A LETTER From His GRACE JAMES DUKE OF ORMOND, Lord Lieutenant of IRELAND, In Answer to the Right Honourable ARTHUR EARL OF ANGLESEY Lord Privy-Seal, HIS OBSERVATIONS & REFLECTIONS Upon the EARL of Castlehaven's Memoires Concerning the REBELLION of IRELAND.  
And Concerning which, the Complaint of the Duke of Ormond in Council now depends against the Earl of Anglesey, Lord Privy-Seal.  
Printed from the Original, with an Answer to it, by the Right Honourable the Earl of Anglesey.  
LONDON, Printed in the Year 1682. And are to be sold by R. Baldwin in the Old-Baily.   

A LETTER From His GRACE JAMES DUKE OF ORMOND, etc.  
My Lord,  
IT is now, I think, more than a year since I first saw a little Book written by way of Letter, called, Observations and Reflections on my Lord of Castlehaven's Memoires: Wherein, though there are some things that might lead the Reader to believe that your Lordship was the Author; yet there were many more I thought impossible should come from you: for it affirms many Matters of Fact positively, which are easily and authentically to be disproved; and from those Matters of Fact, grossly mistaken, it deduces Consequences, raises Inferences, and scatters Glances injurious to the memory of the Dead, and the Honours of some Living; among those that by the Blessing of God are yet living, I find myself worst Treated: Twenty years after the King's Restauration, and Forty after the beginning of the Irish Rebellion, as if it had been all that while reserved for me, and for such Times as these we are fallen into, when Calumny, though the Matter of it be never so groundless and improbable, meets with Credulity; and when Liberty is taken to Asperse Men, and Represent them to the World under the monstrous and odious figures of Papists, or Popishty affected; not because they are so thought by those that employ the Representers, but because they are known to be too good Protestants, and too Loyal Subjects, to join in the Destruction of the Crown, and Church. Besides, the Treatise came forth, and must have been written, when I had but newly received Repeated Assurances of the continuance of your Friendship to me, wherein, as in one of your Letters, you are pleased to say, you had never made a false step; for these Reasons I was not willing to believe that Book to be of your Lordships Composing, and hoped some of the Suborned Libelers of the Age had endeavoured to Imitate your Lordship, and not you them; but I was in a while after, first by my Son Arran, and afterward by the Bearer, Sir Robert Reading, assured your Lordship had owned to them that the Piece was yours, but professed the Publication to be without your Order, and that you did not intent to do, or think that you had done me any injury or prejudice. If your Lordship really thought so, the Publication might have been owned as well as what was Published: But then let the World Judge, whether Pen, Ink, and Paper are not dangerous Tools in your Hands? When I was thus assured your Lordship was the Author, it cost me some thoughts how to vindicate Truth, my Master the late King, myself, my Actions and Family, all Reflected on an traduced by that Pamphlet; I found myself engaged in the Service of our present King, and that in a Time of difficulty and danger, and in such Times for the most part it has been my lot to be Employed in Public Affairs; and though I had not been so taken up, yet I well knew that Writing upon such Occasions is no more my Talon, than it is my Delight: And to say truth, my indisposition to the exercise might help to persuade me, that the Book, though honoured with your Lordship's Name, would, after it had performed its Office in Coffeehouses, and served your Lordship's Design in that Conjuncture, expire; as writings of that nature and force usually do: And herein I rested, without troubling myself, or any body else, with Animadversions upon your Lordship's mistakes, which are so many an so obvious, that I wonder how you could fall into them, I will add to this, that I have been in expectation that by this time your Complete History would have come forth, wherein, if I may judge by the Pattern, I have just cause to suspect that neither the Subject or myself will be more justly deal with, than in that occasional Essay, and I would have been glad to have seen all my Work before me, in case I should think fit to make a Work of it. The delay of your Publishing that History, and the consideration of your Lordship's Age and mine, are the occasions of this Letter, whereby I inform you, that as no man now alive is better able than I am to give an account of the Principal Transactions during the Rebellion in Ireland; so no man is possessed of more Authentic Commissions, Instruments, and Papers; all which, or Transcripts of them, you might have Commanded before you set forth our Reflections: But possibly to have stayed for them, might have lost you a seasonable opportunity of Publishing your abhorrence of the Irish Rebellion, and your Zeal against Popery: What your Lordship might then have had, you may yet have because I had rather help to prevent than detect Errors, but then I must first know to what particular part of your History you desire Information, and how you deliver those parts to the World and to Posterity. If after this Offer your Lordship shall proceed to the Conclusion and Publication of your History, and not accept of it, I must before hand Appeal from you, as from an Incompetent Judge of my Actions, and a partially engaged and an unfaithful Historian.  
My Lord, Your Lordship's most Humble servant, ORMOND. Dublin. 12. Nou. 1681.