Preface:

PREFACE.

The designation "State Papers," by which the documents preserved in the State Paper Office are ordinarily known, and by which they are described on the title pages of the present series of Calendars, must be understood with some qualification. It is a convenient general title, under which the Calendars published, and the papers they represent, may be easily and properly recognized,—a title clearly applicable to them with reference to the place of their deposit, and generally so with reference to their actual character; but it is by no means put forth as a precise diplomatic description of every single document.

The Papers which form the Domestic Series of State Papers during the reign of Charles I. are of a miscellaneous character. Intermingled with sign manuals, proclamations, orders and correspondence of the Council, letters of the Secretaries of State, of the Lord High Admiral, and of other important public functionaries—great and primary evidences of the acts of the King's Government—there occur papers, some entirely private, of Secretary Nicholas, of Archbishop Laud, of Attorney-General Heath; and of other eminent persons. By what means many of these papers were originally brought into the State Paper Office it is not easy to discover. Some of them evidently found their way thither by the accidents to which in disturbed periods the papers of public men are subject. With some slight exceptions, they are now all intermingled, and arranged chronologically in one great series. Together they form a collection of papers, public and private, general and individual, local and personal, which has not, indeed, the definiteness, or what may even be termed the grandeur, of some of our great series of public Records, but they constitute a collection which cannot be surpassed for facility of consultation, and one which, when taken in connexion with the present Calendars, will be found to develope the facts of our national history in a way and to a degree altogether unexampled.

The portion of this collection which relates to the period of Charles I. is very unequally divided between the several parts of that King's reign. During the early years, as the present volume makes evident, the number of papers is very great. It continues to be so during the administration of the Duke of Buckingham, and until after the peace with Spain. For a few years after 1630 the papers are much less numerous. From 1634 there is again an increase, and as the time of the final public troubles approaches they are greatly augmented. For 1639 and 1640, they are as numerous as in 1625 and 1626. From an early period in the succeeding year there is a great falling off, and the papers of the last eight years of the reign will not occupy more space than those of the two bustling years which are included in the present volume. The cause of this inequality is obvious. The greater the variety and importance of public business, the larger the number of papers. The early years of the reign, which were years of war and foreign maritime expeditions, produced most extensive collections; the endeavour to defray the expenses of Government by the levy of ship money gave rise to much new business and to many papers. But the State Paper Office, it will be remembered, was the King's repository, and the officers who transmitted papers thither were his servants. When the fatal quarrel arose between the King and the Parliament, and the King retired from London, these officers followed his person to York, to Oxford, and elsewhere. They carried their papers about with them, or deposited them in places not within the enemy's quarters. Few found their way into the State Paper Office, except those which were captured on the field of battle, or came into possession of the Parliament by some of the other chances of a state of warfare.

The present volume opens with the State ceremonies consequent upon the recognition of the new Sovereign. From that time it takes its course through the events of the two succeeding years, illustrating, day by day, every incident as it occurred. In the case of many of the more important acts of public policy within this period, the State Papers give us their entire history. They show in whose advice such acts originated; they develope their progress and exhibit their results.

The funeral of King James I., the reception of Queen Henrietta Maria, the plague which desolated the metropolis, the coronation, the loan of the Vanguard and other English ships to the French, the Parliaments of 1625 and 1626, the naval expeditions of those years, the loans which supplied the place of subsidies, the impeachment of Buckingham, the dismissal of the Queen's French attendants, the quarrel between England and France, following hard upon that with Spain, the general disarming of the Roman Catholics, the ravages of the Dunkirkers on our eastern and those of the Sallee-men on our western coasts:—these are examples of the kind of subjects which will be found copiously illustrated in the State Papers. The force and vividness with which these papers bring the England of that day before us, is indeed marvellous. The condition of every department of the State, of the households of the King and Queen, of the people, with many of their trades and occupations, and the feeling with which they regarded every incident which affected the honour or prosperity of the country, may be read with a distinctness which it is scarcely possible to transfuse into treatise or history. Nor is it only the general condition of the people, or of the country, which here receives illustration; students of biography, and of those valuable branches of historical inquiry, topography and genealogy, will all find that they have an interest in these State Papers. The Index at the end of the volume lays open information on all these subjects. The multitude of names of places, and of letters of distinguished persons, many of them in a high degree characteristic, will prove to all historical inquirers that there is matter here to which it behoves them to pay attention.

