I have to thank the authoress of ‘Mistress Margery,’ etc., for the names in the index marked QQ., RR. 1, RR. 2, and RR. 3. Such entries from the registry of St. James’s, Piccadilly (QQ.), as ‘Repentance Tompson’ (1688), ‘Loving Bell’ (1693), ‘Nazareth Rudde’ (1695), ‘Obedience Clerk’ (1697), or ‘Unity Thornton’ (1703), may be set beside the instances recorded on pp. 102–104. To these I would take this opportunity of adding ‘Comfort Starre,’ ‘Hopestill Foster,’ ‘Love Brewster,’ ‘Fear Brewster,’ ‘Patience Brewster,’ ‘Remembrance Tibbott,’ ‘Remember Allerton,’ ‘Desire Minter,’ ‘Original Lewis,’ and ‘Thankes Sheppard,’ all being names of emigrants from England in the 17th century. (_Vide_ Hotten’s ‘Original Lists of Persons of Quality.’) _February 1875._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. As prefaces are very little read, I will make this as brief as possible. It is strange how little has been written upon the sources and significations of our English surnames. Of books of Peerage, of Baronetage, and of Landed Gentry, thanks to Sir Bernard Burke, Mr. Walford, and others, we are not without a sufficiency; but of books purporting to treat of the ordinary surnames that greet our eye as we scan our shop-fronts, or look down a list of contributions, or glance over the ‘hatches, matches, and despatches’ of our newspapers—of these there are but few. Indeed, putting aside Mr. Lower’s able and laborious researches, we may say none. Tracts, pamphlets, short treatises, articles in magazines, have at various times appeared, but they have been necessarily confined and limited in their treatment of the subject.[1] And yet what can be more natural than that we should desire to know something relating to the origin of our surname, when it arose, who first got it, and how? Of the feebleness of my own attempt to solve all this I am conscious that I need not to be reminded. Still, I think the ordinary reader will find in a perusal of this book some slight increase of information, and if not this, that he has whiled away, not unpleasantly, some of his less busy hours.