IX.—On certain Letters of Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Count of Gondomar, giving an account of the affair of the Earl of Somerset, with Remarks on the career of Somerset as a public man. By Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Esq., in a Letter to C. Knight Watson, Esq., M.A., Secretary

Extract

I have the honour to lay hefore the Society of Antiquaries copies and translations of some original documents from the archives of Simancas and Venice, relating to the passage of English history which formed the subject of a communication from Mr. Spedding on the 1st of March of the present year, and in doing so I can only regret that they were not before Mr. Spedding at the time when he was drawing up his Paper. In that case they would not merely have been in the hands of one who was most capable of making the best use of them, but they would have fallen into their natural place in the narrative which he prepared. He would have found in them the strongest confirmation of many of his arguments; but, amongst the new facts which would have thus been at his service, he would not have encountered one to necessitate the withdrawal or even the modification of a single statement.