The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660, by David Masson

THE LIFE

OF

JOHN MILTON:

NARRATED IN CONNEXION WITH

THE POLITICAL, ECCLESIASTICAL, AND LITERARY

HISTORY OF HIS TIME.

BY

DAVID MASSON, M.A., LL.D.,

PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE

IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.

VOL. V.

1654-1660.

London:

MacMillan and Co.

1877.

CONTENTS.

BOOK I.

SEPTEMBER 1654-JUNE 1657.

HISTORY:—OLIVER'S FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED.

BIOGRAPHY:—MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED.

CHAP. I. SECTION I. Oliver and his First Parliament: Sept. 3, 1654-Jan. 22, 1654-5.—Meeting of the First Parliament of the Protectorate: Its Composition: Anti-Oliverians numerous in it: Their Four Days' Debate in challenge of Cromwell's Powers: Debate stopped by Cromwell: His Speech in the Painted Chamber: Secession of some from the Parliament: Acquiescence of the rest by Adoption of The Recognition: Spirit and Proceedings of the Parliament still mainly Anti-Oliverian: Their Four Months' Work in Revision of the Protectoral Constitution: Chief Debates in those Four Months: Question of the Protector's Negatives: Other Incidental Work of the Parliament: Question of Religious Toleration and of the Suppression of Heresies and Blasphemies: Committee and Sub-Committee on this Subject: Baxter's Participation: Tendency to a Limited Toleration only, and Vote against the Protector's Prerogative of more: Case of John Biddle, the Socinian.—Insufficiency now of our former Synopsis of English Sects and Heresies: New Sects and Denominations: The Fifth-Monarchy Men: The Ranters: The Muggletonians and other Stray Fanatics: Bochmenists and other Mystics: The Quakers or Friends: Account of George Fox, and Sketch of the History of the Quakers to the year 1654.—Policy of the Parliament with their Bill for a New Constitution: Parliament outwitted by Cromwell and dissolved: No Result.

CHAP. I. SECTION II. Between the Parliaments, or the Time of Arbitrariness: Jan. 22, 1654-55—Sept. 17, 1656.—Avowed "Arbitrariness" of this Stage of the Protectorate, and Reasons for it.—First Meeting of Cromwell and his Council after the Dissolution: Major-General Overton in Custody: Other Arrests: Suppression of a wide Republican Conspiracy and of Royalist Risings in Yorkshire and the West: Revenue Ordinance and Mr. Cony's Opposition at Law: Deference of Foreign Governments: Blake in the Mediterranean: Massacre of the Piedmontese Protestants: Details of the Story and of Cromwell's Proceedings in consequence: Penn in the Spanish West Indies: His Repulse from Hispaniola and Landing in Jamaica: Declaration of War with Spain and Alliance with France: Scheme of the Government of England by Major-Generals: List of them and Summary of their Police-System: Decimation Tax on the Royalists, and other Measures in terrorem: Consolidation of the London Newspaper Press: Proceedings of the Commission of Ejectors and of the Commission of Triers: View of Cromwell's Established Church of England, with Enumeration of its various Components: Extent of Toleration outside the Established Church: The Protector's Treatment of the Roman Catholics, the Episcopalians, the Anti-Trinitarians, the Quakers, and the Jews: State of the English Universities and Schools under the Protectorate: Cromwell's Patronage of Learning: List of English Men of Letters alive in 1656, and Account of their Diverse Relations to Cromwell: Poetical Panegyrics on him and his Protectorate.—New Arrangements for the Government of Scotland: Lord Broghill's Presidency there for Cromwell: General State of the Country: Continued Struggle between the Resolutioners and the Protesters for Kirk-Supremacy: Independency and Quakerism in Scotland: More Extreme Anomalies there: Story of "Jock of Broad Scotland": Brisk Intercourse between Scotland and London: Mission of Mr. James Sharp.—Ireland from 1654 to 1656.—Glimpse of the Colonies.

CHAP. I. SECTION III. Oliver and the First Session of his Second Parliament: Sept. 17, 1656-June 26, 1657.—Second Parliament of the Protectorate called: Vane's Healing Question and another Anti-Oliverian Pamphlet: Precautions and Arrests: Meeting of the Parliament: Its Composition: Summary of Cromwell's Opening Speech: Exclusion of Ninety-three Anti-Oliverian Members: Decidedly Oliverian Temper of the rest: Question of the Excluded Members: Their Protest: Summary of the Proceedings of the Parliament for Five Months (Sept. 1656-Feb. 1656-7): Administration of Cromwell and his Council during those Months: Approaches to Disagreement between Cromwell and the Parliament in the Case of James Nayler and on the Question of Continuation of the Militia by Major-Generals: No Rupture.—The Soxby-Sindercombe Plot.—Sir Christopher Pack's Motion for a New Constitution (Feb. 23, 1656-7): Its Issue in the Petition and Advice and Offer of the Crown to Cromwell: Division of Public Opinion on the Kingship Question: Opposition among the Army Officers: Cromwell's Neutral Attitude: His Reception of the Offer: His long Hesitations and several Speeches over the Affair: His Final Refusal (May 8, 1657): Ludlow's Story of the Cause.—Harrison and the Fifth Monarchy Men: Venner's Outbreak at Mile-End-Green.—Proposed New Constitution of the Petition and Advice retained in the form of a Continued Protectorate: Supplements to the Petition and Advice: Bills assented to by the Protector, June 9: Votes for the Spanish War.—Treaty Offensive and Defensive with France against Spain: Dispatch of English Auxiliary Army, under Reynolds, for Service in Flanders: Blake's Action in Santa Cruz Bay.—"Killing no Murder": Additional and Explanatory Petition and Advice: Abstract of the Articles of the New Constitution as arranged by the two Documents: Cromwell's completed Assent to the New Constitution, and his Assent to other Bills. June 26, 1657: Inauguration of the Second Protectorate that day: Close of the First Session of the Second Parliament.

CHAP. II. Milton's Life and Secretaryship through the First Protectorate continued: September 1654-June 1657.—SECTION I.: From September 1654 to January 1654-5, or Through Oliver's First Parliament.—Ulac's Hague Edition of Milton's Defensio Secunda, with the Fides Publica of Morus annexed: Preface by Dr. Crantzius to the Reprint: Ulac's own Preface of Self-Defence: Account of Morus's Fides Publica, with Extracts: His Citation of Testimonies to his Character: Testimony of Diodati of Geneva: Abrupt Ending of the Book at this Point, with Ulac's Explanation of the Cause.—Particulars of the Arrest and Imprisonment of Milton's Friend Overton.—Three more Latin State-Letters by Milton for Oliver (Nos. XLIX.-LI.): No State-Letters by Milton for the next Three Months: Milton then busy on a Reply to the Fides Publica of Morus.

CHAP. II. SECTION II.: From January 1654-5 to September 1656, or Through the Period of Arbitrariness.—Letter to Milton from Leo de Aitzema: Milton's Reply: Letter to Ezekiel Spanheim at Geneva: Milton's Genovese Recollections and Acquaintances: Two more of Milton's Latin State-Letters (Nos. LII., LIII.): Small Amount of Milton's Despatch-Writing for Cromwell hitherto.—Reduction of Official Salaries, and Proposal to Reduce Milton's to £150 a Year: Actual Commutation of his £288 a Year at Pleasure into £200 for Life: Orders of the Protector and Council relating to the Piedmontese Massacre, May 1655: Sudden Demand on Milton's Pen in that Business: His Letter of Remonstrance from the Protector to the Duke of Savoy, with Ten other Letters to Foreign States and Princes on the same Subject (Nos. LIV.-LXIV.): His Sonnet on the Subject.—Publication of the Supplementum to More's Fides Publica: Account of the Supplementum, with Extracts: Milton's Answer to the Fides Publica and the Supplementum together in his Pro Se Defensio, Aug. 1655: Account of that Book, with Specimens: Milton's Disbelief in Morus's Denials of the Authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor: His Reasons, and his Reassertions of the Charge in a Modified Form: His Notices of Dr. Crantzius and Ulac: His Renewed Onslaughts on Morus: His Repetition of the Bontia Accusation and others: His Examination of Morus's Printed Testimonials: Ferocity of the Book to the last: Its Effects on Morus.—Question of the Real Authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor and of the Amount of Morus's Concern in it: The Du Moulin Family: Dr. Peter Du Moulin the Younger the Real Author of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, but Morus the Active Editor and the Writer of the Dedicatory Epistle: Du Moulin's own Account of the whole Affair: His close Contact with Milton all the while, and Dread of being found out.—Calm in Milton's Life after the Cessation of the Morus-Salmasius Controversy: Home-Life in Petty France: Dabblings of the Two Nephews in Literature: John Phillips's Satyr against Hypocrites: Frequent Visitors at Petty France: Marvell, Needham, Cyriack Skinner, &c.: The Viscountess Ranelagh, Mr. Richard Jones, and the Boyle Connexion: Dr. Peter Du Moulin in that Connexion: Milton's Private Sonnet on his Blindness, his Two Sonnets to Cyriack Skinner, and his Sonnet to young Lawrence: Explanation of these Four Sonnets.—Scriptum Domini Protectoris contra Hispanos: Thirteen more Latin State-Letters of Milton for the Protector (Nos. LXV.-LXXVII.), with Special Account of Count Bundt and the Swedish Embassy in London: Count Bundt and Mr. Milton.—Increase of Light Literature in London: Erotic Publications: John Phillips in Trouble for such: Edward Phillips's London Edition of the Poems of Drummond of Hawthornden: Milton's Cognisance of the same.—Henry Oldenburg and Mr. Richard Jones at Oxford: Letters of Milton to Jones and Oldenburg.—Thirteen more State-Letters of the Milton Series (Nos. LXXVIII.-XC.): Importance of some of them.

CHAP. II. SECTION III.: From September 1656 to June 1657, or Through the First Session of Oliver's Second Parliament.—Another Letter from Milton to Mr. Richard Jones: Departure of Lady Ranelagh for Ireland: Letter from Milton to Peter Heimbach: Milton's Second Marriage: His Second Wife, Katharine Woodcock: Letter to Emeric Bigot: Milton's Library and the Byzantine Historians: M. Stoupe: Ten more State-Letters by Milton for the Protector (Nos. XCI.-C.): Morland, Meadows, Durie, Lockhart, and other Diplomatists of the Protector, back in London: More Embassies and Dispatches over Land and Sea: Milton Standing and Waiting: His Thoughts about the Protectorate generally.

BOOK II.

JUNE 1657-SEPTEMBER 1658

HISTORY:—OLIVER'S SECOND PROTECTORATE.

BIOGRAPHY:—MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE SECOND PROTECTORATE.

