retensions to the Crown of
France; and though for the greater part of her life shut up in a castle,
surrounded by rocks and mountains, she has not escaped the shafts of
obloquy.

The Translator has added some notes, which give an account of such places
as are mentioned in the Memoirs, taken from the itineraries of the time,
but principally from the "Geographie Universelle" of Vosgien; in which
regard is had to the new division of France into departments, as well as
to the ancient one of principalities, archbishoprics, bishoprics,
generalities, chatellenies, balliages, duchies, seigniories, etc.

In the composition of her Memoirs, Marguerite has evidently adopted the
epistolary form, though the work came out of the French editor's hand
divided into three (as they are styled) books; these three books, or
letters, the Translator has taken the liberty of subdividing into
twenty-one, and, at the head of each of them, he has placed a short table
of the contents. This is the only liberty he has taken with the original
Memoirs, the translation itself being as near as the present improved
state of our language could be brought to approach the unpolished
strength and masculine vigour of the French of the age of Henri IV.

This translation is styled a new one, because, after the Translator had
made some progress in it, he found these Memoirs had already been made
English, and printed, in London, in the year 1656, thirty years after the
first edition of the French original. This translation has the following
title: "The grand Cabinet Counsels unlocked; or, the most faithful
Transaction of Court Affairs, and Growth and Continuance of the Civil
Wars in France, during the Reigns of Charles the last, Henry III., and
Henry IV., commonly called the Great. Most excellently written, in the
French Tongue, by Margaret de Valois, Sister to the two first Kings, and
Wife of the last. Faithfully translated by Robert Codrington, Master of
Arts;" and again as "Memorials of Court Affairs," etc., London, 1658.

The Memoirs of Queen Marguerite contained the secret history of the Court
of France during the space of seventeen years, from 1565 to 1582, and
they end seven years before Henri III., her brother, fell by the hands of
Clement, the monk; consequently, they take in no part of the reign of
Henri IV. (as Mr. Codrington has asserted in his title-page), though
they relate many particulars of the early part of his life.

Marguerite's Memoir