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Little need be said by way of preface to the following collection of public and private documents.By permission of Lord Francis Egerton, President of the Camden Society, they have been transcribed from a great body of miscellaneous original manuscripts preserved at Bridgewater House, accumulated by his Lordship's ancestor, who, while Sir Thomas Egerton, was Keeper of the Great Seal to Queen Elizabeth, and who, having been created in the first instance Baron Ellesmere, and subsequently Viscount Brackley, filled the office of Lord Chancellor of England during considerably more than half the reign of James I.I cannot express too strongly my sense of obligation to Lord Francis Egerton for the unrestricted manner in which every muniment deposited in his family archives was placed at my disposal.
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