John Warburton (officer of arms)

John Warburton (1682–1759) was an antiquarian, cartographer, and Somerset Herald of Arms in Ordinary at the College of Arms in the early 18th century.

He was the son of Benjamin and Mary Warburton. In early life John was an exciseman and then a supervisor, being stationed in 1718–19 at Bedale in Yorkshire. He was admitted F.R.S. in March 1719, but was ejected on 9 June 1757 for nonpayment of his subscription. His election as F.S.A. took place on 13 January 1720, but he ceased to be a member before January 1754. On 18 June 1720 he was appointed to the office of Somerset Herald in the College of Arms.

Warburton's first wife was Dorothy, but they separated in 1716. He later married a widow with children, and is said to have married her son, when a minor, to one of his daughters. By his second wife he had a son called John. Warburton died at his apartments in the College of Arms, London, his usual place of residence, on 11 May 1759, and was buried in the south aisle of St Benet Paul's Wharf, London.

Warburton published in 1716 from actual survey a map of Northumberland in four sheets, and during the next few years brought out similar maps of Yorkshire, Middlesex, Essex, and Hertfordshire.

He brought out in 1749 a "Map of Middlesex" in two sheets of imperial atlas, which came under the censure of John Anstis the Younger. Warburton had given on the border of this map five hundred engraved arms, and the earl marshal, supposing many of them to be fictitious, ordered that no copies should be sold until the right to wear them had been proved. Warburton endeavoured to vindicate himself in London and Middlesex illustrated by Names, Residence, Genealogy, and Coat-armour of the Nobility, Merchants, &c. (1749).

In 1753 he published Vallum Romanum, or the History and Antiquities of the Roman Wall in Cumberland and Northumberland, the survey and plan of which were made by him in 1715. William Hutton applauded him as "the judicious Warburton, whom I regard for his veracity".

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