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pray, my lord, since you will not name the persons, what are the things you call mismanagement? R. Sir, I call that mismanagement, when your majesty's revenue, that is intended for the public, and to the payment of your majesty's establishment, civil and military, shall be diverted by private warrants, contrary to instructions, and your army thereby be left so shamefully in arrear. D. O. Sir, if my lord can name any one private warrant issued to my proper advantage, or by my own authority, let him name it. R. No, my lord, I cannot say that such warrants were to your own advantage; but I say the private interest in such things was preferred to the public. D. O. Why then, my lord, since you will not name one of that kind, I will; and that was a warrant to pay your lordship one thousand pounds, which was, I am sure, not to my account, but your own. However, you brought a warrant from his majesty, who did command it, and I gave obedience. R. I confess I had one

thousand pounds, but it was in part of a greater debt due to my father, and all that I had for fifteen years' service. D. O. Sir, I am well content that all these matters be referred to the examination of a committee; and I pray you, give your commands to the lord Ranelagh to put all in writing. R. I am ready so to do whenever your majesty commands. withdrawn, the lord keeper said, "Surely to give obedience to your majesty's warrants is no mismanagement, nor ought to be reputed such."

His lordship being

Whereupon it was ordered that lord Ranelagh should give in a state of the fact, and the particulars of the mismanagement for the ten years before his undertaking.

Three months passed, and lord Ranelagh gave in no account pursuant to the order. This obliged the duke of Ormond on Feb. 18 to present a petition to the board, setting forth the foregoing order, and lord Ranelagh's neglect, notwithstanding his majesty, at the petitioner's instance, had ordered sir John Nicholas, the clerk of the council then attending, to call upon him for his narrative, and his lordship had upon that and other occasions promised to bring it in within a very short time, but had still failed in the performance of his promises: where

upon the petitioner found himself constrained humbly to beseech his majesty, that, since nothing could more nearly and highly concern him in this world than the vindication of the integrity, diligence, and faithfulness of his service to his majesty, which might suffer under the reflections of so solemn a discourse delivered in full council, 454 the lord Ranelagh might be required to bring in the so long and so often promised narrative; that the petitioner, if he should find himself injured thereby, might have means to acquit himself from any misconstruction of his actions or service by reason of that lord's discourse. Lord Ranelagh was thereupon ordered to give in his narrative on the Wednesday following.

175 He deferred it however till March 1, when it was delivered. The purport of it was to shew, that his management of the revenue after Christmas-day 1670 was better than the management from April 1, 1662, till that time. This he endeavours to do by calculations, reckoning the charge of the establishment in that interval of time to amount to 16,660,000l., and the receipts of the exchequer for the same [time] to be 1,826,772l. 108. 4d., so that there was received 166,772l. 10s. 4d. more than was necessary to pay the establishment, which yet was 146,1437. 78. 7d. in arrear when his contract began. These two last sums making 312,915l. 178. 11d., or thereabouts, he says, were applied to other uses than the said establishments, of which 50,000l. was made use [of] towards clearing the old arrears, due before the commencement of this calculation. This he represents as contrary to the king's repeated instructions and letters, that the income of the revenue should be applied in the first place to discharge the establishment, and to the leave which (he was informed) his majesty had given to suspend the obeying his own letters and warrants, in case they should be found inconvenient to his service there. This, with the large arrear of the revenue, which he computes at 250,000l.

(some part of which was desperate) when his undertaking began, is the substance, and contains all the particulars, of his charge of the management of the revenue. 176 It must be observed, that these calculations in the most material points were but estimates, and not made with that certainty of which accounts are capable. No notice is taken in them of other necessary charges besides the establishment, such as the buying of Chappel Izod, Charlemont, a magazine of corn, and the customs of Derry and Strangford, nor of the three years' Dutch war, bill against Irish cattle, the sitting of the court of claims, and other reasons why the subject should be favoured in their payments. The calculations take in the time of four chief governors and three vice-treasurers, promiscuously reflecting upon some one more or all of them, without determining which was to blame. A charge of this sort, consisting merely of conjectures and estimates, without any proof, does not seem to have required three hours' time to have drawn it up, and was scarce worthy of notice. Yet notwithstanding the uncertainty of the whole, and the mistakes in the computation, at least of the arrears before April 1, 1662, the duke of Ormond thought it a fit occasion to vindicate his own administration, and put in the following answer:

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Having read my lord of Ranelagh's paper presented in council by your majesty's command on the first of March last, and remembering the scope of his speech in October before, magnifying the effects of his own, and undervaluing and disparaging the management of affairs during the preceding governments in Ireland, (wherein mine, being much the longest, must needs have the greatest share,) I do humbly crave leave, by way of answer to those objections, that either in the speech or paper may be aimed at me, or understood to concern me, to present your majesty with the ensuing discourse.

