I endeavour in the subjoined Tabular Views of the Records to supply—at least in some small measure—a want which I have long felt during my own researches, both at the late State Paper Office and at the Rolls House. Mr. Thomas' Handbook to the Public Records has several merits, but in my own case, as in some others, it has wholly failed to give real help. To put it in few words, Mr. Thomas begins with what is—to those who need any “Handbook” at all—the merely technical and obscure terminology of his subject, instead of beginning with plain terms, and subordinating to them, the technicalities. He multiplies divisions instead of simplifying them. He gives to what is trivial, just the same prominence as to what is essential. Whilst adopting an alphabetical arrangement, he cancels its advantages by using a whole series of alphabets in which the same headings continually recur. And he adds to the perplexities thus arising by a multitude of references which are so truly “cross-references” that they perpetually send the reader from page to page, and back again. The one cardinal merit of a “Handbook’ is to give the information sought for at a single view; not at two views, or twenty.

Here, and now, I can deal only, or almost only, with the chief headings of the subject-matter of the Records, and must pass over most of the minor headings. I offer my “Synoptical Tables” simply as a small help to such of my fellow-soarchers at the Rolls, as may chance to fall in with this volume.