PREFACE.

THE MATERIALS from which these stories have been derived are to be found almost entirely in the Calendars of State Papers, edited by the officials of the Record Office and published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls.

One of the results of the incorporation of the State Paper Office with the Record Office was the carrying out of a proposal that had long been suggested. To the ordinary inquirer, anxious to obtain some connecting link in his pedigree or to verify an historical statement, the Public Records and State Papers were utterly unintelligible; the cramped and indistinct handwriting confused him; the curious Latin and quaint Norman-French puzzled his scholarship; he was ignorant of the legal terms and phraseology employed, and after a few hours of vainly cudgelling his brains and damaging his eyesight he was compelled either to obtain the services of a practised agent or to abandon his task altogether. If the archives were to be of any value to the public it was therefore absolutely necessary that their contents should be presented in such a form as to be understanded of the people.'

Communicating with the Lords of Her Majesty's Treasury, December 7, 1855, Sir John Romilly, afterwards Lord Romilly, Master of the Rolls, wrote that although 'the Records, State Papers and Documents in my charge constitute the most complete and perfect series of their kind in the civilised world,' and although they are of the greatest value in an historical and constitutional point of

view, yet they are comparatively useless to the public, from the want of proper calendars and indexes.' This complaint received the attention it deserved, and orders were issued for the framing and publication of 'proper calendars.' Naturally, from their experience and past training, the officials of the Record Office were at once pointed out as the most fitting persons to perform this task; but as the Department possessed a limited staff, it became necessary, unless its current work was to be suspended, to employ certain qualified outsiders to assist the Record Office in the object it had in view. Happily the introduction of transcribers has so far relieved the officials from the mechanical work of their department, as now to dispense with this foreign help.

The work of calendaring has proceeded with as much rapidity as the nature of the subject will permit. Indeed, the guardians of our archives may direct, with no little pride, the attention of the public to their labours during the past quarter of a century. The State Papers and correspondence of Henry VIII. have been calendared from 1509 to 1532. The Foreign State Papers of Edward VI., Mary, and of Elizabeth, down to the year 1577, have reached the light. The Domestic State Papers from 1547 to 1640 have been given to the world in seven-and-twenty volumes. The Papers of the Commonwealth are now before the historical inquirer in six volumes; whilst the papers of Charles II. have been indexed to the year 1667. The documents connected with the affairs of the Treasury from 1557 to 1714 have been published in four volumes; and the papers of the Home Office of the reign of George III. are now being edited in a similar fashion. The Irish State Papers and the State Papers relating to Scotland have been carefully catalogued, and comprise several volumes. The calendars of the Colonial Papers relating to America and the West Indies, and to the East Indies and China, are in progress, and now consist of four volumes.

Nor has the Record Office been merely content with publishing condensations of the documents preserved in its own Repository. The letters and despatches stored up at Simancas relating to the negotiations between England and Spain in the reigns of our seventh and eighth Henries; the Carew papers, housed in the Lambeth library; and the manuscripts touching English affairs preserved amongst the archives of Venice, have all been examined and edited, and their indexes now occupy some fourteen bulky volumes.

The 'Stories from the State Papers' deal with historical subjects upon which new light has been shed by the labours and researches of the editors of the different Calendars above mentioned. The author cannot better express the nature of his obligations than by saying that had it not been for the issue of these publications, his work could never have appeared.

Most of the 'Stories' were originally contributed to the various Magazines-to 'Fraser,' 'Cornhill,' 'Temple Bar,' and the 'Gentleman's'—and are now republished with little alteration. The Massacre of Amboyna' first appeared in an article written by the author on Mr. Sainsbury's Calendars for the Edinburgh Review;' whilst the Gathering of the Storm' is a reprint of a similar criticism upon Messrs. Bruce and Hamilton's Calendars for the Westminster Review.' The Introductory Chapter is condensed from two articles upon our Public Records that appeared in the ' Times,' and from a third article upon the same subject contributed to the Magazine 'Time.'

LONDON: November, 1881.

A. C. E.

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