This list also, it must be remembered, does not profess to give an account of all those families whose descent may possibly be traced beyond the year 1500, but merely of those who were in the position of what we now call _county families_ before that period. The line of demarcation indeed between the families who rose upon the ruins of the monastic system, and the more ancient aristocracy of England, is often very difficult to be traced, depending as it does on documentary evidence often inaccessible, and obscured by the fanciful and too favourable deductions of the heralds of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. With regard to the sources from whence the following memoranda have been taken, I have endeavoured as much as possible to rely upon the best county histories and MS. collections of authority, and carefully to eschew those modern accounts of family history, which, by ascribing the most absurd pretensions of ancient lineage to families who bore no _real_ claim to that distinction, have done much to bring genealogy itself into contempt among that numerous class of readers who are but slightly acquainted with the subject. I cannot conclude without recording my obligations to several gentlemen who have in the most liberal manner placed their genealogical collections at my service, and by so doing rendered less imperfect these notices of the noble and gentle houses of England: among that number I wish particularly to mention the names of the late Mr. Joseph Morris of Shrewsbury and Mr. Joseph Hunter, one of the Assistant Keepers of the Records, the learned and accurate historian of South Yorkshire. E.P.S. Lower Eatington, July 1, 1860. * Quarterly Review, Jan. 1858, p. 37. ** Quarterly Review, Jan. 1858, p. 31. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. ANOTHER edition of this little work having been called for, I have carefully revised and corrected what has been already written; I have also made some additions, the result of further investigation, and the information of many friends and correspondents, whose courtesy and kindness I here beg most gratefully to acknowledge.