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

LETTERS OF JAMES IV
XXV
The Editor has printed Hannay’s own work with the
minimum of alteration, only rectifying discrepancies in
the spelling of place and personal names, adding references
to sources which Hannay had overlooked, and inserting
a distinguishing c H.’ at the end of each of Hannay’s
summaries and footnotes. He has completed the Calendar
from transcripts of the uncalendared material in the two
letter-books from the Lettres du Roy Louis XII, and from
certain letters from James IV and Andrew Forman
to Louis XII in the Bibliotheque Nationale, the ex¬
istence of which Hannay does not seem to have
suspected. He has not thought it necessary, how¬
ever, to include more than the briefest references to
the very important confidential documents brought to
Scotland by the agents of Louis XII and now preserved
in the Register House, indispensable though they are for
an understanding of the tangled Franco-Scottish negotia¬
tions in 1512 and 1513, as they have already been printed
in full and summarised in Flodden Papers, edited by Dr.
Marguerite Wood, and published by the Scottish History
Society in 1933. These documents were overlooked by
Brodie, who overlooked little, and whose great collection
has been an indispensable aid to the present Editor.
The Editor is under a very heavy debt to Miss Anne Spil-
man, who made the transcripts of most of the many letters
in N.L. and B.M. left uncalendared by Hannay. Her task
was facilitated by the generous action of the Librarian of
the National Library of Scotland, who provided micro¬
films of both manuscripts and by the co-operation of the
Librarian and Staff of St. Andrews University Library,
where a microfilm reader was put at her disposition.
The Editor’s deep indebtedness to two friends of Hannay’s
youth, the late J. S. Hamilton and the late Rev. W. T.
Cairns, D.D., and to Dr. William Angus, he has noted in
the Biographical Memoir. For the description of Hannay
as a University teacher he has drawn upon material sup¬
plied by members of his Scottish History classes—Mrs. E. W.
Dobbie, Mrs. Annie I. Dunlop, Miss E. J. Boog-Watson,
Mr. John Buchanan, and Dr. Gordon Donaldson. He also