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Five Letters of King Charles II. communicated by the Marquis of Bristol
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2010
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References
page 3 note a Dugdale states that the letters patent conferring the dignity were dated at “Breda in Brabant, 27 Apr. an. 1660.” The Earl of St. Alban's died on 2nd January, 1683–4, without issue. On that event his earldom became extinct, but his barony of “Jermyn of St. Edmundsbury in com. Suffolk” descended to Thomas the eldest son of Thomas the Earl's elder brother, on whose death in 1703 it also became extinct. (Dugdale's Baronage, ii. 469; Collect. Topog. and Genealog, ii. 337; and Lord Alfred Hervey's. Paper on the Family of Hervey, p. 89.)
page 6 note a The conclusion and signature of this letter are represented in the prefixed fec-simile.
page 7 note a Tom Talbot, one of five celebrated brothers who frequented the court of Charlea IL, ia thus described by Clarendon: “The fourth brother was a Franciscan friar, of wit enough, but of so notorious debauchery that he was frequently under severe discipline by the superiors of his order for his scandalous life, which made him hate his habit, and take all opportunities to make journeys into England and Ireland; but, not being able to live there, he was forced to return and put on his abhorred habit, which he alwaya called his ‘fool's coat,’ and came seldom into those places where he was known, and so wandered into Germany and Flanders, and took all opportunities to be in the place where the King was; and so he came to Cologne and Brussels and Bruges, and, being a merry fellow, was the more made of for laughing at and contemning his brother the Jesuit, who had not so good natural parts, though by his education he had more sobriety and lived without scandal in his manners. He went by the name of Tom Talbot, and after the King's return was in London in his man's clothes (as he called them), with the natural licence of an Irish friar (which are a people, for the most part, of the whole creation the most sottish and the most brutal), and against his obedience, and all orden of his superiors, who interdicted him to say mass.” (Life of Clarendon, p. 1193, ed. 1843.)
page 8 note a Colonel Thomas Blagge, a gentleman of an ancient Suffolk family, groom of the Bedchamber to Charles I. and II., and a family connexion of Lord Jermyn. During the Civil War he was governor of Wallingford Castle, and, after the Restoration, Captain of Landguard Fort. He died on the 14th November, 1660, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. A pedigree of the family of Blagge is published in Gage's History of Thingoe, p. 520, and more fully, as shewing its relationship to the Jermyns and the Godolphins, in Evelyn's Life of Mr. Godolphin (ed. Bishop of Oxford), p. 254.
page 8 note b It is ordinarily stated that Murrough O'Brien, Lord Inchiqnin, was created by Charles II. Lord O'Brien and Earl of Inchiquin in the year 1654. This may hare been the date of the sign manual here alluded to. Other facts mentioned in this letter show that it was written, and that consequently the Earl of Inchiquin's patent of his earldom was sealed, in 1658.
page 9 note a Signed with Charles II.'s knot, a fac-simile of which (with the address and conclusion of the letter) is given in the plate prefixed.
page 9 note b Sir Richard Foster had been keeper of the King's privy purse.
page 9 note c Signed in the same manner as the body of this letter mentioned in the preceding note marked a.
page 10 note a Signed with the Charlea II.'s knot mentioned in the note to the preceding letter.
page 13 note a Signed with the Charlea II.'s knot mentioned before.
page 14 note a A letter of Lord Clarendon, dated the 10th of April, 1660, which, like the one above, was N.S., affords an apt explanation of these Calais reports: “The Parliament was, as you have heard, to be dissolved upon Thursday the 15th of the last month, but there had been so many artifices used by the Republican party to stay the business of the militia, and afterwards to stop and corrupt it at the press, that the House resolved to sit again the next day, and then about seven o'clock at night they dissolved, to the universal joy of all the kingdom, the Republican party only excepted, who had no mind to cashier themselves of a power they were like again never to be possessed of; the people not being like to choose many of them to serve in the next Parliament. Before they dissolved they declared the engagement, by which men were bound to submit to the government without King or House of Lords, to be void and null, and to be taken off the file of all records, wherever it was entered; and this might be the ground of that report at Calais, that they had voted the government to be by King, Lords, and Commons; besides, there was a pretty accident that might contribute thereunto, for the day before the Parliament dissolved, at full Exchange, there came a fellow with a ladder upon his shoulders, and a pot of paint in his hand, and set the ladder in the place where the last King's statue had stood, and then went up and wiped out that inscription which had been made after the death of the King, Exit Tyrannus, &c., and as soon as he had done it threw up his cap, and cried “God bless King Charles the Second!” in which the whole Exchange joined with the greatest shout you can imagine, and immediately caused a huge bonfire to be made, which the neighbours of Cornhill and Cheapside imitated with three or four more; and so that action passed, nor do I find there was any order for it.” (Clarendon Papers, iii. 725.)
page 15 note a Signed with a variety of the Charles II's knot, represented, with the conclusion of his letter, in the fac-simile No. 4.
page 16 note a It would be unjust not to mention that this most accurate and excellent plate of combined photography and lithography, for which the Society is indebted to the Marquis of Bristol, ia the work of Mr. G. I. F. Tupper.