Preface
The object which the
editor of the following letters has had in view, was to do for English
history, what Bishop Percy did for old English poetry — to give its
documents to the public in a popular and amusing form. His design has
been not only to make the witnesses of the facts vouch for their truth,
but to let those who acted and counselled tell themselves the actions or
explain the counsels in which each was engaged throughout the memorable
reign of Elizabeth. It was one of those peculiar periods, when every
man’s character and actions have been so differently viewed by different
persons, that it is but fair to let them all speak for themselves; and
in so doing, if he mistake not, they give us a vivid and accurate
picture of the times when they lived, for which we may look in vain
through the pages of the historian. To the editor himself, the
comparison of these letters with one another, bearing always in mind the
characters and positions of the writers, has opened many new views of
the history of Elizabeth’s reign, and he feels confident that most of
his readers will rise from the perusal of them with much clearer notions
of the condition of their forefathers nearly three centuries ago, than
they had when they began them. History is but imperfectly represented by
dry records of facts —to understand fully those facts, we must know not
only the character of the people, but the characters of the individuals,
their relative feelings, their private and petty jealousies, the social
condition of the community in general, even the intimacies of private
life; and in no documents are all these painted more lively or more
truly than in private correspondence. The editor is so far from wishing
the present work to be considered as a dry collection of state papers,
that he has studiously interwoven many letters of a lighter character,
which apparently have little connexion with history, and he has often
turned aside to illustrate literature and domestic life. With this
object also, as well as to give a greater diversity of style and
sentiment, a varied selection has been made, in preference to the more
usual method of illustrating the history of a given period by the
successive letters of one man, or of one family.
The reign of Elizabeth may be conveniently divided into three periods.
During the first, the enemies of her government and of the Protestant
religion laboured by secret conspiracies to undermine both, until they
were disconcerted not less by the vigilance of her ministers, than by
the fall and imprisonment of Mary Queen of Scots, in whose person all
their plots centred. In the second period, Elizabeth’s foreign enemies
were preparing, as their domestic troubles gave them leisure, to crush
her by open force, till in the ever-memorable eighty-eight the
invincible Annada was defeated by the bravery of her subjects. The third
period, though not one of peace, was one in which the English government
was freed from the fear of its enemies, and when the cause of
protestantism was triumphant. The first two periods are by far the most
interesting, and to them the larger proportion of the following work is
dedicated. The correspondence between Cecil and Sir Thomas Smith, the
letters of Randolph, Throgmorton, Drury, and Knollys, relating to the
affairs of Scotland and the eventful history of Mary, with a variety of
others, cannot fail to be popular; and later on, those of the merry
Recorder Fletewood give us a curious picture of the .state of the lower
classes at the period which gave birth to those poor-laws, which have of
late years been so much canvassed, and of which, in their first
workings, so curious an account is given by Sir Anthony Thorold in our
second volume, p. 406. Care has also been taken to collect together most
of the letters relating to the defeat of the Spanish Armada. During the
third period, in the absence of any suitable documents, either new or
interesting, relating to the fall of the Earl of Essex, the editor has
felt a true pleasure in tracing the last years of the great minister,
Lord Burghley, and his never-failing attachment to the cause of his
royal mistress, in a series of letters from himself to his son, which
have been placed in his hands by the liberality of the|Univer-sity of
Cambridge.
With comparatively but a few exceptions, the letters now published have
hitherto remained inedited. In pursuing the plan which the editor
proposed to himself, of making a connected history of the reign, it was
sometimes not only desirable, but even necessary, to fill up the chain
with a letter or two which had been already given to the public; and
this was thought the less objectionable, as most of the works from which
they are taken are heavy collections of state papers, inaccessible by
their size and rarity to the general reader. Several of Fletewood’s
letters, and some others also, have been previously printed in the
elegant collection of Original Letters by Sir Henry Ellis; but if it
were necessary, besides that in a work peculiarly dedicated to the reign
to which they belong, they acquire an additional interest by their
connexion with those that precede and follow, their reproduction might
have been excused, were not such excuses always invidious, by several
important errors, that a reference to the original manuscripts has
corrected. Few works of this class or indeed of any other, are totally
free from errors, and the editor of the present work wishes that he may
experience the same indulgence which he is willing to use towrards
others.
A considerable number of these letters have been selected from the
manuscripts in the British Museum. A few interesting letters, more
particularly illustrative of the literary history of this reign, have
been derived from private sources. The latter part of the second volume
is composed chiefly of the letters from Lord Burghley to Sir Robert
Cecil, during the last six years of his life, preserved in the Public
Library of the University of Cambridge, and endorsed at the end,
apparently by Sir Robert himself, “My Lord’s last letters that ever he
wrote with his owne hande.” The last of them has been considered so
curious, that it has been thought worthy to be given in a facsimile.
It was once suggested to the editor, that the orthography of these
letters should be modernised; but, after due consideration and advice,
this suggestion was rejected for reasons altogether of a literary
nature. The orthography of Elizabeth's reign is by no means so far
removed from our own, as to present any difficulties to the most
ordinary reader. Had it been modernised, a host of passages, whose
beauty is their quaint and antiquated turn of expression must either
have been altered, in which case the letters would have lost entirely
their character of authenticity, or they would have appeared extremely
bare and unsightly. Moreover, there are many words no longer in use,
which could net have been modernised, and still more, that were not used
in exactly the same sense that they now bear, whose older meaning would
have been forgotten in giving them a modern dress. Another difficulty
lay in the proper names, which are by no means spelt uniformly, and in
some cases the preference of any one spelling to another, might very
reasonably be disputed. In fact, the question seems to be that of giving
originals of the correspondence, or translations. One liberty the editor
has taken with the orthography, which it will be necessary in a few
words to explain. In the written monuments of our language, there were
two causes of variety of spelling. From the earliest period we know, up
to the beginning of the last century, certain letters and certain
combinations of letters were always interchangeable, and a given word,
though differently spelt, was in none of its forms incorrectly spelt.
There was also a gradual changing of forms at different periods of the
language, so that in many instances the orthography now adopted would
not be correct three hundred years ago. All these variations exist in
printed books as generally as in manuscripts; but in the latter there
was another cause of variation, namely, the ignorance or, more commonly,
the inattention of the writer, and the forms of words thus produced are
neither more nor less than errors, which by a printer of the age in
which they were written would invariably have been corrected. These
errors are naturally common in private correspondence, and there is no
reason whatever for retaining them in print. The editor of the following
letters has given them as nearly as possible in the orthography which
they would have presented had they been printed in the reign of
Elizabeth, and by so doing, he thinks that, perhaps with the exception
of two or three letters at the beginning, they will be read with perfect
ease. The peculiarities of dialect have also been preserved—the
complaints of Shane Macguire are peculiarly quaint and amusing in his
rude Irish brogue, and the elegant wit of George Buchanan is heightened
by the broad Scotch in which it is written.
The editor has to acknowledge much aid and advice from two very kind and
very learned friends, Mr. Crofton Croker, to whose rich stores and
extensive knowledge of Irish history he is indebted for the greatest and
most valuable part of the notes to the Irish letters in the first
volume, and the Rev. Joseph Hunter, who is no less known for his deep
learning in the general and particular history of England, and in its
records.
Volume 1 \
Volume 2 |