In the following Play I have, without any such praiseworthy intention on my own part, obeyed to the very letter the well-known Horatian precept—keep your piece nine years! Mitford here quotes, not Horace, but Pope's , in which he paraphrases Horace's advice to authors.

The attempt to dramatize one of the most striking events in English History, and to delineate one of the most remarkable characters that ever figured on the great Theatre of Life, was originally suggested to me by Mr. Macready, whose earnest recommendation to try my hand on Cromwell, was at a subsequent period stil more strongly enforced by Mr. Charles Kemble; neither of those gentlemen, whose judgment in dramatic affairs will hardly be disputed, having foreseen any objection to such an experiment on the part of the Licenser or the Lord Chamberlain. How indeed could they have anticipated any obstacle from that quarter, when an acted Tragedy on the same story and bearing the same title, written above sixty years ago by Mr. Havard, and frequently played in by Mr. John Kemble, was already in possession of the stage, and might have been performed without let or hindrance on any night at any Theatre whether in Town or Country?

Unforeseen as it was however, such an obstacle unfortunately arose. Mr. Colman did object not to the details or the execution of the piece but to the title and the subject, and as the Duke of Montrose, the then Lord Chamberlain, confirmed the decision of his Reader of Plays, we submitted to the fiat without complaint, though not without remonstrance, and the Tragedy, instead of being produced at Covent Garden eight seasons ago, has remained unacted and unpublished, with little apparent chance of representation, until the spirited Managers of the Victoria Theatre applied to me for permission to bring it forward on a stage honourably distinguished in this age of opera and spectacle by its encouragement of the legitimate drama.

. In acceding to their proposal I beg most earnestly and sincerely to disavow having been influenced by any thing like a spirit of defiance toward the Licenser or his office. To the present Lord Chamberlain the whole theatrical world, and I myself more particularly, owe nothing but respect and gratitude. Under his administration a similar case can hardly occur; since, however, a characteristic delicacy might have withheld him from rescinding a declared resolution or nullifying a positive decree of his noble predecessor, the Duke of Devonshire is too eminent for liberality and kindness, too tasteful and enlightened a patron of the acted Drama, to be led by the fear of an imaginary danger into placing fetters and shackles on an art which he loves. He is far more likely to foster and cherish in an attempt to pursue at a humble distance, the track of those master poets of all countries, who from the first Tragedy of Eschylus Aeschylus down to this very hour, have found the subjects of their noblest plays in the heart-stirring convulsions, the dark and dangerous conspiracies, the bold and daring usurpations, the parricides, and the Regicides of their national annals.

That Mr. Colman's scruples arose from no ill-will to the writer, but were the offspring of an honest timidity, an over-zealous fear, I do not for a moment question. A Licenser must needs be somewhat of an alarmist in virtue of his office. But he who apprehends danger to the Monarchy from the representation of this Play, because it embodies the trial and condemnation of Charles the First, will do well to suppress, if he can, the striking narrative of Hume . In the present universal diffusion of literature and general knowledge, the Stage has lost much of its ancient influence over the feelings and passions of the multitude. That democratic engine the Press, has swept away the regal supremacy of the drama. And even if the Theatre were as powerful as in the days of old,—if the tendency of this Play were revolutionary, which I deny,—and if Cromwells were plenty as blackberries, Falstaff from : "If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I." (II.iv). A favorite quotation of Mitford's, which also appears in other contexts in her letters. which I must be permitted to doubt,—against such a King as William the Fourth, their shafts would fall harmless. The Monarch who has earned, as he has done, the honest love of a whole people, may defy the subtlest attacks of fanaticism and rebellion.

Of the Tragedy, considered as a literary production, I shall say little: that is before the reader, and must speak for itself. No one can be more conscious than I am of its numerous defects, and still more numerous deficiencies; but great as those faults may be, they are not the result of negligence or carelessness. It would be the worst of all pedantries, female pedantry, were I to enumerate the very many cotemporary writers, the Histories, Memoirs, Narratives, and State Papers, the Roundhead Sermons and Cavalier Ballads from which I have endeavoured to gather not merely an accurate outline— of this great event, but those minute and apparently trifling touches which might serve to realize the scene, and supply, by a vivid impression of the people and the time, the usual sources of dramatic attraction, the interest of story and suspense, from which I was cut off by the nature of my subject.

Many of these allusions, those for instance to the papers concealed in the stuffing of the saddle, —to the sowing of the melon seeds, to Charles's constant perusal of Shakespeare whilst in prison, so prettily recorded by Milton, and to the falling of the head of the king's staff in the trial scene,—are mentioned by the best writers, and will be immediately recognized by all who are any ways conversant with the histories of the time. The anecdote of Lord Broghill (afterwards Earl of Orrery), which really happened at a subsequent period, is less generally known. He was in London on a mission from Charles the Second during the early part of the Protectorate, when Cromwell discovered, confronted, converted, and employed him, much in the manner that I have related.

The materials of the scene of signing the , in which I believe that I have given, from the marking of Marten's cheek to the guiding of Ingoldsby's hand, a very faithful version of what actually occurred, are chiefly taken from the Defences in the Trials of the Regicides.Likely refers to the collections of State Trials collected and edited throughout the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century by Francis Hargrave, William Cobbett, and others. Mitford likely also had access to collections of memoirs of the regicides from Heneage Finch's works to James Caulfield's. It is certain that the Judges, after the condemnation, were panic-struck at their own act; and that but for an extraordinary exertion of his singular power over the minds of all with whom he came in contact, Cromwell would never have succeeded in obtaining the signatures of the Commissioners of the High Court of Justice to an instrument essential to the completion of this great national crime, and to the purposes of his own ambition.

I am not aware of having in any material point departed from the truth of History, except in shortening the trial, in bringing the Queen to England, and in assigning to Henrietta the interruption of the sentence, which was actually occasioned by Lady Fairfax; deviations, which were vitally necessary to the effect of the drama. I have some doubts also whether Cromwell did really get rid of Fairfax by dismissing him and Harrison to "seek the Lord together."Not a direct quotation, but a corruption of the anecdote from Hume's History of England, Volume I, Part E. Hume tells the story confidently; but Hume, although the most delightful, is by no means the most accurate of historians; and the manner in which we are, by the casual mention of contemporary writers, as well "as by the evidence on the different trials, enabled to account for almost every instant of Cromwell's time during that eventful morning, goes far in my mind to disprove the circumstance.Source unidentified. But the incident is highly dramatic, and so strictly in keeping with the characters of all parties, that I have no scruple in assuming it as a fact. The thing might have happened, if it did not, and that is excuse enough for the dramatist, although not for the historian.