The Memoirs of the Lives and Actions of James and William, Dukes of Hamilton and Castle-Herald (Classic Reprint) - Gilbert Burnet

Histories are of all books the most universally read the wiser find matter of great speculation in them, and improve their knowledge by the experience these give them; and weaker persons make them their diversion, and entertain dis course with them. But most writers of history have been men that lived out of business, who took many things upon trust, and have committed many and palpable errors in mat ters of fact, and either give no account at all of the secret causes and counsels of the greatest transactions, or when they do venture upon it, it is all romance, and the effect of their imagination or interest.

And indeed the authors of all the histories that were writ ten for near a thousand years together, being for the most part monks, there is no great reason to think they were either well informed or ingenuous in what they delivered to poste rity, though there is perhaps no nation that is more beholding to their labours than England is.

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