232 A LETTER FROM CHARLES I April purport by his answers. Montreuil arrived at Newcastle about 9 July with letters and instructions from the queen, and the king, replying on 15 July, tells her that he will do nothing concerning Ireland but by Montreuil's advice, adding that he had ' dispatched to Marquis Ormond, as thou wilt find by my letter yesterday '. x The king clearly refers to his letter to Ormonde of 14 July, which is not forthcoming, but is mentioned in that now published, where the king says ' the sume whereof was to follow the Queenes direction '. The same letter is also mentioned in a dispatch from Montreuil to Mazarin dated the next day, in which Mon- treuil says that Charles had already written to Ormonde to take no account of his prohibition to negotiate. He could not, he added, send him formal powers to come to terms with the Irish, lest he should seem guilty not only of inconstancy, but in some sort of bad faith. It would be enough that he had bidden him to receive orders in future from the queen and the prince. 2 In a subsequent letter to the queen, written on. 23 July, Charles says : As for the things which thine of the 12th [2nd Old Style] of July accuse me of, I only say this ; I believe the queen will find, upon good examina- tion, that I have not erred, unless it were concerning Ormonde [i.e. in the letter of 11 June], for which I have since [14 July] made amends. 3 Nowhere does he hint or try to excuse himself on the ground that the letter of 11 June was written under duress, or that it was other than his deliberate act in furtherance of what he at the time (however mistakenly) believed to be his best interests. At length, after long hesitation, relying on the assurances of Lord Digby, which were formally entered on the council-book, Ormonde, though not without misgiving (as appears by his letter to the king next day), caused the peace to be proclaimed in Dublin on 30 July. 4 On Saturday 1 August Charles received letters from the queen dated * the 2 nd and 3 rd of August ', equivalent to 23 and 24 July in Charles's reckoning. Charles, in his reply on 5 August, says in a postscript, ' I have dispatcht to Ireland as the queen desires '. 5 The letter so dispatched to Ireland was clearly the letter to Ormonde of that date, now for the first time published. We may infer, too, that the queen, having heard from Digby 1 Charles I in 1646, p. 54. 2 Montreuil to Mazarin July 16/26, Arch, des Affaires Etrangeres, ii, fo. 438. I quote from Gardiner, Great Civil War, iii 154 (ed. 1901) ; but the letter, which we now know was written on 14 July, could not have been carried to Ormonde by Digby, as suggested by Gardiner, seeing that Digby arrived from France on 4 July. The copy sent by Charles to the queen was enclosed by her to Ormonde on 7/17 August (Carte, vi. 426). 3 Charles I in 1646, p. 55. 4 Carte, vi. 419-21. B Charles I in 1646, p. 58.