CHAP. I. Oliver's Second Protectorate: June 26, 1657-Sept. 3, 1658.—Regal Forms and Ceremonial of the Second Protectorate: The Protector's Family: The Privy Council: Retirement of Lambert: Death of Admiral Blake: The French Alliance and Successes in Flanders: Siege and Capture of Mardike: Other Foreign Relations of the Protectorate: Special Envoys to Denmark, Sweden, and the United Provinces: Aims of Cromwell's Diplomacy in Northern and Eastern Europe: Progress of his English Church-Establishment: Controversy between John Goodwill and Marchamont Needham: The Protector and the Quakers: Death of John Lilburne: Death of Sexby: Marriage of the Duke of Buckingham to Mary Fairfax: Marriages of Cromwell's Two Youngest Daughters: Preparations for another Session of the Parliament: Writs for the Other House: List of Cromwell's Peers.—Reassembling of the Parliament. Jan. 20, 1667-8: Cromwell's Opening Speech, with the Supplement by Fiennes: Anti-Oliverian Spirit of the Commons: Their Opposition to the Other House: Cromwell's Speech of Remonstrance: Perseverance of the Commons in their Opposition: Cromwell's Last Speech and Dissolution of the Parliament, Feb. 4, 1657-8.—State of the Government after the Dissolution: The Dangers, and Cromwell's Dealings with them: His Light Dealings with the Disaffected Commonwealth's Men: Threatened Spanish Invasion from Flanders, and Ramifications of the Royalist Conspiracy at Home: Arrests of Royalists, and Execution of Slingsby and Hewit: The Conspiracy crushed: Death of Robert Rich: The Earl of Warwick's Letter to Cromwell, and his Death: More Successes in Flanders: Siege and Capture of Dunkirk: Splendid Exchanges of Compliments between Cromwell and Louis XIV.: New Interference in behalf of the Piedmontese Protestants, and Project of a Protestant Council De Propaganda Fide: Prospects of the Church Establishment: Desire of the Independents for a Confession of Faith: Attendant Difficulties: Cromwell's Policy in the Affairs of the Scottish Kirk: His Design for the Evangelization and Civilization of the Highlands: His Grants to the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow: His Council in Scotland: Monk at Dalkeith: Cromwell's Intentions in the Cases of Biddle and James Nayler: Proposed New Act for Restriction of the Press: Firmness and Grandeur of the Protectorate in July 1658: Cromwell's Baronetcies and Knighthoods: Willingness to call another Parliament: Death of Lady Claypole: Cromwell's Illness and Last Days, with the Last Acts and Incidents of his Protectorship.

CHAP. II. Milton's Life and Secretaryship through the Second Protectorate. —Milton still in Office: Letter to Mr. Henry de Brass, with Milton's Opinion of Sallust: Letters to Young Ranelagh and Henry Oldenburg at Saumur: Morus in New Circumstances: Eleven more State-Letters of Milton for the Protector (Nos. CI.-CXI.): Andrew Marvell brought in as Assistant Foreign Secretary at last (Sept. 1657): John Dryden now also in the Protector's Employment: Birth of Milton's Daughter by his Second Wife: Six more State-Letters of Milton (Nos. CXII.-CXVII.): Another Letter to Mr. Henry de Brass, and another to Peter Heimbach: Comment on the latter: Deaths of Milton's Second Wife and her Child: His two Nephews, Edward and John Phillips, at this date: Milton's last Sixteen State-Letters for Oliver Cromwell (Nos. CXVIII.-CXXXIII), including Two to Charles Gustavus of Sweden, Two on a New Alarm of a Persecution of the Piedmontese Protestants, and Several to Louis XIV. and Cardinal Mazarin: Importance of this last Group of the State-Letters, and Review of the whole Series of Milton's Performances for Cromwell: Last Diplomatic Incidents of the Protectorate, and Andrew Marvell in connexion with them: Incidents of Milton's Literary Life in this Period: Young Güntzer's Dissertatio and Young Kock's Phalæcians: Milton's Edition of Raleigh's Cabinet Council: Resumption of the old Design of Paradise Lost and actual Commencement of the Poem: Change from the Dramatic Form to the Epic: Sonnet in Memory of his Deceased Wife.

BOOK III.

SEPTEMBER 1658—MAY 1660.

HISTORY:—THE PROTECTORATE OF RICHARD CROMWELL, THE ANARCHY, MONK'S MARCH AND DICTATORSHIP, AND THE RESTORATION.

RICHARD'S PROTECTORATE: SEPT. 3, 1658—MAY 25, 1659.

THE ANARCHY:—

STAGE I.:—THE RESTORED RUMP: MAY 25, 1659—OCT. 13, 1659.

STAGE II.:—THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: OCT. 13, 1659—DEC. 26, 1659.

STAGE III.:—SECOND RESTORATION OF THE RUMP, WITH MONK'S MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: DEC. 26, 1659—FEB. 21, 1859-60.

MONK'S DICTATORSHIP, THE RESTORED LONG PARLIAMENT, AND THE RESTORATION.

BIOGRAPHY:—MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH RICHARD'S PROTECTORATE, THE ANARCHY, AND MONK'S DICTATORSHIP.

CHAP. I. FIRST SECTION. The Protectorate of Richard Cromwell: Sept. 3, 1858—May 25, 1659.—Proclamation of Richard: Hearty Response from the Country and from Foreign Powers: Funeral of the late Protector: Resolution for a New Parliament.—Difficulties in Prospect: List of the most Conspicuous Props and Assessors of the New Protectorate: Monk's Advice to Richard: Union of the Cromwellians against Charles Stuart: Their Split among themselves into the Court or Dynastic Party and the Army or Wallingford-House Party: Chiefs of the Two Parties: Richard's Preference for the Court Party, and his Speech to the Army Officers: Backing of the Army Party towards Republicanism or Anti-Oliverianism: Henry Cromwell's Letter of Rebuke to Fleetwood: Differences of the Two Parties as to Foreign Policy: The French Alliance and the War with Spain: Relations to the King of Sweden.—Meeting of Richard's Parliament (Jan. 27, 1658-9): The Two Houses: Eminent Members of the Commons: Richard's Opening Speech: Thurloe the Leader for Government in the Commons: Recognition of the Protectorship and of the Other House, and General Triumph of the Government Party: Miscellaneous Proceedings of the Parliament.—Dissatisfaction of the Army Party: Their Closer Connexion with the Republicans: New Convention of Officers at Wallingford-House: Desborough's Speech; The Convention forbidden by the Parliament and dissolved by Richard: Whitehall surrounded by the Army, and Richard compelled to dissolve the Parliament.—Responsible Position of Fleetwood, Desborough, Lambert, and the other Army Chiefs: Bankrupt State of the Finances: Necessity for some kind of Parliament: Phrenzy for "The Good Old Cause" and Demand for the Restoration of the Rump: Acquiescence of the Army Chiefs: Lenthall's Objections: First Fortnight of the Restored Rump: Lingering of Richard in Whitehall: His Enforced Abdication.

CHAP. I. SECOND SECTION. The Anarchy, Stage I.: or The Restored Rump: May 25, 1659-Oct. 13, 1659.—Number of the Restored Rumpers and List of them: Council of State of the Restored Rump: Anomalous Character and Position of the New Government: Momentary Chance of a Civil War between the Cromwellians and the Rumpers: Chance averted by the Acquiescence of the Leading Cromwellians: Behaviour of Richard Cromwell, Monk, Henry Cromwell, Lockhart, and Thurloe, individually: Baulked Cromwellianism becomes Potential Royalism: Energetic Proceedings of the Restored Rump: Their Ecclesiastical Policy and their Foreign Policy: Treaty between France and Spain: Lockhart at the Scene of the Negotiations as Ambassador for the Rump: Remodelling and Reofficering of the Army, Navy, and Militia: Confederacy of Old and New Royalists for a Simultaneous Rising: Actual Rising under Sir George Booth in Cheshire: Lambert sent to quell the Insurrection: Peculiar Intrigues round Monk at Dalkeith: Sir George Booth's Insurrection crushed: Exultation of the Rump and Action taken against the Chief Insurgents and their Associates: Question of the future Constitution of the Commonwealth: Chaos of Opinions and Proposals: James Harrington and his Political Theories: The Harrington or Rota Club: Discontents in the Army: Petition, and Proposals of the Officers of Lambert's Brigade: Severe Notice of the same by the Rump: Petition and Proposals of the General Council of Officers: Resolute Answers of the Rump: Lambert, Desborough, and Seven other Officers, cashiered: Lambert's Retaliation and Stoppage of the Parliament.

CHAP. I. SECOND SECTION (continued). The Anarchy, Stage II.: or The Wallingford-House Interregnum: Oct. 13, 1659-Dec. 26, 1659.—The Wallingford-House Government: Its Committee of Safety: Behaviour of Ludlow and other Leading Republicans: Death of Bradshaw.—Army—Arrangements of the New Government: Fleetwood, Lambert, and Desborough, the Military Chiefs: Declared Championship of the Rump by Monk in Scotland: Negotiations opened with Monk, and Lambert sent north to oppose him: Monk's Mock Treaty with Lambert and the Wallingford-House Government through Commissioners in London: His Preparations meanwhile in Scotland: His Advance from Edinburgh to Berwick: Monk's Army and Lambert's.—Foreign Relations of the Wallingford-House Government: Treaty between France and Spain: Lockhart: Charles II. at Fontarabia: Gradual Improvement of his Chances in England.—Discussions of the Wallingford-House Government as to the future Constitution of the Commonwealth: The Vane Party and the Whitlocke Party in these Discussions: Johnstone of Warriston, the Harringtonians, and Ludlow: Attempted Conclusions.—Monk at Coldstream: Universal Whirl of Opinion in favour of him and the Rump: Utter Discredit of the Wallingford-House Rule in London: Vacillation and Collapse of Fleetwood: The Rump Restored a second time.

CHAP. I. SECOND SECTION (continued). The Anarchy, Stage III.: or Second Restoration of the Rump, with Monk's March from Scotland: Dec. 26, 1659-Feb. 21, 1659.—The Rump after its Second Restoration: New Council of State: Penalties on Vane, Lambert, Desborough, and the other Chiefs of the Wallingford-House Interregnum: Case of Ludlow: New Army Remodelling: Abatement of Republican Fervency among the Rumpers: Dispersion of Lambert's Force in the North: Monk's March from Scotland: Stages and Incidents of the March: His Halt at St. Alban's and Message thence to the Rump: His Nearer View of the Situation: His Entry into London, Feb. 3, 1659-60: His Ambiguous Speech to the Rump, Feb. 6: His Popularity in London: Pamphlets and Letters during his March and on his Arrival: Prynne's pamphlets on behalf of the Secluded Members: Tumult in the City: Tumult suppressed by Monk as Servant of the Rump: His Popularity gone: Blunder retrieved by Monk's Reconciliation with the City and Declaration against the Rump: Roasting of the Rump in London, Feb. 11, 1659-60: Monk Master of the City and of the Rump too; Consultations with the Secluded Members: Bill of the Rump for Enlarging itself by New Elections; Bill set aside by the Reseating of the Secluded Members: Reconstitution of the Long Parliament under Monk's Dictatorship.

CHAP. I. THIRD SECTION. Monk's Dictatorship, the Restored Long Parliament, and the Drift to the Restoration: Feb. 21, 1659-60—April 25, 1660.—The Restored Long Parliament: New Council of State: Active Men of the Parliament: Prynne, Arthur Annesley, and William Morrice: Miscellaneous Proceedings of the Parliament: Release of old Royalist Prisoners: Lambert committed to the Tower: Rewards and Honours for Monk: "Old George" in the City: Revival of the Solemn League and Covenant, the Westminster Confession of Faith, and all the Apparatus of a Strict Presbyterian Church-Establishment: Cautious Measures for a Political Settlement: The Real Question evaded and handed over to another Parliament: Calling of the Convention Parliament and Arrangements for the Same: Difficulty about a House of Lords: How obviated: Last Day of the Long Parliament, March 16, 1659-60: Scene in the House.—Monk and the Council of State left in charge: Annesley the Managing Colleague of Monk: New Militia Act carried out: Discontents among Monk's Officers and Soldiers: The Restoration of Charles still very dubious: Other Hopes and Proposals for the moment: The Kingship privately offered to Monk by the Republicans: Offer declined: Bursting of the Popular Torrent of Royalism at last, and Enthusiastic Demands for the Recall of Charles: Elections to the Convention Parliament going on meanwhile: Haste of hundreds to be foremost in bidding Charles welcome: Admiral Montague and his Fleet in the Thames: Direct Communications at last between Monk and Charles: Greenville the Go-between: Removal of Charles and his Court from Brussels to Breda: Greenville sent back from Breda with a Commission for Monk and Six other Documents.—Broken-spiritedness of the Republican Leaders, but formidable Residue of Republicanism in the Army: Monk's Measures for Paralysing the same: Successful Device of Charges; Montague's Fleet in Motion: Escape of Lambert from the Tower: His Rendezvous in Northamptonshire: Gathering of a Wreck of the Republicans round him: Dick Ingoldsby sent to crush him: The Encounter near Daventry, April 22, 1660, and Recapture of Lambert: Great Review of the London Militia, April 24, the day before the Meeting of the Convention Parliament: Impatient longing for Charles: Monk still impenetrable, and the Documents from Breda reserved.

