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FAC-SIMILE OF A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF LEICESTER,

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Harvard University, Child Memorial Library

Gift of Thomas Gaffield 12 May 1897

HARVARD
UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

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SMALL portion of the contents of the following pages has already appeared in print, as part of a paper on the "Ancient

Records of Leicester," read before our local Literary and Philosophical Society, in the year 1851, and subsequently printed in the volume of the society's transactions. In now embodying the substance of those brief remarks on the subject in the present greatly extended work, that portion has been almost entirely re-written, and the extracts from the records there referred to, as well as the many additional ones now appearing for the first time, have been carefully collated with the original entries.

The chief source from whence the materials for the following work have been derived is the series of Accounts of the Town Chamberlains, and my attention was first directed to them under the following circumstances:

In the year 1847 I undertook, as a labour of love, in conjunction with Mr. James Thompson, (who was then collecting materials for his valuable "History of Leicester "), to arrange the MSS. in the Borough Muniment-room, which had for very many

years been lying untouched in a state of great disorder and neglect. Our offer having been promptly accepted by the Town Council, who-properly appreciating the value of these records of our past history, which, if once allowed to perish, no wealth could replace— unanimously voted the sum of money required for binding them, and our labours then commenced: my colleague undertaking the arrangement of the interesting series of Hall Papers (now forming twenty-four folio volumes, beginning with the year 1583), whilst the Chamberlains' Accounts (now collected into thirtyeight volumes) fell to my lot. These accounts were at the time lying in a confused mass, mixed with other papers, in a corner of the muniment-room, a prey to rats and saturated with moisture, caused by the overflowings of a water butt filtrating through the porous stone wall of the building; owing to which the contents of some of the documents were hopelessly effaced, whilst others were rotting away and crumbled under the touch.

Whilst occupied at home during my leisure hours in drying and arranging the accounts, I was naturally led to peruse them, and I was at once struck by the interesting nature of their contents, and, on examination, was surprised to find how little (as compared with the mass of information which they contained) they had been consulted by our local historians.

This, it is fair to assume, could only be accounted for by the jealous care with which all access to the Corporation archives had been guarded prior to the year 1836, when the Reformed Corporation was elected.

This induced me to transcribe a considerable num

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