The chief value of this compilation consists in the illustrations, and for these I wish to express my thanks to my friends the late R. Almack, Esq., Miss Bourdillon, E. T. Bridges, Esq., Miss Chapman, Miss Dunnage, Miss Daintrey, Miss Liveing, E. Liveing, Esq., M. D., and Miss S. Rowley. To Dr. Liveing I am also indebted for much valuable help in searching the MSS. in the British Museum. I have also to express my best thanks to Mr. Frere for allowing me to search and make extracts from the Mss. in his possession, and to Mr. Overall, the Librarian of the Guildhall Library, for extracts from the Records of the City of London.<br><br>"As to the performance, I am under no concern to vindicate it from the slights and ridicules<br>"that may be cast upon it by idle and witty people, who think all history to be scraps, and all<br>"antiquity to be rust and rubbish. I say this only, next to the immediate discharge of my Holy<br>"office, I know not, how in any course of studies I could have better served my patron, my people,<br>"and my successors, than by preserving the memoirs of this parish, and the adjacent parts, which<br>"before lay remote from common notice, and in a few years had been buried in unsearchable<br>"oblivion. If the present age be too much immers'd in cares or pleasures to take any relish, or<br>"to make any use of these discoveries, I then appeal to posterity, for I believe the times will<br>"come when persons of better inclination will arise, who will be glad to find any collection of<br>"this nature, and will be ready to supply the defects, and carry on the continuation of it. - From the Parochial Antiquities, hy WniT E.Kennett, Vicar of Ambrosden, 1695.