Excerpt from Liber Albus: Compiled A. D. 1419The result is, that we must either rest contented with the few and transient glimpses of light fitfully thrown upon this interesting subject from the pages of our early Glossarists and Vocabularists, with what little we may glean incidentally from the Chroniclers or we must look, of necessity, to other and far different sources for the materials of our social history in mediaeva.l days to docu ments, in fact, which their compilers little dreamt of ever being turned to such an account, but which atone by their truthfulness and authenticity for their want of embellishment and their meagreness of diction, and which, fortunately for those whose wish it is that our past social history may not be wholly swept away into oblivion, still lie scattered in comparatively great abun dance over the length and breadth of the land. It is to our early Laws, Statutes, and enactments, to Registers, Chartularies, Rentals, Domesday-books, and Rolls, under their legion of technical appellations, that we must mainly have recourse, if we would gain the moderate credit of knowing at least as much about our own fore fathers as about the populace that thicnged the streets of ancient Athens or Rome.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.