A New Source for Holinshed’s 1577 Hystorie of Scotland

THE recent completion of the Holinshed project has greatly enhanced our knowledge of this voluminous, and valuable, sixteenth-century chronicle.1 Nevertheless, not all of Holinshed’s sources have been identified, a task which is particularly problematic when Holinshed failed to cite the source from which he drew.2 John Lesley’s History of Scotland, first published in 1578, in Latin, at Rome, was openly cited by Francis Thynne in his revisions to the Hystorie of Scotland section of the second edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles, published in 1587. However, it has not hitherto been recognized that Holinshed had earlier relied on Lesley’s History, which he must have acquired in manuscript, for his first edition of 1577.3