Roger Dodsworth was born in 1585 and died in 1654. At an early age he began collecting Yorkshire church notes and pedigrees, and by 1618 he had begun what eventually became the most monumental collection of antiquarian material bequeathed to us by the 17th century. Dodsworth spent twenty laborious years on Yorkshire antiquities, but the work naturally led him into many other counties, and after 1638 his interests, although still mainly genealogical and topographical, embraced most of England.

In 1635 he had met Dugdale, and the two had decided to collaborate in a Monasticon Anglicanum, for which Dodsworth had already made extensive collections. These were supplemented by Dugdale chiefly from the Cottonian library and some of the public records. The work was ready for the press in 1650, but the first volume was not actually published until 1655, after Dodsworth's death, and the second in 1661. For the relative shares of Dodsworth and 'that grand plagiary' in this undertaking, see 'Roger Dodsworth and his Circle' by N. Denholm-Young and H.H.E. Craster in the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, vol. xxxii (1934), pp. 5-32. In his later years, apart from the Monasticon, Dodsworth was also gathering material for a history of Yorkshire and for a Baronage. Further details are given in the Dictionary of National Biography.