THE PREFACE 



When I first intended to write this History, knowing 

 my self to be no scholar, and as ignorant of the rules 

 of writing histories, as I have in my other works 

 acknowledged my self 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 assist- 

 ance 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 trans- 

 actions 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 rhetorick did adorn truth: and he 

 answered, that rhetorick was fitter for falsehoods 

 then truths. Thus I was forced by his Grace's com- 

 mands, to write this History in my own plain style, 

 without elegant flourishings, or exquisite method, 

 rel5ring intirely 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 any bodies 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 



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