occasional blank leaf to mark the territorial divisions. The title of the MS. is as follows:—
An Exact & perfect Survey & view of the Mannor of Sheffield, with the Mannrs of Cowley & Ecclesfield, scituated in the County of Yorke, late parcell of the possessions of the Right Honourable Gilbert Earle of Shrewsbury, & now parcell of the possessions of the Right Honourable Thomas Howard Earle of Arundell & Surrey, prime Earle & Earle Marshall of England, Lord Howard, Lord Mowbray, Lord Seymour, Lord Brusse, Lord Fitzalan, Lord Clune, Lord Oswaldestre, Lord Maltravrs & Graystocke, Knight of the most noble order of the Garter, & one of his Majesties most Honourable Privy Councell, and of the Right Honourable Countisse the Lady Alatheia his wife, one of the daughters and coheires of the said Right Honourable Gilbert Earle of Shrewsbury, had, made, and taken there by the view and particular mensuration of all & every the messuages, lands, & tenements of, within, and belonging to the same. Dated the 29th of September Annoque Domini 1637 Annoque Regni Regis Caroli secundi Anglie &c thirteenth
Per me John Harrison, Supervisorem.
Although Hunter and Eastwood in their respective histories of Sheffield and Ecclesfield have often referred to this survey, they have not made any large use of it. As I am not here dealing with genealogy or with social or economic history, I do not pretend to have exhausted its stores. The survey yields a valuable picture of the condition of the town and neighbourhood of Sheffield in the year 1637. Although a few of the field-names which it contains may have lost their ancient shape, I believe that no such complete record of them has been preserved elsewhere.[1] It will be found in the course of the following pages that not a few of these names have been made to give up their secrets, and that light has consequently been shed on the early condition of this most southern corner of Yorkshire, and the various settlers who, in the morning of our history, inhabited it. I may, for example, draw attention to the uniform way in which Harrison describes the river now called the Sheaf as the Sheath. He calls it by no other name, and it had been so called long before his day. As reference has been previously made to this subject,[2] and as it is also, under the word Sheath, referred to in the glossary, I need not do more than mention it here, only observing that, notwithstanding the perverse way in which careless scribes and copyists
