specious names of Religion and Liberty.”  After these introductory paragraphs Dryden began to reply to the pamphlet point by point.  His method is to quote or, more strictly, partly to quote and partly to paraphrase, a sentence and then refute its argument.  In so doing he is following the method of the author of A Letter.  Accordingly, to understand and judge the fairness of Dryden’s refutation, it is well first to read His Majesties Declaration, then A Letter, and finally Dryden.  The first has not been reprinted in full but a substantial extract may be found in Echard’s History of England (III, 624-6) and in Arthur Bryant’s The Letters of Charles II (pp. 319-22), the second is available in a not uncommon folio, State Tracts:  being a Collection of several Treatises ... privately printed in the Reign of K. Charles II (1689), and the third is here reproduced for the first time.  After the perusal of these three tracts, the student may well turn to Absalom and Achitophel, and find instruction in comparing the prose and the verse.  He may reach the conclusion that while both were written to win converts to the royal cause, the first was designed to weaken the Whig party and the second to take advantage of a tide that had turned to ruin the Whig leaders. (For a fuller discussion of the relationship of Dryden’s tract and his poem see the writer’s article, “The Conclusion of Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel” in the Huntington Library Quarterly, X (1946-7), 69-82.) In addition to its historical interest Dryden’s tract is a fine specimen of his masculine, vigorous style so well suited to controversial writing.

I desire to thank Mr. James M. Osborn, Yale University, for helpful suggestions in the preparation of this introduction.

This facsimile has been made from the copy in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

Godfrey Davies The Huntington Library

His Majesties

DECLARATION

DEFENDED: 

In a LETTER to a Friend.

BEING AN

ANSWER

TO A

Seditious Pamphlet,

CALLED

A LETTER from a Person of Quality to his Friend: 

CONCERNING

The Kings late Declaration touching the Reasons which moved him to Dissolve

THE TWO LAST

PARLIAMENTS

AT

WESTMINSTER and OXFORD.

LONDON: Printed for T.  Davies, 1681.

THE
Kings Declaration
DEFENDED.

Sir,