In his scholarly monograph _Quellen Studien zu den Dramen George Chapmans, Massingers, und Fords_ (1897), E. Koeppel showed that the three connected plays were based upon materials taken from Jean de Serres's _Inventaire Général de l'Histoire de France_ (1603), Pierre Matthieu's _Histoire de France durant Sept Années de Paix du Regne de Henri IV_ (1605), and P. V. Cayet's _Chronologie Septénaire de l'Histoire de la Paix entre les Roys de France et d'Espagne_ (1605). The picture suggested by Koeppel's treatise was of Chapman collating a number of contemporary French historical works, and choosing from each of them such portions as suited his dramatic purposes. But this conception, as I have shown in the _Athenæum_ for Jan. 10, 1903, p. 51, must now be abandoned. Chapman did not go to the French originals at all, but to a more easily accessible source, wherein the task of selection and rearrangement had already been in large measure performed. In 1607 the printer, George Eld, published a handsome folio, of which the British Museum possesses a fine copy (c. 66, b. 14), originally the property of Prince Henry, eldest son of James I. Its title is: "_A General Inventorie of the Historie of France, from the beginning of that Monarchie, unto the Treatie of Vervins, in the Yeare 1598. Written by Jhon de Serres. And continued unto these Times, out of the best Authors which have written of that Subiect. Translated out of French into English by Edward Grimeston, Gentleman._" This work, the popularity of which is attested by the publication of a second, enlarged, edition in 1611, was the direct source of the "Byron" plays, and of _The Revenge_. In a dedication addressed to the Earls of Suffolk and Salisbury, Grimeston states that having retired to "private and domesticke cares" after "some years expence in France, for the publike service of the State," he has translated "this generall Historie of France written by John de Serres." In a preface "to the Reader" he makes the further important statement: