[MS. Harl. 7009, fol. 58.]

“Right Honourable and the rest of our very loving friends,—We are not ignorant how divers perplext and jealous eies mae looke out, and keepe more then freindly espiall over this our passive and misconceived bewsines, and now (more especially, haply, then at any other time), in these our early dayes, and after the aspersions of so many slanderous and wandering discourses, which have bin scattered by malignant and ill-disposed people against it; for which we have conceived it essentiall with the birth of the worke itself, to give up unto your noble knowledges the truith of the state of the same, and of some consequences most materiall following it, since it tooke protection and fostering from us.

“You shall please then to know, how the first of Aprill 1610, in the good shipp the De-la-warr, admirall, accompanied with the Blissing of Plinmouth, viz-admirall, and the Hercules of Ry, reere-admirall, we weyed from the Cowes, getting out of the Needles, and with a favourable passadge holding consort; the 12th day we fell with the Treseras, and recovered that evening (within three leagues) the westermost part of St. George's Island, where we lay that night becalmed; but the next morning with the sunn-rise did the wind likewise rise, west and west-by-south, a rough and lowde gale, at what time the master of the Reereadmirall told me of a roade fitt for that winde at Gratiosa, whereupon I willed him to go before and I would follow, and so we stood for that roade ; but it was my fortune to lead it in, where we came to an ancor at fortie fathom, when it blew so much winde presently, that our ancor came home, and we were forced to sea againe: the same time.