The Surveyor in Foure Bookes

...many extraordinary observations and courses therein to be had and taken, not usually known or practiced; as by the argument of that book more particularly appears.

Wherein, by the way, I would advise the reader, who desires to make use thereof and to profit himself thereby in reading and practicing, to take the chapters before him as they lie in order; for I have strived to place them in such an orderly and methodical form that the one necessarily follows the other in use and practice, well knowing that disorder and irregularity in this kind breeds no little trouble and confusion to the weak practitioner.

The fourth and last book consists of the legal part of survey; wherein I first show what a manor is and the several parts thereof, with the appendants thereunto; how the same is created and maintained, and how and by what means it is destroyed and discontinued: also the several sorts and kinds of estates whereby any lands or tenements may be held, and the several tenures, rents, and services depending on those estates. I further show therein the order and manner of keeping courts of survey, with the entry of the tenants' evidence and estates; and the orderly and artificial manner of engrossing copying into an official record the same, with many other necessary rules and observations tending to those purposes, as more at large also appears by the argument of the same book.

And here, as before, would I advise the practitioner to observe the same course in reading and practicing the rules and instructions of this book, as I have formerly directed for the third, for I have strictly observed the same decorum in placing the chapters each after other, as of necessity they are to be used and practiced.

Now might I here much enlarge and protend extend this preface in explicating the wonderful use of the two former books in the performance of infinite geometrical conclusions, so far passing this subject of survey as it itself exceeds the meanest matter of dispose, which (to avoid prolixity) I will here forbear, leaving the consideration thereof to your own judgment, when you shall find therein, by your diligent practice, the sweet and pleasing taste of such sense-beguiling fruit.

And further, I might amplify the same, not only in declaring the great and infinite pleasure, with no less profit, which the true knowledge, use, and understanding of the two later books may bring (as well to surveyors as all owners and occupiers of land in general), but also of the antiquity and necessity of survey; however slighted by many, who will not bestow a penny in points, or two pence in tape, or the like, but they will number the one and measure the other before they pay for either...