Catalogue description GEORGE [BROWN], ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN, to CROMWELL.

According to a letter directed unto your Lordship at the motion of the Chief Justice and Master of the Rolls, and as they say it is your Lordship's commandment, I have disposed myself towards the Bishop of Meath, trusting that your Lordship will me to do nothing that shall sound unto my dishonesty or reproach, namely in my cause being so just as it is, as the very favorers of truth can declare." I have sent you the articles which he devised, "nothing unto the purpose;" and those which I intended to have laid against him, if the matter had gone forward. I have written sundry times to you "that I had suspended the fine of controversy betwixt the Observants and the other named de communi vita, until that mine authority were sent me over. Howbeit my Lord Deputy in that point prevented me in Galway, bearing still his favours towards the Observants. Soon after the return of my chaplain that brought me letters from your Lordship, amongst divers other messengers unto my Lord Deputy, came there over one Baker, an old servant of my said Lord Deputy's, which keepeth a tavern in Newgate Market, at the Three Tuns, which reported unto my Lord, that my chaplain should answer your Lordship, demanding him who was chief of my Lord Deputy's Council, that Stephen Appary, Margaret Bathe, and Richard Lute did bear all the swing with his Lordship; again, that he should report other things unto him at Chester; and it is well known and proved that he never came in his company, nor never spake with him in England, nor yet in no part of Wales, for he was over three weeks or ever the said Baker came there. Nevertheless he was commanded unto the castle as a prisoner, spite of my teeth, and all the friends I could make. Here hath been many such light messengers, and that causeth my Lord many times the less to regard th' advertisement of the Council.

Dublin, 10 August. Signed.

In John Allen's hand. Addressed: The Lord at Private Seal. Endorsed.

State Papers III. 65.

Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth, ed. J. S. Brewer & W. Bullen (6 vols., 1867-73), vol. I, document 129.