CHAP. II. FIRST SECTION. Milton's Life and Secretaryship through Richard's Protectorate: Sept. 1658-May 1659.—Milton and Marvell still in the Latin Secretaryship: Milton's first Five State-Letters for Richard (Nos. CXXXIII.-CXXXVII.): New Edition of Milton's Defensio Prima: Remarkable Postscript to that Edition: Six more State-Letters for Richard (Nos. CXXXVIII.-CXLIII.): Milton's Relations to the Conflict of Parties round Richard and in Richard's Parliament: His probable Career but for his Blindness: His continued Cromwellianism in Politics, but with stronger private Reserves, especially on the Question of an Established Church: His Reputation that of a man of the Court-Party among the Protectoratists: His Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes: Account of the Treatise, with Extracts: The Treatise more than a Plea for Religious Toleration: Church-Disestablishment the Fundamental Idea: The Treatise addressed to Richard's Parliament, and chiefly to Vane and the Republicans there: No Effect from it: Milton's Four last State-Letters for Richard (Nos. CXLIV.-CXLVII.): His Private Epistle to Jean Labadie, with Account of that Person: Milton in the month between Richard's Dissolution of his Parliament and his formal Abdication: His Two State-Letters for the Restored Rump (Nos. CXLVIII.-CXLIX.)

CHAP. II. SECOND SECTION. Milton's Life and Secretaryship through the Anarchy: May 1659—Feb. 1659-60.—First Stage of the Anarchy, or The Restored Rump (May—Oct. 1659):—Feelings and Position of Milton in the new State of Things: His Satisfaction on the whole, and the Reasons for it: Letter of Moses Wall to Milton: Renewed Agitation against Tithes and Church Establishment: Votes on that Subject in the Rump: Milton's Considerations touching the Likeliest Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church: Account of the Pamphlet, with Extracts: Its thorough-going Voluntaryism: Church-Disestablishment demanded absolutely, without Compensation for Vested Interests: The Appeal fruitless, and the Subject ignored by the Rump: Dispersion of that Body by Lambert.—Second Stage of the Anarchy, or The Wallingford-House Interruption (Oct.-Dec. 1659):—Milton's Thoughts on Lambert's coup d'etat in his Letter to a Friend concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth: The Letter in the main against Lambert and in Defence of the Rump: Its extraordinary practical Proposal of a Government by two Permanent Central Bodies: The Proposal compared with the actual Administration by the Committee of Safety and the Wallingford-House Council of Officers: Milton still nominally in the Latin Secretaryship: Money Warrant of Oct. 25, 1659, relating to Milton, Marvell, and Eighty-four other Officials: No Trace of actual Service by Milton for the new Committee of Safety: His Meditations through the Treaty between the Wallingford-House Government and Monk in Scotland: His Meditations through the Committee-Discussions as to the future Model of Government; His Interest in this as now the Paramount Question, and his Cognisance of the Models of Harrirgton and the Rota Club: Whitlocke's new Constitution disappointing to Milton: Two more Letters to Oldenburg and Young Ranelagh: Gossip from abroad in connection with these Letters: Morns again, and the Council of French Protestants at Londun: End of the Wallingford-House Interruption.—Third Stage of ike Anarchy, or The Second Restoration of the Rump (Dec. 1659-Feb. 1659-60):—Milton's Despondency at this Period: Abatement of his Faith in the Rump: His Thoughts during the March of Monk from Scotland and after Monk's Arrival in London: His Study of Monk near at hand and Mistrust of the Omens: His Interest for a while in the Question of the Preconstitution of the new Parliament promised by the Rump: His Anxiety that it should be a Republican Parliament by mere Self-enlargement of the Rump: His Preparation of a new Republican Pamphlet: The Publication postponed by Monk's sudden Defection from the Rump, the Roasting of the Rump in the City, and the Restoration of the Secluded Members to their places in the Parliament: Milton's Despondency complete.

CHAP. II. THIRD SECTION. Milton through Monk's Dictatorship: Feb. 1659-60—May 1660.—First Edition of Milton's Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth: Account of the Pamphlet, with Extracts: Vehement Republicanism of the Pamphlet, with its Prophetic Warnings: Peculiar Central Idea of the Pamphlet, viz. the Project of a Grand Council or Parliament to sit in Perpetuity, with a Council of State for its Executive: Passages expounding this Idea: Additional Suggestion of Local and County Councils or Committees: Daring Peroration of the Pamphlet: Milton's Recapitulation of the Substance of it in a short Private Letter to Monk entitled Present Means and Brief Delineation of a Free Commonwealth: Wide Circulation of Milton's Pamphlet: The Response by Monk and the Parliament of the Secluded Members in their Proceedings of the next fortnight: Dissolution of the Parliament after Arrangements for its Successor: Royalist Squib predicting Milton's speedy Acquaintance with the Hangman at Tyburn: Another Squib against Milton, called The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton's Book: Specimens of this Burlesque: Republican Appeal to Monk, called Plain English: Reply to the same, with another attack on Milton: Popular Torrent of Royalism during the forty days of Interval between the Parliament of the Secluded Members and the Convention Parliament (March 16, 1659-60—April 25, 1660): Caution of Monk and the Council of State: Dr. Matthew Griffith and his Royalist Sermon, The Fear of God and the King: Griffith imprisoned for his Sermon, but forward Republicans checked or punished at the same time: Needham discharged from his Editorship and Milton from his Secretaryship: Resoluteness of Milton in his Republicanism: His Brief Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon: Second Edition of his Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth: Remarkable Additions and Enlargements in this Edition: Specimens of these: Milton and Lambert the last Republicans in the field: Roger L'Estrange's Pamphlet against Milton, called No Blind Guides: Larger Attack on Milton by G. S., called The Dignity of Kingship Asserted: Quotations from that Book; Meeting of the Convention Parliament, April 25, 1660: Delivery by Greenville of the Six Royal Letters from Breda, April 28-May 1, and Votes of both Houses for the Recall of Charles: Incidents of the following Week: Mad impatience over the Three Kingdoms for the King's Return: He and his Court at the Hague, preparing for the Voyage home: Panic among the surviving Regicides and other prominent Republicans: Flight of Needham to Holland and Absconding of Milton from his house in Petty France: Last Sight of Milton in that house.

BOOK I.

SEPTEMBER 1654—JUNE 1657.

HISTORY:—OLIVER'S FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED.

BIOGRAPHY:—MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED.

THE LIFE OF JOHN MILTON,

WITH THE

HISTORY OF HIS TIME.

CHAPTER I.

OLIVER'S FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED: SEPT. 3, 1654-JUNE 26, 1657.

Oliver's First Protectorate extended over three years and six months in all, or from December 16, 1653 to June 26, 1657. The first nine months of it, as far as to September 1654, have been already sketched; and what remains divides itself very distinctly into three Sections, as follows:—

Section I:—From Sept. 3, 1654 to Jan. 22, 1654-5. This Section, comprehending four months and a half, may be entitled OLIVER AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENT.

Section II:—From Jan. 22, 1654-5 to Sept. 17, 1656. This Section, comprehending twenty months, may be entitled BETWEEN THE PARLIAMENTS, OR THE TIME OF ARBITRARINESS.

Section III:—From Sept. 17, 1656 to June 26, 1657. This Section, comprehending nine months, may be entitled OLIVER AND THE FIRST SESSION OF HIS SECOND PARLIAMENT.

We map out the present chapter accordingly.

SECTION I.

OLIVER AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENT: SEPT, 3, 1654-JAN. 22, 1654-5.

MEETING OF THE FIRST PARLIAMENT OF THE PROTECTORATE: ITS COMPOSITION: ANTI-OLIVERIANS NUMEROUS IN IT: THEIR FOUR DAYS' DEBATE IN CHALLENGE OF CROMWELL'S POWERS: DEBATE STOPPED BY CROMWELL: HIS SPEECH IN THE PAINTED CHAMBER: SECESSION OF SOME FROM THE PARLIAMENT: ACQUIESCENCE OF THE REST BY ADOPTION OF THE RECOGNITION: SPIRIT AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARLIAMENT STILL MAINLY ANTI-OLIVERIAN: THEIR FOUR MONTHS' WORK IN REVISION OF THE PROTECTORAL CONSTITUTION: CHIEF DEBATES IN THOSE FOUR MONTHS: QUESTION OF THE PROTECTOR'S NEGATIVES: OTHER INCIDENTAL WORK OF THE PARLIAMENT: QUESTION OF RELIGIOUS TOLERATION AND OF THE SUPPRESSION OF HERESIES AND BLASPHEMIES: COMMITTEE AND SUB-COMMITTEE ON THIS SUBJECT: BAXTER'S PARTICIPATION: TENDENCY TO A LIMITED TOLERATION ONLY, AND VOTE AGAINST THE PROTECTOR'S PREROGATIVE OF MORE: CASE OF JOHN RIDDLE, THE SOCINIAN.—INSUFFICIENCY NOW OF OUR FORMER SYNOPSIS OF ENGLISH SECTS AND HERESIES: NEW SECTS AND DENOMINATIONS: THE FIFTH-MONARCHY MEN: THE RANTERS: THE MUGGLETONIANS AND OTHER STRAY FANATICS: BOEHMENISTS AND OTHER MYSTICS: THE QUAKERS OR FRIENDS: ACCOUNT OF GEORGE FOX, AND SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE QUAKERS TO THE YEAR 1654.—POLICY OF THE PARLIAMENT WITH THEIR BILL FOR A NEW CONSTITUTION: PARLIAMENT OUTWITTED BY CROMWELL AND DISSOLVED: NO RESULT.

