The Year after the Armada, and Other Historical Studies
David Hume · en
About the same time as the discovery of Muñoz's
letter three other letters, which in my opinion are
even more valuable, because of the position of the
supposed author, were found in the Escorial library.
The first is a printed tract in the form of a diary and
is entitled "Transcript of a Letter sent from
England to this City of Seville, in which is given a
Relation of the Events of the Voyage of our Lord
the Prince Don Philip, from his Embarkation in
the Coruña, a Port of Spain, to his Marriage to the
Serene Queen of England. 1554." The book
bears the well-known device, although not the
name, of the celebrated Sevillian printer Andres de
Burgos. In the same library was found a manuscript
letter taking up the narrative where the
last-mentioned tract ended--namely, after the marriage
at Winchester at the end of July--and carrying it
to August 19th, when the Court was at Richmond.
No printed copy of this continuation is known to
exist, but it is almost certainly written by the same
hand, and contains many remarks and opinions
which would probably have been suppressed if the
letter had been published. A continuation of this,
again, was also found in the Escorial, written
apparently by the same person, bringing the narrative
down to October 2nd, and is dated from London,
where the King and Queen then were. These three
letters, which I shall distinguish by the numbers 3,
{135}
4, and 5, were published, together with Muñoz's
narrative (No. 2), by the Society of Bibliophilists of
Madrid in 1877, under the editorship of Don
Pascual de Gayangos.