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List of Worthies of Devon

Wikimedia list article

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ6632893 ↗
Source-derived summary

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.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “List of Worthies of Devon” is wikimedia list article. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through List, Worthies and Devon, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1643, 1723, 1697, 1701—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, List, Worthies and Devon is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “wikimedia list article” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6632893. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1643, 1723, 1697 and 1701.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “List of Worthies of Devon”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow List of Worthies of Devon primary sources, List of Worthies of Devon archive and List research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

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.