viii Editor's Preface 



book and its writer: 'March 18, 1668 — Thence home, and 

 there in favour to my eyes staid at home, reading the ridicu- 

 lous history of my Lord Newcastle, wrote by his wife ; which 

 shows her to be a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman, and he 

 an ass to suffer her to write what she writes to him and of 

 him. So to bed, my eyes being very bad.' Without stopping 

 to inquire how far the state of the worthy Secretary's eyes 

 influenced his critical faculties, it may be taken for granted 

 that his recollections of the authoress influenced his judgment 

 of her book. Describing her visit to the Royal Society on 

 May 30, 1667, he had come to the conclusion that ' her dress 

 was so antick and her deportment so ordinary ' that he did 

 not like her at all, and expressed his terror lest her conduct 

 should make the Royal Society ridiculous. Perhaps it was 

 these very eccentricities and extravagances which had so 

 shocked Pepys which recommended the Duchess to Charles 

 Lamb. Certainly his larger sympathy, and keener insight, 

 enabled him to perceive in the style and in the writer those 

 finer qualities which the more conventional judgment of 

 Pepys had refused to recognize. Lamb never mentions with- 

 out praise 'that princely woman, thrice noble Margaret of 

 Newcastle '. For a book such as the Life of the Duke of New- 

 castle, a book ' both good and rare ', he held no binding too 

 good. ' No casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable 

 to honour and keep safe such a jewel.' 



To decide between these conflicting sentences, and expound 

 the precise amount of truth contained in each, would be a 

 tedious and ungrateful task. This at least may be said, that 

 the ' generous and highborn men ' who follow the recommen- 

 dation of the Cambridge Senate and study this Life as a contri- 

 bution to military history will find little in it which they could 

 not learn more fully and accurately from the pages of Rush- 

 worth or Whitelock. An occasional incident or anecdote, 

 the name of a forgotten officer, or the locality of an obscure 

 skirmish, an account of the Duke's personal share in one or 

 two engagements, sum up the amount of its contributions to 

 the military history of the civil wars. The special interest of 

 the book lies rather in the picture of the exiled royalist, cheer- 

 fully sacrificing everything for the King's cause, struggling 

 with his debts, talking over his creditors, never losing confi- 

 dence in the ultimate triumph of the right, and on his return 