Before the 3rd of September, 1654, the day fixed by the Constitutional Instrument for the meeting of the First Parliament of the Protectorate, the 460 newly elected members, or the major part of them, had flocked to Westminster. They were a gathering of the most representative men of all the three nations that could be regarded as in any sense adherents of the Commonwealth. All the Council of State, except the Earl of Mulgrave and Lord Lisle, had been returned, some of them by two or three different constituencies. Secretary Thurloe had been returned; Cromwell's two sons, Richard and Henry, had been returned, Henry as member for Cambridge University; several gentlemen holding posts in his Highness's household had been returned. Of the old English peers, there had been returned the Earl of Salisbury, the Earl of Stamford, and Lord Dacres; and of the titular nobility there were Lord Herbert, Lord Eure, Lord Grey of Groby, and the great Fairfax. Among men of Parliamentary fame already were ex-Speaker Lenthall, Whitlocke, Sir Walter Earle, Dennis Bond, Sir Henry Vane Senior, Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Thomas Scott, William Ashurst, Sir James Harrington, John Carew, Robert Wallop, and Sir Thomas Widdrington; and of Army or Navy men, of former Parliamentary experience or not, there were Colonels Whalley, Robert Lilburne, Barkstead, Harvey, Stapley, Purefoy, Admiral Blake, and ex-Major-General Harrison. Some of these had been returned by two constituencies. Bradshaw was a member, with two of the Judges, Hale and Thorpe, and ex-Judge Glynne. Lawyers besides were not wanting; and Dr. Owen, though a divine, represented Oxford University. One missed chiefly, among old names, those of Sir Henry Vane Junior, Henry Marten, Selden, Algernon Sidney, and Ludlow; but there were many new faces. Among the thirty members sent from Scotland were the Earl of Linlithgow, Sir Alexander Wedderburn, Colonel William Lockhart, the Laird of Swinton, and the English Colonels Okey and Read. Ireland had also returned military Englishmen in Major-General Hardress Waller, Colonels Hewson, Sadler, Axtell, Venables, and Jephson, with Lord Broghill, Sir Charles Coote, Sir John Temple, Sir Robert King, and others, describable as Irish or Anglo-Irish.¹

The 3rd of September, selected as Cromwell's "Fortunate Day," chancing to be a Sunday, the Parliament had only a brief meeting with him that day, in the Painted Chamber, after service in the Abbey, and his opening speech was deferred till next day, On Monday, accordingly, it was duly given, but not till after another sermon in the Abbey, preached by Thomas Goodwin, in which Cromwell found much that he liked. It was a political sermon, on "Israel's bringing-out of Egypt, through a Wilderness, by many signs and wonders, towards a Place of Rest,"—Egypt interpreted as old Prelacy and the Stuart role in England, the Wilderness as all the intermediate course of the English Revolution, and the Place of Rest as the Protectorate or what it might lead to. Goodwill seems to have described with special reprobation that latest part of the Wilderness in which the cry had arisen for sheer Levelling in the State and sheer Voluntaryism in the Church; and Cromwell, starting in that key himself, addressed the Parliament, with noble earnestness, in what would now be called a highly "conservative" speech. Glancing back to the Barebones Parliament and beyond, he sketched, the proceedings of himself and the Council and the great successes of the Commonwealth during the intervening eight months and a half, and hopefully committed to the Parliament the further charge of Order and Settlement throughout the three nations, Then he withdrew. That same day they chose Lenthall for their Speaker, and Scobell for their Clerk.¹

Cromwell's hopes were blasted. The political division of the population of the British Islands was now into OLIVERIANS, REPUBLICAN IRRECONCILABLES, PRESBYTERIANS, and STUARTISTS, the two last denominations hardly separable by any clear line, Now, in this new Parliament, though there were many staunch Oliverians, and no avowed Stuartists, the Republican Irreconcilables and the Presbyterians together formed a majority. They needed only to coalesce, and the Parliament called by Oliver's own writs would be an Anti-Oliverian Parliament. And this is what happened.

No sooner was the House constituted, with about 320 members present out of the total 460, than it proposed for its first business what was called "The Matter of the Government"; by which was meant a review of that document of forty-two Articles, called the Government of the Commonwealth, which was the constitutional basis of the Protectorate. On Thursday, Sept. 7, accordingly, they addressed themselves to the vital question of the whole document as propounded in the first of the Articles. "Whether the House shall approve that the Government shall be in one Single Person and a Parliament": such was the debate that day in Grand Committee, after a division on the previous question whether they should go into Committee. On this previous question 136 had voted No, with Sir Charles Wolseley and Mr. Strickland (two of the Council of State) for their tellers, but 141 had voted Yea, with Bradshaw and Colonel Birch for their tellers. In other words, it had been carried by a majority of five that it fell within the province of the House to determine whether the Single-Person element in the Government of the Commonwealth, already introduced somehow as a matter of fact, should be continued. On this subject the House debated through the rest of that sitting, and the whole of the next, and the next, and the next,—i.e. till Monday, Sept 11. Bradshaw, Hasilrig, and Scott took the lead for the Republicans, not that they hoped to unseat Cromwell, but that they wanted to assert the paramount authority of Parliament, and convert the existing Protectorship into a derivative from the House then sitting. Lawrence, Wolseley, Strickland, and others of the Council of State, describable as the ministerial members, maintained the existing constitution of the Protectorate, and pointed out the dangers that would arise from plucking up a good practical basis for mere reasons of theory. Matthew Hale interposed at last with a middle motion, substantially embodying the Republican view, but affirming the Protectorship at once, and reserving qualification. All in all, there was great excitement, much confusion, and an outbreak from some members of very violent language about Cromwell.¹

What might have been the issue had a vote come on can only be guessed. Things were not allowed to go that length. On Tuesday, Sept, 12, the members, going to the House, found the doors locked, soldiers in and around Westminster Hall, and a summons from the Lord Protector to meet him again in the Painted Chamber. Having assembled there, they listened to Cromwell's "Third Speech." It is one of the most powerful of all his speeches. It began with a long review of his life in general and the steps by which he had recently been brought to the Protectorship. It proceeded then to a recitation of what he called "the witnesses" to his Government, or proofs of its validity—the Witness above, or God's manifest Providence in leading him to where he was; the Witness within, or his own consciousness of integrity; and the Witnesses without, or testimonies of confidence he had received from the Army, the Judges, the City of London, other cities, counties and boroughs, and public bodies of all sorts. "I believe," he said, "that, if the learnedest men in this nation were called to show a precedent, equally clear, of a Government so many ways approved of, they would not in all their search, find it." Then, coming to the point, he asked what right the present Parliament had to come after all those witnesses and challenge his authority. Had they not been elected under writs issued by him, in which writs it was expressly inserted, by regulation of Article XII. of the Constitutional Instrument of the Protectorate, "That the persons elected shall not have power to alter the Government as it is hereby settled in one Single Person and a Parliament"? On this point he was very emphatic. "That your judgments, who are persons sent from all parts of the nation under the notion of approving this Government—for you to disown or not to own it; for you to act with Parliamentary authority especially in the disowning of it, contrary to the very fundamental things, yea against the very root of this Establishment; to sit and not own the Authority by which you sit:—is that which I believe astonisheth more men than myself." A revision of the Constitution of the Protectorate in circumstantials he would not object to, but the fundamentals must be left untouched. And let those hearing him be under no mistake as to his own resolution. "The wilful throwing away of this Government, such as it is, so owned of God, so approved by men, so witnessed to in the fundamentals of it as was mentioned above, were a thing which,—and in reference not to my good, but to the good of these Nations and Posterity,—I can sooner be willing to be rolled into my grave, and buried with infamy, than I can give my consent unto." He had therefore called them now that they might come to an understanding. There was a written parchment in the lobby of the Parliament House to which he requested the signatures of such as might see fit. The doors of the Parliament House would then be open for all such, to proceed thenceforth as a free Parliament in all things, subject to the single condition expressed in that parchment. "You have an absolute Legislative Power in all things that can possibly concern the good and interest of the public; and I think you may make these Nations happy by this settlement." With so much great work before them, with the three nations looking on in hope, with foreign nations looking on with wonder or worse feelings, had they not a great responsibility?¹

Bradshaw, Hasilrig, and others, would not sign the document offered them, which was a brief engagement "to be true and faithful to the Lord Protector and the Commonwealth," and not to propose alteration of the Government as "settled in a single Person and a Parliament." The Parliament, therefore, lost these leaders; but within an hour "The Recognition," as it came to be called, was signed by a hundred members, and the number was raised to 140 before the day was over, and ultimately to about 300. And so, with this goodly number, the House went on. But the Anti-Oliverian leaven was still strong in it. This appeared even in the immediate dealings of the House with the Recognition itself. They first (Sept, 14) declared that it should not be construed to comprehend the whole Constitutional Instrument of the Protectorate, but only the main principle of the first Article; and then (Sept. 18) they converted the Recognition into a resolution of their own, requiring all members to sign it, Next, in order to get rid of the stumbling-block of the First Article altogether, they resolved (Sept. 19) that the Supreme Legislative authority was and did reside in "One Person and the People assembled in Parliament," and also (Sept. 20) that Oliver Cromwell was and should he Lord Protector for life, and that there should be Triennial Parliaments. Thus free to advance through the rest of the Forty-two Articles at their leisure, they made that thenceforward almost their sole work. Through the rest of September, the whole of October, and part of November, the business went on in Committee, with the result of a new and more detailed Constitution of the whole Government in sixty Articles instead of the Forty-two. A Bill for enacting this Constitution, passed the first reading on the 22nd of December, and the second on the 23rd; it then went back into Committee for amendments; and in January 1654-5 the House was debating these amendments and others.¹

In the long course of the total debate perhaps the most interesting divisions had been one in Committee on October 16, and one in the House on November 10. In the first the question was whether the Protectorship should be hereditary, and it had been carried by 200 votes to 60 that it should not. This was not strictly an Anti-Oliverian demonstration; for, though Lambert was the mover for a hereditary Protectorship in Cromwell's family, many of the undoubted Oliverians voted in the majority, nor does there seem to be any proof that Lambert had acted by direct authority from Cromwell. More distinctly an Anti-Oliverian vote had been that of Nov. 10, which was on a question of deep interest to Cromwell: viz. the amount of his prerogative in the form of a negative on Bills trenching on fundamentals. In his last speech he had himself indicated these "fundamentals," which ought to be safe against attack even by Parliament—one of them being Liberty of Conscience, another the Control of the Militia as belonging to the Protector in conjunction with the Parliament, and a third the provision, that every Parliament should sit but for a fixed period. In all other matters he was content with a negative for twenty days only; but on bills trenching on these fundamentals he required a negative absolutely. The question had come to the vote in a very subtle form. The motion of the Opposition was that Bills should become Law without the Protector's consent after twenty days, "provided that such Bills contain nothing in them contrary to such matters wherein the Parliament shall think fit to give a negative to the Lord Protector," while the amendment of the Oliverians or Court-party altered the wording into "wherein the Single Person and the Parliament shall declare a negative to be in the Single Person," thus giving Cromwell himself, and not the Parliament only, a right of deciding where a negative should lie. On this question the Oliverians were beaten by 109 votes to 85, and the decision would probably have caused a rupture had not the Opposition conceded a good deal when they went on to settle the matters wherein Parliament would grant the Protector a negative.¹

As we have said, almost the sole occupation of the Parliament was this revision of the flooring on which itself and the Protectorate stood. They did, however, some little pieces of work besides. They undertook a revision of the Ordinances that had been passed by the Protector and his Council, and also of the Acts of the Barebones Parliament; and they proposed Bills of their own to supersede some of these,—especially a new Bill for the Ejection of Scandalous Ministers, and a new Bill for Reform of the Court of Chancery. But of all the incidental work undertaken by this Parliament none seems to have been undertaken with so much gusto as that which consisted in efforts for the suppression of Heresy and Blasphemy. Here was the natural outcome of the Presbyterianism with which the Parliament was charged, and here also the Parliament was very vexatious to the soul of the Lord-Protector.

