Notice to the Reader

Notice to the Reader

1. In preparing this Volume for the press it has been found necessary in many instances to adhere rigidly to the text of the documents, in consequence of their mutilated condition, rather than venture on a more condensed and necessarily merely conjectural abstract of their contents. The reader will be pleased to notice that wherever dots occur in such descriptions each dot is supposed to represent a letter; where asterisks are employed, more than a line or a passage of indefinite extent has been lost.

2. In the spelling of proper names it has not been considered advisable to adopt a uniform system. They are given generally as they appear in the documents, but in the index these varieties in the spelling have been reduced to one form, with cross references.

3. The expression Cipher undeciphered, implies that up to the time of the formation of this Calendar the documents in question had never been deciphered, but they are so now, and are printed at full length. Whenever a contemporary decipher has been found, it has not been considered necessary to give more than the ordinary abstract. In such cases, however, the whole document has been carefully tested with the cipher, as it not unfrequently happens that the original decipher has been partly destroyed or mutilated, and the decipherer sometimes has omitted or misread passages. Whenever it has been found impossible to make out a cipher, the reader's notice has been drawn to the fact.

4. In the references to the Epistles of Erasmus, the London edition of 1640 is meant; but those to the Appendix apply to Le Clerc's edition.

5. In the numeration, the Arabic numbers 1, 2, &c., indicate such documents as, though having a natural connection, were found apart, but have now been brought together; the Roman numerals imply that the documents were found together, either as enclosures or otherwise.