Excerpt from The History and Antiquities, Ancient and Modern, of the Borough of Reading, in the County of Berks In the historical part of the work, it may be thought that he has introduced too many petitions and addresses but it should be considered that such things make up almost all the political interest of corporate towns, and though they may now be thought of insignificant value, yet should this work survive but a very few years, they may perhaps be read by the succeeding generation as matters of curiosity, if not of imitation. The list of the members (f parliament who have represented the borough from the commencement of the representative system is taken from Brown Willis, as far as his list goes, with some few additions extracted from the Corporation Diaries, which are not to be found in the Rolls: particularly during the Protectorship, which he says 'he had purposely omitted for the credit of the nation but as this motive no longer exists, they are here inserted in their proper order. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.