PREFACE. No history of the Borough of Huntingdon having hitherto been published, the following attempt to supply the deficiency, will it is hoped, be received with candour and indulgence by the Public. It is not offered as an Antiquarian work, but the utmost pains have been taken, to render it complete on all material points, and strictly impartial. Further research could not have been prosecuted without incurring expenses and entering into details incompatible with the plan of a popular work like the present. For much valuable original information the Writer is indebted to the liberality of the Corporation of Huntingdon, who have kindpermitted him to inspect their Books, and extract from them whatever was deemed requisite for his undertaking; besides furnishing copies of the various Charters of the Borough, so indispensable a portion of every local history, and supplying every information respecting its existing Charities. It is deeply to be regretted, that the earlier Records of this Body have long been irrecoverably lost; but particular circumstances, to which it is unnecessary here to allude, have recently brought to light many interesting and curious documents, illustrative of the ancient history of the Borough, which the reader will find interspersed throughout this volume. The historical reader will perceive that in the account of our Anglo Saxon ancestors contained in the Introduction, Mr. Sharon Turner's admirable history has been closely consulted. In other instances the Writer freely confesses, that, like honest John Speed, he has " put his sickle into other Men's Corn, and laid his Building upon * * See his address "to the Well-affected and Favourable Reader" of his "Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine."-Lond. Folio. 1676. other Men's foundations;" but as his object was to bring to the task all the information he could collect from authentic sources, originality was but a subordinate consideration. From these pages it will appear that few Towns have a better claim to the title of ancient than the Town of Huntingdon. The date of its first Incorporation is unknown. In the Tenth Century we find it flourishing and populous-divided into four Ferlings, or Wards; and dignified with a Castle, the hereditary residence of its Earls, and with a Mint in full operation. Descending two or three centuries, we read of its containing fifteen Parish Churches, and a fair inference is here afforded of the continued or increased prosperity of the Town. It ought to be remembered, however, that when the Roman Catholic was the prevailing Religion in this country, Churches were more numerous in proportion to the population, than in the present times. Religion was indeed almost the only channel in which public charity and beneficence flowed. The people willingly paid to the Ecclesiastical power that un qualified supremacy which they denied to the Crown; and where a wealthy citizen of the present day appropriates his superfluous riches to the support of Houses of Industry, the encouragement of Trade and Commerce, and of public Institutions which ameliorate the condition of the Poor and exalt them in the scale of rational beings, our ancestors applied the residue of their fortunes to the endowment of a Chantry or Chapel, or to the enriching some Abbey or Monastery. When the increasing opulence and importance of the English Boroughs, co-operating with a desire to humble the Barons, induced our first Edward to summon Burgesses to Parliament, we find the Elective Franchise bestowed on this town, and its representatives returned so early as the year 1295. Time, however, which in the just and figurative language of Chaucer, Wasteth night and day, And steleth from us As doth the Streme that turneth never again, Descending fro the montagne to a plain, early wasted the Town of Huntingdon, and, |