How Harrison came to write his book[3] was on this wise. Reginald Wolfe,
the Printer to Queen Elizabeth, meant to publish "a universall
Cosmographie of the whole world,[4] and therewith also certaine particular
histories of every knowne nation." For the Historical part of the work, he
engagd Raphael Holinshed, among other men; and when the work was nearly
done, Wolfe died, after twenty-five years' labour at his scheme. Then the
men who were to have borne the cost of printing the Universall
Cosmographie were afraid to face the expense of the whole work, and
resolvd to do only so much of it as related to England, Scotland, and
Ireland.[5]

Holinshed having the History of these countries in hand, application was
made to Harrison, who had long been compiling a Chronologie[6] of his own,
to furnish the Descriptions of Britain and England. He was then Household
Chaplain to the well-known Sir William Brooke, Lord Cobham (so praisd by
Francis Thynne[7]), and was staying in London, away from his rectory of
Radwinter in Essex, and his Library there. He had also travelld little
himself, only into Kent, to Oxford and Cambridge, etc., as he honestly
tells Lord Cobham.

Still, mainly by the help of Leland--"and hitherto Leland, whose words I
dare not alter"--as well as of "letters and pamphlets from sundrie places
& shires of England," and "by conference with diuers folk,"[8] and "by
mine owne reading,"[9] together with Master Sackford's charts or
Maps,"[10] Harrison--notwithstanding the failure of his correspondents[11]
and the loss of part of his material--"scambled up," what he
depreciatingly calls "this foule frizeled Treatise of mine," to "stand in
lieu of a description of my Countrie." But, he says, "howsoeuer it be
done, & whatsoeuer I haue done, I haue had an especiall eye vnto the truth
of things." And this merit, I think every reader will allow Harrison.
Though he swallowd too easily some of the stories told in old
chronicles,[12] etc., though (in his 2nd ed. only) he put Chertsey above,
instead of below, Staines, on the Thames,[13] etc., yet in all the
interesting home-life part, he evidently gives both sides of the case,
"speaks of it as it was; nothing extenuates, nor sets down aught in
malice" (_Oth._, V. ii. 341). When he tells with pride, on the one hand,
of the grand new buildings and the many chimnies put up in his day; on
the other hand, he brings in the grumble:

"And yet see the change, for when our house