coheirs, with the marriages of those coheirs;—in the mention of the wives, a species of information which is almost peculiar to the Fine;—in the innumerable local terms which occur in them;—in the notices which they not unfrequently contain of dependencies and connections between contiguous properties, important, perhaps, in the adjustment of rights, even in the present day;— in the mention which they contain of the course of the ancient roads of the kingdom;—in the notices which they contain of peculiar services, peculiar customs, and the habits of a state of society which has long passed away;—in the view which they present of the progressive accumulation of property in the hands of the religious, and the frequent mention which they make of the superiors of the communities of the religious, of whom a catalogue, almost complete, might be made from
this species of document alone;—it is these things (which, singly, are perhaps of no great moment) which give the value to [this] species of document. We may add, that each Fine is also the basis, the secure and
venerable foundation, on which some interest of the present day may be resting."
   The above extracts will, we trust, prove a sufficient warrant for our setting apart so large a portion of our Volume for the publication of these Fines. They shall be given in regular series, from the first, without a single omission; and, although we cannot pretend to say that they will furnish a complete registry of all the alienations of property made in the years to which they respectively belong,—for it was only those, in the effecting of which the parties chose to secure themselves by a fictitious suit, that are here made matter of record, and even of these, in the lapse of ages many must have perished,—yet we shall have the satisfaction of giving to our readers every particle of evidence of this nature, which is yet extant among the National Records. The