It is impossible to enumerate all the important letters here calendared, but it may stimulate inquiry to mention a few. There is a letter, unfortunately only one, but one of characteristic kindness, and among the latest he ever wrote, of Lord Bacon. (fn. 1) Papers of Archbishop, then Bishop Laud, occur not unfrequently. Among them is the original, in his own hand, of his "Memorables of our late "dear and dread Sovereign Lord King James, of famous "memory." (fn. 2) The letters of Sir John Eliot and papers relating to him, scattered throughout the volume, are in the highest degree important. They contain much new and valuable matter. One letter of Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards Earl of Strafford, need scarcely be pointed out. (fn. 3) Fulke, Lord Brooke, the servant of Queen Elizabeth and friend of Sir Philip Sydney, then tottering towards the grave into which he was shortly afterwards hurried by the knife of an assassin, the Earls of Essex, Totness, Bristol, Warwick, Denbigh, Holland, and Carlisle, Viscounts Grandison and Wimbledon, Lord Willoughby, Bishops Andrewes, Morton, Neile, Bayly, and Williams, are correspondents whose letters will be sure to attract attention. Some of those of the last-mentioned prelate are almost incredible examples of flattery. One interesting letter occurs from Speed, the chronicler, (fn. 4) and one from Alexander Gil, the master of St. Paul's school. (fn. 5) There are single letters, also, of Donne the poet (fn. 6) and of Sir Tobie Matthew. (fn. 7) Sir Francis Nethersole and Sir Benjamin Rudyerd are writers of valuable news-letters included in this collection, the well-known Chamberlain is a similar writer, and so is Thomas Locke. There are several papers relating to Sir Robert Sherley and the English intercourse with Persia; a few papers relating to artists will be found referred to in the Index under Vanderdort, Briot, and Mittens; some to musicians, under Orlando Gibbons, the several Lanieres, and Ferrabosco; there is one letter of Sir Richard Beaumont, (fn. 8) and several papers of Edmund Bolton, and of others of the minor celebrities of the literature of the time. Sir Henry Goodyere appears as a humble petitioner for pecuniary relief, and there is a similar application of an interesting kind from the degraded Sir Francis Mitchell. Sir Allen Apsley, Sir Henry Vane, Sir William St. Leger, Sir Thomas Love, Sir John Suckling, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Sir Robert Heath, and Sir Lewes Lewkenor, are all contributors, more or less frequently, to the collection, taking their turns, in that respect, with the Duke of Buckingham, Secretaries Conway and Coke, Captain Pennington, Sir John Hippisley, Sir Henry Palmer, Sir James Bagg, Captain Richard Gyffard, Sackville Crow, and a multitude of others.

Among the papers are many which relate to subjects of interest to the investigators of national progress;—the state of the Mint and the Post Office, the course of improvement in ordnance and hand-arms, the pay, training, and muster of soldiers and sailors, the state of the art of shipbuilding, the places where the greater number of ships were built, the condition of fisheries, of the coal trade, the introduction of the "new draperies," the state of the cloth trade, and many other branches of manufacture, with a great variety of cognate subjects.

One point is necessary to be mentioned with reference to the arrangement of some of the papers which are here calendared. A considerable number of them, it will be perceived, are undated. In many instances these stand in the State Paper Office in places which are, in a certain sense, traditionary. They have come down to the present time in connexion with certain bundles or collections of papers relating to kindred subjects. It would, perhaps, be possible to fix the date of almost every one of these undated papers, but to do so would involve an amount of tedious and difficult inquiry which would exhaust a hundred lives, and when accomplished would, in the great majority of cases, advance no purpose of material moment. Such prolonged inquiry with reference to papers of slight importance would also militate against what may be termed one of the very principles of the publication of the series of Calendars in which the present volume occupies its niche; that principle is expedition. The wish is, to give to the present generation information which is valuable, but has not hitherto been made accessible. In accordance with this object, I have thought it right, in the cases to which I have alluded, to leave these papers in their traditionary places, satisfied that any inquirer to whom they may be of interest will be directed to them by the Index, and that, if at all, they are not very far out of place. The question in these cases always is, whether the apparent importance of such papers justifies the loss of time occupied in the pursuit of their actual date. When I have been able to answer that question in the negative, and have exhausted all ordinary sources of inquiry, I have deemed myself justified in leaving such papers where I found them.

In all these investigations, and indeed generally in connexion with the preparation of this volume, and its passage through the press, I have derived assistance, for which I am deeply grateful, from William Impey, Esq., and William Douglas Hamilton, Esq., two gentlemen upon the staff of the State Paper Office, who have been associated with me in this work. Without their able and zealous co-operation this volume could not have been produced at the present time, nor could I alone have got through the great amount of preliminary arrangement which has been necessary.

At the last moment, when the concluding portion of the Calendar contained in the present volume was in the hands of the printer, the donation of The Conway Papers to the State Paper Office by the Right Honourable John Wilson Croker made a considerable addition to the papers relating to the period which is here dealt with. One portion of this donation is of a peculiar character. It consists of docquets of papers presented to King Charles I. for his signature, from his accession to the end of 1628, the period during which the first Lord Conway was a Secretary of State. In the previously published volumes of this series of Calendars, under the editorship of Robert Lemon, Esq., and Mrs. Green, it will have been noticed that the docquets of that class run to a considerable number; in the present Calendar as it stood completed at the time of Mr. Croker's donation, there occurred only one docquet for the year 1625, and four for 1626. This obvious hiatus is now filled up by the occurrence of these docquets in the Conway papers. The omission in the present volume of the Calendar has been supplied, as nearly as possible, by printing a calendar of these Conway docquets as an Appendix, and inserting the names which occur in them in their proper places in the General Index to the volume. The other documents amongst the Conway papers, which relate to the years 1625 and 1626, stand over until the publication of a General Appendix, at the end of the work.

The next volume will comprise, at the least, the years 1627 and 1628, and the whole series of the Calendar of the papers of Charles I. will probably extend to six or seven volumes.

John Bruce.