" From the' seventh year of King Richard I. only, is there any large collection of documents of this class extant, or anything which can be called a consecutive series of them. From that time to the present day, the series .may be said to be unbroken; not but that some Fines which once no doubt existed cannot now be produced, and there are, perhaps, a few years, such as the two last years of the reign of John, in which, either no Fines were levied, or the record of them has wholly perished. But so many remain of the seventh of Richard I., and of almost every year from that time downward, that we may justly speak of possessing a series of documents of this class from the seventh of Richard I. to the present time."
   Of these Records we purpose to print in our successive volumes a continued series of all that remain in the Office relating to Kent. They commence in the above-named year, viz., the seventh of Richard I. That which is numbered No. 1 in the Office, has no lunar date. There being, therefore, nothing to determine the correctness, or otherwise, of the Office number, we leave it as it stands, No. 1; but in those instances which have a precise date recorded, we have departed from the Office arrangement, and placed them, as far as we have been able, in their precise order of date. With regard to this point, we are desirous of referring to Mr. Hunter's observation as to the principle which guided him in his publication. In the Office, he tells us, the Fines are all arranged in counties, and according to the years of the reigns of the different kings; there is no difficulty, therefore, as to the year; but it is not always an easy task to settle the chronological arrangement of the Fines in each particular year, according to the actual days on which they were levied. The practice of the Office seems to have been determined by no definite rules; "on the whole, it appears uncertain what was