5 



My scheme originally was just an index to the MSS. and 

 Charters in the British Museum, the Oxford and Cambridge 

 Libraries, the pubhcations of the Record Commission, and the 

 Deputy Keeper, but I soon found the scheme growing under 

 treatment and gradually developing. I do not think I am far 

 wrong in stating that there must be something hke 30,000 

 MSS. in the British Museum and in the Oxford and Cambridge 

 Libraries alone, relating directly or indirectly to the County of 

 Suffolk. Undoubtedly a mass of MS. matter exists never used 

 by the several county historians. 



Further, new sources of information have been opened for 

 the first time, or at least made easy of access in the present 

 day. When one considers the value of the Patent and Close 

 Rolls series now being issued and of the several Calendars and 

 Indexes prepared by the Public Record Office, one becomes 

 alive to the great mass of material thus placed in an accessible 

 form. 



It is easy to work one county at a time, and it may be of 

 some interest to enter a little more into details. 



The 5 vols, of the Suffolk MSS. and Records (an Index, 

 the proof of the last page of which was before me this day, 

 runs to about 330 pages, will form a sixth vol.) I have issued 

 look about three years to compile, working mostly between 

 eight o'clock at night and three in the morning. It is by no 

 means so stupendous a matter as it might appear to some. In 

 a few cases I had the work to be extracted from looked through 

 and the entries relating to the County marked by the insertion 

 of a piece of paper between the leaves. Each entry was 

 placed on a separate card, of which I must have had in use at 

 various times about 100,000, and every night what was done 

 during the evening sorted so that the work should not run 

 behind in this respect, and the sorting was simplified by the 

 substance of the written entry being still in the mind of the 

 sorter during the operation. The entries were arranged 

 alphabetically under places and chronologically inter se. The 

 manors and the churches I invariably separated from the main 



