The Harl. MSS. 2224, 2237, 2238, 2243, 2325, contain transcripts and extracts from the journals of the house of peers, with private remarks, notes, and observations by the earl of Radnor. No. 5091-2-3-4-5, comprise common-place collections, political and historical, the greater part in his lordship's hand-writing. No. 6121 includes an exordium to his will, and No. 2294 has two answers to two papers on the following question:

"Whether bishops have right to vote in capitall cases in parlyament?”

This nobleman's theological tract, which solely constitutes him an author, has not been met with.]

JAMES TOUCHET,

EARL OF CASTLEHAVEN,

AND

BARON AUDLEY.

Ir this lord, who led a very martial life, had not taken the pains to record his own actions (which however he has done with great frankness and ingenuity), we should know little of his story, our historians scarce mentioning him : and even our writers of anecdotes, as Burnet; or of tales and circumstances, as Roger North; not giving any account of a court-quarrel occasioned by his lordship's Memoirs. Anthony Wood alone has preserved this event, but has not made it intelligible. The earl was a Catholic, far from a bigotted one, having stiffly opposed the pope's nuntio in Ireland', and treating the monks with very little ceremony when he found them dabbling in sedition 3. He himself had been a commander in the Irish rebellion for the confederate Catholics, but afterwards made all the amends he could to the king's

• Vide his Memoirs, p. 121.

* Memoirs, p. 142.

cause, serving under the marquises of Ormond and Clanricarde. A little before the ruin of the latter, lord Castlehaven was dispatched by him to the young king at Paris, whose service when he found desperate, he engaged with the great prince of Condé then in rebellion; attended that hero in most of his celebrated actions; returned to England on the Restoration; entered into the Spanish service in Flanders; was witness to the unsuccessful dawn of king William's glory; and died in 1684. He

wrote

"The Earl of Castlehaven's Review, or his Memoirs of his Engagement and Carriage in the Irish Wars." Enlarged and corrected, with an appendix and postscript. Lond. 1684.

This I suppose was the second edition. The earl had been much censured for his share in the Irish rebellion, and wrote those memoirs to explain his conduct rather than to excuse it; for he freely confesses his faults, and imputes them to provocations from the government of that kingdom, to whose rashness and cruelty, conjointly

[The first edition was printed in 1680; says Mr. Gyll. Dr. Lort gives the title of it as follows: "Memoirs of James Lord Audley, Earl of Castlehaven; his Engagement and Carriage in the Wars of Ireland, from 1642 to 1651, written by himself." London, 1680, 12mo, dedicated to the king.]

with the votes and resolutions of the English parliament, he ascribes the massacre. There are no dates, like method, and less style in these memoirs; defects atoned in some measure by a martial honesty. Soon after their publication, the earl of Anglesey, lord privyseal, wrote to ask a copy: lord Castlehaven sent him one, but denying the work as his. Anglesey, who had been a commissioner in Ireland for the parliament, thinking himself affected by this narrative, published Castlehaven's letter, with observations and reflections very abusive on the duke of Ormond, which occasioned, first a printed controversy, and then a trial before the privy-council: the event of which was, that Anglesey's first letter was voted a scandalous libel, and himself removed from the custody of the privy-seal; and that the earl of Castlehaven's memoirs, on which he was several times examined, and which he owned, were declared a scandalous libel on the government; a censure that seems very little founded: there is not a word that can authorize that sentence from the council of Charles the second, but the imputation on the lords justices of Charles the first, for I suppose the privy-council did not pique themselves on vindicating the honour of the republican parliament! Bishop Morley wrote

"A true Account of the whole Proceedings betwixt James Duke of Ormond, and Arthur Earl of Anglesey"." Folio. More of this affair will be found in the article of Anglesey.

Lord Castlehaven's frank mode of narration and blunt style will be shown by the following recapitulatory conclusion to his Memoirs, which he entitles

"Some few Reflections more of Castlehaven on himself.

"In my beginning I was a great party-man; but considering myself and soldiers but young beginners, I meddled with nothing that was not almost sure: remembering, that young hawks must be entred on weak

game.

"Having martial-law, it was certain death to take from any of our friends the worth of a hen: but withal, I had care that my soldiers should not want. If any thing happen'd of that kind, I sent out a party with a sure officer to bring in so many beefs; and, at his return, to tell me where he took 'em. Then I issued my order to the commissioners, to applot on the country or barony from whence the cattle came, their value, and immediately to satisfy the owners; which was always allowed out of their contributions, This I held constantly during the war,

"An other of my rules, no ess punctually observed,

• Wood, vol. ii p. 774