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.

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