After all, this portion of the work of the Parliament can hardly be called incidental. It was part and parcel of their main work of revising the Constitution, and it was inter-wrought with the question of Cromwell's negatives. Article XXXVII. of the original Instrument of the Protectorate had guaranteed liberty of worship and of preaching outside the Established Church to "such as profess faith in Jesus Christ," and Cromwell, in his last speech, had noted this as one of the "fundamentals" he was bound to preserve. How did the Parliament meet the difficulty? Very ingeniously. They said that the phrase "such as profess faith in Jesus Christ" was a vague phrase, requiring definition; and, the whole House having formed itself into a Committee for Religion, and this Committee having appointed a working sub-Committee of about fourteen, the sub-Committee was empowered to take steps for coming to a definition. Naturally enough, in such a matter, the sub-Committee wanted clerical advice; and, each member of the sub-Committee having nominated one divine, there was a small Westminster Assembly over again to illuminate Parliament on the dark subject. Dr. Owen and Dr. Goodwin were there, with Nye, Sidrach Simpson, Stephen Marshall, Mr. Vines, Mr. Manton, and others. Mr. Richard Baxter had the honour of being one, having been asked to undertake the duty by Lord Breghill, when the venerable ex-Primate Usher had declined it; and it is from Baxter that we have the fullest account of the proceedings. When he came to town from Kidderminster, he found the rest of the divines already busy in drawing up a list of "fundamentals of faith," the profession of which was to be the necessary title to the toleration promised. Knowing "how ticklish a business the enumeration of fundamentals was," Baxter tried, he says, to stop that method, and suggested that acceptance of the Creed, the Lord's P[r]ayer, and the Decalogue would be a sufficient test. This did not please the others; Baxter almost lost his character for orthodoxy by his proposal; Dr. Owen, in particular, forgetful of his own past, was now bull-mad for the "fundamentals." They were drawn out at last, either sixteen or twenty of them in all, and handed to Parliament through the sub-Committee. Thus illuminated, Parliament, after a debate extending over six days (Dec. 4-15, 1654), discharged its mind fully on the Toleration Question. They resolved that there should certainly be a toleration for tender consciences outside the Established Church, but that it should not extend to "Atheism, Blasphemy, damnable Heresies to be particularly enumerated by this Parliament, Popery, Prelacy, Licentiousness or Profaneness," nor yet to "such as shall preach, print, or avowedly maintain anything contrary to the fundamental principles of Doctrine held forth in the public profession,"—said "fundamental principles" being the "fundamentals" of Dr. Owen and his friends, so far as the House should see fit to pass them. They were already in print, with the Scriptural proofs, for the use of members, and the first of them was passed the same day. It was "That the Holy Scripture is that rule of knowing God, and living unto Him, which whoso does not believe cannot be saved." The others would come in time. Meanwhile it was involved in the Resolution of the House that the Protector himself should have no veto on any Bills for restraining or punishing Atheists, Blasphemers, damnable Heretics, Papists, Prelatists, or deniers of any of the forthcoming Christian fundamentals.¹

As if to show how much in earnest they were on this whole subject, the House had at that moment the notorious Anti-Trinitarian John Biddle in their custody. Since 1644, when he was a schoolmaster in Gloucester, this mild man had been in prison again and again for his opinions, and the wonder was that the Presbyterians had not succeeded in bringing him to the scaffold in 1648 under their tremendous Ordinance of that year. His Socinian books were then known over England and even on the Continent, and he would certainly have been the first capital victim under the Ordinance if the Presbyterians had continued in power. At large since 1651, he had been living rather quietly in London, earning his subsistence as a Greek reader for the press, but also preaching regularly on Sundays to a small Socinian congregation. In accordance with the general policy of the Government since Cromwell had become master, he had been left unmolested. The orthodox had been on the watch, however, and another Socinian book of Biddle's, called A Two-fold Catechism, published in 1654, had given them the opportunity they wanted. For this book Biddle had been arrested on the 12th of December, and he had been brought before the House on his knees and committed to prison on the 13th. The views which the House were then formulating on the Limits of Toleration in the abstract may be said therefore to have been illustrated over Mr. Biddle's body in the concrete. His case came up again on the 15th of January, when the House, after hearing with horror some extracts from his books, ordered them to be burnt by the hangman, and at the same time instructed a Committee to prepare a Bill for punishing him. The punishment, if the Presbyterians could succeed in falling back on their Parliamentary Ordinance of May 1648, was to be death.¹

It was really of very great consequence to the Commonwealth of the Protectorate what theory of Toleration should be adopted into its Constitution, whether the Parliament's or Cromwell's. For the ferment of religious and irreligious speculation of all kinds in the three nations was now something prodigious, and there were widely diffused denominations of dissent and heresy that had not been in existence ten years before, when the Long Parliament and the Westminster Assembly first discussed the Toleration Question. Our synopsis of the English sects and Heresies of 1644 (Vol. III. 143-159) is not, indeed, wholly out of date for 1654, but it would require extensions and modifications to adjust it accurately to the latter year. There had been the natural flux and reflux of ideas during the intervening decade, the waning of some sects and singularities that had no deep root, the interblending of others, and new bursts in the teeming chaos. Atheists, Sceptics, Mortalists or Materialists, Anti-Scripturists, Anti-Trinitarians or Socinians, Arians, Anti-Sabbatarians, Seekers, and Divorcers or Miltonists: all these terms were still in the vocabulary of the orthodox, describing persons or bodies of persons of whose opinions the Civil Magistrate was bound to take account. Sects, on the other hand, that had been on the black list ten years ago had now been admitted to respectability. Baptists or Anabaptists, Antinomians, Brownists, nay even INDEPENDENTS generally, had been regarded in 1644 as dark and dangerous schismatics; but now, save in the private colloquies or controversial tracts of Presbyterians, no feeling of horror attached to those names. INDEPENDENTS, indeed, were now the Lords of the Commonwealth, and Anabaptists and Antinomians were in high places, so that the most orthodox Presbyterians found themselves side by side with them in private gatherings and committees. In the Established Church of the Protectorate there was to be a comprehension of Presbyterians, Independents, and such Baptists and other really Evangelical Sectaries as might be willing; and, accordingly, the question of mere Toleration outside the Established Church no longer concerned the Evangelical sects lying immediately beyond ordinary Independency. If, from objection to the principle of an Establishment, they chose to remain outside, they would have toleration there as a matter of course. To make up, however, for this removal of so many of the old Sectaries from all practical interest in the question on their own account, there were new religious denominations of such strange ways and tendencies, such unknown relations to anything hitherto recognised as Orthodoxy or as Heresy, that the poor Civil Magistrate, or even the coolest Abstract Tolerationist, in contemplating them, might well be puzzled. The following is a list of the chief of these new Sects that had sprung up since 1644:—

FIFTH-MONARCHY MEN:—At first sight this does not appear a new sect, but merely a continuation of the old MILLENARIES or CHILIASTS (Vol. III, pp. 152-153), who believed that the Personal Reign of Christ on Earth for a thousand years was approaching. The change of name, however, indicates greater precision in the belief, and also greater intensity. According to the wild system of Universal Chronology then in vogue, the past History of the World, on this side of the Flood, had consisted of four great successive Empires or Monarchies—the Assyrian, which ended B.C. 531; the Persian, which ended B.C. 331; the Macedonian, or Greek Empire of Alexander, which was made to stretch to B.C. 44; and the Roman, which had begun B.C. 44, with the Accession of Augustus Cæsar, and which had included, though people might not see how, all that had happened on the Earth since then. But this last Monarchy was tottering, and a Fifth Universal Monarchy was at hand. It was that foreshadowed in Rev. xx.: "And I saw an Angel come down from Heaven, having the key of the Bottomless Pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the Dragon, that great serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the Bottomless Pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season. And I saw Thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the worship of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished." This prophecy was the property of all Christians, and might receive different interpretations. The literal interpretation, favoured by some theologians, was that, at some date fast approaching, Christ would reappear visibly on Earth, accompanied by the re-embodied souls of dead saints and martyrs, while the rest of the dead slept on, and that in the glorious reign of Righteousness and the subjugation of all Evil thus begun for a thousand years men then living, or the true saints among them, might partake. This interpretation, though scouted by the more rational theologians, had seized on many of the more fervid English Independents and Sectaries, so that they had begun to see, in the great events of their own time and land, the dazzling edge of the near Millennium. The doctrine had caught the souls of Harrison and other men of action, hitherto classed as Anabaptists or Seekers. Now, so far there was no harm in it, nor could any of the orthodox who rejected it for themselves dare to treat it as one of the heresies to be restrained by the Civil Magistrate. Evidently, however, there was a root of danger. What if the Fifth-Monarchy men should make it part of their faith that the saints could accelerate the Fifth Monarchy, and that it was their duty to do so? Then their tenet might have strange practical effects upon English politics. Already, in the time of the Barebones Parliament, there had been warnings of this, the Fifth-Monarchy men there, or outside the Parliament, having distinguished themselves by an ultra-Republicanism which verged on Communism, and also by their zeal for pure Voluntaryism in Religion and the abolition of a paid Ministry and all express Church machinery. The fact had not escaped Cromwell, and in his speech at the opening of the present Parliament he had taken notice of it. In that very speech he had singled out for remark "the mistaken notion of the Fifth Monarchy." It was a notion, he admitted, held by many good and sincere men; nay it was a notion he honoured and could find a high meaning in. "But for men, on this principle, to betitle themselves that they are the only men to rule kingdoms, govern nations, and give laws to people, and determine of property and liberty and everything else,—upon such a pretension as this: truly they had need to give clear manifestations of God's presence with them, before wise men will receive or submit to their conclusions." If they were notions only, he added, they were best left alone; for "notions will hurt none but those who have them." But, when the notions were turned into practice, and proposals were made for abrogation of Property and Magistracy to smooth the way for the Fifth Monarchy, then one must remember Jude's precept as to the mode of dealing with the errors of good men. "Of some have compassion," Jude had said, "making a difference; others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire."¹

RANTERS:—"These made it their business," says Baxter, "to set up the Light of Nature under the name of Christ in Man, and to dishonour and cry down the Church, the Scripture, and the present Ministry, and our worship and ordinances; and called men to hearken to Christ within them. But withal they conjoined a cursed doctrine of Libertinism, which brought them to all abominable filthiness of life. They taught, as the FAMILISTS, (see Vol. III. p. 152), that God regardeth not the actions of the outward man, but of the heart, and that to the pure all things are pure ... I have seen myself letters written from Abington, where among both soldiers and people this contagion did then prevail, full of horrid oaths and curses and blasphemy, not fit to be repeated by the tongue or pen of man; and this all uttered as the effect of knowledge and a part of their Religion, in a fanatic strain, and fathered on the Spirit of God." The Ranters, in fact, seem to have been ANTINOMIANS (see Vol. III. 151-152) run mad, with touches from FAMILISM and SEEKERISM greatly vulgarized. Of no sect do we hear more in the pamphlets and newspapers between 1650 and 1655, though there are traces of them of earlier date. The pamphlets about them generally take the form of professed accounts of some of their meetings, with reports of their profane discourses and the indecencies with which they were accompanied. There are illustrative wood-cuts in some of the pamphlets; and, on the whole, I fancy that some low printers and booksellers made a trade on the public curiosity about the Ranters, getting up pretended accounts of their meetings as a pretext for prurient publications. There is plenty of testimony, however, besides Baxter's word, that there was a real sect of the name pretty widely spread in low neighbourhoods in towns, and holding meetings. Among Ranters named in the pamphlets I have noticed a T. Shakespeare. "The horrid villainies of the sect," says Baxter, "did not only speedily extinguish it, but also did as much as ever anything did to disgrace all sectaries, and to restore the credit of the ministry and the sober unanimous Christians;" and this, or the transfusion of Ranterism into equivalent phrenzies with other names, may account for the fact that after a while the pamphlets about the Ranters cease or become rare. Clearly, in the main, the regulation of such a sect, so long as it did last, was a matter of police; and the only question is whether there were any tenets mixed up with Ranterism, or held by some roughly called Ranters, that were capable of being dissociated, and that were in fact in some cases dissociated, from offences against public decency. Exact data are deficient, and there were probably varieties of Ranters theologically. Pantheism, or the essential identity of God with the universe, and his indwelling in every creature, angelic, human, brute, or inorganic, seems to have been the belief of most Ranters that could manage to rise to a metaphysics—with which belief was conjoined also a rejection of all essential distinction between good and evil, and a rejection of all Scripture as mere dead letter; but from a so-called "Carol of the Ranters" I infer that Atheism, or at least Mortalism or Materialism (see Vol. III. p. 156-157), had found refuge among some of the varieties. Thus:—

