Andrew Ducarel

Andrew Coltée Ducarel (9 June 1713 – 29 May 1785) was a French-English antiquary, librarian, and archivist. He was also a lawyer practising civil law (a "civilian"), and a member of the College of Civilians.

Early life and education Ducarel was born on 9 June 1713 in Paris. His parents, Jacques Coltée Ducarel (1680–1718) and Jeanne Crommelin (1690–1723), were Huguenots from Normandy. Jacques was a banker and merchant, who achieved ennoblement in 1713 with the title Marquis de Chateau de Muids. He died in 1718, just as a new wave of Huguenot persecution was beginning, and in 1719 Jeanne fled with her three infant sons first to Amsterdam, and then, in 1721, to England. They settled in Greenwich, where Jeanne married her second husband, Jacques Girardot, another Huguenot.

In 1728, Andrew was sent to be educated at Eton. The following year he suffered a serious accident there in which he lost one eye: he spent three months under the medical care of Sir Hans Sloane. In 1731 he matriculated at Oxford from Trinity College, but transferred shortly afterwards to St John's. In 1734, while still undergraduates, he and his brother were naturalized. He was created Doctor of Civil Law in 1742, and graduated as a "grand compounder" on 21 October 1748. He was admitted a member of the College of Advocates at Doctors' Commons on 3 November 1743, and afterwards served as librarian there 1754–7, and as treasurer 1757–61.

He greatly improved the catalogues both of the printed books and the manuscripts at Lambeth, and made a digest, with a general index, of all the registers and records of the province of Canterbury. He was assisted by his friend, Edward Rowe Mores, the Rev. Henry Hall (his predecessor in the office of librarian), and the engraver Benjamin Thomas Pouncy, who was for many years his clerk and deputy librarian. Ducarel's contribution was seriously impeded by his complete blindness in one eye, and the weakness of the other. Besides the digest preserved among the official archives at Lambeth, he formed another personal manuscript collection in forty-eight volumes: after his death this passed to the antiquary Richard Gough, and in 1810 was bought for the British Museum library.

He also took a more general interest in the ecclesiastical antiquities of the province of Canterbury, and, with Mores, compiled a history of Croydon Palace and of the town of Croydon. This was completed and presented to Archbishop Herring in manuscript in 1755, and published in 1783. However, the work led to a virulent rift between the two friends, when Mores, who had made significant contributions to it, discovered that he was not named on the title page.

In 1763, Ducarel was appointed by the government, with Sir Joseph Ayloffe and Thomas Astle, to sort and catalogue the records of the state paper office at Whitehall, and afterwards those in the augmentation office.

On the death of Archbishop Secker in 1768 Ducarel applied for the post of secretary to the new archbishop, Frederick Cornwallis, but without success.

Wider antiquarianism For many years Ducarel used to go in August on an antiquarian tour through different parts of the country, in company with his friend Samuel Gale, and attended by a coachman and footman. They travelled about fifteen miles a day, and put up at inns. After dinner, while Gale smoked his pipe, Ducarel transcribed his topographical and archaeological notes. In an engraving of London Bridge Chapel by George Vertue, the figure measuring is Ducarel, and that standing is Gale.

In 1752, with a friend, Thomas Bever, he undertook a tour of Normandy. Through his publications Tour through Normandy in a letter to a Friend (1754), later greatly expanded and illustrated as Anglo-Norman Antiquities Considered (1767), he effectively put the Duchy on the map for the late 18th-century English traveller. He was one of the first Englishmen to see and appreciate the significance of the Bayeux Tapestry, and included an account of it written by his late friend Smart Lethieullier – the first detailed description in English – as an appendix to Anglo-Norman Antiquities.

Character sketches Francis Grose described Ducarel in scathing terms:

Grose further wrote:

Horace Walpole similarly formed a negative opinion of him:

According to John Nichols, who knew him well:

Death and legacy Ducarel was a fit and athletic man, who believed that he would live to a great age. The immediate cause of his final illness was the shock of receiving a letter at Canterbury informing him that his wife was at the point of death. He hurried home to South Lambeth, took to his bed, and died three days later, on 29 May 1785. He was buried on the north side of the altar in the church of St Katharine's by the Tower. In the event, Mrs Ducarel survived him more than six years, dying on 6 October 1791.

His coins, pictures, and antiquities were sold at auction on 30 November 1785 and his books, manuscripts and prints were sold in April 1786. Most of the manuscripts passed into the hands of Richard Gough and John Nichols.

Personal life In 1749 Ducarel married Sarah Desborough (1696–1791). She was a widow seventeen years his senior, who had previously been his housekeeper. He is said to have married her out of gratitude, after being nursed by her through a severe illness. In Grose's view, these circumstances "tended greatly to his future establishment, Mrs. Ducarrel being a sober, careful woman". There were no children of the marriage.

Works A Tour through Normandy, described in a letter to a friend (anon.) (London, 1754); republished in a greatly enlarged form (and under Ducarel's name) as Anglo-Norman Antiquities considered, in a Tour through part of Normandy, illustrated with 27 copperplates (London, 1767) De Registris Lambethanis Dissertatiuncula (London, 1766) A Series of above 200 Anglo-Gallic, or Norman and Aquitain Coins of the antient Kings of England (London, 1757) Some Account of Browne Willis, Esq., LL.D. (London, 1760) A Repertory of the Endowments of Vicarages in the Diocese of Canterbury (London, 1763; 2nd edn, 1782) A Letter to William Watson, M.D., upon the early Cultivation of Botany in England; and some particulars about John Tradescant, gardener to Charles I (London, 1773); appeared originally in Philosophical Transactions, vol. 63, p. 79 Account of William Stukeley, in vol. 2 of Stukeley's Itinerary (1776) A List of various Editions of the Bible, and parts thereof, in English; from the year 1526 to 1776 (London, 1776) (enlarged from a manuscript originally prepared by Joseph Ames) Some Account of the Alien Priories, and of such lands as they are known to have possessed in England and Wales, collected by John Warburton, Somerset Herald, and Ducarel, 2 vols (London, 1779; 2nd edn 1786) History of the Royal Hospital and Collegiate Church of St. Katharine, near the Tower of London (1782) Some Account of the Town, Church, and Archiepiscopal Palace of Croydon (1783) [written with Edward Rowe Mores] History and Antiquities of the Archiepiscopal Palace of Lambeth (1785); in Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica, vol. 2