Of the surviving sources for the internal history of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 1260s, the collection of materials on the regency (bailliage) disputes of 1264 (or 1265 or 1266) and 1268 is among the most important. It helps explain the rise to power of Hugh of Antioch-Lusignan (King Hugh III of Cyprus) and also sheds much light on contemporary legal concepts and procedures.

George Rainsford's Ritratto d'Ingliterra appears, in the two manuscripts in which it has come down to us, as an appendix to Stephen Gardiner's Ragionamento dell'advenimento delli inglesi et normanni in Britannia. Apart from catalogue references and one brief note in J. A. Muller's introduction to The Letters of Stephen Gardiner (Cambridge, 1933), neither the Gardiner work nor that by Rainsford has been mentioned by scholars. Professors Paul Oskar Kristeller and William Nelson directed my attention to these texts some years ago, and suggested the project which has resulted in the publication of Gardiner's treatise under the title A Machiavellian Treatise by Stephen Gardiner (Cambridge, 1975) and in the edition of Rainsford's appendix presented here. Though it has proved necessary to publish the two texts separately, they are very closely connected works, and should be studied together. Rainsford was Gardiner's translator; it was he who was responsible for the Italian version in which Gardiner's last work survives, and to which his own composition was appended. The Rainsford text was, therefore, explicitly offered as a supplement to what Gardiner had done. In his dedication of the composite volume to Philip II he gave this as the reason for his own work:

So that nothing might be lacking in this little book that might contribute to an understanding of the laws, procedures, customs, nature and humour of the people of Britain, I have composed and here appended a portrait of the realm, (fo. IVr)

Thus his own work was composed expressly to supplement what Gardiner has written.

The letter-book of Thomas Bentham, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield (1560–79), is to be found in National Library of Wales MS. 4919D. The volume was purchased in May 1923, being one of some 500 volumes sold by Captain Ivor McClure on his removal from London to Malvern. Mr (later Sir) John Ballinger travelled up to London to examine the library on behalf of the National Library of Wales. Personal letters between the Librarian, Mr Ballinger, and Captain McClure survive for this period but provide no clue as to the origins of the library in general or of this volume in particular. The correspondence, moreover, does not indicate how the sale was made. The National Library of Wales Librarian's Report to the half yearly meeting of the court of Governors, held on 30 October 1923, makes no mention whatsoever of this purchase. It is known that at least three other rare books were bought from the same collection—a seventeenth-century Ethiopia psalter; the Divinae Institutiones of Lactantius (Latin, fifteenth century); and Roman Inscribed and Sculptured Stones (nineteenth century).