supervision of the latter a transcript of the _History_ was made for
the printers. The work was published at Oxford in three handsome
folio volumes in 1702, 1703, and 1704, and became the property of the
University. The portions of the 'Manuscript Life' which Clarendon
had not incorporated in the _History_ as being too personal, were
published by the University in 1759, under the title _The Life
of Edward Earl of Clarendon_, and were likewise printed from a
transcript.[1]

The original manuscripts, now also in the possession of the University
of which Clarendon's family were such generous benefactors, enable
us to fix the dates of composition. We know whether a part belongs
originally to the 'Manuscript History' or the 'Manuscript Life', or
whether it was pieced in later. More than this, Clarendon every now
and again inserts the month and the day on which he began or ended
a section. We can thus trace the stages by which his great work was
built up, and learn how his art developed. We can also judge how
closely the printed texts represent what Clarendon had written. The
old controversy on the authenticity of the first edition has long been
settled.[2] The original editors did their work faithfully according
to the editorial standards of their day; and they were well within the
latitude allowed them by the terms of Clarendon's instructions when
they occasionally omitted a passage, or when they exercised their
somewhat prim and cautious taste in altering and polishing phrases
that Clarendon had dashed down as quickly as his pen could move.[3]
Later editors have restored the omitted passages and scrupulously
reproduced Clarendon's own words. But no edition has yet reproduced
his spelling. In the characters printed in this volume the attempt
is made, for the first time it is believed, to represent the original
manuscripts accurately to the letter.[4]