Catherine Evans
Brodie Waddell, "Writing History from Below: Chronicling and Record-Keeping in Early Modern England", History Workshop Journal (2018), 239–264
Bufton was born in 1651 in Cloggeshall, to John Bufton, a clothier, and his wife Elizabeth. He worked primarily for his father and for other master clothiers in local towns. After his father died in 1695 he ran his own weaving workshop. He never married. He wrote his will in the village of Castle Hedingham and died there in January 1718, when he was 67 years old. Bufton was a "lay" historian, who filled more than twenty almanacs with notes aout his local community and daily life. One of these chronicled local affairs, births and deaths in Coggeshall and the last recordeded details to do with his trade and a "yearly account of remarkable things". (Essex Record Office, D/DBM Z9). Eleven of his notebooks have remained, with eight held in the Essex Record Office and three in the Brotherton Library, Leeds. [ERO, D/DBm Z7-Z14; Brotherton Library, University of Leeds (BLUL), MS 8-10].