PREFACE.

THE present Calendar of State Papers in the reign of Queen Elizabeth is a continuation of the series of which two volumes were edited by the late Robert Lemon, Esq., of the State Paper Office. Mr. Lemon's volumes were compiled on the principle which regulated the earlier State Paper Calendars, that of indicating rather than describing the contents of the papers. Experience has since proved the advisability of fuller descriptions, such as shall be exhaustive of the important contents of the papers, and shall in most cases preclude the necessity of consulting the originals themselves.

The present system of Calendars has however the disadvantage that the lengthened entries increase their bulk. The present volume includes the papers of four years only, and two more volumes will be required for the remainder of the reign. When it is completed, the Calendars of Domestic Papers will run on in continuous series, from the commencement of the reign of Edward VI., 1547, for a period of nearly a century. There will still probably remain wide intervals to be filled up in the reigns of Henry VIII., Charles I., and Charles II., but all these Calendars are in progress, and when they are completed, and the short reign of James II. added, the scheme of

the Domestic Paper Calendars, from Henry VIII. to the Revolution, that is from 1509 to 1688,-the limit to which it is proposed to carry the Calendars,—will be fully carried out.

Among the most remarkable papers in the present volume are the intelligence letters written by or to Thos. Phelippes, the decipherer. This man, known to the historical student as the decipherer of the papers connected with Babington's conspiracy (and, as believed by many, the fabricator of some of those most deeply implicating the Queen of Scots), had received, in reward of sundry similar services, the office of customer in the Port of London. His place afforded him facilities for the reception and transmission of letters. Part of his correspondence he made a merit of communicating to the Government, but the more important portion consists of his private papers, seized doubtless when he himself got into trouble in the early part of the reign of James I. These are drafts of letters written by him to persons abroad, or by him for other persons, giving such minute details of the proceedings at Court as it was easy for him, through his acquaintance with the Earl of Essex and Sir Rob. Cecil, to obtain (see pp. 21, 38, 47, 64, 74, 97, 117, 309, 314, 328, 341, 353, 358, 360, 369, 419). The papers are sometimes partially in cipher, not deciphered, but decipherable, sometimes in cipher which has baffled all efforts to unravel it, chiefly (see pp. 229, 291, 368,) where conventional, generally mercantile terms are used as a mask to disguise political intelligence, and are to be understood according to an arrangement concerted between the correspondents. A curious instance of this double-entendre, the most difficult of all possible forms of cipher, may be found on p. 459.

Phelippes had an agent, William Sterrell, alias Saint Main (see directions to him, pp. 79, 182), whom he made use of seemingly for his own private purposes rather than the service of the Government, as none of Sterrell's reports bear tokens of having passed into the hands of Cecil or Essex. They are full of circumstantial details on foreign politics, so far as these relate to England, especially to the treatment of Catholics here, and the plots for securing the succession of the Crown to some one or other of the numerous Catholic competitors. They also supply much information about the proceedings in Flanders, Spain, and Rome, of the leading English fugitives who had fled their country for the sake of their religion, or had been banished on account of their implication in the conspiracies in favour of Mary Queen of Scots. Among these may be named the Earl of Westmoreland, Lord Dacres of the North, Charles Paget, brother of Lord Paget, Sir William Stanley, of the house of Derby, Cardinal Allen, and the Jesuits Parsons, Owen, Holt, Baldwin, &c. (see pp. 81, 118, 160, 183, 206, 217, 222, 225, 227, 234, 302). Again, all letters in cipher intercepted, which fell into the hands of government, were transmitted to Phelippes, and few indeed were the instances in which he failed to read them, and thus to reveal plots and designs which would otherwise have been safe in the keeping of the mystic symbols in which they were concealed (pp. 241, 244).

The volume also contains some important papers relative to the state of religion. In the northern parts of England, and down as far as Lancashire, Cheshire, and Derbyshire, the recusants were very numerous. In some places the churches were so little frequented that the clergy refrained from preaching for lack of auditors