The fate of this Life of Wolsey has been indeed singularly unfortunate; after remaining in manuscript nearly a century, it was first printed in 1641, for party purposes, but in such a garbled form as to be hardly recognized for the same work, abridgment and interpolation having been used with an unsparing hand. Its author too had been robbed of his literary honours, which were bestowed upon his younger and more fortunate brother Sir William Cavendish, until the year 1814, when his cause was ably advocated in a Dissertation by the Rev. Joseph Hunter, F.A.S. author of the History of Hallamshire. I am indebted to the kind intervention of my friend J. H. Markland, Esq. for the privilege of reprinting that Dissertation, which the reader will find at the commencement of the volume, and will, I doubt not, be gratified in the perusal. It affords the best example of clear argumentative solution of a literary paradox from circumstantial evidence with which I am acquainted, at the same time it is so skilfully interwoven with curious matter bearing upon the question, as not only to divest it of the sterile character with which disquisitions of the same kind from less able hands have been marked, but to render it very interesting. I owe Mr. Hunter my best acknowledgements for the ready manner in which the favour was conferred, and I look to have the thanks of those, who are yet unacquainted with it, for uniting this tract with the work of George Cavendish, from which it should never again be disjoined. For all that relates to the Life of Wolsey and its author, therefore, I shall beg leave to refer to this source of information; and it will only remain for me to give an account of the present edition.