Preface

Preface.

The preceding volume of this Calendar (Vol. XXIV) covered the unusually brief period of six months. No more than half that space of time (July, August and September, 1683) is comprised in the present volume. Even so it is clear that the State Papers of the last years of the reign of King Charles II (as of that of his successor) are only partially preserved in the national archives. The Secretaries of State at this time were, for the Southern Department, Sir Leoline Jenkins, who had been in office since 1680, and, for the Northern Department, Robert Spencer, second Earl of Sunderland, who had superseded the Earl of Conway in the early days of 1683. Jenkins's correspondence, both the letters which he received and those which he wrote, is voluminous and may be regarded as virtually complete. That of Sunderland is evidently far from being so. A single Entry Book (No. 56) suffices for his two terms of office as Secretary, extending respectively from 1679 to 1681 and from 1683 to 1688. The majority of the letters of his which are calendared in this volume are addressed to his colleague, being written at times when Sunderland was in attendance on the King at Windsor, Newmarket or Winchester and Jenkins was at Whitehall; and they exist as originals preserved among Jenkins's in-letters, not as out-letters copied into official Entry Books. Very few letters received by the earl are to be found.

Sunderland was notoriously careless and unbusinesslike, but the explanation of the disappearance of his papers is perhaps to be sought in the tortuous character of his political dealings. It may well be that, on his hasty departure from Whitehall and England a few weeks before the Revolution, he either destroyed his correspondence or carried it away with him. If it is still extant in some as yet unexplored private collection, its discovery would be of very great value to students of history.

That in spite of this hiatus the State Papers for 1683 are exceptionally numerous is due to the revelation, in June of that year, of the ramifications of intrigue which were to have culminated on the one hand in an insurrection to enforce the demand of the Whig magnates for the exclusion of the Duke of York from the succession and, on the other, in the assassination of the King and the Duke at the Rye House in Hertfordshire on their return journey from Newmarket to London. To bring these two distinct conspiracies fully to light, to sift the evidence relating to them and fix the responsibility where it was due entailed an enormous amount of correspondence between the Secretary's office and the county and municipal authorities, examinations of suspects almost daily before the Privy Council (at which the King was usually present and the minutes of which are incorporated with the State Papers), the taking of informations by magistrates, the search of houses in town and country and other kindred activities which will be found reflected in the following pages.

The documents calendared are included in the bundles and volumes here listed:—

S.P. Dom., Car. II. 359, 425, 426 (Rye House plot papers), 427, 428, 429, 430, 431, 432, 433; Case G; Various 12. Entry Books 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60, 64, 66, 68, 69, 164, 335. Signet Office 1, Vol. 11. King William's Chest 1, 3.

S.P. Scotland, Warrant Book 8.

S.P. Ireland 341, 343. Entry Book 1.

Admiralty 77 (Greenwich Hospital, Newsletters, Original) 2.