Dear Sir, I write from Portsmouth, where so directed by your instruction of the 1st instant, a shameful inn called Three Fauns, the keeper drunken, the bill of fare smoked sprats, crusts and water, vile rooms that have never, I believe, seen a broom. The yard reeks of the excrements from a trench into which the sodden relieve themselves and tumble, with a frequency truly disgusting, as they become drunk from multitudinous pots of the wretched ale. This amuses the other sots greatly. I am, as I write, gnawed by fleas and lice.

Even so, Master, I am about your service, and am pleased to report that the rumors are true, a Cavalier hath claimed this City for King Charles I. He is none other than the very Governor, George, Lord Goring, a colonel, who hath held that office since 1640. My lord Goring, you will recall, was in some manner involved with that plot of ill-affected Army officers, who last year had the wild idea to march against London with the rabble Charles had organized for the war on Scotland, and seize the Tower for the King and behead everyone. My lord Goring babbled of the scheme to my lord Newport, through whom it reached the ears of Mr Hampden and Mr Pym, and the desperate conspirators were duly arrested before their dastardly plot could be hatched.

Examined by a committee of Parliament, Goring somehow convinced it that he was guiltless in the affair, and had indeed whispered to my lord Newport in the interest of bringing the plot to ruin and preventing the needless effusion of blood and promoting the flowering of peace, etc. The Committee decided to allow him to return to his Governorship.

I spoke to my lord Goring this afternoon, gaining entrance to the Castle by the simple expedient of explaining myself as a gatherer of News for a publication that sought to avoid the hysterics of the rumor-mongers and tract-writers, and provide Englishmen and posterity with an accurate account of the events of this troubled time.

My lord spoke in his chamber overlooking the harbor, which he shared with twenty-three empty bottles of Madeira, twelve full bottles, and a lady asleep on a trestle. Several pieces of her wardrobe were on the table, with a deck of cards, two tobacco-pipes, a bag of tobacco, and a volume of poems by Mr Lovelace.

On rumors that he had corresponded both with the Queen and members of Parliament, to maintain civil relations with each side while deciding which to join:  “Damned if that is the truth. She is my Queen and I have always been a loyal servant of my King and Queen, and that tale, yes I’ve heard it said in the damned ale-sinks of this pisshole, that she’s bought my loyalty with £3000, that is a damned lie spread by damned lying atheists. My loyalty is not for sale and cannot be purchased, sir.”

Having declared for the King, are you concerned you’ve made a terrible mistake? “No, damn you, fool of an apprentice. A gaggle of lowborn Puritan hat-makers and shopkeepers against the nobility of the nation? We’ll trounce the rubbish of schismatics in two campaigns, or three.”

Will it be two campaigns, or three campaigns? “I know not, depends on the damned rains, and if there’s a decent supply of powder and horses. There’s a bit more to war than just beating a damned schismatic around the head, you've got to have money, you've got to have a clear idea of where you mean to go, and a road that can bear a march. Iron-wheeled wagons, with field-pieces, nothing'll churn up a road like that, boy. It's things like that can make the difference between two or three. But it matters not, it's a difference of one, not five or seven, and I don’t see why you should give a damn anyway.”

Did you discuss the Army Plot with my lord Newport, knowing through him it would eventually reach the Parliament? “Newport’s a damned silly fool of a dog.”

On rumors that, when drunk, you voiced Royalists sentiments? “If I did, and I neither admit nor deny, not because I fear the truth but because I can’t remember in this particular case, I said no damned more than what’s engraved upon my heart and should be on the heart of every Englishman that’s not some damned damned rubbish of a schismatic Puritan dog of a Roundhead.”

On the rumor that, a great assembly of strumpets known as the “League of Ladies” attended him at Portsmouth: “A damned lie of heretics and atheists.” From the trestle-bed: “It’s the Leaguer Ladies, boy.”

At this, my lord Goring bid me farewell.

On departing I observed bricklayers plying their craft about the fortifications in a lacksadasical manner. I enquired if they were strengthening the walls against an attack by “atheists and schismatics.” No, the leader said; this is work contracted over a year ago, that proceeded by “farts and starts” due to  “the Governor’s pouring our wages into his belly” and “the c - - - s of the Leaguer Ladies.”

I have observed in my walks through Portsmouth and in my discussions with the populace what you, Mr Holyfen, have noted as the case in Bristol, Dover, London, and elsewhere: a bare plurality of the nobles, and most of the greater merchants (Merchant Adventurers, East India men), support the King, he guaranteeing their privileges and monopolies. The middle sort of men, those energetically engaged in the accumulation of capital through retailing and manufacturies and the like, and the newer merchants, that is those involved in the American and West Indies trades, are all Puritan and solidly for the Parliament. The basest and lowest (this would be the guests of the Three Fauns, including the Keeper and sots) are for the King,  he being a source of charity and able to heal leprosy and the clap with a touch of his hand because he in Christ on earth (so they say).

I wait instructions at the Three Fauns, where as I write, dogs howl, and children caterwaul like the very imps of Hell in the mud and filth of the street. And I have just recognized the keeper’s daughter as the Leaguer Lady observed in the rooms of my lord Goring.

I am, thy humble servant

William Firth, the Three Fauns, Portsmouth.

To Mr Sydney Holyfen, Beacon Manor, Ivinghoe, Buckinghamshire