Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/15

 with this restriction, the field under examination expanded to such an extent that it was only by condensing the material collected, as far as was possible, that the work has been kept within reasonable limits.

In the preparation of this work, I have had access to a great mass of original manuscripts which have never been used. for the same general purpose before. These manuscripts include the nine large folio volumes of Land Patents for the seventeenth century now in the office of the Register in the Capitol at Richmond, and the seventy-five or more volumes, both folio and quarto, of the records for the same period, of the counties of Henrico, York, Lower Norfolk, Elizabeth City, Surry, Middlesex, Lancaster, Rappahannock, Accomac, and Northampton. These volumes are kept in the clerk&rsquo;s offices in the counties named. Copies of the records of Henrico, York, Rappahannock, Elizabeth City, and Surry have been made and deposited in the Virginia State Library,&#8212;a fact which is due to the success of Mr. Lyon G. Tyler, the President of the venerable William and Mary College, in securing from the Legislature an appropriation for that purpose. The very large collection of original manuscripts in the possession of the Virginia Historical Society relating to the same period&#8212;the Ludwell, Randolph, Byrd, and Fitzhugh, and also the General Court MSS. covering the interval between 1670 and 1676, together with transcripts of a varied mass of records belonging to the same century, made by or at the instance of the late Conway Robinson, Esq.&#8212;have been of very great use to me. In the