Clarencieux King of Arms, to the great indignation of the heralds,
whose pedantry he ridiculed. He afterwards sold his place for L2,000,
avowing ignorance of his profession and his constant neglect of his
official duties.

In the same reign, to Peter Le Neve (Norroy) we are indebted for the
careful preservation of the invaluable "Paxton Letters," of the reigns
of Henry VI., Edward IV., and Richard III., purchased and afterwards
published by Sir John Fenn.

Another eminent herald was John Anstis, created Garter in 1718 (George
I.), after being imprisoned as a Jacobite. He wrote learned works on the
Orders of the Garter and the Bath, and left behind him valuable
materials--his MS. for the "History of the College of Arms," now
preserved in the library.

Francis Grose, that roundabout, jovial friend of Burns, was Richmond
Herald for many years, but he resigned his appointment in 1763, to
become Adjutant and Paymaster of the Hampshire Militia. Grose was the
son of a Swiss jeweller, who had settled in London. His "Views of
Antiquities in England and Wales" helped to restore a taste for Gothic
art. He died in 1791.

Of Oldys, that eccentric antiquary, who was Norroy King at Arms in the
reign of George II.--the Duke of Norfolk having appointed him from the
pleasure he felt at the perusal of his "Life of Sir Walter
Raleigh"--Grose gives an amusing account:--

"William Oldys, Norroy King at Arms," says Grose, "author of the 'Life
of Sir Walter Raleigh,' and several others in the 'Biographia
Britannica,' was natural son of a Dr. Oldys, in the Commons, who kept
his mother very privately, and probably very meanly, as when he dined at
a tavern he used to beg leave to send home part of the remains of any
fish or fowl for his _cat_, which cat was afterwards found out to be Mr.
Oldys' mother. His parents dying when he was very young, he soon
squandered away his small patrimony, when he became first an attendant
in Lord Oxford's library and afterwards librarian. He was a little
mean-looking man, of a vulgar address, and, when I knew him, rarely
sober in the afternoon, never after supper. His favourite liquor was
porter, with a glass of gin between each pot. Dr. Ducarrel told me he
used to stint Oldys to three pots of beer whenever he visited him. Oldys
seemed to have little classical learning, and knew nothing of the
sciences; but for index-reading, title-pages, and the knowledge of
scarce English books and editions, he had no equ