Excerpt from English Local Government, From the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act: The Parish and the County It may be of interest in this connection to give here a short survey of the materials. The indispensable foundation for any study of local governing bodies is an investiga tion of their own official records. We have found the manuscript minutes of the Parish Vestries and the primitive accounts of the parish officers - sometimes dating back four and even five centuries - a storehouse of facts and figures, and deserving both of more careful preservation and of more extensive publication than they have yet been favoured with. The voluminous Order Books and Sessions Papers of the Courts of Quarter Sessions in the different counties constitute precious materials for the social historian, whilst the scantier records of Petty and Special Sessions, and the manuscript diaries of Justices of the Peace, yield even more intimate knowledge than the formal records of the larger bodies. The Rolls of those Manors which still continued to do Local Government work go far to elucidate the manuscript minutes of the innumerable Courts and assemblies of which the Municipal Corporations of the period were made up. We broke ground that was quite new to us when we explored the proceedings of the Courts of Sewers, the Street Commissioners, the Turnpike Trustees, and the Incorporated Guardians of the Poor. To go through these local archives, all of which were indispensable to our task, has involved many a sojourn in provincial centres from Newcastle to Plymouth, and journeys innumerable into the remotest corners of England and Wales. 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.