Excerpt from The Visitations of Bedfordshire, Annis Domini 1566, 1582, and 1634 Sir Joseph Williamson, Secretary of State in the reign of Charles II. In the course of my work I was particularly struck by the similarity which exists between the Visitations of 1566 and 1582; this for a long time puzzled me, and were it not for internal evidence I should have hesitated ere I assigned Harl. Ms. 5186 to the Visitation of 1582, so exactly alike are the pedigrees which are common to both; but I think the explanation arises from the fact of there being an interval of only sixteen years between the two, and in so short a period it is not likely that many changes could have taken place. At the same time I am at a loss to account for the fact that the first two Visitations came so close together in point of time, as the average interval between Visitations in other counties appears to be from thirty to forty years; in many cases, indeed, this interval is exceeded; while, on the other hand, in the counties of Bucks and Essex, Visitations appear to have been made so near to each other as to allow Of periods of only eight years and six years respectively intervening. 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.