Excerpt from Remains Historical Literary Connected With the Palatine Counties of Lancaster and Chester, Vol. 9 The MSS. here printed are a portion of a much larger collection made by several generations of the family of Norris, of Speke. These documents are said to have been distributed when the estate, fifty years ago, passed into the hands of Mr. Watt. They have since fallen into the hands of auctioneers, booksellers, and virtuosi, and are now diminished in number, and separated beyond the possibility of ever again being collected so as to form a connected series. Fortunately the Corporation of Liverpool, and Mr. Norris, of Manchester, are the possessors of many of the Papers, and the Chetham Society have to acknowledge the very liberal manner with which these MSS. have been placed at their disposal for publication. A few of the earlier documents are printed, but the great interest of the book is the insight which it affords into the characters and actions of the men, who at the close of the seventeeenth, and the beginning of the succeeding century, founded Liverpool. Defoe, whose visit is alluded to in the following correspondence, (1705, ) has left on record his surprise at the change which this little community of merchants had effected, though opposed by what appeared to him almost insurmountable natural difficulties. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.