The Object of this Book, as the dedication explains, is the instruction of my child in the history of her ancestors. It has required more than five years of pretty constant labour and research, and has led me much further afield than I expected or intended at the outset. Much that is set down in it may appear immaterial and trivial; but I have hesitated to use the pruning hook, because with lapse of time trivial matters become of interest. If our forefathers of two or three hundred years ago had written full accounts of their daily life, and had gone into domestic details, what interesting reading it would be now! But they did not usually do so; and in consequence we are much in the dark about them, and can only give a bald epitome of their proceedings culled from deeds and wills, public records and parish registers.<br><br>This book is intended in the first instance for my daughter; and it may also be of some interest to members and friends of our family. Whether anyone beyond that limited circle will attempt to read it, is doubtful. It does not tell of heroes or men of genius, or even of attractive or amusing scamps. The Twemlows for the most part seem to have been fair specimens of average Englishmen, conscientious, prudent, and free from excesses of all kinds. Their surroundings have been provincial; for some seven centuries they have had their roots in Sandbach parish, from which they have seldom wandered far. Their wives, with a few exceptions of modern date, have all come from the same district. Any interest which the book may be found to possess for the general reader must be due to the representative character of the people whom it attempts to describe. They are, as it were, a sample taken from the bulk, and in the course of the narrative we see how they stood in relation to the institutions and movements of bygone centuries, and how they were affected by political and economic changes.<br><br>In the main, it seems that these good people tried to do their duty in their generation; and if this humble record should induce others to do likewise, it will not have been written in vain.