In the ‘English Historical Review,’ * Mr. Gairdner, examining the question, used Mr. Froude’s transcripts in the British Museum, and made some slight corrections in his translation, but omitted to note the crucial error of the ‘third of THIS month’ for ‘the third of LAST month.’ This was in 1886. Mr. Gairdner’s arguments as to dates were unconvincing, in this his first article. But in 1892 the letter of de Quadra was retranslated from Mr. Froude’s transcript, in the Spanish Calendar (i. pp. 174-176). The translation was again erroneous, ‘THE QUEEN HAD PROMISED ME AN ANSWER ABOUT THE SPANISH MARRIAGE BY THE THIRD INSTANT’ (September 3), ‘but now she coolly tells me she cannot make up her mind, and will not marry.’ This is all unlike Mr. Froude’s ‘On the third of this month the Queen spoke to me about her marriage WITH THE ARCH DUKE. SHE SAID THAT SHE HAD MADE UP HER MIND TO MARRY AND THAT THE ARCH DUKE WAS TO BE THE MAN.’ There is, in fact, in Mr. Froude’s copy of the original Spanish, not a word about the Arch Duke, nor is there in Baron Lettenhove’s text. The remark has crept in from an earlier letter of de Quadra, of August 4, 1560.** But neither is there anything about ‘promising an answer by the third instant,’ as in the Calendar; and there is nothing at all about ‘the third instant,’ or (as in Mr. Froude) ‘the third of this month.’ *No. 2, April 1886, pp. 235-259. **Spanish Calendar, i. pp. 171-174. The Queen’s character has thus suffered, and the whole controversy has been embroiled. In 1883, three years before the appearance of Mr. Gairdner’s article of 1886, nine years before the Calendar appeared, the correct version of de Quadra’s letter of September 11, 1560, had been published by Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove in his ‘Relations Politiques des Pays-Bas et de l’Angleterre sous le Regne de Philippe II’ (vol. ii. pp. 529, 533). In 1897, Mr. Gairdner’s attention was called to the state of affairs by the article, already cited, of Dr. Ernst Bekker. Mr. Gairdner then translated the Belgian printed copy of de Quadra’s letter, with comments.* *English Historical Review, January 1898, pp. 83-90.