BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The edition of Cromwell’s letters and related documents which I have used has consistently been that by Wilbur Cortez Abbott, which is the fullest to date. It also, however, has distinct shortcomings, which have been valuably highlighted by John Morrill (‘Textualizing and Contextualizing Cromwell’, Historical Journal 33, 1990, 629–39), and in some respects the Carlyle-Lomas edition is better. My preference for Abbott has been due simply to the fact that his happens to be the edition available in my own university library, which I could borrow, study and transcribe at leisure: we in the provinces do not have the choices available to those with college and copyright libraries at their doors. That has not been a problem in practice, because for the precise period which I have tackled, the Carlyle-Lomas edition presents the text of Cromwell’s letters seemingly as Abbott’s does (according to the sample I have checked) and it is not much superior in its notes. Like so many others, I have long and eagerly been awaiting the major new Oxford University Press edition of the letters and speeches overseen by John Morrill; but it was not ready in time for the writing of this book.