xlii The Preface 



and kind promises he received from his Gracious Sovereign, 

 Charles the First, and from his royal consort, in the time he 

 was in the actions of war, as also since the war, from his dear 

 sovereign and master, Charles the Second : but many of 

 the former letters having been lost, when all was lost, I thought 

 it best, seeing I had not them all, to print none. As for 

 orations, which is another way of swelling the bulk of histories, 

 it is certain, that my Lord made not many ; choosing rather 

 to fight than to talk ; and his Declarations having been printed 

 already, it had been superfluous to insert them in these nar- 

 rations. 



This book would, however, have been a great volume, if 

 his Grace would have given me leave to publish his enemy's 

 actions. But being to write of his own only, I do it briefly 

 and truly ; and not as many have done, who have written of 

 the late Civil War, with but few sprinklings of truth, like as 

 heat-drops upon a dry barren ground ; knowing no more of 

 the transactions of those times, than what they learned in 

 the gazettes, which, for the most part (out of policy to amuse 

 and deceive the people), contain nothing but falsehoods and 

 chimeras ; and were such parasites, that after the King's 

 party was overpowered, the government among the rebels 

 changing from one faction to another, they never missed to 

 exalt highly the merits of the chief commanders of the then 

 prevailing side, comparing some of them to Moses, and some 

 others to all the great and most famous heroes, both Greeks 

 and Romans 1 . Wherein, unawares, they exceedingly com- 

 mended my noble Lord ; for if those ringleaders of factions 

 were so great men as they are reported to be, by those time- 

 servers, how much greater must his Lordship be, who beat 

 most of them, except the Earl of Essex, whose employment 

 was never in the northern parts, where all the rest of the 

 greatest strength of the Parliament was sent, to oppose my 

 Lord's forces, which was the greatest the King's party had 

 anywhere 



Declaration made by the Earl of Newcastle for his resolution of marching into York- 

 shire, as also a just vindication of himself from that unjust aspersion laid upon him for 

 entertaining some Popish recusants in his service.' — Rushworth, III, i, 78-81. 'A 

 Declaration of his Excellency the Earl of Newcastle, in answer to the aspersions cast 

 upon him by the Lord Fairfax in his warrant bearing date February 2d.' — Rushworth 



III, i, 133- 



1 This is evidently a hit at Thomas May's History 0/ the Long Parliament. 



