It is desired to make full acknowledgment of the various printed books which I have perused, and from which I have sometimes borrowed, viz.: such books as “Wills from Doctors’ Commons” (Nichols and Bruce), “Fifty English Wills” (Furnivall), “North Country Wills” (Surtees Society), “Testamenta Eboracensia” (Surtees Society), “Testamenta Vetusta” (Nicolas), “Testamenta Cantiana” (Duncan and Hussey), “Wells Wills” (Weaver), “Lincoln Wills” (Gibbons), “Royal Wills” (Nichols), “A History of English Law” (Holdsworth).
Again, there are books, not directly connected with the subject, in which wills or pertinent tales occur. In this class I am indebted to such books as Messrs. Maclehose’s edition of “An Historical Relation of Ceylon” (Robert Knox), “Anna Van Schurman” (Una Birch), “Bygone Leicestershire” (Andrews), “The Old Sea-Port of Whitby” (Gaskin), “Beckenham Past and Present” (Borrowman), “Walks in Islington” (Cromwell), “_Gentleman’s Magazine_,” “Table Book” (Hone), “London” (Knight), “Ancient Monuments” (Weever), “Seventeenth Century Men of Latitude” (George), “Ancestral Stories and English Eccentrics” (Timbs), “Haunted Houses” (Harper), “Real Ghost Stories” (Stead), “Naturalisation of the Supernatural” (Podmore), “Dreams and Ghosts” (Lang), “Folk Lore and Folk Stories of Wales” (Trevelyan), “_The Annals of Psychical Science_,” and “_The Occult Review_.”
Especial acknowledgment is due to Messrs. Constable and Co. for permission to make use of articles in “_The Ancestor_”; to Mr. C. L. Kingsford and the Delegates of the Oxford University Press for permission to introduce the story of the last days of Elizabeth Stow, as contained in Mr. Kingsford’s Introduction to his edition of Stow’s “Survey”; and to Mr. R. de M. Rudolf for valuable illustrations drawn from his book, “Clapham Before 1700 A.D.”
The idea of this book is the writer’s own. It was inevitable that the idea should have been anticipated, but of such anticipation I was unaware until the book was under weigh. The nearest approaches which I have read are Mrs. Byrne’s “Curiosities of the Search Room: A Collection of Serious and Whimsical Wills” (1880), and Walter Tegg’s “Wills of Their Own: Curious, Eccentric, and Benevolent” (1876), to both of which I acknowledge indebtedness. But those who are interested should repair, if possible, to their entertaining pages. An earlier anticipatory volume is G. Peignot’s excellent “Choix de Testamens Anciens et Modernes, Remarquables par leur Importance, leur Singularité, ou leur Bizarrerie” (1829).