The documents that lie at the heart of this biography are, with few exceptions, freshly transcribed from original sources. To preserve the flavour of the originals I retain original spellings (in which u is essentially interchangeable with v, i with j and y) and something of the original format. I print the archaic ‘thorn’ (π or y) as th, and long-s as s. I silently expand abbreviations; incorporate scribal corrections, additions, and interlineations; suppress cancellations; restore missing text; and insert letters, words, and comments, as needed for clarity, within square brackets. Dates are normalized to a calendar year beginning 1 January (rather than 25 March).

More pedantically accurate transcriptions of many of the same documents are posted on my website: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ahnelson/. I will add more documents as I complete full transcriptions: but as websites are not forever, I will deposit printouts and other items in the Edward de Vere Collection at Concordia University, Portland, Oregon; and the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

For items in the Calendar of State Papers I have recorded both the ‘article’ and the folio number:

CSPD, 1581–90, p. 395 (PRO SP12/199[/38], f. 71)

The document, noted and partly described in the Calendar of State Papers, volume 1581– 90, page 395, survives in the Public Record Office, Kew. SP12/199 is a typical guard-book into which documents – often letters – have been bound. This is the thirty-eighth document, and the citation is from leaf 71 (as marked by a mechanical stamping-machine). The reader may consult CSPD, 1581–90 in almost any major library, or SP12/199 on microfilm at the PRO, and in specialist libraries elsewhere.

I will maintain a webpage for corrections of factual errors, along with announcements of newly discovered or overlooked documents. An example of the latter was brought to my attention by Nina Green too late for inclusion in this volume: