PREFACE. THE letters submitted to the public in these volumes relate to the affairs of England and Europe during the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. They are published from the originals, in the Lansdowne collection of manuscripts in the British Museum. The value of such documents to the historian will be at once admitted. They have their place among his safest guides; and are indispensable if his narrative is to be characterized by accuracy, fulness, and the real spirit of the times which it is meant to describe. Communications made in the confidential freedom proper between parties alike initiated into the mysteries of state policy, often enable us to distinguish between the true springs of the most memorable proceedings, and the alleged grounds of them; and furnish such illustrations of individual character, as are rarely supplied by the conduct of men while acting on the open stage of public affairs. It is hoped, also, that such publications may not be without their attraction to the general reader. It cannot be pleasing to feel that we are forming our notions of history from secondary sources, at best imperfect, and tainted, too commonly, by party prejudice. Minds possessing some element of independence, must be desirous of obtaining their information, so far as it may be practicable, from the fountain rather than the streams. It must be confessed, however, that in such works as the present the reader will not often find the charm which belongs to flowing and vigorous narration; to the finished portraitures of great men; or to the regular classification, and judicious compression, of the materials which relate to the several departments of General History. But if such charms are wanting, there are others by which their place may be supplied. It is something to feel assured that we are seeking truth in the safest way to it; that we are admitted to read the undisguised utterances of great men in bygone times, concerning the parties and occurrences of their day; that we are allowed, in some sense, to be of their fraternity; and that our converse with them is such as to permit our being at their side as they task their powers in tracing out the labyrinths of diplomacy, and in PREFACE. providing against its snares,-the keenest intellects of their age, each sharpening the other for that war of argument which, whether conducted in cabinets or senates, is ever arising out of the great business of nations. Nor is it merely in disclosures of this nature, relating to the more considerable movements which form the usual substance of history, that such documents are interesting. The importance attached by such correspondents to the talk and doings of courts; to the passing humours of the people-in short, their care to make a full report of the news of every hour, and the free and natural manner in which they set forth small details of this sort, upon which the general historian rarely descends to touch-all contribute to give to such papers an interest of their own, so that they are sometimes found to bear the reader away from the world around him, and to place him in the midst of the noise, and change, and struggle-the ever-bubbling life of other lands and other days. With regard to the papers contained in these volumes, it will suffice to say, that there are few points of interest connected with the state of England during the protectorate on which they do not touch so as to cast more or less light upon them; while the accounts which they furnish of Cromwell's negotiations with the states of the continent, particularly in favour of the injured Vaudois, admit us to an inspection of the political relations, and social condition, of the people of Europe at that period, which, it is presumed, must be deemed interesting and valuable by every lover of history. There is also an Appendix to the second volume, selected from the Pell papers in the Lansdowne, and in the Birch collections, which affords some illustration of the state of philosophy and learning in the early part of the reign of Louis XIV.; and concerning the domestic and literary character of Dr. Pell. It is the remark of a writer who brought much sagacity to the business of authorship, that every book should be, as far as possible, complete in itself, so that there may be no necessity, in order to an intelligent perusal of it, of referring to other works. The object of the Editor in the Notes and Introduction, has been to give this degree of completeness to the present publication. On those points in the Introduction concerning which some difference of opinion may possibly arise, he has given both the authorities and the reasoning on which his convictions are founded; but in a preliminary summary of this nature, it was not ex |