antiquities (see Bibliography).

J. Eaton, his research assistant, and by Faithful Thomas, the deputy keeper of the records at Chester Castle.

[1] A second edition of the work, revised and enlarged, was produced by Thomas Helsby and published between 1875 and 1882.

Following his move to Gloucestershire he became interested in the antiquities and Roman history of the local area, publishing a series of books and papers, including Strigulensia in 1861, which was about the archaeology of the local region around Chepstow Castle, which in the Middle Ages had been known as "Striguil".