I desire here to acknowledge my obligation for valuable assistance in prosecuting my researches to my lamented friend and correspondent, Professor Jean Guillaume Baum, long and honorably connected with the Académie de Strasbourg, than whom France could boast no more indefatigable or successful student of her annals, and who consecrated his leisure hours during forty years to the enthusiastic study of the history of the French and Swiss Reformation. If that history is better understood now than when, in 1838, he submitted as a theological thesis his astonishingly complete "Origines Evangelii in Gallia restaurati," the progress is due in great measure to his patient labors. To M. Jules Bonnet, under whose skilful editorship the Bulletin of the French Protestant Historical Society has reached its present excellence, I am indebted for help afforded me in solving, by means of researches among the MSS. of the Bibliothèque Rationale at Paris, and the Simler Collection at Zurich, several difficult problems. To these names I may add those of M. Henri Bordier, Bibliothécaire Honoraire in the Department of MSS. (Bibliothèque Rationale), of M. Raoul de Cazenove, of Lyons, author of many highly prized monographs on Huguenot topics, and of the Rev. John Forsyth, D.D., who have in various ways rendered me valuable services. Finally, I deem it both a duty and a privilege to express my warm thanks to the librarians of the Princeton Theological Seminary and of the Union Theological Seminary in this city; and particularly to the successive superintendents and librarians of the Astor Library--both the living and the dead--by the signal courtesy of whom, the whole of that admirable collection of books has been for many years placed at my disposal for purposes of consultation so freely, that nothing has been wanting to make the work of study in its alcoves as pleasant and effective as possible. UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, September 15, 1879. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Meantime I am glad that we may expect before very long, from the pen of my brother, Charles W. Baird, the history of the Huguenot emigration to the American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--a work based upon extensive research, that will afford much interesting information respecting a movement hitherto little understood, and fill an important gap in our historical literature.] [Footnote 2: Of the different modes of spelling this name, I choose the mode which, according to the numerous fac-similes given by Dr. Forbes, the worthy knight seems himself to have followed with commendable uniformity.] CONTENTS OF VOLUME FIRST. BOOK I.