PREFACE.
The present volume is really an amplification of the Appendix to the ninth edition of Wright's "Court Hand Restored," which I brought out in 1879, with the addition of a list of the abbreviated forms of Latin and French words used in English records and manuscripts.
Several such lists have been published at various times, the most used, perhaps, in England being Chassant's "Dictionnaire des Abréviations," and the list in the fourth volume of the "Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense," edited by the late Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy in the series of "Chronicles and Memorials."
This latter, however, being merely a portion of the preface of a historical book, is not so well known nor so convenient for use as if it occurred in a book devoted to information of this class.
I have endeavoured also to justify the printing of another such list by arranging the abbreviations in such a manner as to facilitate the finding the word wanted. In some lists this is not easy, unless one knows what the word is in full.
The principle acted on has been as follows: — Letters with marks of contraction attached to them, represented by a single type, are separated from the same letters printed in the ordinary
