History of the English People, Volume IV

Transcriber's Note: Click on the page number to see an image of the page.

HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE
BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN, M.A. HONORARY FELLOW OF JESUS COLLEGE, OXFORD
London MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO. 1896


CONTENTS


For the close of Henry the Eighth's reign as for the reigns of Edward and Mary we possess copious materials. Strype covers this period in his Memorials and in his lives of Cranmer, Cheke, and Smith; Hayward's Life of Edward the Sixth may be supplemented by the young king's own Journal; Machyn's Diary gives us the aspect of affairs as they presented themselves to a common Englishman; while Holinshed is near enough to serve as a contemporary authority. The troubled period of the Protectorate is illustrated by Mr. Tytler in the correspondence which he has published in his England under Edward the Sixth and Mary, while much light is thrown on its close by Mr. Nicholls in the Chronicle of Queen Jane, published by the Camden Society. In spite of countless errors, of Puritan prejudices, and some deliberate suppressions of the truth, its mass of facts and wonderful charm of style will always give importance to the Acts and Monuments or Book of Martyrs of John Foxe, as a record of the Marian persecution. Among outer observers, the Venetian Soranzo throws some light on the Protectorate; and the despatches of Giovanni Michiel, published by Mr. Friedmann, give us a new insight into the events of Mary's reign.
For the succeeding reign we have a valuable contemporary account in Camden's Life of Elizabeth. The Annals of Sir John Hayward refer to the first four years of the Queen's rule. Its political and diplomatic side is only now being fully unveiled in the Calendar of State Papers for this period, which are being issued by the Master of the Rolls, and fresh light has yet to be looked for from the Cecil Papers and the documents at Simancas, some of which are embodied in the history of this reign by Mr. Froude. Among the published materials for this time we have the Burleigh Papers, the Sidney Papers, the Sadler State Papers, much correspondence in the Hardwicke State Papers, the letters published by Mr. Wright in his Elizabeth and her Times, the collections of Murdin, the Egerton Papers, the Letters of Elizabeth and James the Sixth published by Mr. Bruce. Harrington's Nugæ Antiquæ contain some details of value. Among foreign materials as yet published the Papiers d'Etat of Cardinal Granvelle and the series of French despatches published by M. Teulet are among the more important. Mr. Motley in his Rise of the Dutch Republic and History of the United Netherlands has used the State Papers of the countries concerned in this struggle to pour a flood of new light on the diplomacy and outer policy of Burleigh and his mistress. His wide and independent research among the same class of documents gives almost an original value to Ranke's treatment of this period in his English History. The earlier religious changes in Scotland have been painted with wonderful energy, and on the whole with truthfulness, by Knox himself in his History of the Reformation. Among the contemporary materials for the history of Mary Stuart we have the well-known works of Buchanan and Leslie, Labanoff's Lettres et Mémoires de Marie Stuart, the correspondence appended to Mignet's biography, Stevenson's Illustrations of the Life of Queen Mary, Melville's Memoirs, and the collections of Keith and Anderson.