Many executors of persons whose goods all fell within one Diocese chose to prove in the greater court rather than in one of the minor locals, and the net result is that we have here gathered together the most wonderful mass of testamentary evidences in the world, and an inexhaustable mine of wealth for the investigator.

This storehouse of genealogical and historical facts has heretofore been approached by two totally different methods, of which Col. Joseph L. Chester and Mr. Henry F. Waters, the well known and justly celebrated American genealogists, may be taken as the exemplars. The first and more obvious method was that followed by Col. Chester and also by most enquirers, (including the writer,) to the present time, and consisted in making exhaustive search for the names of certain families in the Indices or Act Books, abstracting or carefully reading all the wills found, digesting and tabulating the results, and building up each particular pedigree as well as might be there from. The second method, instituted by Mr. Waters, was to read at random through various volumes, noting such references to names of interest to the reader as caught his eye. Both methods had their advantages and both of the gentlemen whom I have named achieved brilliant results in their chosen field, but in neither case was that result final for others, who were in turn forced to rework all the ground already gone over, again and again, for the special facts which these later comers desired to establish or disprove.