He made his first appearance as an author with the publication of Formulare Anglicanum in 1702, concerning ancient charters, which Madox introduced with a learned dissertation on the subject.
[1][4] In 1711 he published his History of the Exchequer, with a dedication to the Queen and a long prefatory epistle to Lord Somers, giving an account of his researches among the public records to gather the materials for the work.
Madox was subsequently sworn in and admitted to the office of historiographer royal, in succession to Thomas Rymer, on 12 July 1714,[5] with an attached salary of £200 a year.
[1] The last of his works Madox saw printed in his lifetime was Firma Burgi, on early records concerning English towns and boroughs, dedicated to George I, published in 1723.
It ran to ninety-four volumes,[7] folio and quarto, consisting chiefly of extracts of records from the Exchequer, the Patent and Close Rolls in the Tower, the Cottonian Library, the archives of Canterbury and Westminster, and the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; all that Madox had transcribed himself, intending them as materials for a Feudal History of England from the earliest times.