Neither Is That Englishman Forgotten, Who Was Forced To Traueile With The Cruel Tartars Into Their Countrey, And From Thence To Beare Them Company Into Hungary And Poland.

And because those Northeasterne Regions beyond Volga, by reason of the huge deserts, the colde climate, and the barbarous

Inciuilitie of the people there inhabiting, were neuer yet throughly traueiled by any of our Nation, nor sufficiently knowen vnto vs: I haue here annexed vnto the said Englishmans traueile, the rare & memorable iournals of 2. Friers, who were some of the first Christians that trauailed farthest that way, and brought home most particular intelligence & knowledge of all things which they had seene. These Friers were sent as Ambassadours vnto the sauage Tartars (who had as then wasted and ouerrunne a great part of Asia, and had pierced farre into Europe with fire and sword) to mitigate their fury, and to offer the glad tidings of the Gospel vnto them. The former, namely Iohannes de Plano Carpini (whose iourney, because he road sixe moneths poste directly beyond Boristhenes, did, I thinke, both for length and difficultie farre surpasse that of Alexander the great, vnto the riuer of Indus) was in the yeere 1246. sent with the authoritie and commission of a Legate from Pope Innocentius the fourth: who passed through more garisons of the Tartars, and wandered ouer more vast, barren, and cold deserts, then (I suppose) an army of an hundred thousand good souldiers could haue done. The other, to wit, William de Rubricis, was 1253. by the way of Constantinople, of the Euxin sea, and of Taurica Chersonesus imployed in an ambassage from Lewis the French King (waging warre as then against the Saracens in the Holy land) vnto one Sartach a great duke of the Tartars, which Sartach sent him forthwith vnto his father Baatu, and from Baatu he was conducted ouer many large territories vnto the Court of Mangu-Can their Emperour. Both of them haue so well played their parts, in declaring what befell them before they came at the Tartars, what a terrible and vnmanerly welcomming they had at their first arriuall, what cold intertainment they felt in traueiling towards the great Can, and what slender cheere they found at his Court, that they seeme no lesse worthy of praise then of pitie. But in describing of the Tartars Countrey, and of the Regions adiacent, in setting downe the base and sillie beginnings of that huge and ouerspreading Empire, in registring their manifolde warres and bloody conquests, in making relation of their herds and mooueable Townes, as likewise of their food, apparell and armour, and in setting downe their vnmercifull lawes, their fond superstitions, their bestiall liues their vicious maners, their slauish subiection to their owne superiours, and their disdainfull and brutish inhumanitie vnto strangers, they deserue most exceeding and high commendation. Howbeit if any man shall obiect that they haue certaine incredible relations; I answere, first that many true things may to the ignorant seeme incredible.

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