There will, doubtless, be many who will say that much of what I have hereafter advanced is of too speculative a nature to be of real value. They will declare, too, that I have shown far too great a readiness to ascribe to an heraldic origin, signs which are at least as likely to have been derived from some other source. To these objections I may fairly reply that as, in most cases, no means now exist of discovering the precise mode of origination, centuries ago, of many of our modern signs, it is impossible to do much more than speculate as to their derivation; and the fact that it has been found possible to ascribe such large numbers to a probable heraldic origin affords, to my thinking, all the excuse that is needed for so many attempts having been made to show that others have been derived from the same source. No one is more fully aware than I am of the incompleteness of my work. Many very interesting facts relating to Essex inns and their signs have unquestionably been omitted. But the search after all such facts is practically an endless one. If, for instance, I had been able to state the history of all the inns and their signs in every town and village in the county with the completeness with which (thanks to Mr. H. W. King) I have been enabled to treat those of Leigh, I should have swelled my book to encyclopædic dimensions, and should have had to ask for it a prohibitory price. In a treatise involving such an immense amount of minute detail, it is impossible to avoid some errors. My hope is, however, that these are not many. I shall always be glad to have pointed out to me any oversights which may be detected, and I shall be not less glad at all times to receive any additional facts which my readers may be kind enough to send me. I regret that it has been necessary to make use of some old heraldic terms which the general reader will probably not at first understand. This, however, was quite unavoidable. The meaning of these terms will be at once made clear on reference to the Glossary given at the end of the work, as an Appendix. According to the list given in the last edition of the _Essex Post Office Directory_ there are now existing in the county no less than one thousand, three hundred and fifty-five inns and public-houses. The signs of all these have been classified, arranged under various headings, and treated of in turn, together with a very large number of others which have existed in the county during the last two centuries and a half, but have now disappeared. Information as to these has been collected by means of a careful examination of the trade-tokens of the seventeenth century, old Essex Directories, early books and pamphlets relating to the county, old deeds and records, the early issues of the _Chelmsford Chronicle_ (now the _Essex County Chronicle_), and other newspapers, &c., &c. Altogether it will be found I have been able to enumerate no less than 693 distinct signs as now or formerly occurring in Essex.