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INTRODUCTION.
THE importance of the Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ will not, it is presumed, be denied in the present day, when so many volumes illustrative of history and biography are constantly issuing from the press.
If any proof of the high estimation of the work were required, it is furnished by the fact of there being known to be extant at least twenty copies fully annotated by eminent men[1].
Many of these copies are apparently designed for new editions, but none has yet been given to the world.
Such a work manifestly requires continuation from time to time, and the compiler took some steps towards it[2]; but he did not effect his purpose, probably,
- ↑ In the Bodleian Library are to be found one by Dr. Rawlinson, others by Cole, Masters, Lussan, Brooke, Dr. Tanner, the Rev. J. Gutch, Registrar of Oxford, the Rev. Robert Smyth, of Woodstow, and one by an unknown hand. There are others in the British Museum, and at Cambridge, besides that by Bishop White Kennett in the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps, bart., and that belonging to Earl Powis. This, perhaps, is the most fitting place for the Editor to offer his public thanks to Earl Powis and Sir Thomas Phillipps for their great kindness and liberality in lending him these most valuable copies, with permission to make all the use of them he might think proper.
- ↑ "If ever there should be occasion to print a second edition of this work," he says, "let Fuller's Worthies and the Athenæ Oxonienses be revised; which will furnish the birthplaces and an account of the
