Series 1 > Letters and papers illustrating the relations between Charles the Second and Scotland in 1650

INTRODUCTION
be like in the eyes of a stranger apparently not altogether
unprejudiced. Interesting as they are, the two letters about
Charles’s conversations with the Dean of Tuam (Nos. lxxxvii.,
lxxxviii.) ought not to have appeared here, as they are printed
in a book so well known as Carte’s Original Letters, a fact of
which I was not aware till it was too late to exclude them.
Of the documents drawn from manuscripts, those taken from
the State Papers in the Public Record Office have, in some
cases, been very fully calendared by Mrs. Everett Green, but
I have thought it worth while to reproduce them in their
entirety, especially as I have been able to rectify a few clerical
errors. In some cases, such as that of the letter from Montrose
(No. xxxvi.), the last one which he ever wrote to Charles, there
has been practically no antecedent publication at all. The
same may be said of letters and documents here printed from
the Clarendon or Carte Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library.
Of the latter collection no calendar has been printed, and Mr.
Macray’s Calendar of this part of the former is too brief to
take the place of a full publication. Where part of a letter
here printed has already appeared in the Clarendon State
Papers, I have referred to the circumstance in a note. As
for the account of the trial of Macleod, given in the Appendix,
it cannot be said to add much to our knowledge of the circum¬
stances attending Montrose’s capture ; but, as arguments have
frequently been based on it, it seems worth while to print it
in its entirety, if only to show what it does not contain.
It must be remembered that, however widely I have sought
for material, much has necessarily been omitted as printed in
other collections easily accessible, and it may therefore be help¬
ful to my readers if I make some attempt to fill up the gaps
as far as such material is known to exist.
At the close of 1649 Charles was at Jersey, whither—in
consequence of a resolution taken upon the failure of his
negotiation with the Scots earlier in the year—he had gone
with the intention of crossing to Ireland to take part in the