83 
of the levying of the Subsidy; and as these Subsidies were de- 
manded for the Crown at frequent intervals, there will be found 
upon the Subsidy Rolls the names of the whole of what we 
should now style the respectable townsmen of Burnley and the 
contiguous townships, in nearly every generation, from the four- 
teenth century to the middle of the seventeenth. If we bear in 
mind that the parish registers do not go back beyond the reign 
of Elizabeth (with few exceptions), the interest of these simple 
entries on the Subsidy Rolls of names of landowners and other 
householding inhabitants nowhere else recorded will be recognised. 
A selection of the entries on some of these Rolls of tenants of 
Burnley, Habergham Eaves, Towneley, Briercliffe and Cliviger 
would be usefully inserted in a History of Burnley, such as I 
hope some day to see produced. ‘They are accessible without 
charge at the Record Office, and are not particularly difficult to 
read. None of the lists relating to this district has yet been 
printed. 
2. Proceedings in the Duchy Cowrts.—I need hardly tell you 
that law-suits have been common incidents of local social life 
ever since English property-law was reduced to system, and 
Courts established for its definition and dispensation. The 
official records of suits in the Courts of the Duchy of Lancaster 
from an early period are in preservation. They have all (excep- 
ting the modern records), now been transferred from their former 
place of custody at Lancaster Castle to the Public Record Office 
in London. Some thousands of these accounts haye been classi- 
fied and bound in volumes, and a calendar or catalogue of them 
has been printed, which contains the names of plaintiffs and 
defendants, and a short statement of the matter in dispute in 
each cause. The later batches of these records of the Chancery 
Court of Lancaster sent to London have not yet been analysed 
and calendared, and until that is done their contents will not be 
so readily made use of as those of an earlier consignment; but 
in the Report of the Keeper of the Public Records, issued in 1874, 
there is a list of the volumes of these documents, dating from 
temp. Henry VII. to 1611 in one vol., and from 1612 to 1853 in 
some hundreds of volumes and bundles. They consist of Bills, 
Answers, Interrogatories, Depositions, and Examinations : 
Decrees, Orders, &¢. There are also the Prothonotary’s Records 
from the time of John of Gaunt to William the Fourth, consis- 
ting of records of Fines, Final Concords, Enrolments of Fines, 
Plea Rolls, &e. Then there are the Assize Rolls, from the reign 
of Henry VI. to that of Victoria, and other series of legal records 
of procedures in the Duchy Courts. I have dipped into two or 
three of the uncatalogued volumes of these records, of the Stuart 
period, and I can state that they contain numerous records of 
suits by litigants from these parts of the County Palatine, some 
