THE CHIEF SOURCES USED.

• a. Addy, S. O.—The Evolution of the English House. London, 1933 (rev. edn.).

• b. Batchelor, T.—General View of the Agriculture of the County of Bedford. London, 1808.

• c. Burn, R.—The Ecclesiastical Law. London, 1828 (8th edn.).

• d. Davie, W. G.—Old Cottages, Farmhouses [etc.] in the Cotswold District. London, 1905.

• e. Emmison, F. G.—Beds. Parish Registers, 1538- 1812. Bedford, 1931 (in progress).

• f. Garside, J. T.—Old English Furniture: a view of its characteristics from Tudor Times to the Regency. London, 1924.

• g. Harrison's Description of England (1577-87). Ed. F. J. Furnivall. 1877.

• h. Hayward, C. H.—English Period Furniture: an account of the evolution of furniture from 1500 to 1800. London, 1936.

• i. Innocent, C. F.—The Development of the English Building Construction. Cambridge, 1916.

• j. Jekyll, G.—Old English Household Life. London, 1925.

• k. Lindsay, J. S.—Iron and Brass Implements of the English House. London, 1927.

• l. Macquoid, P., and Edwards, R.—Dictionary of English Furniture. London, 1924-27.

• m. Ryan, P. F. W.—Stuart Life and Manners. London, 1912.

• n. Victoria and Albert Museum.—Catalogue of English Furniture and Woodwork. Vol. ii. Late Tudor and Early Stuart. London, 1930. (Contains a bibliography).

• o. Various contributors.—Shakespeare's England : an account of the life and manners of his age. Oxford, 1916.

New English Dictionary, Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Wright's Dialect Dictionary, Baker's Glossary of Northants. Words, etc.

For a good bibliography of inventories in print, see G. E. Fussell and V. G. B. Atwater, “Farmers’ Goods and Chattels, 1500-1800,” in “History,” xx, 211-20.

INTRODUCTION

General.—It is believed that there has not previously been published a collection of inventories, accompanied by introductory notes, analyses, and detailed index. The present writer undertook this work without full realisation of the wide variety of subjects involved—architecture, furniture, farm equipment, livestock, crops, local dialect, and so forth—of which his knowledge was (and still is) lamentably small. His sole reason for attempting publication was to make this valuable material accessible, instead of its remaining difficult to read and undigested. A knowledge of palaeography and of Bedfordshire topography and archives seems to be his only justification for having ventured on the task. The handwriting of some of the illiterate appraisers is very difficult to master.