Hacke Alyt Me Eleaner 5-12-64 add⋅ cop. TO THE REVEREND JOHN S. BREWER, M.A., PREACHER AT THE ROLLS, HONORARY FELLOW OF QUEEN'S COLLEGE, oxford, AND PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON. MY DEAR MR. Brewer, There was a time when dedications were written to secure patronage; this of mine shall be to confess a debt. It has been my privilege for many years to be brought into close official relations with you at the Record Office; and by having to assist, in a humble.way, in some of your labours there-an honour I esteem more highly than any credit I hope to gain for work of my own,-I feel that I have learned nearly all I know of the value of historical documents, or how to use them. Certain I am that, whoever is familiar with your "Letters and Papers of iv the Reign of Henry VIII." will have little difficulty in perceiving how much this work is indebted to yours in respect of its plan and system. I only trust that, in its execution, it may not be found unworthy of the teaching from which I have so much profited, and in gratitude for which I remain, Yours very sincerely, JAMES GAIRDNER. P PREFACE. UBLIC attention was first drawn to the Paston Letters in the year 1787, when there issued from the press two quarto volumes with a very lengthy title, setting forth that the contents were original letters written "by various persons of rank and consequence" during First publication the reigns of Henry VI., Edward IV., and of the Letters. Richard III. The materials were derived from autographs in the possession of the Editor, a Mr. Fenn, of East Dereham, in Norfolk, who seems to have been known in society as a gentleman of literary and antiquarian tastes, but who had not at that time attained any degree of celebrity. Horace Walpole had described him, thirteen years before, as “a smatterer in antiquity, but a very good sort of man." What the great literary magnate afterwards thought of him we are not informed, but we know that he took a lively interest in the Paston Letters the moment they were published. He appears, indeed, to have given some assistance in the progress of the work through the press. On its appearance he expressed himself with characteristic enthusiasm :-"The letters of Henry VI.'s reign, &c., are come out, and to me make all other letters not worth reading. I have gone through one volume, and cannot bear to be writing when I am so eager to be reading. There are letters from all my acquaintance, Lord Rivers, Lord Hastings, the Earl of Warwick, whom I remember still better than Mrs. Strawbridge, though she died within these fifty years. What antiquary would be answering a letter from a living countess, when he may read one from Eleanor Mowbray, Duchess of Norfolk ?"1 So wrote the great literary exquisite and virtuoso, the man whose opinion in those days was life or death 1 Walpole's Letters (Cunningham's ed.), ix. 92. |