PREFACE TO THE 



Then followeth the true processe of English policie, I 

 meane that excellent and pithy treatise de politia con- 

 servativa maris : which I cannot to any thing more fitly 

 compare, then to the Emperour of Russia his palace 

 called the golden Castle, and described by Richard 

 Chanceller pag. 238. of this volume : whereof albeit \ 

 the outward apparance was but homely and no whit i 

 correspondent to the name, yet was it within so beautified | 

 and adorned with the Emperour his majesticall presence, ■■ 

 with the honourable and great assembly of his rich- \ 

 attired Peers and Senatours, with an invaluable and huge \ 

 masse of gold and silver plate, & with other princely i 

 magnificence ; that well might the eyes of the beholders ^ 

 be dazeled, and their cogitations astonished thereat. For \ 

 indeed the exteriour habit of this our English politician, I 

 to wit, the harsh and unaffected stile of his substantial! , 

 verses and the olde dialect of his wordes is such ; as | 

 the first may seeme to have bene whistled of Pans I 

 oaten pipe, and the second to have proceeded from 

 the mother of Evander : but take you off his ut- i 

 most weed, and beholde the comelinesse, beautie, and ' 

 riches which lie hid within his inward sense and sentence ; | 

 and you shall finde (I wisse) so much true and sound • 

 policy, so much delightfuU and pertinent history, so many | 

 lively descriptions of the shipping and wares in his time 

 of all the nations almost in Christendome, and such a | 

 subtile discovery of outlandish merchants fraud, and of 

 the sophistication of their wares ; that needes you must ; 

 acknowledge, that more matter and substance could in no 

 wise be comprised in so little a roome. And notwith- 

 standing (as I said) his stile be unpolished, and his ; 

 phrases somewhat out of use ; yet, so neere as the written : 

 copies would give me leave, I have most religiously ■ 

 without alteration observed the same': thinking it farre j 

 more convenient that himselfe should speake, then that ! 

 I should bee his spokesman ; and that the Readers should j 

 enjoy his true verses, then mine or any other mans fained i 

 prose. j 



