This is the first of three parts of the sixth volume in a seven-volume collection - published between 1864 and 1890 - comprising Venetian and other northern Italian state papers relating to England. Translator and editor Rawdon Lubbock Brown (1806–83) lived for many years in Venice, had unrivalled access to the Venetian archives and travelled widely to find documents in other Italian libraries and archives. He had previously published two volumes of Sebastian Giustinian's dispatches to Venice from Henry VIII's court (also reissued in this series). This first part of the sixth volume contains documents from the years 1555–6, the early years of Mary I's reign, an important period for the Italian states when papal authority was reinstated in England and Mary married Philip of Spain - documented here by the correspondence of, among others, the papal legate Cardinal Pole. The editor's preface puts the various documents into historical context.