EDITORIAL NOTE

Volume eight of the Cambridgeshire History has been edited and almost entirely written by the central staff of the Victoria History. Many people and institutions have made an invaluable contribution by giving information and by giving access to documents and buildings. For the most part they are named in appropriate footnotes, but it is fitting to mention here those whose help was not confined to particular passages. Special thanks are offered to the Librarian, Mr. F. W. Ratcliffe, and the staff of the University Library, Cambridge; the Archivist, Mr. J. M. P. Farrar, and the staff of the Cambridgeshire Record Office; the Ely Diocesan Archivist, Mrs. A. E. B. Owen; and Mr. M. J. Petty and the staff of the Cambridgeshire Collection, Cambridge City Library. Extensive documentary evidence was also provided by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England); the Records Officers of the Church Commissioners and of the Charity Commission; the Keeper of the Muniments of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey; the Chapter Clerk to the Dean and Chapter of St. George's Royal Free Chapel, Windsor; and by archivists, librarians, and bursars in charge of the college records of Gonville and Caius, Christ's, Clare, Downing, Jesus, King's, Peterhouse, Queens', St. John's, and Trinity Colleges, Cambridge, and of New College, Oxford. Mr. J. P. R. Layng, by making available in the Cambridgeshire Record Office typed and indexed transcripts of about fifty Cambridgeshire parish registers, has made the work of writing parish histories both easier and more thorough.

The General Introduction to the History (1970) outlines the structure and aims of the series as a whole. The names of counties by which places outside Cambridgeshire are identified in the text below are those of the counties as they existed on 31 March 1974.