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Selections from the family papers preserved at Caldwell
Selections from the family papers preserved at Caldwell Author:William Mure Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: specific notices as may be required for the full understanding of those documents will be supplied in connexion with each. The first part of the compilation, ... more »occupying the first volume, consists of miscellaneous papers or parchments, feudal contracts, letters, journals, factory accounts, land-leases, and other statistical records, household and personal, illustrative of the internal history of Scotland, and of the state of society and manners in that country, between the latter part of the fifteenth and the early part of the eighteenth century.1 The second part, occupying the second and third volumes, consists chiefly of the correspondence and miscellaneous papers of Baron Mure, the compiler's grandfather, which extend from 1733 to 1776. The series closes with a more limited selection from the papers of the compiler's father and immediate predecessor. The original documents are in the possession of the family, with very few exceptions, which have in each case been distinguished in the text by an asterisk prefixed to the title. It need scarcely be added, that a collection of this nature, intended for private and chiefly local circulation, comprises much to which no place might have been allotted in a similar work destined for public sale. It is to be hoped, however, that there are few of the papers which will not be found more or less conducive to the main object of the compilation, —that of shedding light on Scottish history, literature, and manners, or on the lives and characters of remarkable Scotchmen.2 1 The Series of Tacks, or Land-leases, at the close of the volume, extends to the present century. 2 With a view of sparing more fastidious readers the task of closely sifting what they may, perhaps justly, cons1der the rubb1sh of the collection, in order to di...« less