the Duke owned, in addition to his numerous private and official residences in Ireland, a house of great magnificence in "St. James's, Chelsea," and his celebrated seat of Moor Park already noticed, which he had acquired in 1661. Many of the Duchess's letters are eloquent as to the difficulty of finding ready money for the equipment and maintenance of these mansions, and of the necessity for retrenching by giving up Moor Park. After many negotiations Moor Park was bought by Charles II. "goods and all," for the Duke of Monmouth for £13,200, of which £1,700 was for the furniture. "It is the King," writes the Duchess, "that buys it for the Duke, so as it is the Lords of the Treasury that we are now treating with, and so hope that will secure our payment, which is the main concern to be looked after." *案

The debts which figure so largely in these letters were due in part to the great magnificence with which the Duke of Ormond deemed it necessary to support the dignity of his almost unexampled position. But they were considerably aggravated by the extravagance of the three sons of the Duke and Duchess, Thomas, Earl of Ossory; Richard, Earl of Arran; and Lord John Butler. Of these the last named was a hopeless scapegrace, whose difficulties were perpetual, and whose excesses terminated in an early death. During the period covered by these letters this young hopeful was resident in Ireland, and the correspondence is much occupied with appeals to Captain Mathew to endeavour to effect his reform; appeals in which maternal solicitude is frequently at odds with wifely prudence. The precise extent of Lord John's debts does not appear; but that they were considerable may be inferred from the liberal arrangements which were sanctioned by the Duchess as a reasonable and moderate allowance for his future maintenance when they had been paid off, and which showed the standard of living considered appropriate for a cadet of a noble family in the early years of the Restoration:--" By the computation made of the yearly charge of my son John's servants and equipage, you will find it will come unto two hundred and twenty pound a year, so as out of his yearly allowance he may have besides, for clothes and pocket money, three hundred and fourscore, which well managed will maintain him as decently as

any man of his quality needs to be, and his entertainment to go towards the payment of his debts. The greatest difficulty I apprehend to him will be the laying out of a hundred pound for a chariot and a pair of horses, and fifty more for liveries, besides what clothes he may need at his first coming over.*

The other sons reflected much more honour on their parents than the unlucky John, but they were proportionately costly. The Duchess writes in strong terms of the reckless expenditure of the gallant and gifted Ossory, which was, according to her, only too well supported by his wife (a different character of Lady Ossory is given by Carte). She also complains with almost equal irritation of the expensive habits of Lord Arran. But both these atoned for the anxiety they caused, the former by the splendour of his services in the Dutch war, the latter by a wealthy match. In several letters the Duchess recounts with maternal pride the exploits of her eldest son in the naval battles of the Dutch war, in which Ossory served as Rear-Admiral under the Duke of York. In June, 1672, she tells how her husband has been to Windsor to attend the installation of Lord Arlington as a Knight of the Garter, and adds, "the like honour the King declared my son Ossory should have when the next vacancy should happen: which promise he made in public upon Tuesday last, when the Queen and he did both sup with my son in his ship; Her Majesty having a desire to see the fleet, which she did and lay in the ship two nights."t Catherine of Braganza evidently held Ossory in high esteem. He was towards the close of his career appointed Governor of the fortress of Tangier; and in one of Queen Catherine's extant letters preserved at Kilkenny she condoles with evident sincerity with Ormond on the premature death of his gifted son.‡ A few months later Ossory's instalment is duly announced,—a ceremony "which has been of some charge to my Lord (Ormond) who was willing to help him on that occasion, and did unto the value of £500." The occasion also involved some charge to the Duchess herself; for not long afterwards she tells Mathew he will do her a special courtesy by procuring her £200," for so much I owe for a diamond George that I gave unto my son *p. 451. p. 450. This letter has been printed in Vol, 1, of the Ormonde Papers (Fourteenth Rep. App., part vii., p. 30.) § Ibid.