STRAY FANATICS: THE MUGGLETONIANS:—Sometimes confounded with the Ranters, but really distinguishable, were some crazed men, whose crazes had taken a religious turn, and whose extravagances became contagious.—Such was a John Robins, first heard of about 1650, when he went about, sometimes as God Almighty, sometimes as Adam raised from the dead, with the power of raising others from the dead. He had raised Cain and Judas, and other personages of Scripture, forgiving their sins and blessing them; which personages, changed in character, but remembering their former selves quite well, went about in Robins's company and were seen and talked with by various people. He could work miracles, and in dark rooms would exhibit himself surrounded with angels, and fiery serpents, and shining lights, or riding in the air. He had been sent to Bridewell, and his supernatural powers had left him.—One heard next, in 1652, of two associates, called John Reeve and Ludovick Muggleton, who professed to be "the two last Spiritual Witnesses (Rev. xi.) and alone true Prophets of the Lord Jesus Christ, God alone blessed to all eternity." They believed in a real man-shaped God, existing from all eternity, who had come upon earth as Jesus Christ, leaving Moses and Elijah to represent him in Heaven—also in the mortality of the soul till the resurrection of the body; and their chief commission was to denounce and curse all false prophets, and all who did not believe in Reeves and Muggleton. They visited Robins in Bridewell and told him to stop his preaching under pain of eternal damnation; but they favoured some eminent Presbyterian and Independent ministers of London with letters to the same effect. They dated their letters "from Great Trinity Lane, at a Chandler's shop, against one Mr. Millis, a brown baker, near Bow Lane End;" and the editor of Mercurius Politicus, who had received one of their letters so dated, had the curiosity to go to see them, with some friends of his, in the end of August 1653. He found them "at the top of an old house in a cockloft," and made a paragraph of them thus:—"They are said to be a couple of tailors: but only one of them works, and that is Muggleton; the other, they say, writes prophecies. We found two women there whom they had convinced; whom we questioning, they said they believed all. Besides there was an old country plain man of Essex, who said he had been with them twice before; and, being asked whether he were of the same opinion and did believe them, he answered, Truly he could not tell what to say, but he was come to have some discourse with them in private." Two mouths after this interview (Oct. 1653), they were brought before the Lord Mayor and Recorder for their letters to ministers, and sentenced to six months of imprisonment each. But they were to be farther heard of in the world. Muggleton indeed to as late as 1698, when he died at the age of ninety, leaving a sect called THE MUGGLETONIANS, who are perhaps not extinct yet.—Among those who attached themselves to Reeves and Muggleton was a Thomas Tany, who called himself also "Theauro John," and professed to be the Lord's High Priest. They would have nothing to do with him, and put him on their excommunicated list. Whether because this preyed on the poor man's mind or not, he was found in the lobby of the Parliament House on Saturday, Dec. 30. 1654, with a drawn sword, slashing at members, and knocking for admittance. The House, who were then in the midst of their debate on the proper Limits of Toleration, ordered him to be brought to the bar:—"Where," say the journals, "being demanded by Mr. Speaker what his name was, answered' Theeror John'; being asked why he came hither, saith, He fired his tent, and the people were ready to stone him because he burnt the Bible—which he acknowledgeth he did. Saith it is letters, not life. And he drew his sword because the man jostled him at the door. Saith he burnt the Bible because the people say it is the Word of God, and it is not; it deceived him. And saith he burnt the sword and pistols and Bibles because they are the Gods of England. He did it not of himself; and, being asked who bid him do it, saith God.' And thereupon was commanded to withdraw." He was sent into custody immediately.—Stray fanatics like Robins, Reeves, Muggleton, and Theauro John, seem to have been not uncommon through England.¹

BOEHMENISTS AND OTHER MYSTICS:—Of the German Mystic Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) there had been a Life in English since 1644, with a catalogue of his writings, and since then translations of some of the writings themselves had appeared at intervals, mostly from the shop of one publisher, Humphrey Blunden. The interest in "the Teutonical Philosopher" thus excited had at length taken form in a small sect of professed BOEHMENISTS, propounding the doctrine of the Light of Nature, i.e. of a mystic intuitional revelation in the soul itself of all true knowledge of divine and human things. Of this sect Baxter says that they were "fewer in number," and seemed "to have attained to greater meekness and conquest of passions," than the other sects. The chief of them was Dr. Pordage, Rector of Bradfield, in Berks, with his family. They held "visible and sensible communion with angels" in the Rectory, on the very walls and windows of which there appeared miraculous pictures and symbols; and the Doctor himself, besides alarming people with such strange phrases as "the fiery deity of Christ dwelling in the soul and mixing itself with our flesh," was clearly unorthodox on many particular points.¹—Boehme's system included a mystical physics or cosmology as well as a metaphysics or theosophy, and some of his English followers seem to have allied themselves with the famous Astrologer William Lilly, whose prophetic Almanacks, under the title of Merlinus Anglicus, had been appearing annually since 1644. But indeed all sorts of men were in contact with this quack or quack-mystic. He had been consulted by Charles I as to the probable issue of events; he had been consulted and feed by partisans of the other side: his Almanacks, with their hieroglyphics and political predictions, had a boundless popularity, and were bringing him a good income; he was the chief in his day of those fortune-telling and spirit-auguring celebrities who hover all their lives between high society and Bridewell. As he had adhered to the Parliamentarians and made the stars speak for their cause, he had hitherto been pretty safe; but the leading Presbyterian and Independent ministers, as we have seen (ante IV, p. 392), had recently called upon Parliament to put down his bastard science. Gataker had attacked "that grand impostor Mr. William Lilly" in an express publication.²—Is it in a spirit of mischief that Baxter names THE VANISTS, or disciples of Sir Henry Vane the younger, as one of the recognised sects of this time? That great Republican leader, it was known, with all his deep practical astuteness and the perfect clearness and shrewdness of his speeches and business-letters, carried in his head a mystic Metaphysics of his own which he found it hard to express. It was a something unique, including ideas from the Antinomians, the Anabaptists, and the Seekers, he had been so much among, with something also of the Fifth-Monarchy notion, and with the theory of absolute Voluntaryism in Religion, but all these amalgamated with new ingredients. Burnet tells us that, though he had taken pains to find out Vane's meaning in his own books, he could never reach it, and that, as many others had the same experience, it might be reasonable to conclude that Vane had purposely kept back the key to his system. Friends of Vane had told Burnet, however, that "he leaned to Origen's notion of a universal salvation of all, both of devils and the damned, and to the doctrine of pre-existence." Even when Cromwell and Vane had been close friends, calling each other "Fountain" and "Heron" in their private letters. Vane had been in possession of such peculiar lights, or of others, beyond Cromwell's apprehension. "Brother Fountain can guess at his brother's meaning," he had written to Cromwell in Scotland August 2, 1651, with reference to some troublesome on-goings in the Council of State during Cromwell's absence, begging him not to believe ill-natured reports about "Brother Heron" in connexion with them, and adding, "Be assured he answers your heart's desire in all things, except he be esteemed even by you in principles too high to fathom; which one day, I am persuaded, will not be so thought by you, when, by increasing with the increasings of God, you shall be brought to that sight and enjoyment of God in Christ which passes knowledge." If this to Cromwell, what to others? Three years had passed, and Vane was now in compulsory retirement. His Retired Man's Meditations had not yet been published. Such Vanists, therefore, as there were in 1654 must have imbibed their knowledge of them from Sir Henry's conversation or indirectly. Among these Baxter mentions Peter Sterry, one of Cromwell's favourite preachers, and afterwards known as a mystic on his own account. Of Sterry's preaching, already notoriously obscure, Sir Benjamin Rudyard had said that "it was too high for this world and too low for the other," and Baxter puns on the association of Vane and Sterry, asking whether Vanity and Sterility had ever been more happily conjoined. But the sect of the VANISTS existed perhaps mainly in Baxter's fancy.³

