y
years. Spelman, Camden, and others, desirous of renovating the society,
met for this purpose at the Herald's-office; they settled their
regulations, among which, one was "for avoiding offence, they should
neither meddle with matters of state nor religion." "But before our next
meeting," says Spelman, "we had notice that his majesty took _a little
mislike of our society_, not being informed that we had resolved to
decline all matters of state. Yet hereupon we forbore to meet again, and
so all our labour's lost!" Unquestionably much was lost, for much could
have been produced; and Spelman's work on law terms, where I find this
information, was one of the first projected. James the First has
incurred the censure of those who have written more boldly than Spelman
on the suppression of this society; but whether James was misinformed by
"taking a little mislike," or whether the antiquaries failed in exerting
themselves to open their plan more clearly to that "timid pedant," as
Gough and others designate this monarch, may yet be doubtful; assuredly
James was not a man to contemn their erudition!

The king at this time was busied by furthering a similar project, which
was to found "King James's College at Chelsea;" a project originating
with Dean Sutcliff; and zealously approved by Prince Henry, to raise a
nursery for young polemics in scholastical divinity, for the purpose of
defending the Protestant cause from the attacks of catholics and
sectaries; a college which was afterwards called by Laud "Controversy
College." In this society were appointed historians and antiquaries, for
Camden and Haywood filled these offices.

The Society of Antiquaries, however, though suppressed, was perhaps
never extinct; it survived in some shape under Charles the Second, for
Ashmole in his Diary notices "the Antiquaries' Feast," as well as "the
Astrologers'," and another of "the Freemasons'."[278] The present
society was only incorporated in 1751. There are two sets of their
Memoirs; for besides the modern _Archaeologia_, we have two volumes of
"Curious Discourses," written by the Fathers of the Antiquarian Society
in the age of Elizabeth, collected from their dispersed manuscripts,
which Camden preserved with a parental hand.

The philosophical spirit of the age, it might have been expected, would
have reached our modern antiquaries; but neither profound views, nor
eloquent disquisitions, have imparted that value to their confined
researc