OF THE REFORMATION AND ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION, AND OTHER VARIOUS OCCURRENCES IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, DURING QUEEN ELIZABETH'S HAPPY REIGN: TOGETHER WITH AN APPENDIX OF ORIGINAL PAPERS OF STATE, RECORDS, AND LETTERS. BY JOHN STRYPE, M. A. A NEW EDITION. VOL. IV. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS. MDCCCXXIV. THE PREFACE. My store of authentic papers, transcribed by me from the originals, are sufficient to furnish me with matter to carry on my Annals to the end of queen Elizabeth's reign in the same method with the former volumes, and to be digested into a just and methodical history; a thing which many of my learned friends and readers have desired to see. But my great age, and infirmities accompanying it, require me to forbear. And yet, that those papers might not be quite lost, or remain in obscurity and of no use, I have at last, in intervals of better health, prepared a great number of the most important and useful of them, as I took them by my own pen at first from the originals, and have now digested them into a course of historical matters, succeeding year by year, as they fell out. By which means a knowledge of the affairs both of the church and state may be attained, until the access of king James to the kingdom, and some years after. Wherein will be discovered divers remarkable occurrences during the latter part of her reign. Which consisted chiefly of the king of Spain's formidable attempts against this realm, plots of popish seminaries and Jesuits, and the endeavours of the disaffected to the establishment of this church, and the episcopal government of it; and the judicial proceedings taken with them. All which these collections will give a great light into; none of them as yet having been published to the world. So that this following large number of records will want nothing to render it a complete history of those times of the queen, (all very communicative of the chief matters transacted,) though not compiled into a formal history. And let me add, (which will give a sufficient credit and estimation to these papers,) that they were for the most part found by me among the manuscripts and state-papers of that great and wise counsellor of the queen, lord Burghley, lord treasurer, the Nestor of his age, as he was styled. Under the year of whose death some peculiar and curious remarks in this work are given of him. Since the publishing of the former volumes of the Annals, I have met with many material papers, which may improve and illustrate the said history; and therefore have added them by way of Supplement at the end of this book, as they fell out yearly. J. STRYPE. THE CONTENTS. NUMBER I. Reports sent from sir Edward Kelly in Bohemia, Anno 1589. Certain articles of the discovery of high treason, made by sir Edw. Kelly, baron of Bohemia, unto certain English gentle- men, which came to visit him at Tribona in the said king- dom, the latter end of June, 1589, whose names are here To which may be here subjoined two letters wrote to the said Kelly by the lord treasurer Burghley, as a remaining me- morial of the same famous man, sometime of this nation a Number II. The lord Burghley, lord treasurer, to sir Edward Kelly, written ann. 1591, declaring the value he and others had of him, upon the account of his great knowledge and Number III. Another letter from the lord Burghley to sir Edw. Kelly, in answer to a letter from him, brought by Mr. Dyar. Exhorting him earnestly, and that by command from the queen, to come over into his own country; that they might receive the honour and service that his great wisdom and knowledge deserved. Written by that lord's own hand. P. 4. Number IV. Sir Francis Knowles, knt. treasurer of the queen's chamber; to the lord Burghley, lord high treasurer. A letter of some sharpness against the superiority of bishops. P. 6. Number V. Sir Francis Knowles to the queen, upon some dis- |