Queen Elizabeth's First Historian

Today marks the 387^th anniversary of the death of William Camden, antiquarian and the author of Britannia, the first topographical survey of the British Isles. His Annales Rerum Gestarum Angliae et Hiberniae Regnate has the distinction of being the first – though certainly not the last – biography of Elizabeth I, an undertaking suggested, apparently, by Lord Burghley. He also wrote the official account of the Gunpowder Plot and taught Ben Jonson while headmaster of Westminster School. Hugh Trevor Roper wrote a fine study of him, Queen Elizabeth's first historian: William Camden and the beginnings of English Civil History, published by Jonathan Cape in 1971, that is well worth seeking out.