It is conceived to be necessary, for the satisfaction of the Public, to prefix to this work some account of the Manuscripts from which it has been printed, and of the manner in which they came into the hands of the Editor; which we shall accordingly do, interweaving therewith such subsequent information as we have been able to collect respecting the families and descendents of Colonel and Mrs. Hutchinson.

The Memoirs of the Life of Col. Hutchinson had been seen by many persons, as well as the editor, in the possession of the late Thomas Hutchinson, Esq. of Owthorpe, in Nottinghamshire, and of Hatfield Woodhall, in Hertfordshire; and he had been frequently solicited to permit them to be published, particularly by the late Mrs. Catharine Maccaulay, but had uniformly refused. This gentleman dying without issue, the editor, his nephew, inherited some part of his estates which were left unsold, including his mansionhouse of Hatfield Woodhall. In the library he found the following books, written by Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson. 1st. The Life of Col. Hutchinson. 2d. A book without a title, but which appears to have been a kind of diary made use of when she came to write the Life of Col. Hutchinson. 3d. A Fragment, giving an account of the early part of her own life. This book clearly appears to have been Mrs. Hutchinson's first essay at composition, and contains, besides the story of her life and family, several short copies of verses, some finished, some unfinished, many of which are above mediocrity.

He was the eldest surviving sonne of Sr. Thomas Hutchinson, and the lady Margarett, his first wife, one of the daughters of Sr. John Biron, of Newsted, in the same county, two persons so eminently vertuous and pious in their generations, that to descend from them was to sett up in the world upon a good stock of honor, which oblieg'd their posterity to improove it, as much as it was their privelledge to inheritt their parents glories. Sr. Thomas was he that remoov'd his dwelling to Owthorpe; his father, though he was possessor of that lordship, having dwelt at Cropwell, another towne, within two miles wherein he had an inheritance, which if I mistake not was the place where those of the family that begun to settle the name in this county first fixt their habitation. The famely for many generations past have bene of good repute in Yorkshire, and there is yett a gentleman in that county, descendant of the elder house, that possesses a faire estate and reputation in his father's auncient inheritance. They have bene in Nottinghamshire for generations; wherein I observe that as if there had bene an Agrarian law in the famely, assoon as they arrived to any considerable fortune beyond his who was first transplanted hither, they began other houses, of which one is soone decayed and worne out in an unwoorthy branch (he of Basford) another begins to flourish, and long may it prosper.