The Preface i 3 



fonner 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; chusing rather to fight, then 

 to talk; and his declarations having been printed 

 already, it had been superfluous to insert them in these 

 narrations. 



This book would, however, have been a great volume 

 if his Grace would have given me leave to publish his 

 enemies actions ; but being to write of his own onely, 

 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, then what they learned in the gazets, 

 which, for the most part (out of Policy to amuse and 

 deceive the people), contain nothing but falsehoods 

 and chimeraes; 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, com- 

 paring some of them to Moses, and some others to 

 all the great and most famous heroes, both Greeks 

 and Romans; wherein, unawares, they exceedingly 

 commended my noble Lord ; for if those ring-leaders 

 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 any where. 



