ABSTRACTS OF INQUISITIONES POST MORTEM FOR THE City of London RETURNED INTO THE COURT OF CHANCERY DURING THE TUDOR PERIOD. PART II. 4-19 ELIZABETH. 1561-1577. EDITED BY SIDNEY J. MADGE. London: ISSUED TO THE SUBSCRIBERS BY The British Record Society. Limited. Preface. THERE is little need, in this the second volume of a series of Tudor Inquisitions, to emphasise the supreme importance of these Records to the genealogist, the historian and topographer, for that has already been done, with conspicuous success, in the Introduction to the previous. volume, edited in 1896 by Mr. G. S. Fry. It is only necessary to refer, therefore, by way of Preface, to certain noteworthy features to be found within the following pages. The present volume contains complete abstracts of Inquisitiones post mortem for the City of London during the years 4 to 19 of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the entire period so far covered in the series being that from 1485 to 1577. A considerable portion of the remaining twenty-six years will appear in the "Index Library" during 1902, and the usual thorough Indexes, Nominum et Locorum, will be published as soon as the last Inquisitions of the Tudor Period issue from the press. This is believed to be the better course to follow, for it has the advantage not only of hastening forward the completion of work now well in hand, thus preventing the annoyance of a prolonged pause (due no less to publication than to preparation of the periodic index), but also of avoiding an undue multiplicity of indexes. The abstracts of Inquisitiones post mortem here printed are taken from the Chancery Series for the reign of Elizabeth preserved at the Public Record Office; and since the original documents are in Latin— their decipherment, on account of age and condition, being at times a source of perplexity even to the practised eye of the expert-the great advantage of these readable English abstracts will neither be denied by the critic nor fail to meet with very general approval. They supply, moreover, all the information contained in the originals, and for all practical purposes are the Inquisitions themselves, shorn of their provoking verbiage. Where necessary, they have been collated with the transcripts returned either into the Court of Exchequer or the Court of Wards and Liveries. For this and other good work much praise is due to Miss Walford. иг 583567 |