The Copy of the Lord of Ormonds' Letter to the Bishop of Dromer.  
MY LORD!  
I Have received yours of the 9 of this month, with a copy of Cardinal Mazarines to you; upon which you are pleased to desire my sense, that you may not be ignorant in a matter so nearly 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 faithful subject, as you shall be commanded: yet you say, the keeping firm (as you are) to be the most advantageous course you can take, to avoid disadvantage and dishonour. The best way to comply with your desire (as I understand it) will be in the first place to set down what hath been done by me in obedience to the King my master's command, upon which his Eminency took a pretence to write that letter unto you. His Majesty about the beginning of August thought fit to employ 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 signify unto any of his Subjects in the French service, that his Majesty hath present use 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 King's pleasure known to Colonel Muskery, & Sir James Darcy, who hereupon expressed all possible duty unto his Majesty, and all readiness to obey his commands, as his most Loyal 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 Majesty; 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 soldiers 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 dispense with the demanding of Passports, 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 Passports; 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 Eminency (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 soldiers of the Irish Nation where you are, & to dispose them to disobey their King's order when they should be sent them, by laying before them a feigned example of disobedience in others, which though it had been true, ought rather to be 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 Cardinal to argue his Majesty of ingratitude, or me of indiscretion or imposture: I shall not say more than that his Majesty 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 proceed at Condy were warranted and approved, will evident unto you by the enclosed copy of the order. His Majesty cesent to Colonel 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 only 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 master's 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 owe no account of my discretion, so I take him always to be an incompetent judge of my fidelity, & at this time no very proper instrument for what is good or bad for my Master's service: And since he hath been pleased to usurp an authority to judge and condemn 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 mind, that by his ministration an Alliance is made betwixt France, and the Murderers of a just and lawful King; and that not only without necessity, but upon such infamous conditions, as no necessity can justify: As for instance, the banishing out of France dispossessed Princes, the Grandchilds of Henry the fourth: Add to this, that his Eminency 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 Catholics, and to the destroyers 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 beggary abroad; and than you will be no longer of an opinion, that it can be consistent with honour of advantage for any of the King's subjects (especially of the Irish Nation) to be flattered or bribed by the Cardinal from the duty they own to their natural King and their desolate Country. By this time your Lordship may conceive my sense 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 public as that of his Eminencies hath been, you will (by an act of Justice) oblige me to continue  
Bruges, Sept. 20. 1656. Your Lordships very affectionate humble servant, Ormond.   

His Highness' Letter to his Eminency Cardinal Mazarin.  
THe obligations and many instances of affection which I have received from your Eminence, do engage me to make returns suitable & 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 public declaration of my sense in that point; although I believe, that under my Government, your Eminence in the behalf of Catholics, has less reason for complaint, as to rigour upon men's consciences, then under the Parliament; for I have of some, and those very many had compassion, making a difference, truly I have, and I may speak it with cheerfulness in the presence of God, who is a witness within me to that truth I affirm, made a difference, and as Judas speaketh, plucked many out of the fire, the raging fire of persecution, which did tyrannize over their consciences, and encroached by an arbitrariness of power upon their estates; And herein it is my purpose, as soon as I can remove impediments, and some weights that press me down, to make a further progress, 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 equal degree and measure with myself: I must confess that I had some doubts of its success, 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 cooled in his suit, or condescended 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 security 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 will conclude with giving you assurance that I will never be backwards in demonstrating, as becomes your Brother and Confederate, that I am your Servant  
December 26. 1656. O. P.