geley. Now Camden, fpeaking of the etymology of fur-. names, fays, that from places in England and Scotland came an infinite number of furnames, for that every town, village, or hamlet, has afforded names to families; and in fupport of this his affertion, has produced a long lift of inftances, at the end of which he further remarks, that all which in Latin old evidences have had De prefixed to them, were borrowed from places, and that this diftinction of local names with De was uniformly obferved in records till about the time of king Edward IV.: neither,' adds he, was there, as I faid before, or is there, any town, village, hamlet, or place in England, but hath made names to families; so that many names are local, which do not seem so, because the places are unknown to moft men, and all known to no one man. It seems therefore certain, according to thefe obfervations of Camden's, that the furname Ruggeley was derived from fome place; and as one of that name is to be found in the county in which their earlieft refidence is known. to have been, it is fubmitted to the reader whether the fuppofition that the family were originally inhabitants of Ruggeley is not more than probable '.

From Hawkfbeard, in confequence of a purchase of an eftate which he had made in this latter county, and to gratify, as it is imagined, a love of field recreations, particularly hunting, Nicholas Ruggeley, of Hawkfbeard, efquire, who appears to have been appointed, in the 2d of Henry IV. ranger of Sutton chace in Warwickshire, and to have held the rangership till the 10th of Henry VI. removed, about the 10th of Henry V. viz. A. D. 1423, to Dunton, in War

a Camden's Remains, edit. 8vo. 1674, p. 142, 150.

The name Ruggeley, as applied to a place, though the time of its affumption is much too diftant to enable us to decide with certainty, is molt probably of Anglo-Saxon original, Rug or pnuhge, in that language, fignifying rough or rugged. See Lye's Dict. Saxonico-GothicoLat. art. Rug, and alfo, art. Pruz; and Ley denoting, among other fignifications, a ley of land, terra inculta, novale. It. ut leag & lega, campus, locus. See Lye's Dict. before cited, art. Ley. So that pruhge ley or Rugsley, or, as it has been fince fpelt, Ruggeley, would mean rough or rugged field or place, and might very properly refer to the rude and uncultivated state in which that town, at the time when it was thus named, may reasonably be fupposed to have been.

5

wickshire

wickshire, where he became the founder of a new family. In the 8th year of king Henry VI. he appears to have been sheriff of the counties of Leicester and Warwick, and in the 12th of that king's reign his name occurs among the gentry of Warwickshire, who made oath for the obfervance of the articles concluded on in the parliament then held. But about the beginning of the fixteenth century, as there is good reason to believe, a younger branch of the family, removing first into fome part of Lincolnshire, though to what place is not certainly known, and very shortly afterwards to Lavenham, or, as it is now ufually, though corruptly, called, Lanham, in Suffolk, a market-town then of confiderable note for the cloathing trade, not far diftant from St. Edmundsbury,

a Dugdale, ubi fupra. It fhould feem that the family were either defirous of preferving the name of the place at which, if our conjecture above advanced fhall be thought well fupported, they were originally fettled, and from which they derived their name, and therefore transferred it to Dunton also, in addition to its former appellation; or else that they were anxious that, befides its own, it should also bear the name of their family: for it is obfervable, that in an old pedigree (from this Nicholas Ruggeley down to 1640, but without noticing that at Lavenham) now remaining in the Heralds office, the family is thus defcribed, Ruggeley, of Downton Ruggeley, in Warwickfhire,' and they are there faid to bear the following arms: Field argent, a chevron, inter three rofes, gules; creft, on a wreath of the colours, a tower, or, flaming at the top, proper, against four arrows in faltier, argent;' and these are the arms borne by the prefent reprefentative of the family. Sir William Dugdale, in his Antiquities of Warwickshire, edit. 1656, p. 647, and again, p. 674, remarks, that anciently it was a frequent practice, if any thing could be hit on which founded near or like the name, to bear that in the arms; I am therefore inclined to think that the above-mentioned arms were, at least in their colour, intended to allude to the first fyllable of the name, rouge, in heraldical language, as well as gules, fignifying the colour red.

b Fuller's Worthies, Leicestershire, p. 139.

Dugdale, in loco fupra cit. Fuller's Worthies, Warwickshire, p. 131. Among the records of the court of Chancery, now in the Tower, is a bill, filed in the year 1674 by John Ruggeley and others, against John Thory and others, in which the plaintiff defcribes himself as John Ruggeley, of Holton Holgate, com. Lincoln, gent.' From this circumftance it is more than probable, that the place in Lincolnshire to which the family removed was Holton Holgate, and that the above-mentioned John Ruggeley was a defcendant of the family.

became

became ultimately fettled at this latter place; and from this younger branch it was that the perfon of whom we are about to speak derived his descent.