Ossory when he was made knight of the Garter."* It would seem that the Duchess was sometimes driven by the expenses of the Ormond's London establishment to raise money by even. more inconvenient expedients. In 1668 she found herself obliged "to pawn a pair of diamond pendants worth £700," in respect of which £500 was advanced by Sir Stephen Fox.t

Of Lord Arran, the second son, we also hear a good deal. When first mentioned in 1668 he is described as "in great sadness," caused by the untimely death of his first wife. Subsequently Arran seems to have fallen into doubtful habits; but he had the resolution to break from them, and to drown in the excitement of war the sorrows which wine could not obliterate, and is found honourably bracketed with Ossory for his gallantry in the fights with the Dutch. Eventually, towards the close of the correspondence, he consoles himself by a second marriage with Miss Dorothy Ferrars, which manifestly rejoiced his mother. The Duchess was a confirmed matchmaker, and these letters contain many allusions to possible alliances. The letter announcing Arran's engagement is quite triumphant. "If you have not heard from me so frequently of late as you might expect," she writes in May, 1673, "you will the less wonder when you hear of two marriages in my family that are near concluded the one for my son Ossory's daughter unto the Earl of Derby; the other my son Arran to the daughter of one Mr. Ferrars, one of the best and ancientest families of England, formerly Earls of Essex. The portion is £12,000, and but one sickly young man between her and £3,000 a year after his father's decease. "This,"

she goes on, "is a great year for weddings generally, so as I do not despair but that my son John may get a wife too, for so he makes me believe, if his friends assist and countenance him." The ne'er-do-well did in the end succeed. in making a great alliance, marrying in 1676 the Lady Ann Chichester, daughter of the first Earl of Donegall, and being created a peer on his marriage by the title of the Earl of Gowran. But he survived his marriage only by a few months. Several letters in the first section of this volume refer to the negotiations attending this alliance.

* p. 451.

tp. 438. See also as to their transaction p. 290.

+ p. 452.

Of the customs of the time as regards the establishments of great houses, and the mode of travelling between England and Ireland, the letters of the Duchess contain numerous illustrations. The move from Ireland must have been a formidable undertaking even to those who could best afford the expense when, as detailed in the first of these letters, a great lady brought her equipage across the channel. "I arrived at Minehead," the Duchess writes from Moor Park, "the Sunday after I parted from you, where I was driven to stay until the Wednesday following to give my coach horses one day's rest, that came not into the harbour till two days after me; so as I came not hither till Tuesday last." The journey from Dublin to Moor Park thus occupied at least ten days, and it cost exactly £140, as we learn from the next letter: "I must tell you that I have been so good a manager of my own, as paying the charge of both the ships, which cost me threescore and five pounds—and ten shillings a head duty for every horse besides I brought threescore pound of my two hundred with me hither, which has purchased me all that I shall lay out upon myself until Christmas next." Elsewhere we learn that the salary of a clerk of the kitchen engaged in London for Kilkenny Castle was £20 yearly, while an assistant to that functionary called 'a larder man,' demanded £15 a year, “but with much ado I brought him to £10,"-a modest wage for one who was certified to have "skill to powder meat and to keep the wet larder; he is a cook besides, and has served as a caterer seven years in a gentleman's house."** The scarcity and incapacity of domestic servants is no new thing in the twentieth century. The Duchess pronounces her verdict on those of the Restoration in terms which sound familiar: "So strange a time this is for servants, as people of all degrees complain that they were never so bad as now." The Duchess further throws light on house rent in London and its suburbs in her day. “My son (Ossory) has taken a house for his lady, and intends to send for her as soon as better weather is. The rent he pays for it is £110 a year. It is competent for the bigness of it, and such a number of servants as he intends to keep." The Duke himself, we learn, paid £250 per annum * In the 17th century there was much communication between Minehead in Somerset, on the south side of the Bristol Channel, and the south of Ireland, especially Waterford and Wexford. ** p. 444. †† p. 440.

† p. 437.

+ p. 438.

Sp. 444.

for his town house.

This, however, does not sound so good a bargain as that which she made for herself when she wintered at Hampstead for the benefit of her health. "To prevent my cough growing worse," she writes in December, 1673, I came for better air to Hampstead, some five miles from London, to a pretty house furnished, which I took from Michaelmas last unto our Lady Day, for £40.”†

This Report and introduction has been prepared by Mr. C. Litton Falkiner, who desires to acknowledge the assistance he has received in the work of transcription from Mr. Sidney C. Ratcliff, now of the Public Record Office, London, and Mr. Thomas J. Morrissey, of the Irish Record Office.

In this as in former volumes, Ormond and not Ormonde has been uniformly followed as the form of the title almost invariably used by the Duke of Ormond and by his Duchess.

NOTE. The letters as bound up in the volume of originals at Kilkenny Castle are misplaced in several instances. In some of them the dates of the month only is given, and is ascribed to the wrong year. They are here printed as far as possible in their proper chronological order; as in the case of the misplaced letters the real sequence is usually apparent from internal evidence.