View source for Simon Archer 1581-1662

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===[[personal title::Sir]] [[name::Simon]] [[name::ARCHER]]  [[date of birth::1581]]-[[date of death::1662]]===

====Biographical Note====
Born at [[place of birth::Umberslade, Warwickshire]], son of [[family::Andrew Archer]], a member of a long-established landowning gentry family there.  Admitted at [[organisations::Gray’s Inn]] 1602.  Much of his career was subsequently spent managing and expanding the family and estate business at [[location::Umberslade]] and [[location::Tanworth]].  He was active in local politics as a [[occupation::magistrate]] throughout the 1620s and 30s and was knighted in 1624.  [[occupation::MP]] for [[location::Tamworth, Staffordshire]] 1640.  His sympathies during the Civil War were parliamentarian, in line with his Calvinist theology, but his generally moderate line is shown by his continuing in office as a [[occupation::JP]] not only throughout the Interregnum but also into the Restoration years.  He served on the parliamentary subcommittee for accounts in [[location::Warwickshire]] in 1644.

Archer was an active [[occupation::antiquary]], stimulated by a wish to pursue the history of his family and its estates.  He gathered extensive manuscript notes and transcripts relating to [[location::Warwickshire]], and during the 1630s distributed questionnaires around parishes to gather information.  He was well connected with other antiquaries and scholars of his generation, and his meeting with [[associates::William Dugdale]] in 1630 developed into an extensive collaboration which bore fruit as [[author::William Dugdale|Dugdale’s]] [[book title::''Antiquities of Warwickshire'']] ([[date of publication::1656]]).  Much of the research in this book was Archer’s, but he passed this to Dugdale in 1638 to produce the book (whose publication was delayed by the Civil War).

====Books==== 
[[File:ArcherSimonSir1.jpg| thumb | Armorial stamp of Sir Simon Archer (British Armorial Bindings)]]
Many of Archer’s [[format::manuscript]] collections, together with letters, notes and account books, survive in [[present repository::the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust]], [[present repository::the Warwickshire Record Office]], [[present repository::the Bodleian Library]] and elsewhere.  We know little about his printed books beyond the fact that his [[subsequent owner::second son]] and heir [[family::Thomas Archer|Thomas]], 1619-1685, left a library which was valued at [[monetary value::£350]], much of which is assumed to have been inherited from his father.

====Characteristic Markings==== 
Used an armorial stamp. 

====Sources==== 
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*[https://armorial.library.utoronto.ca/stamp-owners/ARC001 British Armorial Bindings].
*Cust, Richard. [https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/626 "Archer, Sir Simon (1581–1662), magistrate and antiquary."] ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''. 
*Styles, P. ''Sir Simon Archer, in his Studies in seventeenth-century West Midlands history'', 1978, 1-41. 
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Archer, Simon, Sir}}
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