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all the sources of original materials for your local history, in the 
branch of descents of estates and families, which I have hitherto 
enumerated, are, I venture to assert, exceeded in richness and 
value by one remarkable collection which is preserved near by— 
I refer to the great collection of what are known as the Towneley 
M.S.S. in general, and the collections of Christopher Towneley the 
antiquary, in particular, which are kept in a splendid series of 
bound volumes of manuscripts in the Muniment Room of 
Towneley Hall. If these collections had been public instead of 
private property, they would have been most of them printed 
bodily long ago with avidity by interested antiquaries in the 
series of. works of learned societies like the Chetham Society. 
As it is, they stand in stately rows at Towneley Hall all but 
totally useless, because antiquaries and authors who know by 
report of their treasures, shrink from asking for the permission 
to go to Towneley Hall to examine them. I assisted Dr. Grosart 
of Blackburn, to edit and annotate two of the most interesting 
Manuscripts in the Towneley Collection,—the one the series of 
English Jacobite Ballads, and the other the three-century old 
M.S. record of the Disbursements in charities of the fortune of 
Robert Nowell, Esq., under the direction of his Will, by his 
brother Dean Alexander Nowell and his half-brother John 
Towneley, Esq. But we are at present more concerned with the 
collections of transcripts of ancient documents made by 
ChristopherTowneley, Esq., during forty years or more previous 
to his death in 1674. He was a younger son of Richard 
Towneley, Esq., and was born at Towneley Hall, in January, 
16038. It was his passion to get hold of any kind of old docu- 
ments, public or private, and to transcribe them in his Manu- 
script Books. Sixty folio volumes of his transcripts are at 
Towneley. When at Towneley looking at the other manuscripts 
used, I spent an hour on two occasions glancing through several 
of these volumes of Christopher Towneley’s M.§.8., and I assure 
you that materials most useful, and curious items tempting the 
searcher interested in county and local history to stop and make 
note of, abounded on every page of the volumes I handled. 
Without a lengthened inspection of each volume in this exten- 
sive collection, it is impossible to give an idea of their varied 
contents. They include copies of ancient charters, abstracts of 
later title deeds, sketch pedigrees, personal notes of contem- 
poraries, wills, letters, official documents and returns, rentals, 
assessments, inquisitions, notes of monumental inscriptions in 
churches, trickings of arms displayed in the interiors of old halls, 
copies of heraldic visitation entries, estate accounts, and other 
papers which I cannot just now bethink me of the purport of. 
It may be assumed with safety that a more than ordinary propor- 
tion of the materials piled up by this laborious transcriber refer 
