PREFACE. XXXIX 



&quot; what I could do in your majesty s times, which 

 &quot; being but a leaf or two, I pray your pardon, if I 

 &quot; send it for your recreation ; considering that love 

 &quot; must creep where it cannot go. But to these I 

 &quot; add these petitions : First, that if your majesty do 

 &quot; dislike any thing, you would conceive I can amend 

 &quot; it upon your least beck. Next, that if I have not 

 &quot; spoken of your majesty encomiastically, your ma- 

 &quot; jesty would be pleased only to ascribe it to the 

 &quot; law of an history ; which doth not cluster together 

 &quot; praises upon the first mention of a name, but ra- 

 &quot; ther disperseth and weaveth them through the 

 &quot; whole narrative. And as for the proper place of 

 &quot; commemoration, which is in the period of life, I 

 &quot; pray God I may never live to write it. Thirdly, 

 &quot; that the reason why I presumed to think of this 

 &quot; oblation, was because whatsoever my disability be, 

 &quot; yet I shall have that advantage which almost no 

 &quot; writer of history hath had ; in that I shall write 

 &quot; of times not only since I could remember, but since 

 &quot; I could observe. And lastly, that it is only for 

 &quot; your majesty s reading.&quot; 



Of this tract Archbishop Tenison says, &quot; This 

 &quot; was an essay, sent to King James, whose 

 &quot; times it considered. A work worthy his pen, had 

 &quot; he proceeded in it ; seeing (as he saith) he should 

 &quot; have written of times, not only since he could re- 

 member, but since he could observe ; and by way 

 of introduction, of times, as he further noteth, of 

 &quot; strange variety ; the reign of a child : the offer of 

 &quot; usurpation by the Lady Jane, though it were but as 



