Many institutions, colleagues, and friends have helped bring this volume together. The seeds began at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009; they grew significantly during a stay at Durham University from 2012 to 2014; they bear fruit finally at the University of Nottingham now in 2015. I am grateful to all three universities for the opportunity to work on this project, grateful to the library staffs and interlibrary loan departments who consistently accepted and processed hundreds of my requests. I have been lucky to fall on my feet here in Nottingham, where new friends and colleagues have managed to make me feel at home in a matter of months, this despite consistently pointing out my unconscious Americanisms. The archives in which these documents are found deserve thanks not only for permission to publish but also for the courteous service I received while in situ. The British Library is justifiably a magnet for many early modernists, but Lambeth Palace Library has a wonderful charm all its own, the Huntington offers an idyllic setting in an otherwise busy environment, and the National Library of Scotland felt a home away from home for a time. For fellowship support during the research and writing, I am grateful to the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Department of History, the European Union's COFUND/Marie Curie Actions, and the Huntington Library.

The documents edited in this volume were written during or shortly after missions from Elizabethan England and Jacobean Scotland to the Protestant princes of the Holy Roman Empire and Denmark. Through the particular perspectives of their authors, these accounts provide helpful if general descriptions while offering minute but critical details of two countries hitherto relatively unfamiliar to most sixteenth-century Englishmen and Scots. Much of the intelligence and many of the observations contained in these materials also remain obscure to modern scholarship. This edition is intended to highlight the importance of such information not only to the formation and execution of government policy but also to the intellectual formation and professional trajectory of the authors themselves. Because these documents are relevant to a number of distinct yet related fields of current scholarship, the following introduction offers an overview of English and Scottish diplomacy with Germany and Denmark before addressing the specific missions and authors, trends in diplomatic history, and the nature and purpose of travel writing during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The introduction closes with a discussion of the documents as sources of intelligence, their significance, their locations, the editorial conventions, and the critical apparatus.

The state of Germany.

The Revenewes, and forces, of everie particuller Province; The forme of the Emperors sitting in the Dyett, and a particuler of expences, howe 6000 Horsemen, and Two Regimentes are entertained for one whole yeare, by the Kinges of Fraunce and Spaine.

A discourse touching ye present estate and gouuernement of the kingdomes of Denmarke and Norwegen, with a description of the said realmes, and Dominions appertayninge vnto them. written in September Anno 1588.

Ane Account of ane Embassie performed by William Steuart Commendator of Pittenweim And mr John Skeen

To England[,] Denmark[,] And Princess of Germanie in Anno 1590[.]

WE departed from Edinburgh the 9t day of Junij 1590. came yat night to Berwick lodged in mr Andersones[,] Humainlie receaved, Be Sir John Selbie Master porter, And Sir William Reid capitaine[.] 10. day in the morning we receaved the bankett from Sir Henric wodringtoun marschell and Governour deput. Theraster the samyn day wee tooke the post at 9 hours befoirnoon – Toward lundoun In maner follouing[:]

The Tenn Circles or Provinces of the Empire, and what Horsemen, and ffootemen[,] everie one is bound to Contribute in all necessarie affayres for the State of the Empire, where is to be noted that the Protestantes in the same, doe double their Contribucion.