THE PREFACE 



When I first intended to write this history, knowing myself 

 to be no scholar, and as ignorant of the rules of writing his- 

 tories, as I have in my other works acknowledged myself to 

 be of the names and terms of art ; I desired my Lord, that 

 he would be pleased to let me have some elegant and learned 

 historian to assist me ; which request his Grace would not 

 grant me ; saying, that having never had any assistance in 

 the writing of my former books, I should have no other in 

 the writing of his life, but the informations from himself, and 

 his secretary, of the chief transactions and fortunes occurring 

 in it, to the time he married me. I humbly answered, that 

 without a learned assistant, the history would be defective : 

 but he replied, that truth could not be defective. I said again, 

 that rhetoric did adorn truth : and he answered, that rhetoric 

 was fitter for falsehoods than truths. Thus I was forced by 

 his Grace's commands, to write this history in my own plain 

 style, without elegant flourishings, or exquisite method, 

 relying entirely upon truth, in the expressing whereof, I have 

 been very circumspect ; as knowing well, that his Grace's 

 actions have so much glory of their own, that they need 

 borrow none from anybody's industry. 



Many learned men, I know, have published rules and 

 directions concerning the method and style of histories, and 

 do with great noise, to little purpose, make loud exclamations 

 against those historians, that keeping close to the truth of 

 their narrations, cannot think it necessary to follow slavishly 

 such instructions ; and there is some men of good under- 

 standings, as I have heard, that applaud very much several 

 histories, merely for their elegant style, and well-observed 

 method ; setting a high value upon feigned orations, mystical 

 designs, and fancied policies, which are, at the best, but pleasant 

 romances. Others approve, in the relations of wars, and of 

 military actions, such tedious descriptions, that the reader, 

 tired with them, will imagine that there was more time spent 



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