 From 1707 to 1721 he was Richmond Herald of Arms in Ordinary, an officer of arms of the College of Arms.He was a Fellow and first President of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a Fellow of the Royal Society.Among his library's holdings was a volume of fragments that found its way into the collection of Richard Rawlinson and thence to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, that contains the so-called "Rawlinson Excidium Troie", a unique testimony to a Latin account of the Trojan War that was used by many medieval writers.