QUAKERS OR FRIENDS:—Who can think of the appearance of this sect in English History without doing what the sect itself would forbid, and reverently raising the hat? And yet in 1654 this was the very sect of sects. It was about the Quakers that there had begun to be the most violent excitement among the guardians of social order throughout the British Islands.—It was then six or seven years since they had first been heard of in any distinct way, and four since they had received the name QUAKERS. A Derbyshire Justice of the Peace, it is said, first invented that name for them, because they seemed to be fond of the text Jer. v. 22, and had offended him by addressing it to himself and a brother magistrate: "Fear ye not me? saith the Lord; will ye not tremble at my presence?" But Robert Barclay's account of the origin of the name in his Apology for the Quakers (1675) is probably more correct, though not inconsistent. He says it arose from the fact that, in the early meetings of "The Children of the Light," as they first called themselves, violent physical agitations were not unfrequent, and conversions were often signalized by that accompaniment. There was often an "inward travail" in some one present; "and from this inward travail, while the darkness seeks to obscure the light, and the light breaks through the darkness, which it will always do if the soul gives not its strength to the darkness, there will be such a painful travail found in the soul that will even work upon the outward man, so that often-times, through the working thereof, the body will be greatly shaken, and many groans and sighs and tears, even as the pangs of a woman in travail, will lay hold of it: yea, and this not only as to one, but ... sometimes the power of God will break forth into a whole meeting, and there will be such an inward travail, while each is seeking to overcome the evil in themselves, that by the strong contrary workings of these opposite powers, like the going of two contrary tides, every individual will be strongly exercised as in a day of battle, and thereby trembling and a motion of body will be upon most, if not upon all, which, as the power of Truth prevails, will from pangs and groans end with a sweet sound of thanksgiving and praise. And from this the name of Quakers, i.e. Tremblers, was first reproachfully cast upon us; which though it be none of our choosing, yet in this respect we are not ashamed of it, but have rather reason to rejoice therefore, even that we are sensible of this power that hath oftentimes laid hold of our adversaries, and made them yield to us, and join with us, and confess to the Truth, before they had any distinct and discursive knowledge of our doctrines."—The Quakers, then, according to this eminent Apologist for them, had, from the first, definite doctrines, which might be distinctly and discursively known. What were they? They hardly amounted to any express revolution of existing Theology. In no essential respect did any of their recognised representatives impugn any of the doctrines of Christianity as professed by other fervid Evangelical sects. The Trinity, the Divinity of Christ, the natural sinfulness of men, propitiation by Christ alone, sanctification by the Holy Spirit, the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures—in these, and in other cardinal tenets, they were at one with the main body of their contemporary Christians. Though it was customary for a time to confound them with the Ranters, they themselves repudiated the connexion, and opposed the Ranters and their libertinism wherever they met them. Wherein then lay the distinctive peculiarity of the Quakers? It has been usual to say that it consisted in their doctrine of the universality of the gift of the Spirit, and of the constant inner light, and motion, and teaching of the Spirit in the soul of each individual believer. This is not sufficient. That doctrine they shared substantially with various other sects,—certainly with the Boehmenists and other Continental Mystics, not to speak of the English Antinomians and Seekers. Nay, in their first great practical application of the doctrine they had been largely anticipated. If the inner motion or manifestation of the Spirit in each mind, in interpretation of the Bible or over and above the Bible, is the sole true teaching of the Gospel, and if the manifestation cometh as the Spirit listeth, and cannot be commanded, a regular Ministry of the Word by a so-called Clergy is an absurdity, and a hired Ministry an abomination! So said the Quakers. In reaching this conclusion, however, they had only added themselves to masses of people, known as Brownists, Seekers, and Anabaptists, who had already, by the same route or by others, advanced to the standing-ground of absolute Voluntaryism. What did distinguish the early Quakers seems to have been, in the first place, the thorough form of their apprehension of that doctrine of the Inner Light, or Immediate Revelation of the Spirit, which they held in common with other sects, and, in the second place, their courage and tenacity in carrying out the practical inferences from that doctrine in every sentence of their own speech and every hour of their own conduct. As to the form in which they held the doctrine itself Barclay will be again our best authority. "The testimony of the Spirit," he says, "is that alone by which the true knowledge of God hath been, is, and can only be, revealed; who, as by the moving of his own Spirit he converted the Chaos of this world into that wonderful Order wherein it was in the beginning, and created Man a living Soul to rule and govern it, so by the same Spirit he hath manifested himself all along unto the sons of men, both Patriarchs, Prophets, and Apostles: which revelations of God by the Spirit, whether by outward voices and appearances, dreams, or inward objective manifestations in the heart, were of old the formal object of their faith and remain yet so to be,—since the object of the Saints' faith is the same in all ages, though set forth under divers administrations." This Inner Light of the Spirit, seizing men and women at all times and places, and illuminating them in the knowledge of God, was, Barclay elsewhere explains, something altogether supernatural, something totally distinct from natural Reason. "That Man, as he is a rational creature, hath Reason as a natural faculty of his soul, we deny not; for this is a property natural and essential to him, by which he can know and learn many arts and sciences, beyond what any other animal can do by the mere animal principle. Neither do we deny that by this rational principle Man may apprehend in his brain, and in the notion, a knowledge of God and spiritual things; yet, that not being the right organ, ... it cannot profit him towards salvation, but rather hindereth." And what of the use and value of the Scriptures? "From these revelations of the Spirit of God to the saints have proceeded the Scriptures of Truth, which contain (1) A faithful historical account of the actings of God's people in divers ages, with many singular and remarkable providences attending them; (2) A prophetical account of several things, whereof some are already past and some yet to come; (3) A full and ample account of all the chief principles of the doctrine of Christ ... Nevertheless, because they are only a declaration of the fountain, and not the fountain itself, therefore they are not to be esteemed the principal ground of all Truth and Knowledge, nor yet the adequate primary rule of faith and manners. Nevertheless, as that which giveth a true and faithful testimony of the first foundation, they are and may be esteemed a secondary rule, subordinate to the Spirit, from which they have all their excellency and certainty." So much for the form of the central principle of Early Quakerism, so far as it can be expressed logically. But it was in the resolute application of the principle in practice that the Early Quakers made themselves conspicuous. They were not Speculative Voluntaries, waiting for the abolition of the National Church, and paying tithes meanwhile. They were Separatists who would at once and in every way assert their Separatism. They would pay no tithes; they called every church "a steeple-house"; and they regarded every parson as the hired performer in one of the steeple-houses. Then, in their own meetings for mutual edification and worship, all their customs were in accordance with their main principle. They had no fixed articles of congregational creed, no prescribed forms of prayer, no ordinance of baptism or of sacramental communion, no religious ceremony in sanction of marriage, and no paid or appointed preachers. The ministry was to be as the spirit moved; all equally might speak or be silent, poor as well as rich, unlearned as well as learned, women as well as men; if special teachers did spring up amongst them, it should not be professionally, or to earn a salary. Yet, with all this liberty among themselves, what unanimity in the moral purport of their teachings! Their restless dissatisfaction with the Established Church and with all known varieties of Dissent, their passion for a full reception of Christ at the fountain-head, their searchings of the Scriptures, their private raptures and meditations, their prayers and consultations in public, had resulted in a simple re-issue of the Christianity of the Sermon on the Mount. Quakerism, in its kernel, was but the revived Christian morality of meekness, piety, benevolence, purity, truthfulness, peacefulness, and passivity. There were to be no oaths: Yea or Nay was to be enough. There were to be no ceremonies of honour or courtesy-titles among men: the hat was to be taken off to no one, and all were to be addressed in the singular, as Thou and Thee. War and physical violence were unlawful, and therefore all fighting and the trade of a soldier. Injuries to oneself were to be borne with patience, but there was to be the most active energy in relieving the sufferings of others, and in seeking out suffering where it lurked. The sick and those in prison were to be visited, the insane and the outcast; and the wrongs and cruelties of law, whether in death-sentences for mere offences against property, or in brutal methods of prison-treatment, were to be exposed and condemned. For the rest, the Friends were to walk industriously and domestically through the world, honest in their dealings, wearing a plain Puritan garb, and avoiding all vanities and gaieties.—Had it been possible for such a sect to come into existence by mere natural growth, or the unconcerted association of like-minded persons in all parts of the country at once, even then, one can see, there would have been irritation between it and the rest of the community. The refusal to pay tithes, the refusal of oaths in Courts of Law or anywhere else, the objection to war and to the trade of a soldier, the Theeing and Thouing of all indiscriminately, the keeping of the hat on in any presence, would have occasioned constant feud between any little nucleus of Quakers and the society round about it. But the sect had not formed itself by any such quiet process of simultaneous grouping among people who had somehow imbibed its tenets. It had come into being, and in fact had shaped its tenets and become aware of them, through a previous fervour of itinerant Propagandism such as had hardly been known since the first Apostles and Christian missionaries had walked among the heathen. The first Quaker, the man in whose dreamings by himself, aided by scanty readings, the principles of the sect had been evolved, and in whose conduct by himself for a year or two the sect had practically originated, was the good, blunt, obstinate, opaque-brained, ecstatic, Leicestershire shoemaker, George Fox, the Boehme of England. From the year 1646, when he was two and twenty years of age, the life of Fox had been an incessant tramp through the towns and villages of the Midlands and the North, with preachings in barns, in inns, in market-places, outside courts of justice, and often inside the steeple-houses themselves, by way of interruption of the regular ministers, or correction of their doctrine after the hours of regular service. Extraordinary excitements had attended him everywhere, paroxysms of delight in him with tears and tremblings, outbreaks of rage against him with hootings and stonings. Again and again he had been brought before justices and magistrates, to whose presence indeed he naturally tended of his own accord for the purpose of lecturing them on their duties, and to whom he was always writing Biblical letters. He had been beaten and put in the stocks; he had been in Derby jail and in several other prisons, charged with riot or blasphemy; and in these prisons he had found work to his mind and had sometimes converted his jailors. And so, by the year 1654, "the man with the leather breeches," as he was called, had become a celebrity throughout England, with scattered converts and adherents everywhere, but voted a pest and terror by the public authorities, the regular steeple-house clergy whether Presbyterian or Independent, and the appointed preachers of all the old sects. By this time, however, he was by no means the sole preacher of Quakerism. Every now and then from among his converts there had started up one fitted to assist him in the work of itinerant propagandism, and the number of such had increased in 1654 to about sixty in all. Richard Farnsworth, James Nayler, William Dewsbury, Thomas Aldam, John Audland, Francis Howgill, Edward Burrough, Thomas Taylor, John Camm, Richard Hubberthorn, Miles Halhead, James Parnel, Thomas Briggs, Robert Widders, George Whitehead, Thomas Holmes, James Lancaster, Alexander Parker, William Caton, and John Stubbs, of the one sex, with Elizabeth Hooton, Anna Downer, Elizabeth Heavens, Elizabeth Fletcher, Barbara Blaugden, Catherine Evans, and Sarah Cheevers, of the other sex, were among the chief of these early Quaker preachers after Fox. They had carried the doctrines into every part of England, and also into Scotland and Ireland; some of them had even been moved to go to the Continent. Wherever they went there was the same disturbance round them as round Fox himself, and they had the same hard treatment—imprisonment, duckings, whippings. It is necessary that the reader should remember that in 1654 Quakerism was still in this first stage of its diffusion by a vehement propagandism carried on by some sixty itinerant preachers at war with established habits and customs, and had not settled down into mere individual Quietism, with associations of those who had been converted to its principles, and could be content with their own local meetings. In the chief centres, indeed, there were now fixed meetings for the resident Quakers, the main meeting place for London being the Bull and Mouth in St. Martin's-le-Grand; but Fox and most of his coadjutors were still wandering about the country.—There was already an extensive literature of Quakerism, consisting of printed letters and tracts by Fox himself, Farnsworth, Nayler, Dewsbury, Howgill, and others, and of invectives against the Quakers and their principles by Presbyterians and Independents; and some of the letters of the Quakers had been directly addressed to Cromwell. There had also, some time in 1654, been one interview between the Lord Protector and Fox. Colonel Hacker, having arrested Fox in Leicestershire, had sent him up to London. Brought to Whitehall, one morning early, when the Lord Protector was dressing, he had said, on entering, "Peace be on this House!" and had then discoursed to the Protector at some length, the Protector kindly listening, occasionally putting a question, and several times acknowledging a remark of George's by saying it was "very good," and "the truth." At parting, the Protector had taken hold of his hand, and, with tears in his eyes, said "Come again to my house! If thou and I were but an hour of the day together, we should be nearer one to another. I wish no more harm to thee than I do to my own soul." Outside, the captain on guard, informing George that he was free, had wanted him, by the Protector's orders, to stay and dine with the household; but George had stoutly declined.¹

Such were the more recent sects and heresies for which, as well as for those older and more familiar, the First Parliament of the Protectorate had been, with the help of Dr. Owen and his brother-divines, preparing a strait-jacket. Of that Parliament, however, and of all its belongings, the Commonwealth was to be rid sooner than had been expected.

It had been the astute policy of the Parliament to concentrate all their attention upon the new Constitution for the Protectorate, and to neglect and postpone other business until the Bill of the Constitution had been pushed through and presented to Cromwell for his assent. In particular they had postponed, as much as possible, all supplies for Army and Navy and for carrying on the Government. By this, as they thought, they retained Cromwell in their grasp. By the instrument under which they had been called, he could not dissolve them till they had sat five months,—which, by ordinary counting from Sept. 3, 1654, made them safe till Feb. 3, 1654-5. But, if they could contrive that it should be Cromwell's interest not to dissolve them then, there was no reason why they should not sit on a good while longer, perhaps even till near Oct. 1656, the time they had themselves fixed for the meeting of the next Parliament. To postpone supplies, therefore, till after the general Bill of the Constitution in all its sixty Articles should have received Cromwell's assent, to wrap up present supplies and the hope of future supplies as much as possible in the Bill itself, was the plan of the Anti-Oliverians. The Bill, it will be remembered, had passed the second reading on Dec. 23, had then gone into Committee for amendments, and had come back to the House with these amendments. On the 10th of January, 1654-5, when the Bill was almost ready to be engrossed, it was moved by the Oliverians that there should be a conference about it with the Protector; but the motion was lost by 107 votes to 95. Among various subsequent divisions was one on the 16th on the question whether the Bill should become Law even if the Lord Protector should refuse his assent, and the Anti-Oliverians negatived the putting of the question by eighty-six votes to fifty-five. The next day, after another division, it was resolved thus: "That this Bill entitled An Act Declaring and Settling the Government of the Commonwealth, &c., be engrossed in order to its presentment to the Lord Protector for his consideration and assent," and that, if "the Lord Protector and the Parliament shall not agree thereunto and to every Article thereof, then the Bill shall be void and of none effect." Cromwell having thus been shut up to accept all or none, the Bill passed the third and conclusive reading on Friday, Jan. 19. Then all depended on Cromwell, who would have twenty days to make up his mind. He had made up his mind already, and did not mean to wait for the parchment. The Bill included provisions striking, as he conceived, at the root of his Protectorate, e.g. one for depriving him and the Council of State of that power of interim legislation which they had hitherto exercised with so much effect, and others withholding the negative he thought his due on future Bills affecting fundamentals. He was, besides, wholly disgusted with the spirit and conduct of the Parliament. Accordingly, having bethought himself that, in the payment of the soldiers and sailors, a month was construed as twenty-eight days only, he let the Saturday and Sunday after the third reading of the Bill pass quietly by, and then, on Monday the 22nd, having summoned the House to meet him in the Painted Chamber, addressed them in what counts as the Fourth of his Speeches, told them their time was up that day, and dissolved them. Their Constitutional Bill of Sixty Articles disappeared with them; and they had not, in all the five months, sent up a single Bill to Cromwell for his assent.¹

SECTION II.

