Edited by R.H. Tawney and Eileen Power
(Longmans, Green, & Co., New York - 1st Edition 1924, 2nd Edition 1951)
f you really want a feel for the ways the Elizabethans wrote official papers, you must have this book. Here are Elizabethan contracts, indentures, leases, writs, bills, patents, rental agreements - every bit of paperwork having to do with everyday life. The little details are sometimes enlightening, sometimes as frustrating as the famous incident in Shakespeare's will in which he leaves his second-best bed to his wife and never says what happened to the best one. There is splendid source material here.