Excerpt from The Royal Bishops' Palaces in Old London: With the Parliament Houses and Courts of Justice and the Great Houses of the Nobles Statesmen

IN offering my prospective readers a further work on Old London before the Great Fire, I am following the lines adopted in my former book on the Churches published some three years ago, viz., to illustrate the subjects treated as much as possible by quotations, taken mainly from 16th and 17th century literature, though not neglecting the best known authors of an earlier period and the old Chroniclers. I have, moreover, used freely the Calendars of State Papers and Patent Rolls, and other like Records printed in the Rolls Series. As before, I have made extensive use of the Poets and Dramatists: with regard to the latter the Citations used would 'be more numerous were the scenes of the plays laid in London, but in the majority of cases this is not so, with the exception, perhaps, of Ben Jonson, a London bred man, who found as much of the romantic element in the scenes and life of his native place as is to be imagined in France, Italy, or Spain. I have used, wherever available, the scarce early plays and tracts not well known, and which are to be found for the most part in the British Museum or in Sion College Library, or, in the case of plays, in the Malone Collection at the Bodleian Library or the Dyce Collection at South Kensington. The Garrick Plays are at the British Museum. Letters and Biographies have proved of great service, and have been used where accessible. I have quoted freely from John Stow's great work, A Survey of London, ' first published in 1598, and have used the text of the best edition, that of 1603, as reprinted and edited by Mr. E. C. L. Kingsford, and in my references I have given the page numbers of the 1603 edition as supplied by the Editor. Students of Stow are much indebted to Mr.

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