esse maketh them
apt to conceiue, that whatsoeuer the words are, the finger
pointeth onely at them. The last is, for that the Argument of
our _English_ historie hath been so foiled heretofore by some
unworthie writers, that men of qualitie may esteeme themselues
discredited by dealing in it....

Then he questioned, whether I had wrote any part of our
_English_ Historie, other then that which had been published;
which at that time he had in his hands. I answered, that I
had wrote of certaine of our _English_ Kings, by way of a
briefe description of their liues: but for historie, I did
principally bend, and binde my selfe to the times wherein
I should liue; in which my owne obseruations might somewhat
direct me: but as well in the one as in the other I had at
that time perfected nothing.

The result of the interview was that Hayward proceeded to 'perfect
somewhat of both sorts'. The brief description of the lives of the
three Norman kings was in due course ordered to be published, and
would have been dedicated to its real patron but for his untimely
death; in dedicating it instead to Prince Charles, Hayward fortunately
took the opportunity to relate his conversation with Prince Henry.
How far he carried the other work is not certain; it survives in the
fragment called _The Beginning of the Raigne of Queene Elizabeth_,[4]
published after his death with _The Life and Raigne of King Edward
the Sixt_. He might have brought it down to the reign of James. Had he
been at liberty to follow his own wishes, he would have been the first
Englishman to write a 'History of his own time'. But when an author
incurred imprisonment for writing about the deposition of a sovereign,
and when modern applications were read into accounts of what had
happened long ago, the complexity of his own time was a dangerous if
not a forbidden subject.

There is a passage to the same effect in the preface to _The Historie
of the World_ by Sir Walter Raleigh, who, unlike Hayward, willingly
chose to be silent on what he knew best:

I know that it will bee said by many, That I might have beene
more pleasing to the Reader, if I had written the Story of
mine owne times; having been permitted to draw water as neare
the Well-head as another. To this I answer, that who-so-ever
in writing a moderne Historie, shall follow truth too neare
the heeles, it may happily strike out his te