From Production to Reception: Reading the Perambuliation

This essay traces some of the ways in which readers read and used Lambarde’s book. Their responses, and Lambarde’s reactions to them, tell a number of stories. Readers found the Perambulation a treasury of information about law, ecclesiastical history, geography and much more, as annotated copies of the book show. From the first, Lambarde insisted that admirers exaggerated his accomplishments. But he was pleased, as well as agitated, when William Camden made his book the model for his own survey of British history and topography, the Britannia (1586). Camden showed Lambarde a draft of his chapter on Kent before publication, and he incorporated Lambarde’s comments into the printed text. Like Lambarde, Camden had learned much from such friends as Abraham Ortelius, who encouraged his work as an antiquary. After Britannia appeared, the two men responded to one another’s ideas and worked them into new versions of their writing. The story of their friendship reveals that Lambarde continued to apply the collaborative approach that he had used when working with Laurence Nowell and Matthew parker—and suggests that it was typical more broadly for antiquarian scholarship.