PREFACE
county were made by Roger Dodsworth[1] (1585–1654), Christopher Towneley[2] (1604–1674), Richard Kuerden[3] (1623–c. 1690), Randle Holme (1627–1699), and his son Randle Holme[4] (died 1707), and the Rev. F. R. Raines[5] (1805–1878), but no attempt has hitherto been made to utilize these collections for the history of the county. During the last twenty years transcripts of charters from these collections and of a great part of the Duchy and Palatinate of Lancaster records have been made, these being supplemented by abstracts of many records of the Crown, and of documents in museums, public libraries, and in private hands.
In the department of printed works the volumes of the Chetham Society, the Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, and the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire contain a vast amount of original material, which in the main has been critically and carefully edited.
By utilizing a selected portion of this mass of material it will be possible to give a succinct and precise account of each parish and township with the descent of each manor and large estate from the earliest time to the present day. Four or five volumes will be devoted to this department of history, the remaining subjects being dealt with in volumes i, ii, and vii.
The editors are under great obligations to Mr. Edmund Dickson, F.G.S., Mr. Harper Gaythorpe, F.S.A. (Scot.), and Mr. H. Murray for information in the department of Natural History and Mr. W. E. Gregson, Mr. W. F. Irvine, Mr. R. D. Radcliffe, Mr. J. P. Rylands, Mr. C. W. Sutton, and other members of the Lancashire Committee for their active and friendly services.
They also wish to express their thanks to Sir John Evans, K.C.B., Col. Fishwick, F.S.A., Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co., and the Society of Antiquaries for the use of blocks, and to the British Numismatic Society, and Mr. P. W. P. Carlyon-Britton, F.S.A., for the loan of a series of casts of the coins found in the Cuerdale hoard.
- ↑ In the Bodleian Library, Oxford. For material relating to this county the most important volumes are Nos. xxxix, liii, lviii, lxi, lxii, lxx, lxxxvii, cxxxi, cxlii, cxlix, cliii.
- ↑ The greater part of these MSS. was dispersed at the Towneley Hall sale in 1883. Twenty volumes of transcripts of charters were acquired by the Trustees of the British Museum; the most important being Add. MSS. Nos. 32,103, 32,104 (B.B.), 32,105 (C.T.), 32,106 (E.E., F.F.), 32,107 (G.G.), 32,108 (R.R.). A dozen volumes are in the possession of William Farrer, the most important being those marked by Chr. Towneley D.D., H.H., and O.O. Eighteen volumes were acquired by the Feoffees of Chetham's Library, the most important volumes being C. 8–13 (A-Y), C. 8–14 (C.C.), C. 8–7 (P.P., W.W.).
- ↑ Six volumes are preserved in the College of Arms, one volume is in the British Museum, Harl. MSS., No. 7,386, and two volumes are in Chetham's Library. These MSS. consist of brief abstracts made from original documents, mostly charters, and of abstracts of Chr. Towneley's MSS. The caligraphy and the paper and ink used by the compiler render the deciphering of these MSS. a work of great difficulty.
- ↑ Preserved in the British Museum, the most important volumes being Harleian MSS., Nos. 2,042, 2,063, 2,077, 2,085, and 2,112.
- ↑ These consist of forty-five volumes of Lancashire MSS., and are preserved in Chetham's Library
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