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William Cole (3 August 1714 – 16 December 1782), was a Cambridgeshire clergyman and antiquary. Cole was born in Little Abington, Cambridgeshire, the son of a well-to-do farmer. He was educated at Eton, where he developed a lifelong friendship with Horace Walpole, and Cambridge University, first at Clare College and then at King's College.〔W.M. Palmer and J.D. Pickles 2007 ''William Cole of Milton''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.〕 Having inherited a substantial estate on his father's death, Cole was not obliged to earn a living and stayed for 18 years at King's College, collecting historical information on the county of Cambridgeshire. He visited nearly all the churches in the county, making sketches of them and taking notes of monumental inscriptions and coats of arms (as well as local gossip); he made extensive transcriptions of the registers of the Bishops of Ely, court rolls, registers of wills, and other manuscripts relating to the county. He made a six-month voyage to Lisbon, Portugal, on his doctor's advice to recover his spirits following a disappointment, and also travelled to France, Flanders and Scotland.〔 In 1753 Cole became rector of Bletchley and turned his attention to the history of Buckinghamshire, but 13 years later he returned to Cambridgeshire and became curate of Waterbeach. In 1770 he left the church and moved to Milton, where he was to stay for the rest of his life. He rented a small farm from King's College and continued his work on the history of the Cambridgeshire.〔 Cole never married, but lived with his manservant Tom Wood, a maidservant, and a number of animals including 2 horses and a pony, a dog called Busy, a cat, and a parrot. He enjoyed entertaining and lived well. During his later years he suffered from gout.〔 Cole died in 1782, aged 68. He left money for a new tower to be built at St Clement's church, Cambridge, where he was buried. He had published little, and left his manuscript volumes – over 100 of them – to the British Museum, where they have proved invaluable to people writing about the history of Cambridgeshire. Cole had kept a diary between 1765 and 1770, and in 1931 two volumes – one relating to a trip to France, and one to his time at Bletchley – were published.〔 A nineteenth-century biographer described Cole as "one of the most learned men of the eighteenth century in his particular line, and the most industrious antiquary that Cambridgeshire has ever had, or is likely to have", while the verdict of a contemporary, Professor Michael Lort, was "..with all his oddities, he was a worthy and valuable man".〔 Thompson Cooper wrote an entry for William Cole in the 1887 Dictionary of National Biography, the text of which follows. ==Early life and education== Cole was descended from a family of respectable yeomen, who lived for several generations in that part of Cambridgeshire which borders on Essex. The antiquary's father, William Cole of Baberham, Cambridgeshire, married four times, his third wife, the mother of the antiquary, being Elizabeth, daughter of Theophilus Tuer, merchant, of Cambridge, and widow of Charles Apthorp. The son was born at Little Abington, a village near Baberham, on 3 August 1714, and received his early education in private schools at Cambridge, Linton, and Saffron Walden. From Saffron Walden he was removed to Eton, where he remained for five years on the foundation. His principal friend and companion there was Horace Walpole, who used even at that early period to make jocular remarks on his inclination to Roman Catholicism. While yet a boy he was in the habit of copying monumental inscriptions, and drawing coats of arms in trick from the windows of churches. On leaving Eton he was admitted a pensioner of Clare College, Cambridge, 24 January 1733, and in April 1734 he obtained one of the Freeman scholarships in that college; but in 1735, on the death of his father, from whom he inherited a handsome estate, he entered himself as a fellow-commoner of Clare Hall, and the next year migrated to King's College, where he had a younger brother, then a fellow.〔''Addit. MS''. 5808, f. 58〕 In April 1736 he travelled for a short time in French Flanders with his half-brother, Dr. Stephen Apthorp, and in October of the same year he took the degree of B.A. In 1737, in consequence of bad health, he went to Lisbon for six months, returning to college in May 1738. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「William Cole (antiquary)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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