page_title: William Camden
section_title: Annales
hierarchical_section_title: William Camden / Annales
caption_attribution_description: Frontispiece and titlepage from a 1675 edition of William Camden's biography of Queen Elzabeth I.
context_page_description: William Camden was an English antiquarian, historian, topographer, and herald, best known as author of Britannia, the first chorographical survey of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Annales, the first detailed historical account of the reign of Elizabeth I of England.
context_section_description: In 1597, William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley suggested that Camden write a history of Queen Elizabeth's reign. The degree of Burghley's subsequent influence on the work is unclear: Camden only specifically mentions John Fortescue of Salden, Elizabeth's last Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Henry Cuffe, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex's secretary, as sources. Camden began his work in 1607. The first part (books 1–3) of the Annales rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum regnante Elizabetha, ad annum salutis M.D. LXXXIX, covering the reign up to 1588, appeared in 1615. The second part (book 4, covering 1589–1603) was completed in 1617, but was not published until 1625 (Leiden edition), and 1627 (London edition), following Camden's death. The first translation into English of books 1–3 appeared in 1625, done by Abraham Darcie or Darcy (active 1625). Book 4 was translated into English by Thomas Browne, canon of Windsor, in 1629.
  The Annales were not written in a continuous narrative, but in the style of earlier annals, giving the events of each year in a separate entry. Sometimes criticised as being too favourably disposed towards Elizabeth and James I, the Annales are one of the great works of English historiography and had a great impact on the later image of the Elizabethan age. Hugh Trevor-Roper said about them: "It is thanks to Camden that we ascribe to Queen Elizabeth a consistent policy of via media rather than an inconsequent series of unresolved conflicts and paralysed indecisions."
caption: Frontispiece and title page of a 1675 edition of the Annales
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