A LETTER From the Right Honourable ARTHUR EARL of ANGLESEY LORD PRIVYSEAL.  
In Answer to His GRACE the DUKE of ORMOND'S LETTER of November the 12th. 1681.  
About His Lordship's Observations and Reflections upon the EARL of Castlehaven's Memoires concerning the REBELLION of IRELAND.  
LONDON, Printed for N. P. M.DC.LXXXII.   

A Letter from the Right Honourable ARTHUR Earl of Anglesey, etc.  
My LORD,  
YOur Graces of the 12th of November I received towards the end of that Month, and was not a little surprised, after being threatened above a year with your Grace's Answer to the Observations and Reflections on my Lord Castle-Haven 's Memoires, which your Grace takes notice you had seen above a year before; to find them only most satirically burlesqued, and my intentions in the writing of them most unnaturally misinterpreted and misjudged, without giving instance of any one particular, which could so much transport your Grace, or interest you to judge of a Letter of mine to another, with so invective heat and mistake.  
Your Grace's Letter therefore consisting only of Generals, I can not otherwise adapt my Answer, (after a most serious revision of my Book upon this occasion) but by giving the reverse of your Graces strained and erroneous Affirmatives by my plain and true Negatives, till your Grace shall administer occasion, by communicating the particular Animadversions your Grace hath been (as I hear) so long about.  
The Reasons leading your Grace to believe it impossible I could be the Author of that Discourse, I cannot admit, though they import a fair Opinion of me; and that in the beginning of your Letter your Grace had better thoughts than when your Hand was in and heated.  
I do therefore absolutely deny that I affirm any Matters of Fact positively in that Book, which are easily or authentically (or at all) to be disproved.  
Or that from those Matters of Fact, grossly mistaken, it deduces Consequences, raises Inferences, and scatters Glances injurious to the memory of the dead, and the Honour of some living; among which your Grace finds yourself worst treated.  
This being so, your Grace's unjust Inferences from the time of its Writing, and the misjudging the design of the Author, give no countenance or occasion to your Grace's Rhetorical Character of the Times, though I join in all, but the Opinion your Grace seems to have taken up that there is a Plot, (other than that of the Papists) to destroy the Crown and Church; a Discovery worthy the making, if your Grace knows, and believes what you writ; but how I am concerned to have it mentioned to me, I know not, your Grace can best tell what you intent to insinuate thereby.  
These are your Grace's Reasons why you were not wiling to believe that Book to be of my Composing; yet you cannot leave me without a sting, in your expressing ●he hopes which succeeded them, viz. That some of the suborned Libelers of the Age had endeavoured to imitate me, and not I them.  
Whether I should imitate suborned Libelers, or they ●e, would be all one for my Reputation; because I were ●rosly criminal in the first, and must have been so be●re in your Grace's Opinion, or they could not imitate me in the second: Your Grace will want Instances in both, except this of your own making; and therefore there must be some other reason why your Grace did not believe (if really you did not) that Discourse to be of my composure.  
But this admitted ●●r truth (as it is undoubtedly), your Grace in the next place calls the World to judge whether Pen, Ink and Paper are not dangerous Tools in my hands.  
I remember the Times, when they were serviceable to the King's Restoration, and constant Service of the Crown, or craved in aid by your Grace, that you did not account them so; and it is much to my safety that they are not so in your Grace's Hands, though I find them as sharp there as in any man's alive.  
Your Grace being at length assured I was the Author, your next care was to spend some thoughts to vindicate Truth, the late King, yourself, your Actions and Family, all reflected upon, and traduced (as your Grace is pleased to fancy) by that Pamphlet.  
But your Grace had no cause to trouble your thoughts with such Vindications, unless you could show where in that Book they are reflected upon and traduced, no such thing occurring to me (upon the strictest revisal) nor ever shall be objected to me with Justice and Truth.  
After your Grace hath brought it to the Coffeehouses, (where I believe it never was till your Grace preferred it to that Office) and where you have doomed it to expire, as Writings of that nature and force use (you say) to do (for which I shall not be at all concerned) you rested without troubling yourself or any body else with Animadversions upon my mistakes, which your Grace is pleased to say are so many and so obvious (though you name none, nor do they occur to others) that you wonder how I could fall into them.  
If your Grace believe yourself in this, you seem to have forgot the long time you spent in considering and animadverting upon that despicable Pamphlet, with your Labours whereon I was threatened by some of your Grace's Relations for many months; and your Grace hath redeemed the delay, by the virulent general Reflections you have now sent me, which yet I doubt not will evaporate or shrink to nothing, when your Grace shall seek for Instances to back them, whereof if you can find any, I claim in Justice they may be sent me.  
Your Grace adds, that you have been in expectation that by this time my complete History would have come forth; wherein (if you may judge by the pattern) your Grace saith, you have just cause to suspect, that neither the Subject nor yourself will be more justly dealt with than in that occasional Essay; and therefore offer me all the helps of Authentic Commissions, Transactions and Papers your Grace is possessed of, whereof you inform me none hath more.  
This is an anticipating Jealousy, which no man living can have ground for; and when my History shall be completed (which is now delayed for those Assistances your Grace is so well able, and so freely offers to afford me) tho' my Weakness may be exposed, my Integrity and Impartiality shall appear, and your unjust suspicion will, I doubt not, cease, if Truth may be welcome to you, and not accounted one of the dangerous Instruments in my Hand; by which having incurred your Anger and Enmity in the first Essay; I have slender hopes to be more acceptable in the second; though I resolve to hold to the first approved Law of a good and faithful Historian, which is, That he should not dare to say any thing that is false; and that he dare not but say any thing that is true, that there be not so much as suspicion of favour or hatred in his Writing.  
And this might give a Supersedeas to your Grace's unseasonable Appeal, before a Gravamen; though I never intended, by relating the truth of things past, to become a Judge of your Graces or any other man's actions, but barely Res gestas narrare, for the information, correction, and instruction of this Age and Posterity.  
Your Grace desiring to know to what particular parts of my History I would have Information, I shall at present only mention these.  
The Intrigues of the Cessation, and Commissions for them and the two Peace's of 1646. and 1648. forced upon the King by the Rebellious Irish.  
The grounds and transactions about depriving Sir William Parsons from being one of the Lords Justices, and then dismissing him, Sir Adam Loftus Vice-Treasurer, Sir John Temple Master of the Rolls, Sir Robert Meredith Chancellor of the Exchequer, etc. from the Council-Table.  
The Mystery of Glamorgan's Peace, and his Punishment.  
The several ungrateful Expulsions of your Grace by the Confederate Roman Catholics.  
The passages concerning the Parliaments Present of a Jewel to your Grace.  
The Battles, Reliefs, Sieges, and chief Encounters in your Grace's time.  
The Proceed between your Grace and the Roman Catholic Assembly of the Clergy in 1666. with the Commission for their Sitting.  
The Plot for surprising the Castle of Dublin, in which Warren and others were, with the Examinations, and what Offenders were executed, etc.  
And any thing else your Grace judgeth of import to have conveyed to Posterity.  
Other parts of the History shall be proposed to your Grace in my Progress, and before I put my last Hand to it, with a resolution, that though I may have been sometimes mistaken in Judgement: yet as I never did promote the report of a Matter of Fact which I knew to be false, so I never would.  
Which I am induced the rather to mention, because your Grace saith, you had rather help to prevent, than to detect Errors.  
My Lord, Your Graces most humble Servant ANGLESEY.