CRONICA MAIORUM ET VICECOMITUM ET QUEDAM, QUE CONTINGEBANT TEMPORIBUS ILLIS AB ANNO MCLXXVIII AD ANNUM MCCLXXIV"; COUNCIL OF THE CAMDEN SOCIETY FOR THE YEAR 1845. President, THE RIGHT HON. LORD BRAYBROOKE, F.S.A. THOMAS AMYOT, ESQ. F.R.S., Treas. S.A. Director. C. PURTON COOPER, ESQ. Q.C., D.C.L., F.R.S., F.S.A. T. CROFTON CROKER, ESQ. F.S.A., M.R.I.A. SIR HENRY ELLIS, K.H., F.R.S., Sec. S.A. THE REV. JOSEPH HUNTER, F.S.A. PETER LEVESQUE, ESQ. F.S.A. SIR FREDERIC MADDEN, K.H., F.R.S., F.S.A. THOMAS JOSEPH PETTIGREW, ESQ. F.R.S., F.S.A. THOMAS STAPLETON, ESQ. F.S.A. WILLIAM J. THOMS, ESQ. F.S.A., Secretary. SIR HARRY VERNEY, BART. ALBERT WAY, ESQ. M.A., DIR. S.A. THOMAS WRIGHT, ESQ. M.A., F.S.A. The COUNCIL of the CAMDEN SOCIETY desire it to be understood that they are not answerable for any opinions or observations that may appear in the Society's publications; the Editors of the several Works being alone responsible for the same. PREFACE. THE manuscript, known as the Liber de Antiquis Legibus, now deposited in the Record Room, Town Clerk's Office, at the Guildhall of the city of London, is a small folio, nine inches and a half in length and seven inches in breadth, the binding of white leather, covering wooden backs, and containing 159 leaves of parchment, paged continuously with Arabic cyphers. The index prefixed to the volume indicates the successive chapters which it was originally intended should compose the volume; but the first chapter and three others in the body of the manuscript were left blank, though since written over by matter of later insertion. The original portion of this manuscript will have been written throughout in Latin in the year of our Lord 1274, 2 Edward I., and the remainder added at different intervals in French, which later date will also apply to the references in the margins. A considerable portion of this volume is filled with extracts from the Gesta Regum Anglorum of William, the monk of Malmsbury, under titles of the writer's own composition. At the top of the page the reverse of folio 63 commence the Chronicles of the Mayors and Sheriffs of London and the events which occurred in their times, from the year 1188 to the year 1274, up to the month of August, the preparations for the coronation of Edward I., who landed at Dover the 2d of that month, being the subject matter of the closing paragraphs of this valuable portion of its contents. The title of the Book of Ancient Laws is only applicable to the chapters 38 and 44; the first of which contains the regulations prescribed, by the name of Assise, as to the inhabitants of London in respect of their buildings and dwellings, and the second the Provisions made by the Lord Henry the King, son of King John, and his council, to amend the English laws, of which the larger portion had been ordained in the time of the Earl of Leicester, in the year of the Lord 1264, after the battle of Lewes, fought on Wednesday the fourteenth day of May. In each instance of the Latin name of the city of London, where written at full length in this manuscript, the plural termination CAMD. SOC. b |