Short answers, pulled from the story.
William Oldys (the 14th of July 1696 - the 15th of April 1761) was an English antiquarian and bibliographer. He contributed twenty-two articles to the Biographia Britannica between 1747 and 1760, helped compile one of the earliest British poetry anthologies, and served as literary secretary to Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer.
Oldys was committed to the Fleet debtors' prison in 1751 because of accumulated personal debts. He was imprisoned for two years before friends paid his debts and secured his release.
When Oldys left London for Yorkshire in 1724, his landlord sold the books and papers he had left behind. Among the lost materials was an annotated copy of Gerard Langbaine's Dramatick Poets, which eventually passed to Theophilus Cibber and provided research for the Lives of the Poets published in 1753.
In April 1755, the Duke of Norfolk appointed Oldys Norfolk Herald Extraordinary and then Norroy King of Arms. The College of Arms later recorded that he was wholly ignorant of heraldry, though he held the position until his death.
The Biographia Britannica was one of the most ambitious biographical reference projects of the eighteenth century. William Oldys contributed twenty-two articles to it between 1747 and 1760.
Oldys lost part of his small patrimony in the South Sea Bubble, a catastrophic financial collapse. The losses drove him to leave London in 1724 for Yorkshire, where he spent the better part of six years as a guest of the Earl of Malton.