1 Richard Whalley 22 July 1628 (2644, f. 275)

My honourable and most worthy lady sister The flyinge report of the death of your truly noble, perfectly religious and most well merittinge common wealth's husband, Sir Frances Barrington, rightly remembreth unto mee that godly and true sayinge of the prophet Isaiah, cap. 57,1: the righteous perisheth, and no man considereth it in heart, and mercifull men are taken away, and no man understandeth that the righteous is taken away from the evill to come.Give mee leave even thoroughly to grieve with yow, both for myselfe, the whole common wealth and my children's trust reposed in him; yet to rejoyce and to comfort my selfe with you for him by these words in the next vearse: peace shall come, they shall rest in their bedds, evryone that walketh before him,as most assuredly hee dooth; and therefore in great thanksgivinge say yow, with all that knew him, beatus est ille, qui mortuus est in domino, quia opera ejus sequuntur ilium.Hee lived in honour, dyed in peace, forewent God's heavy judgement - most like to befall us - and shall rise in glory eternall. Oh sister, rejoyce; good maddam rejoyce, rejoyce, even contrary to flesh and blood, rejoyce for his departure, show your humble thanckfullnes to almighty God that hath these many yeares yoke fellowed in your bosome one more then an angell: and for your selfe rejoyce that you have beene as a fruitfull vine unto your husband's house, and have received most plentifully children, the especiall blessinge about your table. And why? Because you both have lived in the feare of the lord; and therein dooe I holde myselfe happy that you please to vouchsafe the educacion of my poore daughter, your niece whom, good maddam, let continue with you, and God graunt her grace either to please you or never to accounte mee her father; and whom I likewise beseech you to bestow in marriage, and her porcion, I hope shall surely in convenient tyme bee provided with advantage. I have sent her by this bearer the third and last volume of Mr Parkins' workes which were her mother's, and further will remember her if I may understand her dutifull care to please you. But, good maddam, keepe her from overmuch liberty and fantasticke new fashions.

When the Parliament of 1621 convened, it had been seven years since the dissolution of the so-called ‘Addled Parliament’ of 1614, which had foundered on a fundamental disagreement between King James I and the House of Commons about the legality of impositions. The Parliament of 1621 faced more than unresolved domestic issues; it met under the shadow of the gravest international crisis of the early modern era. The defenestration of Prague in 1618 had marked the beginning of the Bohemian rebellion and the Thirty Years' War, and in the following summer James's son-in-law, Elector Palatine Friedrich V, accepted the Bohemian crown from the rebels, who had just deposed their Habsburg monarch, Ferdinand of Styria. Two days later Ferdinand was elected Holy Roman Emperor, and he was determined to retake the Bohemian dirone from the new Palatine occupant. In the autumn of 1620, the emperor's Spanish cousins aided his cause by dispatching a large portion of the Spanish Army of the Netherlands to invade the Lower Palatinate, Friedrich's rich patrimonial estates on the Rhine.

At the close of the Relation of a short survey of 26 counties observed in a seven weeks' journey begun on 11 August, 1634, by a Captain, a Lieutenant, and an Ancient, all three of the Military Company in Norwich, the "courteous reader" was invited by an anonymous writer of verse to

Receive it only as a preparation

For a more large and long itineration

and it is not unfitting that in the tercentenary of the fulfilment of this promise, the account of the tour to the south and west of England should be offered to the Royal Historical Society

Though my personall attendance on your lordship receives a discontinuance by my absence from Ireland, I cannot so much forget the obligation of that noble respect vouchsafed me there and the authority of your lordship's commands as not to waite on your lordship by my letters till a new oportunity admitt me againe the honour of kissing your lordship's hands. And though the impression I am under of your lordship's high civilityes might justifye large acknowledgments, yet beleeving your lordship delights more in obligeing acts then the repetition of them, I forbeare saying more then that I shall retayne a due resentment of my great ingagements to appeare your lordship's servant and am ambitious to receive some commands from your lordship which may witnesse you are pleased so to account of me.

At the Carlton Club meeting in October 1922 Balfour had reflected caustically that while ‘it has never been a Conservative principle to abandon a Leader … I concede it has sometimes been a Conservative practice’. At this meeting, the Conservative Party had abandoned Austen Chamberlain. A little over a year later it appeared as if a similar fate would befall his principal successor. Amid the ruins of Law's victory for ‘Tranquillity’ many observers subscribed to Hanky's view that ‘Baldwin, though a nice fellow is not the stuff of which British Prime Ministers are made’. In the immediate aftermath of this disaster, most also assumed he would be compelled to pay the ultimate price for this inadequacy. Certainly Birhenhead was one of them. Electoral defeat was a vindication of all that he had predicted since the fall of the Coalition. Rejoicing that it had finally ‘put an end to the idea that fifth rate intelligence could govern the Empire’, Birkenhead set in motion the final act in a strategy to which he had committed the Chamberlainites in November 1922. Between 6 and 10 December rumours abounded that the former Conservative Coalitionists were about to displace Baldwin, replace him variously with Balfour, Derby or Chamberlain and then form some sort of Liberal-Conservative combination to exclude Labour from office. In the event, the plan miscarried. The apparent recrudescence of the ‘old intrigue’ rallied the victors of the Carlton Club to defend the Party, their brand of Conservatism and, by necessity, its leader from coalitionist conspiracy. Virtually overnight, Baldwin was transformed from the wanton destroyer of Law's majority into the guarantor of Conservative principle. As Amery told Baldwin, ‘you embody and personify the decision of the Party to live its own life and have its own constructive policy’. Ultimately, therefore, despite much Conservative anger, frustration and despair at Baldwin's perceived folly, the impulse which brought about the coalescence of figures as diverse as the Cecils, Younger, Strachey, Gretton and the ministerial beneficiaries of the Carlton Club was the consensus that they were ‘not prepared to cut off Baldwin's head and make Austen Chamberlain King’. They were even less inclined to install Birkenhead as Regent.

As nature has given you a right to the inheritance of my estate, a competency sufficient to support the quality of a gentleman, so I design, as a mark of true paternal affection, to add to it my small collection of books; that, by adorning your mind with useful study, you may deserve that character more from yourself than ancestors. Amongst the rest I leave you this Manuscript. A particular good fortune threw it into my hands, which, had it nothing but the subject to recommend it, would be no inconsiderable value to a Catholic, because it lets him see 'twas Interest and not Religion began the schism, and that 'tis truly Conscience and not Obstinacy makes him, by still adhering to the ancient Church, stand obnoxious to so many laws. But, that your esteem may equal its value, I have thought proper to acquaint you first what I have found concerning the Author, next what reason there is to believe this Copy authentick, and lastly to whose kindness I am obliged for it, and upon what conditions I had leave to transcribe it.

The Tenn Circles or Provinces of the Empire, and what Horsemen, and ffootemen[,] everie one is bound to Contribute in all necessarie affayres for the State of the Empire, where is to be noted that the Protestantes in the same, doe double their Contribucion.

[In the Third Part Eicart carries on the yearly chronicle, but heads each year with the names of the mayor and proyosts, stewards, bailiffs, or sheriffs, as the case may be, beginning with the 1st Henry III. The narration of “Actes done” is but slight : in the earlier years it has been mainly drawn from Mathew of Westminster. There are many pages where nothing beyond the names of the officers appears, each page being arranged with the headings for two years, but time or opportunity having failed the compiler to fill them in. Coming near the writer's own time, however, and later, many notices of value to local history are scattered through the pages, along with the general history. It is remarkable that one of those is related at length by Fabyan, who was a contemporary, though it is little, if at all, mentioned in other chronicles.