ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have had help from so many people and institutions that I am reluctant to list them for fear of omitting someone who should not be omitted. While doing the research for this volume, I was fortunate to have been awarded, at different times, a Summer Stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a grant from the Penrose Fund of the American Philosophical Society; I owe thanks to both organizations. I am especially grateful to the past and present staff of the Corporation of London Records Office: Miss Betty Masters, Mr. James R. Sewell, Miss Anne Sutton, Mrs. Juliet Bankes, Mr. Piers Cain, and Mrs. Vivienne Aldous; and Mr. James Pegram, who wheeled so many trollies of volumes and files to my reading table. I am indebted to the Mercers' Company and the Drapers' Company for their permission to print excerpts from their unpublished records and to the clerks and archivists of a number of livery companies, especially to Mr. Robert Brown, education officer of the Drapers' Company, Miss Jean Imray, the former archivist of the Mercers' Company, and Miss Sutton, the present archivist. The clerks and other personnel of the Skinners', Clothworkers', and Goldsmiths' Companies were also very helpful and I am grateful to them and to their Companies for allowing me to look at their records. Dr. Caroline Barron's notes on the early Journals cleared a path through unindexed records. Dr. Martha Carlin's reading of an early draft of the indexes caught several errors and pointed out omissions. Obviously, all remaining errors are entirely my own. The late Mr. A. R. B. Fuller, librarian of St. Paul's Cathedral, and Canon Philip Buckler, of the Minor Canons of the Cathedral, were generous with their time in allowing me to go through the records in their care. Special thanks are owing to Mr. William Kellaway, the general editor of the London Record Society from 1964 to 1983, who not only suggested this project but who answered questions and offered help throughout its slow path to completion. Finally, I owe a great many thanks to my daughter, Maranda, to whom this volume is dedicated, for her encouragement and for hours she spent in helping me read and reread, check and recheck, certificates and indexes.