HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS COMMISSION. CALENDAR OF THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE MARQUESS OF ORMONDE, K.P. PRESERVED AT KILKENNY CASTLE. New Series, Vol. III. Presented to Parliament by Command of His Majesty. LONDON: PRINTED FOR HIS MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE And to be purchased, either directly or through any Bookseller, from OLIVER & BOYD, EDINBURGH; or E. PONSONBY, 116, GRAFTON STREET, Dublin. 1904. [Cd. 1963.] Price 28. INTRODUCTION. I. MISCELLANEOUS CORRESPONDENCE, 1660-1675. Of the three classes of documents dealt with in this volume the first section is a continuation of the selections from the voluminous correspondence of the first Duke of Ormond, with which the present series of the Ormonde Papers commenced. This correspondence has been catalogued in extenso, it may be remembered, in the Appendices to the Fourth, Sixth and Seventh Reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, compiled by the late Sir John Gilbert; and in Volume I. of the present series the process of selection was carried from the opening letter of the long. sequence of documents in 1572 down to the year 1660. In this volume the selection is continued from the Restoration down to 1675, and covers the period of the Duke of Ormond's first post-Restoration Viceroyalty and of the subsequent temporary eclipse of his splendid fortunes, which lasted from 1668 to 1677. The For the reasons adverted to in the Introduction to Volume I., the interest of the correspondence, though in many respects it is of great value, is disproportionate to its bulk. gaps in the collection at Kilkenny are many and great, and they occur, as a rule, just at those periods and in relation to those events in regard to which historical curiosity is keenest. No better testimony can be borne to the efficiency with which Thomas Carte discharged his great biographical task than that which is provided by the comparative poverty of the materials. remaining at Kilkenny. The biographer thoroughly understood his business. He had a quick eye both for the documents essential to his task and for those which would serve to brighten his work, and accordingly he carried off to England almost all the best gems of a singularly varied collection. The papers accumulated by the first Duke of Ormond are the richest of all collections of extant manuscript materials for modern Irish history. But their most precious treasures are no longer in Ireland. It is therefore to the great mass of papers at Oxford which bear the biographer's name, rather than to those a |