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Cromwell in Ireland Carlyle, in Froude, or even in the later historians now much in vogue. But it was not so with the older writers; they knew these things and spoke openly of them. I repeat, the whole catalogue of royal misfortune in Ireland began in Ormond's surrender of Dublin in the summer of 1647 to the Parliament Commissioners; and it is clear, from a letter recently brought to light by the researches of Dr. Russell and Mr. Prendergast, at Oxford, that this fatal action was taken by Ormond in direct opposition to the orders of the Queen's Council then sitting in Paris (the King being a prisoner in the hands of the Independents).

The shrewd Strafford, writing twelve years earlier of Ormond, had summed up in a few pithy words the whole matter that was later on to separate the Commander-in-Chief from his people. "If bred under the wings of his own parents," wrote Wentworth, "he (Ormond) had been of the same affection and religion his brothers and sisters were." So in truth it was; but the ending of it Thomas Wentworth no more saw than he saw his own end, for, had Ormond been of the same affection as his brothers and sisters, not only would the story of Ireland have been written to different purpose, but the great struggle between King and Parliament might 28