"When you were first pleased in 1661 to design me to serve you as lieutenant of Ireland, I was not so transported with the

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honour of that trust as not to see the difficulty of performing it, 455 and to examine mine own capacity to serve you therein. And therefore I considered with myself the most important branches of it, and how I was qualified for the answering of them. The whole of it, I thought, consisted in, and might be reduced to some general heads; which seemed to me to be, the government ecclesiastical, civil, military, and, fourthly, the revenue; which, though included in the civil, I shall here desire to put by itself, as the foundation and subject of the lord Ranelagh's impu

tations.

"For the three first. The long experience I had had, during the reign of your majesty's father, of blessed memory, of the several parties and factions in that kingdom, my insight into the grounds of them, and the knowledge I had gained of the parts, inclinations, temper, and interest of the chief men in church, state, and the army, as well as of those who had been in opposition to your majesty, either as confederate Roman catholics or parliamentarians, by frequent treaties I had with them, gave me some confidence to think myself as capable to serve you in that trust, among those men, and in that conjuncture, as any other. And I shall freely acknowledge, that I employed most of my thoughts and endeavours upon establishing your majesty's government newly restored, and securing the peace of the kingdom, by bringing your subjects there from the highest animosities that a bloody and merciless war, and the difference of religion and civil interest, could produce, to yield equal obedience to your government, and to the distribution which the acts of settlement and explanation had regulated. And herein, by the blessing of God, I have succeeded, and left that government more easy and safe than at any time I found it; notwithstanding the conspiracy for surprising your majesty's castle of Dublin in the year 1663, and the rebellion of Carrickfergus in 1666, which being seasonably discovered and suppressed by me, and divers of the conspirators and revolters executed, some have been pleased to undervalue, as foolishly laid and weakly attempted by them; the usual judgment made of such designs when they have no better success.

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"Your majesty (as I presume to think) supposing that I might be proper for that other part of your service, and that I might not be very skilful in the affairs of your revenue, (my

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course of life having given me no opportunity of advantaging myself that way,) very prudently, and, pursuant to former precedents, provided against any errors I might fall into, by causing an establishment to be composed, which was long debated, agreed upon, and reported by a committee of the board, and afterwards read, approved of, and signed by your majesty in full council (the method then and formerly held in the like case); by pursuant instructions; by making choice of a very able vicetreasurer and other officers; and by restraining us all by such rules, and within such limits, as none could transgress, but by your majesty's positive allowance and direction, without palpable disobedience, and the danger of proportionable punishment.

"If I should only say that I have kept myself to that establishment, that I have observed those instructions, and that I have not gone beyond the limits that were set me, I suppose I have sufficiently answered all that it concerns me to answer of the lord Ranelagh's insinuations and seemingly convincing inferences upon his calculations, till he shall think fit to set down the particular deviations I am guilty of. But in the mean time, though I am not ignorant of the disadvantage of making answers to general objections and artificial implications, yet I am unwilling to lie under the prejudice his speech and paper may have left in your majesty or any of my lords who heard them, till he shall think fit to come to particulars.

182 "It is not my intention, when I mention my unskilfulness in 456 matters of accounts, or when I suppose a want of invention in myself to improve the revenue, to bespeak your majesty's pardon for any corrupt misapplication of your money to my own, or to the use of any friend, relation, or servant of mine, or for gross failings, proceeding from unexcusable remissness or negligence. Nor do I intend, by mentioning the ability of the treasury-officers chosen by your majesty, and the restraints laid upon them and me, to discharge myself by or upon them, if I have not endeavoured, and that with good success, to perform all the parts that belonged to me, in order to the ascertaining, improving, bringing in, and frugal management of your majesty's revenue. When I shall be convinced of any failing in any of these particulars, no man shall submit himself with more humility and resignation to your majesty's judgment than I shall do, without pretending or imploring that former services may commute for subsequent faults.