every peasant was born a soldier. The majors, the colonels, the captains of such a militia were really, not nominally, men of arms. Sir Robert Cary mentions, in general, some persons who were averse to follow him into Scotland, imagining that the Scotch outlaws must be far superior in the force of numbers; they were so, but were entirely subdued. The Marches long since reduced, the castles demolished, the Debateable Lands settled, and the two kingdoms united under one sovereign, make all farther enquiries into their former state unnecessary. The prudent, the courageous, and the active part which our author acted during his wardenship, will be found fully delineated in his own Memoirs. His situation was nice and perilous. It required a good head and a strong heart to fulfil such a post. But when moderation of temper is joined, as in him, with bravery of spirit, the greatest difficulties are certainly, if not easily, to be overcome. The felicities that might have arisen from the accession of King James I. were such as must have rendered us the envy and the dread of all foreign nations. After twelve hundred years' contests with the North Britons, we became one people, united in the same interest, and subjects to the same sovereign. But these are reflections foreign and vague to the Memoirs of Sir Robert Cary; yet as the present situation of times and things unavoidably occur to our thoughts, whenever we read any historical anecdotes of our ancestors, I may possibly be forgiven in adding farther, that by our intercourse and conjunction with the Scots, we find ourselves united to a wise and a wary nation, whose writings are many of them the ornament and illustration of this age. During the whole reign of King James I. the Memoirs are entirely personal, but not unentertaining; and they are concluded by the coronation of King Charles Į. I ought now to give an account by 8 what means they came into my hands. They were copied by myself from a manuscript entrusted to me by Lady Elizabeth Spelman, daughter to the Earl of Middleton, to whom I had the honour of being in some degree of affinity. I have most religiously adhered to the original manuscript, The dying scene of Queen Elizabeth has already been extracted and published among Sir Thomas Edmund's papers, by my very worthy and learned friend Dr Birch in his Historical View from the year 1592 to 1617. Anecdotes of our English history have been ever sought after with great eagerness, especially those of Queen Elizabeth's reign. I here offer my mite to be thrown into that treasury. |