Preface

This book has been a slow project starting life a couple of decades ago, only to be slowed down by other projects, and more than once held up by the need to visit yet another archive before the writing could be completed. I am immensely grateful to the many archivists and librarians in major and minor archives and libraries across Europe who assisted me in my enquiries over the years. Without their help this book would never have been written. If nothing else their importance is evident from my footnotes. In particular I should like to thank the staff in the Manuscript Room of the Guildhall Library in London where my research began and the staff at the Gemeente Stadsarchief Amsterdam in the Netherlands where I spent considerable time after that, and who recently proved incredibly efficient in responding to some of my many queries saving me time-consuming trips to Amsterdam. I should also like to express my deep gratitude to St Martha Reformed Church in Nuremberg in Germany where a couple of decades ago I arrived out of the blue asking to be shown the archive they did not realise they possessed. Eventually someone remembered that some ‘old’ documents had been stored away in boxes in a cupboard. I was then given access to what is, indeed, a splendid and nearly complete collection of hundreds of documents relating to the charity for the Calvinist refugees from the Upper Palatinate during the Thirty Years War. The enthusiasm which this discovery engendered and the friendliness with which I was received in Nuremberg will always stay with me, while for once in my life I realised that a historian’s work can be dirty, especially when working with documents which have gathered dust for over a generation. Finally I should like to express my gratitude to the ever helpful staff in the Rare Books Room in Cambridge University Library where I spent much of my time dedicated to this project.