As before, this volume is issued without an index. Hereafter, the Editor hopes that it will be feasible to issue a general index for the whole county, and thus to avoid that great evil an undue multiplicity of indexes. Moreover, by postponing index-making for the present, we expedite the printing of the Registers themselves, a matter of no small moment when we remember the risks to which these valuable records are exposed—risks which are well illustrated in the present volume, in which only three of the parishes whose records are now printed have Registers dated prior to 1636, while the earliest of the three sixteenth century Registers only dates from 1560. As the Registers ought to begin in 1538, it is plain that in every one of these parishes a very large part of the Register has been lost or destroyed.