Of the elder Mr. Ruggle, or the others of his children, no further particulars are known, than that he himself died before the year 1612, (for it appears that his wife was buried at Lavenham the 22d of February 1612, and is defcribed in the register for that parish by the name and addition of Margery Rugle, widow ;) that one of his daughters died in 1568, and one of his fons in 1570, both infants; and that two others of his daughters, who were living in 1621, were married and fettled at Chefler; but George, the fubject of our prefent enquiry, was born, as he himfelf informs us in his will, hereafter inferted, at Lavenham, and most probably about the month of November 1575, for on the 13th of that month we find that he was baptized. At a competent age he was fent for grammatical inftruction to the free grammar-fchool at Lavenham, where his industry in the profecution of his ftudies, and the modefty and fobriety of his behaviour, foon attracted the notice and conciliated the affection of Mr. William Greenhall, the then master, and produced between them a friendship which was terminated only by the death of Mr. Ruggle. The progrefs which he had here made in grammatical erudition, affording a good ground for expectation that in time he would attain to a diftinguished eminence for literature, induced his father (who appears to have arrived to a confiderable degree of opulence, fince we find that, befides maintaining a numerous family, he was enabled to carry fuch a defign into execution) ftill further to encourage his propenfity to learning, by fuperadding to the inftruction which he had already received, the additional advantage of an univerfity education; and the vicinity of Cam

a See the extracts from the parish register of Lavenham, inferted in the appendix hereto.

b Ibid.

George Ruggle in his will, hereafter inferted, gives legacies to each

of them.

See the extracts from Lavenham register, before referred to.

e See Mr. Ruggle's will, in which he mentions Mr. Greenball by the appellation of his kind friend Mr. William Greenhall, fome time his School,mafter.

bridge to the place of his refidence naturally pointing that out for the purpofe in preference to Oxford, it was refolved to fend him to Cambridge.

a

In purfuance of this refolution, and with a view, as it is conceived, that he fhould enter into holy orders, the younger Mr. Ruggle was, in the year 1589, and in the 14th of his age, placed in St. John's college, Cambridge, (of which foundation the Rev. Mr. Coppinger, then rector of Lavenham, had himself been a fellow ); and entered in the matriculation book of the univerfity, in the rank of a penfioner, as it is called, on the 20th of June in that year but not having here the good fortune to obtain any fcholarship or other provision, he removed to Trinity college, and was there admitted to a scholarship on the 11th of May 1593. In this year, 1593, or the fubfequent one, young Ruggle is imagined to have taken the degree of bachelor of arts, for it appears that in 1597 he took that of master, being at that time still of Trinity college, and foon after entered into holy orders; but from Trinity college he, in the next year, 1598, removed to Clare hall, and was there elected to a fellowship.

d

The

a Fuller's Church Hiftory, Book X. p. 101.
b The entry in the matriculation book is this:

George Rugglle, St. John's, penfioner.'

<June 20th, 15891

• Dr. Richardfon's papers, penes the Rev. Dr. Farmer.

d Ibid.

e In his will he ftyles himself fimply a member of the univerfity of Cambridge; but that he was in orders may be inferred from the following lines in a manufcript poem in the Harleian collection, No. 5191, entitled The Soldier's Counterbuff to the Cambridge Interludians of Igna

ramus:

Where, among news, fome of more plain import,
Some of more danger, under fhew of fport,
I heard of two occurrents, ftrange to tell,

Both touching Cambridge preachers of God's fpell:
First, that Paul Tomfon clipped the king's coin
Next, that George Rugler's interlude did join

Our laws with ignorance, with mere intent

To tax our king and happy government.'

f Morris Drake Morris, of Mount Morris, in the county of Kent, efq. late fellow-commoner of Trinity college in Cambridge, the compiler of a work now remaining in manufcript among the Harleian

collection,

The natural bent of his inclination feems to have led him to the ftudy of polite literature; in the profecution whereof he fet himself to acquire a competent knowledge of the French and Italian languages, in the latter of which he has left behind him evidence of his fkill, as will hereafter appear, and to form an intimate acquaintance with the writings of the feveral Greek and Roman poets, historians, and orators. Of the Roman poets, he seems to have been more especially converfant with the works of Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Terence, Plautus, Catullus, Juvenal, Perfius, and Martial*; and among the Italian writers, the productions of Giambattista Porta, a Neapolitan philologift, and particularly his comedies, are found to have attracted his notice and engaged his attention b.

His reputation for learning and skill in all polite literature was not confined to his own college, nor indeed to the univerfity of Cambridge, but became fo general, that it was an inducement with many parents and guardians for placing young men at Clare hall, in preference to any other feminary; and it was doubtlefs owing to the fame circumftance

that

collection, No. 7177, entitled The Lives of the illuftrious Men that have been educated in the most ancient and famous University of Cambridge, from the Foundation thereof unto the Year 1715, as collected out of Bale, Pits, Fuller, Lloyd, Wood, Calamy, Walker, &c. has given, p. 229, a brief account of our author; in which he fays, George Ruggle, mafter of arts, was educated in, and fome time fellow of, Clare hall;' but in the former part of this affertion, as appears above, he is most evidently miftaken. The date in the text is fupported by an entry among the few remaining papers at Clare hall.

a From all thefe authors paffages are to be found inferted in the comedy of Ignoramus, more especially from Martial, the quotations from whom are very numerous; and as to Juvenal and Perfius, a copy of their writings, printed at Paris in small 8vo. by Robert Stephens, in 1544, which appears to have been collated by Mr. Ruggle with other printed editions, and even with fome manufcripts, and in which the various readings, and alfo allufions to other claffic authors, are noted in Mr. Ruggle's hand-writing, is now existing among his other books at Clare hall.

Of this perfon fee an account in a subsequent note.

< In The Chriftian Magazine for July 1761, p. 356, is inferted a life of Mr. Nicholas Ferrar, a fellow of Clare hall, Cambridge, (and one of

thofe