I Have received yours of the 9 of this month, with a copy of Car­dinall Mazarines to you; upon which you are pleased to desire my sence, that you may not bee ignorant in a matter so neerly concern­ing you, in relation to the charge you have from the King of France; nor to remit to act the part of an honest and faithfull subject, as you shall be commanded: yet you say, the keeping firm (as you are) to be the most advantagious course you can take, to avoid disadvantage and dishonour. The best way to comply with your desire (as I understand it) will bee in the first place to set down what hath been done by me in obedience to the King my masters command, upon which his Eminencie took a pretence to write that letter unto you. His Majestie about the beginning of August thought fit to imploy me about some affairs of his to his Highness Don John of Austria, and amongst other things gave me order, upon all fitting opportunities to signifie unto any of his Subjects in the French service, that his Majestie hath present vse for them in his, and to require them to march to sure places as I should direct them; in pursuance of his order, upon the rendering of Condy, I made the Kings pleasure known to Col­lonel Muskery, & Sir James Darcy, who hereupon exprest all possible duty unto his Majesty, and all readiness to obey his commands, as his most Loi­all and obedient Subjects; but they desire in performance of that duty to have liberty to provide for their honour, by demanding dismission from his most Christian Majestie; which they conceived could not be denied them (provision, being made in their capitulation for it, and for a months pay to their officers and souldiers at parting) I confess I neither was, nor am satisfied; yet that there was a necessity for that formality (their own Kings commands interposing and extending no farther, then to serve under his commission and by his order and no other) but that they might very well dispence with the demanding of Pasports, if they would quit their pretence to the months pay, and could reasonably suspect they would be broken in this, as they have been in other particu­lars, equally capitulated for by them; yet they persisting in their belief, that it was necessary, and engaging their honours to me, to demand their Pas­ports; [Page]and (in case they should be either granted or refused) to do what became them in Allegiance: I made no attempt to draw their officers or men from them. And this is what hitherto hath passed in that matter, except that I am lately assured that Muskery hath demanded his Pass; but with what success I cannot yet tell, howsoever I must conclude that his Eminencie (when he said my solicitations had been ineffectual) either was not yet well informed, or intended not so much your information in the truth of that passage, as to corrupt the officers and souldiers of the Irish Na­tion where you are, & to dispose them to disobey their Kings order when they should be sent them, by laying before them a fained example of dis­obedience in others, which though it had been true, ought rather to bee detected then imitated.

Of what concerns the King my masters good Treatment in France (the continuance of a monthly assistance to him) from hence urged by the Cardinall to argue his Majestie of ingratitude, or me of indiscretion or imposture: I shall not say more then that his Majestie is well known, to be of a nature much more inclined to forget injuries then benefits; & that it falls not within the Sphere of my business, to know when or whence he received moneys: but that my proceedings at Condy were warranted and approved, will evident unto you by the inclosed copy of the order. His Majestie cesent to Collonel Muskery, & Sir James Darcy; and by those which the officers with you may in due time receive, so that I cannot but wonder so great and wise a Minister as his Eminency should (to serve any present turn how importunate soever) make use of such Artifices as are not onely liable to present and palpable detection and refutation, but such as are also in the best degree injurious to the honour and reputation of a servant, that hath punctually observed, and not exceeded his masters commands. I think I know what is due from me to the first minister of a great King; I am sure there is no man upon all occasions shall treat him with more respect, but then I shall expect to be treated as a Gentleman, and not to be charged with an indiscreet zeal, nor with acting without warrant through partiality to the Spaniard, and to the disservice of my Master, as I am by his Eminency; to whom as I ow no account of my discretion, so I take him alwaies to be an incompetent judg of my fideli­ty, & at this time no very proper instrument for what is good or bad for my Masters service: And since he hath bin pleased to usurp an authority to judge and condemne me with circumstances of calumny, uncivilly pro­ceeding from the Minister of one Prince, to the servant of another. I conceive it gives me just ground to put you in minde, that by his ministra­tion [Page]an Alliance is made betwixt France, and the Murderers of a just and lawful King; and that not onely without necessity, but upon such infa­mous conditions, as no necessity can justifie: As for instance, the banish­ing out of France dispossest Princes, the Grandchildren of Henry the fourth: Adde to this, that his Eminencie is the Instrument of such an al­liance, as gives countenance and support to the usurpers of the rights of Kings, to the Professed persecutors of the Catholicks, and to the destroi­ers of your nation; and to those, by whom the Nobility and Gentry of it are massacred at home, and led into slavery, or driven to beggery a­broad; and then you will be no longer of an opinion, that it can be consistent with honour of advantage for any of the Kings subjects (espe­cially of the Irish Nation) to be flattered or bribed by the Cardinal from the duty they owe to their natural King and their desolate Coun­try. By this time your Lordship may conceive my sence of that Letter, upon which you desire it; and as you have done me a very great favour in sending it to me; so if it please you to make this Letter of mine as publick as that of his Eminencies hath been, you will (by an act of Ju­stice) oblige me to continue

THe obligations and many instances of affection which I have re­ceived from your Eminence, do engage me to make returns suta­ble & commensurate to your merits, But although I have this set home upon my spirit, yet I may not (shall I tell you, I cannot) at this juncture of time (and as the face of my affairs stands now) answer to your Call for Toleration; I say I cannot, as to a publick declaration of my sence in that point; although I believe, that under my Govern­ment, your Eminence in the behalf of Catholicks, has lesse reason for complaint, as to rigour upon men's consciences, then under the Parla­ment; [Page]for I have of some, and those very many had compassion, making a difference, truly I have, and I may speak it with cheerfulnesse in the presence of God, who is a witnesse within me to that truth I affirm, made a difference, and as Jude speaketh, pluckt many out of the fire, the raging fire of persecution, which did tyrannize over their consciences, and en­croached by an arbitrarinesse of power upon their estates; And herein it is my purpose, as soon as I can remove impediments, and some weights that presse me down, to make a further progresse, and to discharge my promise to your Eminence in relation to that: And now I shall come to return your Eminence thanks, for your judicious choice of that person, to whom you have entrusted our weightest affairs, an affair wherein your Eminence is concerned, though not in equall degree and measure with my self: I must confesse that I had some doubts of its successe, till provi­dence cleared them to me by the effects; I was not truly, and to speak in­geniously, without doubtings, and shall not be ashamed to give your E­minence the grounds I had for such doubtings: I did fear that Barkley would not have been able to go through and carry on that work, if ei­ther the Duke had cool'd in his sute, or condiscended to his brother: I doubted also, that those Instructions which I sent over with 290, were not clear enough as to expressions (affairs here denying me leisure at that time to be so particular, as to some circumstances I would). If I am not mis­taken greatly mistaken in his character, as I received it from your Emi­nence, that fire which is kindled between them now, will not ask bellows to blow it and keep it burning: But what I think further necessary in this matter, I will send your Eminence by Lockart: And now I shall boast to your Eminence my securitie upon a well-builded confidence in the Lord; for I distrust not, but if this breach be widened a little more, and this difference fomented with some caution, in respect of the persons to be added to it, I distrust not but that party which is already forsaken of God (as to any outward dispensations of merits) and noisome to their Countrymen, will grow lower in the opinions of all the world. If I have troubled your Eminence too long in this, you may impute it to the resentment of joy which I have for the issue of this affair, and wil con­clude with giving you assurance that I will never be backwards in de­monstrating, as becoms your Brother and Confederate, that I am your Servant