James Torre was an English antiquarian and genealogist.
Life
He was the son of Gregory Torre, a royalist soldier, and his wife Anne, daughter and heir of John Farr of Hepworth, born into a family based at the Isle of Axholm in Lincolnshire; he was baptised at Haxey in Lincolnshire on 30 April 1649. He was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he spent two and a half years, graduating B.A. in 1669. Torre entered the Inner Temple as a student, but was not called to the bar. Settling at York, he concentrated on research into the ecclesiastical antiquities of Yorkshire. He died on 31 July 1699 of a "contagious disorder" at Snydall, Yorkshire, shortly after his purchase of the Snydall estate; he was buried in the parish church, Normanton, where there was a brass set up to his memory.
Works
Torre's Yorkshire collections, in five folio volumes, went to the dean and chapter of York Minster. The first volume has the titleAntiquities Ecclesiastical of the City of York concerning Churches, Parochial Conventual Chapels, Hospitals, and Gilds, and in them Chantries and Interments, also Churches Parochial and Conventual within the Archdeaconry of the West Riding, collected out of Publick Records and Registers, A.D. 1691. The other archdeaconries are treated in similar fashion in two more volumes; the fourth volume consists of peculiars. They were presented to the chapter library by Archbishop John Sharp's executors. For parish churches, Torre's method was to start from the lay interest at an early period, mostly following Kirby's inquest for Yorkshire of 1284; moving to the patronage of the church. He also went through the wills proved at York, extracting from them clauses relating to the interments of the testators. He indexed, in effect, a large number of records, which were then used by later researchers. Torre also wrote five volumes in folio, entitled English Nobility and Gentry, or supplemental Collections to Sir William Dugdale's "Baronage". It transcribed and corrected William Dugdale's work, and added genealogies.
Family
Torre married, first, Elizabeth, youngest daughter of the Rev. William Lincolne, D.D., of Bottesford; and secondly, Anna, daughter of Nicholas Lister of Rigton, by whom he left a son Nicholas and a daughter.
