MR. BISSET AND MR. GODWIN.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,-I shall be much obliged to you if you will permit me to answer an article on my History of the Commonwealth of England, in the Spectator of December 7, 1867.
It is true that Mr. Godwin uses in the preface to his third volume the words quoted by a writer in the Spectator of December 7, 1867 ; but whether it is true or not, as stated by the same writer, that Mr. Godwin "professedly based those chapters in his History of the Commonwealth which cover the period occupied by my volumes on these very papers," it is certainly not• true that Mr. Godwin has made such use of the materials contained in these papers—the MS. Order Books of the Council of State—as to render it incorrect for me to say that I have written from new materials. I think it will be considered sufficient proof of this, first, that Mr. Godwin has repeated without contradiction Roger Coke's assertion that the Long Parliament and their executive, the Council of State, " never pressed any in all their wars," the disproof of which con- tained in many minutes would have struck even the most careless reader of the Order Books ; secondly, that he has taken no notice of the projected invasion from the Continent by an army under the command of the Duke of Lorraine before the battle of Worcester, which is repeatedly mentioned in the MS. minutes of the Order Books of the Council of State ; and thirdly, that Mr. Godwin has taken no notice whatever of the energetic proceedings of the Council of State for several months before the battle of Worcester,
both against the invasion of the Scots and against the projected invasion from the Continent.
No writer has any right to take credit for the use of new materials of great extent on the strength of a few isolated extracts, and without having thoroughly examined those new materials ; and I affirm that no writer of average intelligence would have read the Order Books of the Council of State without being forcibly impressed by the important facts I have mentioned. As Mr. Godwin was certainly a writer of more than average intelli- gence, the necessary conclusion is, that he had not read the Order Books of the Council of State.—I am, Sir, &c., A. BISSET.
[We willingly insert Mr. Bisset's letter, which, however, appears to us to leave the matter exactly as we put it. —En. Specta tor.]
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