PREFACE.
IN the following pages will be found a List—fairly complete, it is believed, if not exhaustive—of such Englishmen or others, being British subjects[1], as have been considered deserving of a place of record in any standard work of British Biography, and whose names are to be found also in the Admission Books of the Middle Temple[2].
The List extends to nearly one thousand names. Of these a very large number are, of course, those of distinction in the records of the Law—Judges, Advocates, Jurists and the like; but the majority,
- ↑ Two noteworthy exceptions to this rule will be found, on pp. 95 and 163 respectively, in the persons of the Venetian Ambassadors, Antonio Foscarini and Pietro Mocenigo
- ↑ This has been the general principle of selection. A departure from it, in the direction of a more Hberal inclusion, has, however, been made in a few instances apparently overlooked in the Biographies alluded to.