from the materials and volumes required for this task, and sometimes forgetting them in the more urgent discussions of temporary interest, or the more seductive pages of affecting or playful genius,-the progress of this Peerage has too often languished, and even slept.

At length it comes, not without some anxiety of the Editor, before the public eye. He looks for little praise; nor does he wholly hope to escape censure. Of the reader, who adds candour to intelligence, he is not much in fear. In such an immense number of facts and dates, there must be some oversights, and some omissions. A sound judgment will not require him to have heaped together every thing which might be found on the subject, without selection; and pour out an indigested common-place book, or loaded memory on every article. It is sufficient to have given the prominent features, and pointed out the track of reading which may still lead to farther illustration. The reader in prose, as well as in poetry, wishes to have something for the exercise of his own ingenuity, and a display of the stores of his own mind.

Of the materials and authorities, on which this work is built, little further requires to be said. The references at the bottom of almost every page speak for themselves. A long familiarity with all the minutiæ of pedigree, and habits of research for more than twenty years among original documents and ancient memorials, more especially the immense mass of genealogical MSS. in the British Museum, have given the Editor a critical judgment on such subjects, which secures him from indiscriminate compilation. Something more might unquestionably have been done in some cases by the aid of the respective families of whom he has treated. But he is not ashamed to confess, that to the task of solicitation his pride would not submit. Besides, it might have re

strained his pen in the exercise of that freedom integrity and truth, tempered by candour, with which he has most. sedulously endeavoured to give the history of every family.

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To a few persons only has he to make his acknowledgements of assistance. George Naylor, Esq. York Herald, has, at the expense of the publishers, furnished copies of all or most of the pedigrees of the new peers, which have been entered at the Heralds' College. These will be apparent, and need not be particularized. To the Right Honourable the Earl of Lonsdale, K. G. the Editor is indebted for the curious memoir of his collateral ancestor the first Viscount, printed for private use. To the late Viscount Melville, for the printed memoir of his immediate ancestors, which is copied into Vol. vi. To Viscount Sidmouth, and Lord De Dunstanville, for replies to the Editor's queries. To the Honourable and Reverend Francis Egerton, for the life of his ancestor the Lord Chancellor BRACKLEY; and to John Egerton, Esq. of Olton, M. P. for Chester, for the deduction of his own branch of the family. To Earl Nelson, Lord Sheffield, and the Honourable W. B. Lygon, M. P. for Worcestershire, for corrections in their respective articles; which two last, though they arrived after those articles were printed, will be noticed in the Addenda. He is also indebted to the Rev. J. Blakeway, of Shrewsbury, for the use of his Marginal Notes to his copy of Collins; and to T. B. Howell, Esq. the learned Editor of the new edition of the State Trials, for a most important addition to the article of the Earl of Doncaster (Duke of Buccleugh); to Frederick Holdsworth, Esq. for his liberal offers of aid in the Roper pedigree; and to J. Haslewood, Esq. for his addition to the Berkeley article.

< Some new Peers have not entered any pedigrees.

CONTENTS OF THE NINE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

Contains the Blood Royal, and part of the Dukes.

VOL. II.

Contains the rest of the Dukes, and all the Marquises.

VOL, III.

Contains the Earls to the termination of the seventeenth Century.

VOL. IV.

Contains the Earls from the commencement of the eighteenth century,
to the death of George II.

VOL. V.

Contains the Earls from the accession of George III.

VOL. VI.

Contains all the Viscounts; and those Barons, whose honours ex-
isted prior to the death of Queen Elizabeth.

VOL. VII.

Contains the Barons from the accession of King James I. to the
termination of the Coalition Ministry in 1783.

VOL. VIII.

Contains the Barons from the commencement of Mr. Pitt's Ministry
1784, to the termination of the eighteenth century.

VOL. IX.

Contains the Barons from the commencement of the nineteenth cen-
tury and the Union of Ireland; and also a short Extinct
Peerage from the accession of King Henry VII. with an ac-
count of Peerage claims.