Page:Mediaevalleicest00billrich.djvu/12

 I am most grateful also to Mr. A. B. McDonald, A.R.C.A. (Lond.), of the Leicester School of Art, who has been very generous and successful in preparing plans and drawings, and in supervising the illustrations contained in the volume. I wish also to thank Col. C. F. Oliver, D.L., T.D., and all others who have so kindly helped with these embellishments, or who have allowed me to publish them; and I take this opportunity of congratulating both Mr. Newton and Mr. Keene on the good results of the photographic work entrusted to them.

I am under considerable obligations to Mr. Henry Hartopp, of Leicester, who has assisted me from the vast stores of his local knowledge; to Mr. A. Hamilton Thompson, M.A., F.S.A., who has given me much-appreciated help, chiefly in matters ecclesiological; to Mr. G. E. Kendall, A.R.I.B.A., who most obligingly made searches at the Public Record Office and elsewhere; to Mr. J. C. Challenor Smith, formerly Head of the Literary Department at Somerset House, who very kindly transcribed some original wills, and helped me in other ways; to the Mayor and Corporation of Leicester City, who readily gave me permission to print a translation of one of the unpublished documents preserved in their Muniment Room, and to publish an illustration of it; to the Venerable Archdeacon Stocks, D.D., who willingly transcribed and translated this document, and gave me other assistance; to Mr. H. A. Pritchard, the Town Clerk of Leicester; to Mr. T. H. Fosbrooke, F.S.A.; to Mr. H. M. Riley, of the Leicester Municipal Reference Library; to Mr. F. S. Herne, the Librarian of the Leicester Permanent Library, and to many others.

But those who are kind enough to help a lame dog over a stile are not answerable for his disability, and the mistakes and shortcomings of the book are all my own.

"Me, me, adsum qui feci, in me convertite ferrum!"

CHARLES JAMES BILLSON. 33,, October 14th, 1920.