Editorial Note

EDITORIAL NOTE

The present volume is the second to be produced as a result of the partnership between the Somerset County Council and the University of London. An account of that partnership is given in the Editorial Note to Volume III, which was published in 1974. In that year the responsibility for the Victoria History of Somerset, which had until then been borne by a special sub-committee under the chairmanship of Colonel C. T. Mitford-Slade, was assigned to the Libraries (from 1977 the Libraries and Museums) Sub-Committee of the County Council's Education and Cultural Services Committee. From 1974 until 1977, when the compilation of the present volume was completed, the sub-committee's chairman was Dr. A. W. G. Court. The University's appreciation of the way in which the Somerset County Council has met and continues to meet the expenses of compiling and editing the History of the county is here most sincerely recorded.

Of the many people who have helped in the preparation of this volume the names of those who were concerned with particular parishes are recorded in the footnotes to the accounts of those parishes; they are thanked warmly for their help. The keeper of the records of the Duchy of Cornwall, Mr. R. J. R. Arundell, Mr. W. S. Blake, and Major H. Hussey are thanked for making available the records in their possession, and the help of Canon F. Bussby, Messrs. G. D. and M. Roper, Mr. A. Sabin, and Miss Dorothy Stroud in providing access to, respectively, Winchester Cathedral Library, the Forde Abbey Cartulary, Bristol Cathedral Library, and the manuscripts in Sir John Soane's Museum is gratefully acknowledged. Among the public libraries and record offices to whose librarians or archivists and their staff the thanks of the History are offered for their sympathetic and patient co-operation, special mention must be made of the Somerset Record Office.

The structure and aims of the History as a whole are outlined in the General Introduction (1970).