Acknowledgements

Editorial Practice

Introduction

Inventory of BL, Additional MS 71009

Extracts from Royal Household regulations […]

When the Parliament of 1621 convened, it had been seven years since the dissolution of the so-called ‘Addled Parliament’ of 1614, which had foundered on a fundamental disagreement between King James I and the House of Commons about the legality of impositions. The Parliament of 1621 faced more than unresolved domestic issues; it met under the shadow of the gravest international crisis of the early modern era. The defenestration of Prague in 1618 had marked the beginning of the Bohemian rebellion and the Thirty Years' War, and in the following summer James's son-in-law, Elector Palatine Friedrich V, accepted the Bohemian crown from the rebels, who had just deposed their Habsburg monarch, Ferdinand of Styria. Two days later Ferdinand was elected Holy Roman Emperor, and he was determined to retake the Bohemian dirone from the new Palatine occupant. In the autumn of 1620, the emperor's Spanish cousins aided his cause by dispatching a large portion of the Spanish Army of the Netherlands to invade the Lower Palatinate, Friedrich's rich patrimonial estates on the Rhine.

Molto Illre signor. I have forgotten whither in my last letters I gave you warning or noe of a journey which then I was to begin, and now I thanke god I have ended, by reason wherofe I have not satisfyed your expectation in writing unto you. I learn by a letter which some three daies since I receaved from mr G. West which was the first and last that ether I receaved from him or you, which was written the 21th of August last, that you are desirous to hear from me, which you shal by the grace of god, if god grant me libertie. In the journey I spake of before, I met with one Mr Smith, which soone after was taken at or about Wallingford. who whiles the pursuivantes were searching in the house got out at a windoe, and had escaped, had not a simple clowne by chance espyed him who was cause of his apprehension.

Paper Petition   [1594]   REQ 2/226/66, m. 1  73

Parchment Bill of Complaint   11 February 1594   REQ 2/226/66, m. 2  74

Parchment Answers   17 April 1594   REQ 2/226/66, m. 4  76

Parchment Replication   3 May 1594   REQ 2/226/66, m. 3  81

Parchment Interrogatories   1594   REQ 2/229/25, m. 19  90

Paper Deposition   19 May 1594   REQ 2/229/25, m. 3  94

Parchment Interrogatories   [1594]   REQ 2/229/25, m. 2  105

Paper Depositions   11 June 1594   REQ 2/229/25, m. 1  106

Court Order   22 November 1594   REQ 1/18, p. 87  107

Court Order   1 February 1595   REQ 1/18, p. 303  107

• Acknowledgements 201

• Abbreviations 202

• Introduction 203

• Editorial Principles 220

• The Chronicle of John Somer, OFM 221

• The BL Royal 13.C.I. Redaction of Somer's Chronicle

[In the Third Part Eicart carries on the yearly chronicle, but heads each year with the names of the mayor and proyosts, stewards, bailiffs, or sheriffs, as the case may be, beginning with the 1st Henry III. The narration of “Actes done” is but slight : in the earlier years it has been mainly drawn from Mathew of Westminster. There are many pages where nothing beyond the names of the officers appears, each page being arranged with the headings for two years, but time or opportunity having failed the compiler to fill them in. Coming near the writer's own time, however, and later, many notices of value to local history are scattered through the pages, along with the general history. It is remarkable that one of those is related at length by Fabyan, who was a contemporary, though it is little, if at all, mentioned in other chronicles.

I Notification by King Henry I of his foundation of Reading Abbey and gift of Reading, Cholsey and Leominster with their churches and with a mint and moneyer at Reading, Thatcham and the church of Wargrave; and grant of specified liberties and immunities

[? March] 1125

A f 13r–v; B f 16r–v; D ff 17r–18r; E ff 48r–49r; F f 75r–v (not fully collated); PRO Cartae Antiq. Roll, C52/22(X), no. 9 (not fully collated)

Pd. Mon. Aug., iv. 40–1 (no. ii); Barfield, Thatcham, ii. 5–6; (cal.) Regesta, ii. 192–3 (no. 1427); Farrer, Itin., 111 (no. 512), reprinted from EHR, xxxiv (1919), 535; (transl.) Hurry, Reading Abbey, 151–5

Henricus del gratia rex Anglorum et dux Normannorum archiepiscopis, episcopis, abbatibus, comitibus baronibusque suis et omnibus christianis tam presentibus quam futuris, salutem perpetuam. Sciatis quia tres abbatie in regno Anglie peccatis exigentibus olim destructe sunt, Radingia scilicet atque Chealseia et Leoministria, quas manus laica diu possedit earumque terras et possessiones alienando distraxit.