Tristram Risdon

[9] After a local education, Tristram Risdon studied either at Broadgates Hall or at Exeter College in Oxford, though he left the university without taking any degree.

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's manuscript Collections towards a description of the country of Devon.

[14] 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, another friend, in his A View of Devonshire of 1630, which was based on the courses of the rivers.

[3] 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 [sic], to visit such places as are offered to be seen upon her banks.

[15] 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.

Many were burned; namely, one Hartnoll, a blind man, lying in his bed, was carried to the market place for his safety, and yet there burnt..." According to Gordon Goodwin, writing in the 1900 Dictionary of National Biography,[17] Risdon was the first documentary source of several old Devonshire stories: of Elflida and Ethelwold,[18] Childe the Hunter,[19] Budockside and his daughter,[c] and the Tiverton fire.

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.

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.

[14] 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.