^{Page 1 note *} At the head of this Latin prologue is a curious drawing, partly coloured in with red and green, which seems to represent the Virgin Mary seated on a throne under a starred canopy, near her an angel standing with a trumpet, while two other figures may be thought to mean the infant Jesus, and the Father looking upon him from the clouds. In the foreground is the figure of a woman kneeling to stir a pipkin which stands on a trivet over a small fire, the floor being covered with a chequered pavement. The whole is somewhat rough in its design and execution, though the dress and throne of Mary display some detail.

^{Page 1 note †} These lines are written in red ink.

^{Page 2 note *} That is, the burgesses of Bristol held the land of their town direct from the Crown, without any middle lord, by the service of land-gable (“per servitium landgabul, quod reddant infra muros”) as their charter of 36 Hen. III. (A.D. 1252) puts it. (Seyer's Charters of Bristol, p. 18; see also Migne's Lexicon Mediæ Latinitatis, v. Burgagium.) The land-gable (A.S. land-gafol) seems to hare been a certain sum payable on each house or holding, in the nature of a ground rent. In Domesday Book the returns for three places mention land-gable, those for Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Lincoln. In Lincoln, Tochi son of Outi has on each of his 30 houses “unum denarium, id est Land-gable.” Goisfrid has the same on “j. mansionem extra murum.” For Cambridge and Huntingdon, only the total sums arising from this source are given; “vij. lib. et ij. oræ et duo den.” for the former, and “x. lib.” for the latter. Spelman says that the land-gable was generally a penny tax on each house. In the Domesday of St. Paul's (A.D. 1222, only thirty years earlier than the Bristol charter of Hen. III.), several individual payments of landgavel by tenants of the manors are named. (Hale's ed. Camd. Soc. Notes, pp. lxix. 56, &c.) In a deed preserved with others in the church of All Saints, Bristol, an obolus of silver a year for Landgable was reserved out of a grant, by Ric. de Mangotsfield, of land in Bristol.

The payment of land-gable in Bristol is not noticed in Domesday Book.

^{Page 2 note †} Cap. ix. of Magna Carta of 9 Hen. III. This chapter stood throughout the several editions of John and Henry III.

^{Page 4 note *} It was at this Great Council (A.D. 1216) that the first and provisional confirmation of Magna Carta was made, speedily to be followed by a second within a year. Blackstone's Magna Carta, Introd., pp. xxvii., xxxiv., xxxix.

^{Page 5 note *} The plan so full of promise sketched out by Ricart in this preface was not, as will be seen, entirely fulfilled, especially in the Third and Fifth Parts. In the Third Part long series of years are passed over with only the record of the mayor and officers for each year, none of the “actes and gestes” done in their time being mentioned. In this Fifth Part also the hope of what might be found by the help of the “wete fynger” is much disappointed.