Page:Court-hand restored (IA courthandresto00wrig).djvu/11

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PREFACE

TO THE

NINTH EDITION,

Seven Plates, executed by the Photolithographic process, have been added to the present Edition. They have been selected, not for the purpose of exhibiting curiosities or extraordinary specimens of Caligraphy, but as examples of the ordinary handwritings which the Student of Records will be likely to meet with in his researches. The first Plate contains a facsimile of a Saxon Charter, the most ancient class of legal deed which the country possesses; of Domesday Book; and of the two oldest Pipe Rolls of the Exchequer. The four following Plates exhibit specimens of Records of various kinds belonging to the four Courts of Chancery, Queen's Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer, from the end of the twelfth century to the beginning of the seventeenth. On the last two Plates will be found extracts from a Court Roll and specimens of Accounts of various kinds and dates.

The Appendix has been throughout corrected and considerably augmented. Although it is not pretended that the Glossary of Latin Words used in Records is in any sense complete, yet, as there is not at present any good English dictionary of Mediæval Latin, it is hoped that it will be found to contain, in a short form, much information which will be useful to the learner, and that it will sometimes also save even the more advanced Student the trouble of consulting more bulky volumes. For the names of Roman stations in the topographical list, the Pklitor has consulted Camden, Horsley's Britannia Romana, the Monumenta Britannica, Pearson's Historical Atlas, Bruce's Roman Wall, and various editions of the Antonine Itinerary. Where Antiquaries differ as to the identification of a Romantown,