Molto Illre signor. I have forgotten whither in my last letters I gave you warning or noe of a journey which then I was to begin, and now I thanke god I have ended, by reason wherofe I have not satisfyed your expectation in writing unto you. I learn by a letter which some three daies since I receaved from mr G. West which was the first and last that ether I receaved from him or you, which was written the 21th of August last, that you are desirous to hear from me, which you shal by the grace of god, if god grant me libertie. In the journey I spake of before, I met with one Mr Smith, which soone after was taken at or about Wallingford. who whiles the pursuivantes were searching in the house got out at a windoe, and had escaped, had not a simple clowne by chance espyed him who was cause of his apprehension.

Acknowledgements

Editorial Practice

Introduction

Inventory of BL, Additional MS 71009

Extracts from Royal Household regulations […]

When the Parliament of 1621 convened, it had been seven years since the dissolution of the so-called ‘Addled Parliament’ of 1614, which had foundered on a fundamental disagreement between King James I and the House of Commons about the legality of impositions. The Parliament of 1621 faced more than unresolved domestic issues; it met under the shadow of the gravest international crisis of the early modern era. The defenestration of Prague in 1618 had marked the beginning of the Bohemian rebellion and the Thirty Years' War, and in the following summer James's son-in-law, Elector Palatine Friedrich V, accepted the Bohemian crown from the rebels, who had just deposed their Habsburg monarch, Ferdinand of Styria. Two days later Ferdinand was elected Holy Roman Emperor, and he was determined to retake the Bohemian dirone from the new Palatine occupant. In the autumn of 1620, the emperor's Spanish cousins aided his cause by dispatching a large portion of the Spanish Army of the Netherlands to invade the Lower Palatinate, Friedrich's rich patrimonial estates on the Rhine.

Auguste 13. UPON Satterdaie, beinge the 13. of Auguste, my lord,(2) havinge intelligence that those of Roan mente to give him a camisado in the nighte, in his army provided all things necessarie to welcome them, together with a determynation, that if they came not that nyghte, then the next morninge he would have surprysed some of them in some of their owne holds and fortresses nere adjoynynge; and for that purpose had caused all his owne cariage-horses and others of th'armye (which would have been above five or six score horses) to be in a-readiness to mownte his beste muskatiers upon. And being ordering of all those things, sir Roger Williams came from the kinge with letters.(3) Whereupon he resolved to goe the nexte mornynge to the kynge, with all his lawnces, and many other voluntarie gentlemen, with a commaundment that none should carrie baggage, but merely a shirte.

Post Karolum regnavit in Britania Caduanus. Post Caduanum Cadwallanus. Tempore vero Cadwallani fuit tanta caristia, tantæ pestilentiæ, et tanta fames invalescebat quod magnates mutuo se amplexantes submerserunt se in aquis. Cui dictum est in voce per angelum quod filius ejus expelleret seipsum de regno, et quod moriturus esset Romæ, et quod deberet numerari in decatalogo Sanctorum. Qui quidem rex quæsivit causam tanti mali in regno suo. Cui respondens Angelus dixit, Negligentia prelatorum; Rapina potentum; Cupiditas Judicum; detestanda Luxuria; Rabies perjuriorum; inordinatus Cultus Vestimentorum.

The following pages contain a valuable, and in its way, I believe, an unique, document for the illustration of certain social relations in this country during the first half of the fourteenth century. I propose, therefore, to analyse it carefully, bearing well in mind, in all that I say, and all that I derive from its entries, the great economic deductions from which we may reason as to the normal mode of life of our forefathers at that period. It is a very striking chapter in that most interesting of all conceivable histories, the history of culture; and from this certain and positive record of one form of being at a definite period we can, without any very great difficulty, draw some valuable conclusions respecting times both earlier and later than the one whose details are so clearly set before us. It is undoubtedly important for us to know how Englishmen of different grades lived in the year of grace 1338, and we are very fortunate in having an account of undeniable authority, and by a contemporary hand, which enables us to follow, step by step, many of the more interesting and valuable details of the condition of English civilisation at that date. I wish we had similar accounts for other periods, both anterior and subsequent to this one. These would certainly give us a nearer insight into the changes of English life, its progression and its principle, than we can glean from records of public events, which we universally construe by the light of our actual state and knowledge, and consequently, in general, with more or less inaccuracy. But, in the absence of these aids to history, let us still rejoice that we possess in these pages a document by which, with due consideration of circumstances, we can test all other similar documents bearing upon the state of our social life during the mediæval period. The fourteenth century did not stand alone and apart: it was the child of the thirteenth, and it was also the father of the fifteenth—it partakes, therefore, in some degree of both.