This volume has been designed to stand alongside The Navy of Edward VI and Mary I (NRS, Vol. 157, 2011), with which it shares much common apparatus. Two substantial appendices containing details of all RN ships and most senior naval personnel mentioned in both volumes were printed in the first; and certain parts of the technical introduction printed there is repeated here.

Crown copyright material is used by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office, and the original State Papers were made available to us by the kind assistance of Mr A. H. Lawes. Papers at Hatfield House are printed by permission of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury. We are grateful to His Lordship's Librarian and Archivist, Mr R. H. Harcourt Williams, for aiding our research. Documents from the British Library, the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, are included by permission of their several custodians, to whom we are indebted for access and guidance in our work. To the British Library, and to the Head of Modern Historical Manuscripts Dr F. Harris, we are in particular grateful for allowing us to print extracts from the Library's online catalogue as an appendix to our own work. Dr R. Luckett helpfully advised us about the provenance of items formerly in his care as Pepys Librarian. We are also appreciative of the research facilities provided by Cambridge University Library and the Suffolk Record Office, Bury St Edmunds. This volume has been produced alongside the Society's edition of the Pepys Library MS ‘Fragments of Ancient English Shipwrightry’, and we have tried to ensure that these two publications are mutually consistent and supportive. To this end we have been much assisted by Mr R. A. Barker, co-editor of ‘Fragments’, and by Dr S. L. Adams and Dr S. P. Rose, who have contributed essays respectively on Hawkins's ‘Bargains’ and nautical terminology for that volume. Dr J. D. Davies has kindly responded to our enquiries. We are obliged to Dr M. Hayward, Director of the AHRC Research Centre for Textile Conservation and Textile Studies, University of Southampton, for advice on fabrics. Miss A. Morgan, Archivist of the City of Plymouth, kindly helped us to identify some civic officials.