The Book of Entries of the Pontefract Corporation (R. Holmes,
Ponte- fract Advertiser Office), is one of those efforts at bringing to light the buried history of provincial towns in which we cannot fail to read a result of the many local meetings of our two Archaalogical Societies in their summer congresses. It covers an interesting period in our national history, namely, from the time of the Commonwealth (1653) down to the reign of George II. (1726.) It treats, as may be sup- posed, of mayors and mayoralties, aldermen, leading inhabitants, in- spectors of markets weights and measures, leases, fines, charters, baildingoperations, fee-farm rents, births, deaths, marriages, guardian- ships and apprenticeships, church registers, the persecution of Papists and Nonconformists, the making of roads and bridges, the building of hospitals, the repair of churches, the Parliamentary elections, and all those other lesser occurrences which go far to make up the daily and early life of a borough in a remote part of the kingdom, under our Stuart Kings. The book contains a great amount of genealogical matter, mostly relating to Yorkshire families. It should be added that considerable parts of the work have appeared in the columns of the Pontefract Advertiser, and that they are now republished as a whole, at the cost of Mr. Thomas W. Tew, a member of the Yorkshire Arohreological Association.
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