The volume now presented to the members of the Parker Society completes the correspondence obtained by the researches of that Soceity from the archives of Zurich and other similar repositories in Switzerland. It is, however, entirely independent of the two series of letters already published; inasmuch as those series included only the letters written during the reign of Elizabeth, while the present collection belongs to a somewhat earlier period of our history, extending from the latter part of the riegn of Henry VIII. through those of his two immediate successors. The dubious character of the English Reformation under the first of these sovereigns, its marked and decided progrress under Edward VI., and its temporary overthrow under queen Mary, invest each of these periods with a character peculiar to itself, and which will also be found reflected in the correspondence of each respectivly. --from the Introduction
