The editor considers this work in another light. He long knew the author, and was no stranger to his politics, connections, tendencies, passions, and the whole economy of his life. He has long been hardily singular in condemning this great man's conduct amid the admiring multitude, nor ever could have thought of making an interest in a man, _whose principles and manners he could by no rule of reason or honour approve, however he might have admired his parts and wit_. _Such was judged the disposition of the man, whose history of the most interesting period of time in the annals of Britain are now, herein, offered to the reader. He may well ask from what motives? The answer is easily, simply given_. _The causes assigned for delaying the publication of this history were principally these:_[2] _That the manuscript fell into the hands of men, who, whatever they might have been by the generality deemed, were by the Dean believed to be of his party, though they did not, after his death, judge it prudent to avow his principles, more than to deny them in his lifetime. These men, having got their beavers, tobacco-boxes, and other trifling remembrances of former friendship, by the Dean's will, did not choose publicly to avow principles, that had marred their friend's promotion, and might probably put a stop to theirs. Therefore, they gave the inquisitive world to understand, that there was something too strong against many great men, as well as the succeeding system of public affairs in general, in the Dean's_ History of the Four Last Years of the Queen's Reign, _to admit of a publication, in our times; and, with this poor insinuation, excused themselves, and satisfied the weakly well-affected, in suppressing the manifestation of displeasing truths, of however great importance to society_. [Footnote 2: The causes for the delay in the publication of the "History" are given at length by the present editor in the Introduction. [T.S.]] _This manuscript has now fallen into the hands of a man, who never could associate with, or even approve, any of the parties or factions, that have differently distracted, it might be said disgraced, these kingdoms; because he has as yet known none, whose motives or rules of action were truth and the public good alone; of one, who judges, that perjured magistrates of all denominations, and their most exalted minions, may be exposed, deprived, or cut off, by the fundamental laws of his country; and who, upon these principles, from his heart approves and glories in the virtues of his predecessors, who revived the true spirit of the British polity, in laying aside a priest-ridden, an hen-pecked, tyrannical tool, who had overturned the political constitution of his country, and in reinstituting the dissolved body politic, by a revolution supported by the laws of nature and the realm, as the only means of preserving the natural and legal, the civil and religious liberties of the members of the commonwealth_.