List of Worthies of Devon
Wikimedia list article

This is a list of persons considered by John Prince (1643–1723) sufficiently notable to warrant the inclusion of their biography in his work The Worthies of Devon.
The Worthies of Devon
While at Berry Pomeroy, John Prince worked on his magnum opus: a biography of his home county's many notable figures, which he probably finished in 1697. The book ran to 600 pages, with woodcuts to illustrate the 191 biographies. He struggled to find funding for it; most publishers able to handle such a large book were based in London or Oxbridge. The printer was forced to advertise for subscribers while the book languished for four years until its first publication in 1701.
It is evident that Prince was over-ambitious in his work. The alphabetical entries from A to H fill half the book, while L to Z are squeezed into the final quarter, as money problems took their toll on his inclusions. A second volume, detailing 115 entries chosen by Prince to redress the balance, was never published.
Biographies included
The following biographies appear in the 1810 edition of the book (Prince's spelling retained):
References
External links
Prince, John (1810). Danmonii Orientales Illustres, Danmonii orientales illustres: or, The worthies of Devon.
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This entry incorporates text from “List of Worthies of Devon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.