Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. My larger debt, however, is to my valued collaborator, Capt. B. M. Ward, who has written an introduction to this book, and. From whose Life of Me Earl of Oxford I have, with his consent, and with that of Messrs. John Murray, his publishers - to whom also I express my indebtedness - taken substantially all the facts, extracts from correspondence, and so forth, which make up the biographical basis of this work. For reasons of space and economy, I have not inserted, in the following pages, the usual page-references to Capt. Ward's volume, which my own does not supersede; since I have, in the main, used extracts only, from the letters and other documents quoted, which, with much other information, can be read.