132 LIFE, TIMES, AND SCIENTIFIC LABOURS [1645-6. 



Lordship s [letter] to me of the 5th present, concerning 

 your prudent and grave proceedings, in the business of 

 the Lord Edward Herbert of Raglan, so highly import 

 ing his Majesty, hath commanded me to send your 

 Lordships his royal thanks, as well for your affectionate 

 expressions of your tenderness of his honour, as your 

 just resentment, how scandalous and disadvantageous 

 such the said Lord Herbert s proceedings might have 

 been to his Majesty s affairs and service here, and on 

 that side, if the wise course your Lordships have taken 

 to vindicate his Majesty, had been deferred. Your 

 Lordships will, by the King s own letter herewith sent, 

 receive the particulars of all, that his Majesty can call 

 to mind or imagine he may have done or said to the 

 Lord Herbert in that business. And since the Warrant, 

 whereby his Lordship pretends to be authorised to treat 

 with the Roman Catholics there, is not sealed with the 

 signet, as it mentions, nor attested by either of his Ma 

 jesty s Secretaries, as it ought, nor written in the style 

 that Warrants of that nature used to be ; neither refers 

 to any instructions at all ; your Lordships cannot but 

 judge it to be, at least, surreptitiously gotten, if not worse; 

 for his Majesty saith, he remembers it not. And as the 

 Warrant is a very strange one, so hath been also the exe 

 cution of it. For it is manifest, the Lord Herbert did 

 not acquaint the Lord Lieutenant with any part of it, 

 before he concluded with the said Roman Catholics, 

 nor ever advertised his Majesty, the Lord Lieutenant, 

 or any of the Council here or there, what he had done 

 in an affair of so great moment and consequence four 

 months before, till it was discovered by accident. This 

 doth not sound like good meaning and I am sure is 

 not fair dealing. But his Majesty having, by his letter 

 to your Lordships, left the charge against the Lord 

 Herbert, to be prosecuted by your Lordships, I shall 

 say no more of that unhappy subject.&quot; 



