will increase your maiestie
daiely in all vertue and honor with moste prosperouse successe,
and augment in vs your most humble subiectes, true loue to
godward, and iust obedience toward your highnes with all
reuerence and subiection.

At London the .xxviij. daie of Ianuarie. M. D. L I.

_Your maiesties moste humble seruant
and obedient subiect,
Robert Recorde._

+THE PREFACE,+
declaring briefely the commodi-
tes of Geometrye, and the
necessitye thereof.

Geometrye may thinke it selfe to sustaine great iniury, if it
shall be inforced other to show her manifold commodities, or els
not to prease into the sight of men, and therefore might this
wayes answere briefely: Other I am able to do you much good, or
els but litle. If I bee able to doo you much good, then be you
not your owne friendes, but greatlye your owne enemies to make
so little of me, which maye profite you so muche. For if I were
as vncurteous as you vnkind, I shuld vtterly refuse to do them
any good, which will so curiously put me to the trial and profe
of my commodities, or els to suffre exile, and namely sithe I
shal only yeld benefites to other, and receaue none againe. But
and if you could saye truely, that my benefites be nother many
nor yet greate, yet if they bee anye, I doo yelde more to you,
then I doo receaue againe of you, and therefore I oughte not to
bee repelled of them that loue them selfe, althoughe they loue
me not all for my selfe. But as I am in nature a liberall
science, so canne I not againste nature contende with your
inhumanitye, but muste shewe my selfe liberall euen to myne
enemies. Yet this is my comforte againe, that I haue none
enemies but them that knowe me not, and therefore may hurte
themselues, but can not noye me. Yf they dispraise the thinge
that they know not, all wise men will blame them and not credite
them, and yf they thinke they knowe me, lette theym shewe one
vntruthe and erroure in me, and I wyll geue the victorye.

Yet can no humayne science saie thus, but I onely, that there is
no sparke of vntruthe in me: but all my doctrine and workes are
without any blemishe of errour that mans reason can discerne.
And nexte vnto me in certaintie are my three systers,
Arithmetike, Musike, and Astronomie, whiche are also so nere
knitte in amitee, that he that loueth the one, can not despise
the other, and in especiall Geometrie, of whiche not o