The snapshots of early Anglo-Saxon studies presented in this book allow specialists in both medieval and early modern England to see what can be gained from examining Nowell's and Lambarde's research in the context of their social and professional circumstances. For medievalists, their work shows that Anglo-Saxon studies could speak to issues of language, topography, and the legal system, and were not limited to Anglican polemic; for early modernists, it demonstrates that early nationalistic historical explorations investigated Anglo-Saxon as well as Romano-Celtic history. Laurence Nowell and William Lambarde sought England's heritage in the period of history between the Germanic migrations and the Conquest, and like Sherlock Holmes in the above quotation, they found what they looked for because they looked for it. Stating this does not negate the painstaking, careful research that they conducted, or the laborious process of copying, editing, and cross-checking variant readings that both scholars undertook. It does, however, underscore that if we are to understand the origin of ‘Anglo-Saxon England,’ we must not only look at what it was that Nowell and Lambarde found in their manuscripts, but what they were looking for when they opened them. This interdependency between questions and answers is why my investigation of Old English studies has looked as much at the earliest Anglo-Saxonists' aims as their results.