IV. On the Municipal Archives of the City of Canterbury. By Thomas Wright, Esq., M.A., F.S.A., Hon. M.R.S.L., Corresponding Member of the Institute of France, &c.; as communicated to the Society of Antiquaries by the Central Committee of the British Archæological Association

Extract

A Large portion of the following observations was read in the Historical Section at the meeting of the British Archaeological Association at Canterbury, on the 13th of September, 1844. The great object of that meeting, and the one to promote which we are all associated together, is the preservation of historical monuments of every description, and among these there are none of more importance than written records. The cromlech and the barrow, by their contents, give us some insight into the manners of a people whose history is lost in the darkness of primaeval fable. The monuments of a later period, more numerous and far more varied in their character, necessarily furnish a greater number of facts; but even the information they convey would be exceedingly imperfect—a few scattered links only out of a long disjointed chain—had we no written documents to fill up the interval and to connect them together. It is indeed to these written documents that we must look for history itself; the others, although of an importance which cannot be too much insisted upon, being but secondary to them.