Correspondence of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leycester, During His Government of the Low Countries in the Years 1585-86

CORRESPONDENCE ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER, DURING HIS GOVERNMENT OF THE LOW COUNTRIES, IN THE YEARS 1585 AND 1586. - INTRODUCTION. IN the year 1840 Frederic Ouvry esquire kindly placed at the disposal of the Camden Society a MS. volume which had been found amongst certain old papers preserved in the office of a solicitor in the city of London. Besides a treatise upon another subject, Mr. Ouvrys volume contains a transcript of a collection of letters of Robert Dudley earl of Leycester, written between the 3rd of April and the 25th of October 1586, during his first mission to the Low Countries as lieutenant-general of the forces sent by queen Elizabeth to the aid of the united provinces in their great contest against Spain. In the course of inquiries instituted by the council of the Camden Society, it appeared that the originals of these letterswere not known to be in existence, but that there were preserved in the national collection at the British Museum certain other letters written by and to the earl of Leycester during that same mission to the Low Countries, which tended to complete the corres- pondence of which the letters contained in Mr. Ouvrys volume formed a part. Such being the case, it was proposed that a selection from those letters in the British Museum should be published together with those in Mr. Ouvrys volume, in such manner as to present, as nearly as possible, a complete view of the correspondence between the earl and the English government during the mission alluded to. This proposal was agreed to by Mr. Ouvry and the Council of the Camden Society, and is carried into effect in the present volume. Mr. Ouvrys MS. is a folio volume containing 74 leaves. Itcommences with the earl of Leycesters letters, which are entitled, Letters from the earle of Leycester to the lords of the councell, Mr. secretarie Walsingham, and others, c. 1586. They are copied book-wise, in a hand-writing of the beginning of the seventeenth century, and extend fromfol. 1 to fol. 62, both inclusive. The remainder of the volume is occupied with a narrative entitled, A relation written by sir DaniellDunne knight, doctorofthe civilllawe, of the whole prosecution of the nullitie between the earle of Essex and his then wife the lady Frauncis Howard. This is written in a hand of a little later date. The transcript of the earPs letters was all made by one scribe, and, from occasional corrections in the hand of an older person, may be concluded to have been examined. The transcriberwasnot a practisedhand, which especially appears from his mistakes in the copying of numerals. Obvious blunders in his transcript prove, also, that he was not acquainted with the names of the persons and places in the Low Countries mentioned by the earl...