For Indeed The Exteriour Habit Of This Our English Politician, To Wit, The Harsh And Vnaffected Stile Of His Substantiall

Verses and the olde dialect of his wordes is such; as the first may seeme to haue bene whistled of

Pans oaten pipe, and the second to haue proceeded from the mother of Euander; but take you off his vtmost weed, and beholde the comelinesse, beautie, and riches which lie hid within his inward sense and sentence, and you shall finde (I wisse) so much true and sound policy, so much delightfull and pertinent history, so many liuely descriptions of the shipping and wares in his time of all the nations almost in Christendome, and such a subtile discouery of outlandish merchants fraud, and of the sophistication of their wares, that needes you must acknowledge, that more matter and substance could in no wise be comprised in so little a roome. [Footnote: The poem here alluded to was written between 1416 and 1438, as appears from the lines:

"For Sigismond, the great Emperour Wich yet reigneth, when he was in this land With King Henryy the fifth" etc.

Sigismund died in 1438, and visited England in 1416.] And notwithstanding (as I said) his stile be vnpolished, and his phrases somewhat out of vse, yet, so neere as the written copies would giue me leaue, I haue most religiously without alteration obserued the same, thinking it farre more conuenient that himselfe should speake, then that I should bee his spokesman, and that the Readers should enioy his true verses, then mine or any other mans fained prose.

Next after the conclusion of the last mentioned discourse, the Reader may in some sort take a vieu of our state of merchandise vnder K. Edward the fourth, as likewise of the establishing of an English company in the Netherlands, and of all the discreet prouisoes, iust ordinations, & gratious priuileges conteined in the large Charter which was granted for the same purpose.

Now besides our voyages and trades of late yeeres to the North and Northeast regions of the world, and our ancient traffique also to those parts; I haue not bene vnmindefull (so farre as the histories of England and of other Countreys would giue me direction) to place in the fore-front of this booke those forren conquests, exploits, and trauels of our English nation, which haue bene atchieued of old. Where in the first place (as I am credibly informed out of Galfridas Monumetensis, and out of M. Lambert his [Greek: Archaionomia]) I haue published vnto the world the noble actes of Arthur and Malgo two British Kings. Then followeth in the Saxons time K. Edwin his conquest of Man and Anglesey, and the expedition of Bertus into Ireland. Next succeedeth Octher making relation of his doings, and describing the North Countreys, vnto his soueraigne Lord K. Ecfrid. After whom Wolstans Nauigation within the Sound of Denmark is mentioned, the voyage of the yong Princes Edmund and Edward into Sweden and Hungarie is recorded, as likewise the mariage of Harald his daughter vnto the Russian duke Ieruslaus.

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