This chapter begins and ends in Ireland. An extract from the Irish Council register [II.14] is possible only because the MS was already in private hands when most of Ireland's public records were destroyed in 1922.

The entries which follow come mostly from the State Papers, Domestic, and concern the war with France which began in 1557. Once again, Pepys Library copies supply gaps in missing originals [e.g., II.48]; they also enable the reconstruction of a command list from two fragments of the original which had been bound in separate volumes of the State Papers [II.20], a connection which eluded the editor of the Calendar of State Papers. In contrast to the documentation of Edward's Scottish war, the correspondence here is mainly outgoing. The copies which survive in the Secretaries’ files are mostly corrected drafts; in some cases the correction is so extensive that we have supplied an additional version of the text, as presumably sent [II.22, 30]. There are only a few despatches from the commanders, mostly concerning the raids on the Breton coast which were the navy's chief contribution to this unwanted war [II.63, 70, 74].

Also included are extracts from the correspondence between the King and his agent in England, Count Feria, [II.58, 62, 65–6, 69]. These and some other entries derive from originals in the Archivo General de Simancas, mostly printed in extenso in the nineteenth century by Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove, and translated almost as fully in what is commonly called the Calendar of State Papers, Spanish. All the Simancas papers used in the present volume have been checked and retranslated by Professor Rodríguez-Salgado. In the process there came to light a fleet list not in the Calendar, clearly devised before the assault on Brittany [II.55]. This supplies a gap in the English records, and is of particular interest in identifying the small Cornish ports which furnished ships and men for this little burst of licensed hooliganism. The Breton raids were in any case only a sideshow, designed to draw some French forces away from the main contest with Philip's armies in Flanders. Not much heed should be given to the Spanish denigration of the English war effort.