Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Genealogia Bedfordiensis: Being a Collection of Evidences Relating Chiefly to the Landed Gentry of Bedfordshire, A. D. 1538-1700, Collected Out of Parish of Registers; The Bishop's Transcripts; Early Wills; Monumental Inscriptions; Etc;, Etc
When I commenced this collection, now some eight years ago, my original intention was to make use of it in illustrating and extending the Visitations of Bedfordshire edited by me for the Harleian Society in 1884, but in the course of correspondence with several genealogical friends I found many who, like myself, were interested in Bedfordshire families, so, in order that the material which I had collected might be available for such, I resolved to print a limited edition for subscribers.
The greater part of the contents of this volume has never, till now, been printed, and I cannot but think they will prove useful to the genealogist. The principal sources I have drawn upon are parish registers, the bishop's transcripts, early wills, monumental inscriptions, and, in the Notes, I have incorporated a few references to, and extracts from, printed genealogical works.
It will be seen that I have not gone beyond the year 1700; I was intending to edit another volume carrying the work on another century, but I fear I must abandon that idea for lack of support, and print the rest of my collections in Bedfordshire Notes and Queries, a slower but a less expensive medium.
The parish registers of this county are, generally speaking, in a fairly good condition; I have, with the kind consent of their custodians, examined and searched some forty-seven, and the conclusion I have arrived at is, that those well cared for and kept in the more equable temperature of the parsonage study are likely to last for all time, whereas those kept in the damp stagnant atmosphere of our too often alas! Barred and bolted churches are gradually but surely decaying. In one instance I have seen the original paper register book still extant, viz., at St. Mary's, Bedford, which is preserved together with the parchment copy made in accordance with a constitution passed in the Convocation of I 597.
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