The opening of Preface
The reign of Philip the Second has occupied the pen of the historian more frequently--if we except that of Charles the Fifth--than any other portion of the Spanish annals. It has become familiar to the English reader through the pages of Watson, who has deservedly found favor with the public for the perspicuity of his style,--a virtue, however, not uncommon in his day,--for the sobriety of his judgments, and for the skill he has shown in arranging his complicated story, so as to maintain the reader's interest unbroken to the end. But the public, in Watson's day, were not very fastidious in regard to the sources of the information on which a narrative was founded. Nor was it easy to obtain access to those unpublished documents which constitute the best sources of information.