As in death, so in those volumes, small and great rest side by side. Of the majority their wills, or, if they died without wills, their intestacies, are their only memorials. But it is fascinating to come suddenly upon some well-known name. In a volume of intestacies of the year 1674, for instance, is an entry stating that administration was granted to Elizabeth Milton, widow of John Milton, late of the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, his nuncupative will not having been proved—“testamento nuncupativo dicti defuncti ... per antedictam Elizabetham Milton allegato nondum probato.” Different types and times, the lighter or the more serious pages of this book, will appeal to different readers. I would, for my part, especially suggest attention to wills illustrative of times of plague as likely to interest students of human nature and history. Time and opportunity for research have been limited—not unfortunately, perhaps. Amid greater abundance of material, choice would have been the more perplexing. It is desired to make full acknowledgment of the various printed books which I have perused, and from which I have sometimes borrowed, viz.: such books as “Wills from Doctors’ Commons” (Nichols and Bruce), “Fifty English Wills” (Furnivall), “North Country Wills” (Surtees Society), “Testamenta Eboracensia” (Surtees Society), “Testamenta Vetusta” (Nicolas), “Testamenta Cantiana” (Duncan and Hussey), “Wells Wills” (Weaver), “Lincoln Wills” (Gibbons), “Royal Wills” (Nichols), “A History of English Law” (Holdsworth). Again, there are books, not directly connected with the subject, in which wills or pertinent tales occur. In this class I am indebted to such books as Messrs. Maclehose’s edition of “An Historical Relation of Ceylon” (Robert Knox), “Anna Van Schurman” (Una Birch), “Bygone Leicestershire” (Andrews), “The Old Sea-Port of Whitby” (Gaskin), “Beckenham Past and Present” (Borrowman), “Walks in Islington” (Cromwell), “_Gentleman’s Magazine_,” “Table Book” (Hone), “London” (Knight), “Ancient Monuments” (Weever), “Seventeenth Century Men of Latitude” (George), “Ancestral Stories and English Eccentrics” (Timbs), “Haunted Houses” (Harper), “Real Ghost Stories” (Stead), “Naturalisation of the Supernatural” (Podmore), “Dreams and Ghosts” (Lang), “Folk Lore and Folk Stories of Wales” (Trevelyan), “_The Annals of Psychical Science_,” and “_The Occult Review_.” Especial acknowledgment is due to Messrs. Constable and Co. for permission to make use of articles in “_The Ancestor_”; to Mr. C. L. Kingsford and the Delegates of the Oxford University Press for permission to introduce the story of the last days of Elizabeth Stow, as contained in Mr. Kingsford’s Introduction to his edition of Stow’s “Survey”; and to Mr. R. de M. Rudolf for valuable illustrations drawn from his book, “Clapham Before 1700 A.D.”