TO SIR ROBERT CECIL 



preparation of ships and gallies to go himselfe into the Holy 

 land, if he had not on the sudden bene prevented by- 

 death ; the travel of John of Holland brother by the 

 mothers side to king Richard the 2 into those parts. All 

 these, either Kings, Kings sonnes, or Kings brothers, 

 exposed themselves with invincible courages to the 

 manifest hazard of their persons, lives, and livings, 

 leaving their ease, their countries, wives and children, 

 induced with a Zelous devotion and ardent desire to 

 protect and dilate the Christian faith. These memorable 

 enterprises in part concealed, in part scattered, and for the 

 most part unlooked after, I have brought together in the 

 best Method and brevitie that I could devise. Where- 

 unto I have annexed the losse of Rhodes, which although 

 it were originally written in French, yet maketh it as 

 honourable and often mention of the English nation, as 

 of any other Christians that served in that most violent 

 siege. After which ensueth the princely promise of the 

 bountifull aide of king Henry the 8 to Ferdinando newly 

 elected king of Hungarie, against Solyman the mortall 

 enemie of Christendome. These and the like Heroicall 

 intents and attempts of our Princes, our Nobilitie, our 

 Clergie, & our Chivalry, I have in the first place exposed 

 and set foorth to the view of this age, with the same 

 intention that the old Romans set up in wax in their 

 palaces the Statuas or images of their worthy ancestors ; 

 whereof Salust in his treatise of the warre of Jugurtha, 

 writeth in this maner : Saepe audivi ego Quintum maxi- 

 mum, Publium Scipionem, praeterea civitatis nostras 

 praeclaros viros solitos ita dicere, cum majorum imagines 

 intuerentur, vehementissime animum sibi ad virtutem ac- 

 cendi. Scilicet non ceram illam, neque figuram, tantam 

 vim in sese habere, sed memoria rerum gestarum flammam 

 eam egregiis viris in pectore crescere, neque prius sedari, 

 quam virtus eorum famam & gloriam adasquaverit. I 

 have often heard (quoth he) how Quintus maximus, 

 Publius Scipio, and many other worthy men of our citie 

 were woont to say, when they beheld the images and 

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