Excerpt from Extracts From the Earliest Book of Accounts, Belonging to the Town Trustees of Sheffield: Dating From 1566 to 1707, With Explanatory NotesBx the courtesy of the Town Trustees, I was permitted several years ago to make copious extracts from the oldest account book in possession of the Trust, a volume of great interest, and covering a period from 1566 to 1707. The result of the investigations into this volume will appear in the following pages, together with notes explanatory of the text. The accounts of the Town Trustees or Town's Burgesses of Sheffield date from the year 1566, but there can be little doubt that the body had its ori in 1297, when Thomas (16 Furnival graute a charter to his free tenants of the town of Sheffield, giving them all the tofts, lands, and tenements they then held of him in fee, reserving to himself a chief rent of £3. 68. Bid. In obtaining this grant the Sheffield men, per haps a little late, but better late than never, were acting as their fellow countrymen in other towns such as Leicester, Preston, York, and Beverley had done. They were buying or beg ging themselves out of the arbitrary taxes, posed by feudal lords, they were becoming own ers in fee of the landon which their houses were built, and uniting themselves as a chartered community, to withstand injustice and oppres sion. They were better pleased to do for them selves what they could, m their own way, than to have it done for them in other peeple's ways.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.