ment of its ancient materials, and the general method of the work, a very few words will be necessary. The papers are placed, as nearly as their dates could be ascertained, in a precise chronological order; and are no otherwise divided than into four sections, by the several accessions of the monarchs to whose reigns they respectively belong. They were originally literally transcribed, even to the retention of their abbreviations; not with that whimsical taste which suffers inscriptions to remain illegible rather than remove the rust which obscures them, but for the sake of certain valuable intelligence with regard to our language which might be fairly expected from the observation of the varied orthography of a whole century. Those readers, however, to whom such a help may be necessary will meet with a key to such of these difficulties as still remain in a table which precedes the papers.

In the notes will be found explanations of obscurities in the text; historical illustrations of important passages; notices of persons and places casually mentioned in the letters; and memoirs, at greater length, of the several writers. These numerous scraps of information were chiefly collected in the College of Arms; the Editor's official connection with which irresistibly tempted him to avail himself of those extensive aids to British history and biography, under the Tudors and the Stuarts, which its most curious library peculiarly affords.

It is in order to prevent an unreasonable increase of the marginal observations that the Editor proposes to make some some slight additions in this place to the many particulars of the illustrious house of Talbot which will be found in the following sheets.

George, Earl of Shrewsbury, with whose correspondence our collection opens, was the eldest son of John, the third Earl of his family, by Catherine, daughter of

As the orthography, &c. has been modernized in this edition, of course it was unnecessary to retain the "table."

Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, and succeeded his father, June 28, 1473. In 1487, being then in his nineteenth year, he fought, in the presence of Henry VII., at the bloody battle of Stoke, and, in the autumn of 1491, attended him in his warlike expedition to Boulogne. He is said to have been a Privy Councillor to that Prince; and Collins's Peerage, upon the weak authority of Polydor Virgil, informs us that he was sworn in 1485, which is most improbable, for he was then barely sixteen years old. In the following reign, however, we find him a member of that council with which it commenced, composed, as Lord Herbert says, "of scholars and soldiers." Henry VIII. likewise, at his accession, gave him the honourable office of Steward of the Household; in 1513, appointed him Captain of the Vanguard in the army which besieged Therouenne; and, in 1522, Lieutenant General of the North. He was an evidence in the great cause between the King and Catherine of Arragon, his deposition on which is preserved by the noble author lately quoted. It was favourable to the King's purpose, and consequently adverse to Wolsey, among whose enemies the Earl now ranked himself; and we accordingly find him a subscriber to the articles which were preferred against that prelate on the 1st of December, 1529, and also to that earnest letter of the 30th of July, in the following year, by which the Parliament conjured the Pope to pass the sentence of divorce. The Cardinal,

who was soon after arrested at his episcopal house of Cawood, was permitted, on his way towards London, to repose himself for a fortnight in the Earl's custody. During this sojournment in Sheffield Castle, where he experienced the most kind and delicate treatment, Wolsey was attacked by the disease which carried him off at Leicester Abbey. In 1536, the Earl, then nearly seventy years of age, appeared again in the field, and, by a timely, but dangerous service, had the

chief share in quelling Aske's rebellion. Upon this pressing occasion, finding himself at a great distance from the Court, and surrounded by a barbarous people who grew every hour more disaffected, he ventured on the bold measure of raising troops by his own personal authority, and had nearly subdued the insurgents in Yorkshire before the arrival of his pardon, which, from a Prince of Henry's character, he was by no means sure of obtaining. This was the last memorable act of his life. He died at his manor of Wingfield, in Derbyshire, July 26, 1541, and was buried at Sheffield, where his magnificent monument remains. Dugdale's Baronage informs us that he ordered by his will, “dated August 29, in the 29th of Henry VIII., that a tomb of marble should be set over his grave, with three images to be laid therein; one for himself, in a mantle of garters; another of his deceased wife, in her robes; and the third, of his wife, then living;" but the latter lies, with her family, at Erith, in Kent.

