Queen Elizabeth herself, and London as it was in her time, with
sketches of Elizabethan England, and of its great men in the way of
social dignity, are here brought home to us by Paul Hentzner and Sir
Robert Naunton.
Paul Hentzner was a German lawyer, born at Crossen, in Brandenburg,
on the 29th of January, 1558. He died on the 1st January, 1623. In
1596, when his age was thirty-eight, he became tutor to a young
Silesian nobleman, with whom he set out in 1597 on a three years'
tour through Switzerland, France, England, and Italy. After his
return to Germany in 1600, he published, at Nuremberg, in 1612, a
description of what he had seen and thought worth record, written in
Latin, as "Itinerarium Germaniae, Galliae, Angliae, Italiae, cum
Indice Locorum, Rerum atque Verborum."
Horace Walpole caused that part of Hentzner's Itinerary which tells
what he saw in England to be translated by Richard Bentley, son of
the famous scholar, and he printed at Strawberry Hill two hundred
and twenty copies. In 1797 "Hentzner's Travels in England" were
edited, together with Sir Robert Naunton's "Fragmenta Regalia," in
the volume from which they are here reprinted, with notes by the
translator and the editor.
Sir Robert Naunton was of an old family with large estates, settled
at Alderton, in Suffolk. He was at Cambridge in the latter years of
Elizabeth's reign, having entered as Fellow Commoner at Trinity
College, and obtained a Fellowship at Trinity Hall.
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