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chests, until some inquisitive antiquary, bent upon bringing to 
light the hidden things of darkness, sets to work in any neigh- 
bourhood hunting out these kinds of materials. I cannot, 
therefore, pretend to tell you what stores of private documents 
and manuscripts you have at this instant stowed away in the 
darkest corners of closets in old houses, or in the deed-rooms 
of conveyancing lawyers in Burnley and its vicinity; but I am 
quite sure there is a great deal of such musty yet far from worth- 
less documentary stuff in Burnley as there has been found in 
other parishes; and the History of Burnley which we are supposing 
is going to be written before long, will when it appears, contain, if 
undertaken and carried through on a proper system, an assem- 
blage of new items rifled from those old family papers and parch- 
ments of whose bare existence nobody at present knows but the 
possessors, and even they are but faintly conscious and never 
think that they will some day be wanted to help some industrious 
chronicler to clear up doubtful points in the passage of estates or 
to supply missing links in family descents. 
6. Wills at Chester, &c—Few documents exemplifying 
personal and family history are more matterful than old wills. 
Copies of wills are frequently found amongst family papers ; but 
apart from those which may be thus met with, county and parish 
historians are now, in their determination to be thorough, accus- 
tomed to be at the trouble of procuring from the official deposi- 
tory for this part of England, the Probate Court at Chester, 
copies of wills of persons of note. Tacilities for the use of wills 
in local historiography are now afforded in this and other 
counties, by the learned societies instituted for the publication of 
original documents and materials for history. The Chetham 
Society of Lancashire has printed three volumes of Lancashire 
Wills and Inventories from the copies made by the late Rey. Mr. 
Piccope, and contained in the Piccope W.S.S. in the Chetham 
Library. The Record Society for Lancashire and Cheshire will 
issue about the end of this year two volumes containing complete 
lists of all the Wills and Letters of Administration made and 
granted from 1545 to 1660, preserved in the Chester Probate 
Court. These lists will contain the names of a number of 
persons who lived in the Burnley district with the date of their 
respective Wills, and by means of this printed Index any wills 
that it is necessary to make copies or extracts from, can be re- 
ferred to without loss of time in searching. In some minor cases 
even the simple date of a will thus supplied in a published index 
may answer the historian’s purpose. J may add that the wills 
printed in extenso by the Chetham Society include several interes- 
ting ones of personages of note who belonged to old Burnley 
families. 
7. The Christopher Towneley M.S.S. at Towneley Hall—But 
