[PLYMOUTH MEMOIRS.] 
« 
Two MS. volumes were presented to the Plymouth Institution in 1831 by 
Dr. James Yonge, which had been written by his ancestor, James Yonge, 
f.r.s., in the closing years of the seventeenth and the opening years of the 
eighteenth century. One of these is an autobiography of the writer; the 
other contains a collection of matters relating to the corporate history of the 
town of Plymouth, with quaint and characteristic contemporary notes. The 
bulk of these " Plymouth Memoirs," as Yonge aptly termed them, will be 
found in the following pages. Such portions of the volume as were merely 
of general and not of local interest, and copies of documents which are 
either of little importance in regard to the borough history, or may be found 
easily accessible elsewhere, have been omitted. The remainder is given 
precisely as the writer left it. For the purposes of elucidation, and in some 
cases of correction, it has been, however, found necessary to append a series 
of notes, which may be distinguished from the original either by being 
between brackets or in smaller type ; and advantage has been taken of this 
to embody the results of a careful examination of the ancient acts and con- 
stitutions of the Corporation, as found in the Corporate Records; so that 
the "Plymouth Memoirs" may now be regarded as presenting a fairly 
accurate general idea of the old corporate life, when the mayor and his 
brethren exercised power of such extent that the borough was in all essential 
particulars a little republic, owing indeed certain service to the king, but in 
the management of its internal affairs absolute and supreme. 
Yonge used in the preparation of his "Memoirs" documents which are 
not now known to exist, and which were probably destroyed or lost in the 
havoc made among the Corporate Muniments when the Old Guildhall of his 
time was removed, at the commencement of the present century. The most 
important Corporate Records which now remain are the fi Black Book" and 
the "White Book," though there are Receivers' accounts of an earlier period. 
The Black Book is a large volume, in which it was evidently intended to 
enter all matters of importance connected with the town. It contains copies 
of several orders and documents of an earlier date than that at which it com- 
mences (the first dated entry therein is of 1540) ; a record of mayors from 
1440 down to 1710, with notes of important occurrences in the respective 
mayoralties — partly therefore of a contemporary character; lists of the 
freemen admitted under the various mayors; and several entries of a mis- 
cellaneous kind. When the names of the mayors as given in the Black Book 
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