This great Peer had by the former of these ladies (Anne, daughter of the amiable and unfortunate Lord Hastings) eleven children. Henry, who died young, and was buried in the Priory of Calke, in Derbyshire; Francis, his successor; two sons, successively baptized John, who died infants; William, styled in the family pedigrees Marshal of Ireland; and Richard. The daughters were, Margaret, wife to Henry Clifford, first Earl of Cumberland; Anne; Dorothy; Mary, married to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland; and Elizabeth, to William Lord Dacre, of Gillesland. His second Countess, Elizabeth, daughter and coheir of Sir Richard Walden, of Erith, brought him a son and a daughter: John, who died unmarried; and Anne, married first to Peter Compton, son and heir of Sir William Compton, Knight, and, secondly, to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke.

Francis, the fifth Earl, though a nobleman of no

ordinary abilities, appears to have been confined almost entirely to a military life, and his services in that line are largely detailed in the first volume of this work. He was born in Sheffield Castle in the year 1500, and was summoned to the House of Peers in the life-time of his father, whom he succeeded in the appointment of Lieutenant General of the North. On the 17th of May, 1545, he was installed a Knight of the Garter. An original letter, written to him on that occasion by the King, remains in the archives of the College of Arms:

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" HENRY R.

Right trusty and well-beloved cousin and councillor, we greet you well; ascertaining that you, in "consideration as well of your approved truth and fidelity, as also of your knightly courage and valiant acts, with other your probable merits experimentally "known in sundry behalfs, we, with our companions "of the noble Order of the Garter, assembled at election "holden this day at our house of Saint James, by Westminster, have elected and chosen you, among "others, to be one of the companions of the said Order, "as your said merits condignly require; and therefore "we will that with all convenient diligence, upon the "sight hereof, you address yourself into our presence, "or receive such things as to the said Order appertaineth. "Given under our signet, at our said house, the 23d day of April, the thirty-seventh year of our reign. "To our right trusty and right well-be

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"loved cousin and councillor, the Earl

"of Shrewsbury, our Lieutenant-Ge"neral in the North Parts."

In the spring of 1547, he was constituted Lord Lieutenant of the counties of York, Lancaster, Chester, Derby, Stafford, Salop, and Nottingham; in the following year, Justice of the Forests North of Trent; and, on Mary's accession, President of the Council in

the North. The bravery, prudence, and fidelity, which had distinguished him in these important public situations, induced Elizabeth to retain him among those few servants of the late reign whom she admitted to her Privy Council when she mounted the Throne, but his steady adherence to the religion of his ancestors probably obstructed his further promotion. Of the whole body of the temporal Peers, who had so lately and unanimously subscribed to Mary's recognition of the papal authority, only this nobleman, and one more (Viscount Montague), could now be found to oppose the revocation of that concession. He survived this ununcourtly act of sincerity but for a few months, and, dying September 21, 1560, was buried with his father at Sheffield.

Earl Francis married first, Mary, daughter of Thomas Lord Dacre of Gillesland, by whom he had issue George, who succeeded to his honours; Thomas, who died unmarried; and Anne, wife to John Lord Bray: secondly, Grace, widow of Robert Shakerley, of Holme in Cheshire, who proved childless. Very soon after the death of the latter lady, whose family name has not been transmitted to us, the Earl made an overture of marriage to the Lady Pope, widow of the famous founder of Trinity College, Oxford. Some original letters which passed between these experienced wooers upon that occasion are extant in the Unpublished Talbot MSS., but the etiquette of courtship in those days required more time than could be spared by two lovers whose united years made up somewhat more than a century, and the good old Earl was arrested by death when perhaps he had not made half his advances.

George, the sixth Earl, in common with the young nobility of his time, first presents himself to us in the field. In October, 1557, he was sent by his father, at the head of a strong force, to aid the Earl of Northumberland, then pent up in Alnwick Castle by a Scottish