The division of the letters into chapters, at first sight an arbitrary arrangement, really follows their natural grouping.  The letters were written in the years 1653 and 1654, and form a clear and connected story of the love affairs of the young couple during that time.  The most important group of letters, both from the number of letters contained in it and the contents of the letters themselves, is that entitled “Life at Chicksands, 1653.”  The Editor regards this group as the very mainland of the epistolary archipelago that we are exploring.  For it is in this chapter that a clear idea of the domestic social life of these troublous times is obtainable, none the less valuable in that it does not tally altogether with our preconceived and too romantic notions.  Here, too, we find what Macaulay longed for—­those social domestic trivialities which the historians have at length begun to value rightly.  Here are, indeed, many things of no value to Dryasdust and his friends, but of moment to us, who look for and find true details of life and character in nearly every line.  And above all things, here is a living presentment of a beautiful woman, pure in dissolute days, passing quiet hours of domestic life amongst her own family, where we may all visit her and hear her voice, even in the very tones in which she spoke to her lover.

And now the Editor feels he must augment Macaulay’s sketch of Dorothy Osborne with some account of the Osborne family, of whom it consisted, what part it took in the struggle of the day, and what was the past position of Dorothy’s ancestors.  All that can be promised is, that such account shall be as concise as may be consistent with clearness and accuracy, and that it shall contain nothing but ascertained facts.

There were Osbornes—­before there were Osbornes of Chicksands—­who, coming out of the north, settled at Purleigh in Essex, where we find them in the year 1442.  From this date, passing lightly over a hundred troubled years, we find Peter Osborne, Dorothy’s great-grandfather, born in 1521.  He was Keeper of the Purse to Edward VI., and was twice married, his second wife being Alice, sister of Sir John Cheke, a family we read of in Dorothy’s letters.  One of his daughters, named Catharine,—­he had a well-balanced family of eleven sons and eleven daughters,—­afterwards married Sir Thomas Cheke.  Peter Osborne died in 1592; and Sir John Osborne, Peter’s son and Dorothy’s grandfather, was the first Osborne of Chicksands.  It was he who settled at Chicksands, in Bedfordshire, and purchased the neighbouring rectory at Hawnes, to restore it to that Church of which he and his family were in truth militant members; and having generously built and furnished a parsonage house, he presented it in the first place to the celebrated preacher Thomas Brightman, who died there in 1607.  It is this rectory that in 1653-54 is in the hands of the Rev. Edward Gibson, who appears from time to time in Dorothy’s letters, and