Brodie Waddell
On 8 August 1716, Joseph Bufton sat down to take stock of his little archive.
For about forty years, he had been filling the margins and blank pages of old almanacs with notes. He now had quite a collection and his terse list hints at their contents.
‘I reckon I have here 22 almanacks’, he wrote…
- Seven volumes were ‘filled up chiefly with things taken out of other books’, including ‘out of a dictionary’.
- Five were account books, some ‘of household stuff, &c.’, but others probably related to his work.
- Three volumes were ‘out of Irish letters, &c.’, that is to say, copies of letters between Joseph and his brother John, who had removed to Ireland in 1678.
- Two were ‘filled up with notes of sermons’ and ‘an account of funerall sermons’.
- One was ‘filled chiefly with buriall and marriage’, chronicling the vital events of his family members and neighbours.
- Another ‘I keep on my board and write in dayly’, though its precise contents remain a mystery.
- One he ‘fill’d great part with Bellman’s verses’, short poems celebrating the chief annual religious and civic festivals such as Christmastide and the royal birthday.
- A final volume recorded the rules of his trade in the form of ‘the orders in Comber’s book, &c.’
This extraordinary little library has only partly survived the ensuing centuries. Only eleven volumes – half the total noted by Bufton in 1716 – are known to remain. Eight of these are held in his native county at the Essex Record Office and another three can be found at the Brotherton Library in Leeds. Still, the fact that any escaped the rubbish heap is surely a sign of providential favour – most personal jottings of this sort were long ago destroyed by unfortunate fires, spring cleanings or damp basements.
One of Bufton’s almanacs, including his scrawl of notes in every available margin.
This brings me to the question that I suspect most readers’ are now asking themselves: Who was Joseph Bufton and why should anyone care? Continue reading
the many-headed monster 