Series 3 > Letters of James the Fourth, 1505-1513

INTRODUCTION
THE LETTERS OF JAMES IV
His friends may regret that in this Calendar Hannay
attempted something less ambitious than the enterprise
to which Scottish scholars must one day address themselves
—the preparation of a complete text and translation of the
correspondence of James IV with foreign states and princes,
already printed in part on the collections of Ruddiman,
Wegener, Gairdner, and Dr. Marguerite Wood, and
calendared in part by Brewer and J. H. Brodie. His more
modest endeavour was to prepare, for the guidance of
future students of the period, full and accurate abstracts,
precisely dated, of all the letters, whether already printed
or not, written by or to James IV and his ministers between
1505 and 1513. There is nothing in his notes to suggest
that he meant to include letters written before 1505, when,
with the appointment of Patrick Paniter as Principal
Secretary to the King, the material for a calendar suddenly
becomes plentiful.
The most substantial part of his material Hannay drew
from the collection of some hundreds of letters, most of
them written by Paniter on behalf of James IV and other
Scottish dignitaries, preserved in five manuscript copies,
four of them almost contemporary, and one made in the
second half of the sixteenth century. Three, MSS. 35,
5, 9, A, B, and D, are in the National Library of Scotland,
one MS. Royal, 13. b.ii, is in the British Museum, and one
(referred to hereafter as R.H.) is in H.M. Register House,
Edinburgh. In only three—N.L. MS. 35, 5, 9, B (referred
to hereafter as N.L.), B.M. MS. Royal 13. b.ii (referred to
hereafter as B.M.) and R.H. are the pages and letters
numbered, and only for one—R.H.—is there a table of
contents, prepared, it should be said, by Hannay himself.
The National Library of Scotland possesses, in addition,
microfilms of both N.L. and B.M.
A comparison, made recently by Mr. H. M. Paton, of the