personal circumstances beyond the fact of his having lived for
fourteen years in Covent Garden, then a fashionable locality."

Another work I have found of the greatest value is the late Mr. J. E.
Doyle's "Official Baronage of England" (1886), which contains a mass of
valuable information not easily to be obtained elsewhere. By reference to
its pages I have been enabled to correct several erroneous dates in
previous notes caused by a very natural confusion of years in the case of
the months of January, February, and March, before it was finally fixed
that the year should commence in January instead of March. More confusion
has probably been introduced into history from this than from any other
cause of a like nature. The reference to two years, as in the case of,
say, Jan. 5, 1661-62, may appear clumsy, but it is the only safe plan of
notation. If one year only is mentioned, the reader is never sure whether
or not the correction has been made. It is a matter for sincere regret
that the popular support was withheld from Mr. Doyle's important
undertaking, so that the author's intention of publishing further volumes,
containing the Baronies not dealt with in those already published, was
frustrated.

My labours have been much lightened by the kind help which I have
received from those interested in the subject. Lovers of Pepys are
numerous, and I have found those I have applied to ever willing to give
me such information as they possess. It is a singular pleasure,
therefore, to have an opportunity of expressing publicly my thanks to
these gentlemen, and among them I would especially mention Messrs.
Fennell, Danby P. Fry, J. Eliot Hodgkin, Henry Jackson, J. K. Laughton,
Julian Marshall, John Biddulph Martin, J. E. Matthew, Philip Norman,
Richard B. Prosser, and Hugh Callendar, Fellow of Trinity College, who
verified some of the passages in the manuscript. To the Master and