Fenn) is the same; and the first part of what is given as a postscript is not a postscript in the original, but actually comes before the first printed paragraph.

'In short, it was the aim of Sir John Fenn to reproduce with accuracy the spelling and the style of the MSS. he had before him; but as for the substance, to give only so much as he thought would be really interesting. The letters themselves he regarded rather as specimens of epistolary art in the fifteenth century than as a substantial contribution to our knowledge of the times. To have given a complete transcript of every letter, or even a résumé in his own words of all that concerned lawsuits, leases, bailiffs' accounts, and a number of other matters of equally little interest, formed no part of his design; but the task that he had really set himself he executed with admirable fidelity. He grudged no labour or expense in tracing facsimiles of the signatures, the seals, and the watermarks on the paper. All that could serve to illustrate the manners of the period, either in the contents of the letters, or in the handwritings, or the mode in which they were folded, he esteemed most valuable; and for these things his edition will continue still to be much prized. But as it was clearly impossible in that day to think of printing the whole correspondence, and determining precisely the chronology by an exhaustive study of minutiæ, there seemed no good reason why he should not give two or three paragraphs from a letter without feeling bound to specify that they were merely extracts.

'Yet even these defects are not of frequent occurrence. The omissions are by no means numerous, and the matter they contain is generally unimportant in itself. By a protracted inquiry, which would have delayed the publication of this volume too seriously to be worth while, some few points of additional interest might perhaps have been gleaned even from these minutiæ, and possibly some slight errors in our

chronology might have been corrected by the references contained in different letters to matters of subordinate importance. But even in such things the gain would have been small, and our inferences would have remained in some cases liable to still further correction when the MSS. presented to King George III. shall be again discovered.

'I have therefore not attempted, from the discovery of so many MSS. at the last moment, to supply the whole of Fenn's omissions, or to collate his printed text with every one of the originals. But to test the general accuracy of the first edition, I have compared one or two letters with their originals throughout; and besides making a cursory examination of the whole collection, I have referred to particular passages in the MSS. wherever doubts had occurred to me, either from the obscurity of the words or from any other cause, as to the correctness of the reading. The results of this examination will be found in an Appendix at the end of the Introduction.'

To this Appendix I again refer the reader as containing what I believe to be really among the most important corrections of Fenn's text which even an exhaustive examination would be likely to reveal.

It is possible now for the palæographic expert to test Fenn's accuracy more carefully than ever, seeing that the originals of all but the first two volumes are, at this day, accessible in the British Museum. But what has been just said will no doubt satisfy the ordinary reader on this score, wherever documents have been simply reprinted from the old edition. What he may fairly demand besides is that the letters hitherto unprinted should be also laid before him. And on this point I have done my best to satisfy him by the Supplement printed at the end of this Introduction; which contains the full text of most of the letters described in the third Appendix, and one or two unprinted letters besides; in addition to which, it will be seen, I have included an

original letter published elsewhere, and a few further Paston letters preserved in Pembroke College, Cambridge.

On the publication of the first volume of my edition of 1872, it was announced on the title-page that it would contain 'upwards of four hundred letters, etc., hitherto unpublished.' But in truth, as the work went on, a still larger number of original MSS. came under my notice, and the total collection increased to over a thousand documents, of which more than six hundred had never been printed before. Among these were the MSS. in the Douce Collection at Oxford, with the other stray documents in the Bodleian Library above referred to; one or two of which, having been made known to me too late for insertion under their proper dates, will be found in Part I. of the Appendix at the end of volume iii. I was also able to include some valuaable papers from another source, which were referred to as follows in my Preface to the Second Volume in 1874.

'In addition to letters and documents preserved at one time by the Paston family themselves, there will be found in the present volume a number of papers derived from a new source-the muniments contained in the tower of Magdalene College, Oxford. As the execution of Sir John Fastolf's will ultimately devolved upon Bishop Waynflete, who, instead of a college at Caister, made provision for a foundation of seven priests and seven poor scholars in Magdalene College, a number of papers relative to the disputes between the executors and the arrangement between the Bishop and John Paston's sons have been preserved among the documents of that college. My attention was first called to these two or three years ago by Mr. Macray, through whom I obtained copies, in the first place, of some entries from an old index of the deeds relating to Norfolk and Suffolk, which had already been referred to by Chandler in his Life

of Bishop Waynflete. Afterwards Mr. Macray, who has for some time been engaged in a catalogue of the whole collection, was obliging enough to send me one or two abstracts of his own made from the original documents. But before this volume was ready for the press, he was able to refer me to his own report on the muniments of Magdalene College, printed in the Fourth Report of the Historical MSS. Commission, which will probably be issued to the public about the same time as the present volume. It will be seen that I have transcribed several interesting entries from this source.'

It may now be desirable to make a brief statement as to such of the original Mss. as are at length accessible to the student in the British Museum. The four volumes of the 'Additional Mss.' numbered 27,443 to 27,446 contain the originals of volume v. of the first edition (Fenn's) with a number of others first printed by me in the edition of 1872-5. The nine volumes which follow these, viz. 'Additional MSS.' 27,447-27,455, contain also Paston letters, but of a later date, and papers relating to Sir John Fenn's publication. There is also a separate volume of Paston Letters in 'Additional мs.' 33,597; but these, too, are mostly of a later date, only eight (which are printed in the Supplement) being of the fifteenth century. Further, there are the Roydon Hall MSS. which are contained in the volumes 'Additional,' 34,888-9. And finally, there are two Paston letters (also printed in the Supplement) in 'Additional MS.' 35,251. These are all that are in the British Museum.

The lapse of years since my first edition of these letters was issued, in 1872, naturally reminds me of the loss of various friends who favoured and assisted it in various ways. Among these were the late Colonel Chester, Mr. H. C. Coote, Mr. Richard Almack of Melford, Mr. W. H. Turner of Oxford,

Mr. J. H. Gurney, Mr. Fitch, and Mr. L'Estrange of Norwich. On the other hand, I am happy to reckon still among the living Dr. Jessopp, Mr. Aldis Wright, Miss Toulmin Smith, and Mr. J. C. C. Smith, now a retired official of the Probate Office at Somerset House, who all gave me kindly help so long ago. And in reference to this new edition, I have further to declare my obligations to Mr. Walter Rye, a gentleman well-known as the best living authority on Norfolk topography and families, for most friendly and useful assistance in the way of notes and suggestions.

But among the departed, there is one whom I have reserved for mention by himself, not so much for any particular assistance given me long ago in the preparation of this work as for the previous education in historical study which I feel that I received from intercourse with him. I had been years engaged in the public service, and always thought that the records of the realm ought to be better utilised than they were in those days for the purpose of historical research; but how even Record clerks were to become well acquainted with them under the conditions then existing it was difficult to see. For each of us had his own little task assigned to him, and had really very little opportunity, if ever so willing, to go beyond it. Nor was there too much encouragement given under official regulations to anything like historical training; for the Record Office, when first constituted, was supposed to exist for the sake of litigants who wanted copies of documents, rather than for that of historical students who wanted to read them with other objects. Besides, people did not generally imagine then that past history could be rewritten, except by able and graphic pens which, perhaps, could put new life into old facts without a very large amount of additional research. The idea that the country contained vast stores of long-neglected letters capable of yielding up copious