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PREFACE county were made by Roger Dodsworth (1585–1654), Christopher Towneley (1604–1674), Richard Kuerden (1623–c. 1690), Randle Holme (1627–1699), and his son Randle Holme (died 1707), and the Rev. F. R. Raines (1805–1878), but no attempt has hitherto been made to utilize these collections for the history of the county. During the last twenty years transcripts of charters from these collections and of a great part of the Duchy and Palatinate of Lancaster records have been made, these being supplemented by abstracts of many records of the Crown, and of documents in museums, public libraries, and in private hands.

In the department of printed works the volumes of the Chetham Society, the Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, and the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire contain a vast amount of original material, which in the main has been critically and carefully edited.

By utilizing a selected portion of this mass of material it will be possible to give a succinct and precise account of each parish and township with the descent of each manor and large estate from the earliest time to the present day. Four or five volumes will be devoted to this department of history, the remaining subjects being dealt with in volumes i, ii, and vii.

The editors are under great obligations to Mr. Edmund Dickson, F.G.S., Mr. Harper Gaythorpe, F.S.A. (Scot.), and Mr. H. Murray for information in the department of Natural History and Mr. W. E. Gregson, Mr. W. F. Irvine, Mr. R. D. Radcliffe, Mr. J. P. Rylands, Mr. C. W. Sutton, and other members of the Lancashire Committee for their active and friendly services.

They also wish to express their thanks to Sir John Evans, K.C.B., Col. Fishwick, F.S.A., Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co., and the Society of Antiquaries for the use of blocks, and to the British Numismatic Society, and Mr. P. W. P. Carlyon-Britton, F.S.A., for the loan of a series of casts of the coins found in the Cuerdale hoard. xxi