LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET
1890
All rights reserved
[PREFACE]
TO
THE THIRD VOLUME.
By a mistake which was not the author’s, the title-pages of its first instalment described this book as being in two volumes. A third had, nevertheless, been previously announced, and this promise is now fulfilled. The Desmond and Tyrone rebellions, the destruction of the Armada, the disastrous enterprise of Essex, and two foreign invasions, have been described in some detail; and even those who speak slightingly of drum and trumpet histories may find something of interest in the adventures of Captain Cuellar, and in the chapter on Elizabethan Ireland.
A critic has said that your true State-paper historian may be known by his ignorance of all that has already been printed on any given subject. If this wise saying be true, then am I no State-paper historian; for the number of original documents in print steadily increases as we go down the stream of time, and they have been freely drawn upon here. But by far the larger part still remains in manuscript, and the labour connected with them has been greater than before, since Mr. H. C. Hamilton’s guidance was wanting after 1592. Much help is given by Fynes Moryson’s history. Moryson was a great traveller, whose business it had been to study manners and customs, who was Mountjoy’s secretary during most of his time in Ireland, and whose brother held good official positions both before and after. Much of what this amusing writer says is corroborated by independent evidence. Other authorities are indicated in the foot-notes, or have been discussed in the preface to the first two volumes. Wherever no other collection is mentioned, it is to be understood that all letters and papers cited are in the public Record Office.