PREFACE TO THE COLLECTION OF LETTERS. T was necessary to print this volume of Letters before I put to the press, because of the frequent occasion there is of referring to them in the course of that history, which could not be done with any exactness, so as the reader might with ease consult them, unless the letters were first printed. The uncertain, mistaken, false, and contradictory accounts, which have been given of the Irish rebellion by writers influenced by selfish views and party animosities, or unfurnished with proper and authentic materials and memoirs, made me unwilling, out of a delicacy in the point of veracity, to publish my own account, (which in many respects will differ from all that have hitherto been given,) without a number of undoubted and unexceptionable testimonies, sufficient to verify the general tenour thereof, and the most material passages therein related, and to bespeak, as it were, faith to the rest, in which I am supported by the like evidence, though not here produced, either for want of room to insert it, or because it lay dispersed in a multitude of letters, the main part of which was of little consequence, though some particular paragraphs were very considerable. I found the gentlemen of taste and learning, whom I consulted on this occasion, agree unanimously in opinion, that none but entire letters should be printed: I have therefore published these in all their integrity. The letters of the lords justices or lord lieutenant in conjunction with the council of Ireland, though I have a complete series of them, are generally omitted, because there was so much form therein, as might possibly render them less agreeable to the reader, and the matter thereof, being chiefly relations of facts publicly transacted, would appear less curious to the world, than such letters as give an account of the real motives and secret springs of action which inspired and influenced the conduct of persons and parties in those troublesome times. To those of this latter sort I have usually confined myself; only in regard of the cessation in 1643, and of the treaty with the parliament of England for the surrender of Dublin and other garrisons in 1647, as they were affairs of a delicate nature and great moment, I have inserted some letters of the council relating to those transactions. The substance of their other letters is thrown into the body of the history, in which likewise are inserted at length some others of the lords justices, signed not by the council in general, but by a particular junto of it, and wrote under the charge of secresy, which could not properly make their appearance in the world, unless accompanied with a relation of the particular circumstances wherein they were wrote. I have chose therefore to compose this volume chiefly of the letters of king Charles the First, and of the lord Digby and sir Edward Nicholas, secretaries of state to the duke of Ormond in particular; and as that excellent prince has with an unparalleled malice and inhumanity been loaded with vile, odious, and false aspersions on occasion of the Irish rebellion, I have given a full and perfect series of all these letters which came to the duke's hand, and were found among his papers, secreting none of them from public view on this occasion. The world will see there as great a confidence placed in the duke by his master as ever was reposed in any servant; a confidence without reserve, which, if ever it can be justly placed in any subject, was so in him, who used it with a wisdom and returned it with a duty and fidelity without a parallel. They will see in the king's letters his real and undisguised sentiments on all events that happened, and in all the various circumstances and situation of his affairs; and will see nothing, either in them or in the orders and instructions which he sent from time to time for the affairs of Ireland, but what became a wise, a good, and a gracious prince, the tender as well as common father of all his people, truly concerned for the preservation of the laws of the land, and the just rights and liberties of his subjects, as well as zealous for the maintenance of the protestant religion and the constitution of the Church of England. The greatest part of these letters, both of the king and the secretaries of state, were wrote in ciphers, and though generally deciphered by the duke of Ormond, yet it was no little trouble to decipher the rest by such keys as I formed out of the figures explained by his grace. For the understanding of some, I was forced to apply to the reverend Mr. Davys, rector of Castle-Ashby in Northamptonshire, who hath a wonderful skill in the art of deciphering, and never failed to give me the true meaning of those letters, and scraps of letters in ciphers, which I did not at first understand, as I found evidently proved by other letters in the same cipher, which I met with afterwards, deciphered in his grace's hand. The reader will easily distinguish this sort of letters by the writer and his correspondent's being therein spoken of generally in the third person. Lord Clarendon hath in his History given so great a character of the marquis of Clanricard, and raised such an opinion of the usefulness of his memoirs for understanding the true state of the affairs of Ireland in those times, that I have thought it proper to give a series of his letters, not doubting of their being well received by the world. I made all the inquiry I could after these memoirs, which were once in several volumes in the possession of the late Mr. Wogan of Ratchcoffy in the county of Kildare; but a complete set of them is not now any where to be found. The first volume thereof is in several hands that which I made use of I owe to the humanity and favour of the earl of Egmond, who very generously communicated it and several other useful papers to me. There is another copy of the same volume among the late archbishop Marsh's manuscripts in the library of S. Sepulchre at Dublin: but the original is in the possession of Dr. Bolton, the present archbishop of Cashel, wrote for the greatest part in the marquis's own hand, though letters are from time to time interspersed throughout it in the handwriting of his secretary. This volume containeth that nobleman's letters and observations from the beginning of the rebellion in October 1641, to the 30th of August 1643. I have from thence taken the letters here published that were wrote within that space of time; the rest I copied out of the originals which I have by me, and which were sent by him to the duke of Ormond, with whom (being made lord lieutenant about two months after that latter period) he held a regular and constant correspondence, sending all his accounts, and communicating to him all his observations. To these I have now and then added some letters of lord |