PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
As an evidence that 'tis very probable these Memorials were written
many years ago, the persons now concerned in the publication assure
the reader that they have had them in their possession finished, as
they now appear, above twenty years; that they were so long ago found
by great accident, among other valuable papers, in the closet of an
eminent public minister, of no less figure than one of King William's
secretaries of state.
As it is not proper to trace them any farther, so neither is there any
need to trace them at all, to give reputation to the story related,
seeing the actions here mentioned have a sufficient sanction from all
the histories of the times to which they relate, with this addition,
that the admirable manner of relating them and the wonderful variety
of incidents with which they are beautified in the course of a private
gentleman's story, add such delight in the reading, and give such a
lustre, as well to the accounts themselves as to the person who was
the actor, that no story, we believe, extant in the world ever came
abroad with such advantage.
It must naturally give some concern in the reading that the name of a
person of so much gallantry and honour, and so many ways valuable
to the world, should be lost to the readers. We assure them no small
labour has been thrown away upon the inquiry, and all we have been
able to arrive to of discovery in this affair is, that a memorandum
was found with this manuscript, in these words, but not signed by any
name, only the two letters of a name, which gives us no light into the
matter, which memoir was as follows:--
Memorandum.
"I found this manuscript among my father's writings, and I understand
that he got them as plunder, at, or after, the fight at Worcester,
where he served as major of ----'s regiment of horse on the side of
the Parliament. I.K."
As this has been of no use but to terminate the inquiry after the
person, so, however, it seems most naturally to give an authority to
the original of the work, viz., that it was born of a soldier; and
indeed it is through every part related with so soldierly a style, and
in the very language of the field, that it seems impossible anything
but the very person who was present in every action here related,
could be the relater of them.
The accounts of battles, the sieges, and the several actions of which
this work is so full, are all recorded in the histories of those
times; such as the great battle of Leipsic, the sacking of Magdeburg,
the siege of Nuremburg, the passing the river Lech in Bavaria; such
also as the battle of Kineton, or Edgehill, the battles of Newbury,
Marston Moor, and Naseby, and the like: they are all, we say, recorded
in other histories, and written by those who lived in those times, and
perhaps had good authority for what they wrote. But do those relations
give any of the beautiful ideas of things formed in this account?
Have they one half of the circumstances and incidents of the actions
themselves that this man's eyes were witness to, and which his memory
has thus preserved? He that has read the best accounts of those
battles will be surprised to see the particulars of the story so
preserved, so nicely and so agreeably described, and will confess
what we allege, that the story is inimitably told; and even the great