BETWEEN THE PARLIAMENTS, OR THE TIME OF ARBITRARINESS: JAN. 22, 1654-55—SEPT. 17, 1656.

AVOWED "ARBITRARINESS" OF THIS STAGE OF THE PROTECTORATE, AND REASONS FOR IT.—FIRST MEETING OF CROMWELL AND HIS COUNCIL AFTER THE DISSOLUTION: MAJOR-GENERAL OVERTON IN CUSTODY: OTHER ARRESTS: SUPPRESSION OF A WIDE REPUBLICAN CONSPIRACY AND OF ROYALIST RISINGS IN YORKSHIRE AND THE WEST: REVENUE ORDINANCE AND MR. CONY'S OPPOSITION AT LAW: DEFERENCE OF FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS: BLAKE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN: MASSACRE OF THE PIEDMONTESE PROTESTANTS: DETAILS OF THE STORY AND OF CROMWELL'S PROCEEDINGS IN CONSEQUENCE: PENN IN THE SPANISH WEST INDIES: HIS REPULSE FROM HISPANIOLA AND LANDING IN JAMAICA: DECLARATION OF WAR WITH SPAIN AND ALLIANCE WITH FRANCE: SCHEME OF THE GOVERNMENT OF ENGLAND BY MAJOR-GENERALS: LIST OF THEM AND SUMMARY OF THEIR POLICE-SYSTEM: DECIMATION TAX ON THE ROYALISTS, AND OTHER MEASURES IN TERROREM: CONSOLIDATION OF THE LONDON NEWSPAPER PRESS: PROCEEDINGS OF THE COMMISSION OF EJECTORS AND OF THE COMMISSION OF TRIERS: VIEW OF CROMWELL'S ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF ENGLAND, WITH ENUMERATION OF ITS VARIOUS COMPONENTS: EXTENT OF TOLERATION OUTSIDE THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH: THE PROTECTOR'S TREATMENT OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICS, THE EPISCOPALIANS, THE ANTI-TRINITARIANS, THE QUAKERS, AND THE JEWS: STATE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES AND SCHOOLS UNDER THE PROTECTORATE: CROMWELL'S PATRONAGE OF LEARNING: LIST OF ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS ALIVE IN 1656, AND ACCOUNT OF THEIR DIVERSE RELATIONS TO CROMWELL: POETICAL PANEGYRICS ON HIM AND HIS PROTECTORATE.—NEW ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF SCOTLAND: LORD BROGHILL'S PRESIDENCY THERE FOR CROMWELL: GENERAL STATE OF THE COUNTRY: CONTINUED STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE RESOLUTIONERS AND THE PROTESTERS FOR KIRK-SUPREMACY: INDEPENDENCY AND QUAKERISM IN SCOTLAND: MORE EXTREME ANOMALIES THERE: STORY OF "JOCK OF BROAD SCOTLAND": BRISK INTERCOURSE BETWEEN SCOTLAND AND LONDON: MISSION OF MR. JAMES SHARP.—IRELAND FROM 1654 TO 1656.—GLIMPSE OF THE COLONIES.

This long stretch of twenty months was to be another period of the government of the Commonwealth by the Lord Protector and the Council of State on their own responsibility and without a Parliament. In the circumstances in which the late Parliament had left them, without supplies and without a single concluded and authoritative enactment, they could only fall back on the original Instrument of the Protectorate, amending its defects by their own ingenuity as exigencies occurred, with a suggestion now and then snatched, for the sake of quasi-Parliamentary countenance, from the wreck of the late Constitutional Bill. Hence a character of "arbitrariness" in Cromwell's government throughout this period greater perhaps than in any other of his whole Protectorate. For that, however, he was prepared. At the first meeting of the Council after the Dissolution of Parliament (Tuesday, Jan. 23, 1654-5) there were present, I find, His Highness himself, and thirteen out of the eighteen Councillors, viz.: Lord President Lawrence, the Earl of Mulgrave, Viscount Lisle, Lambert, Desborough, Fiennes, Montague, Sydenham, Strickland, Sir Charles Wolseley, Skippon, Jones, and Rous; and it was then "ordered by his Highness and the Council that Friday next be set apart for their seeking of God, and that Mr. Lockyer, Mr. Caryl, Mr. Denn, and Mr. Sterry, be desired then to give their assistance." In entering on the new period of their Government, the Protector and the Council thought a day of special prayer very fitting.¹

In the Dissolution Speech Cromwell, rebuking the Parliament for their inattention to what he considered their real duty, had compared them to a tree under the shadow of which there had been a too thriving growth of other vegetation. Interpreting the parable, he had explained to them that there was at that moment a new and very complex conspiracy against the Commonwealth, that the Levellers at home had been in correspondence with the Cavaliers abroad, that their plans were laid and their manifestos ready, that commissioners from Charles Stuart had arrived and stores of arms and money had been collected, and also (worst of all) that there had been tamperings with the Army by Commonwealth men of higher note than the mere Levellers. He did not believe, he said, that any then in Parliament were in the Cavalier interest in the connexion, but he was not sure that they were all perfectly clear of the connexion on all its sides. At all events, he knew that their policy of starving the Army had given the enemy their best opportunity. Fortunately, he had already some of the chief home-conspirators in custody, and the Cavalier part of the plot might explode when it liked.¹

The chief of those in custody when Cromwell spoke was the Republican Major-General Overton. He had been under suspicion before, as we have seen, but had cleared himself sufficiently to Cromwell, and had been sent back to Scotland as second in command to Monk (Sept. 1654). Since then, however, he had relapsed into the Anti-Oliverian mood, and had become, it was believed, the head of the numerous Anti-Oliverians or Republicans in Monk's Army, The proposal was to seize Monk, make Overton the commander-in-chief, and march into England, But, information having been received in time, there had been the necessary arrests of the guilty officers (Dec. 1654). Most of them had been kept in Edinburgh to be dealt with by Monk; but the chiefs had been sent at once to London, and among them Overton, whose arrest had taken place at Aberdeen. He was committed to the Tower Jan. 16, 1654-5. The clue having thus been furnished, further investigation had disclosed more. In concert with the Anti-Oliverian movement in the Army of Scotland, and depending on that movement for help, there had been plottings in England, in which Harrison, Colonel Okey, Colonel Alured, Colonel Sexby, Adjutant-General Allen, Admiral Lawson, Major John Wildman, Lord Grey of Groby, Carew, and even Bradshaw, Hasilrig, and Henry Marten, were, or were said to be, more or less involved. The aim seems to have been a combination of the Anabaptist Levellers with the more eminent Republicans,—the Levellers, or some of them, quite willing to combine also with the Royalists, and indeed in confidential negotiation with them. How the scheme, or medley of schemes, would have turned out in the working, was never to be known. It was frustrated by the arrest, in January and February, of most of the suspected. The most important arrest was that of Major Wildman, the undoubted chief of the Levelling section of the conspiracy. When arrested in Wiltshire, he was found in the act of dictating a "Declaration of the Free and Well-affected People of England now in arms against the tyrant Oliver Cromwell, Esq." He was imprisoned in Chepstow Castle. Sexby, the most active man after Wildman in the Levelling or Anabaptist section of the conspiracy, escaped and went abroad. Adjutant-General Allen, and others less deeply implicated, were dismissed from their posts in the Army. Harrison was confined in the Isle of Portland, Carew in St. Mawes, in Cornwall, and Lord Grey of Groby in Windsor Castle. None of all the Republicans, higher or lower, it was remarked, suffered any punishment beyond such seclusion or dismissal from the service. Clemency on that side was always Cromwell's policy.¹

Much sharper was Cromwell's method of dealing with the attempted invasion and insurrection of the Royalists independently. Hopes had risen high at the Court of the Stuarts, and the preparations had been extensive. Charles himself had gone to Middleburg, with the Marquis of Ormond and others, to be ready for a landing in England; Hull had been thought of as the likeliest landing-place; commissioned pioneers of the enterprise were already moving about in various English counties. Of all this Thurloe had procured sufficient intelligence through his foreign spies, and the precautions of the Protector and Council had been commensurate. The projected Overton revolt in Scotland and the Wildman-Sexby plot in England having been brought to nothing, the Royalists had to act for themselves. Two abortive risings in March, 1654-5, exhausted their energy. One was in Yorkshire, where Sir Henry Slingsby and Sir Richard Malevrier appeared in arms, but were immediately suppressed. The other was in the West, and was more serious. On the night of Sunday, the 11th of March, a body of 200 Cavaliers, headed by Sir Joseph Wagstaff, one of Charles's emissaries from abroad, took possession of the city of Salisbury, The assizes were to be held in the city the next day, and Chief Justice Rolle, Judge Nicholas, and the High Sheriff, had arrived and were in their beds. They were seized; and next morning Wagstaff issued orders for hanging them, but was stopped in the act by the remonstrances of Colonel John Penruddock and others. From Salisbury, finding no encouragement among the citizens, the insurgents moved westward till they reached South Molton in Devonshire, where they were overtaken on the night of Wednesday, March 14, by Captain Unton Crook. There was a brief street-fight, ending in the defeat of the Royalists, and the capture of Penruddock and about fifty more. Wagstaff escaped. Of the contemporary insurgents in the north there had meanwhile escaped Malevrier and also Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, who had come from abroad to head the Royalist insurrection generally, had gone to the north, but had not awaited the actual upshot. He lay concealed in London for a time, and got to Cologne at last. In the trials which ensued those who suffered capitally were Penruddock, beheaded at Exeter, a Captain Hugh Grove and several others at other places in the West, and two or three at York. Many of the inferior culprits, capitally convicted, had their lives spared, but were sent in servitude to Barbadoes.¹

Revenue had been one of the first cares of the Protector and Council in resuming power after the Dissolution. By a former ordinance of theirs of June 1654 (Vol. IV. p. 562), the assessment for the Army and Navy had been renewed for three months at the rate of £120,000 per month, and for the next three months at the lowered rate of £90,000 per month. This ordinance had expired at Christmas 1654; and, though the Parliament had then passed a Bill for extending the assessment for three months more at £60,000 per month, the Bill had never been presented to Cromwell for his assent. On the 8th of February, 1654-5, therefore, a new Ordinance by his Highness and Council fixed the assessment for a certain term at £60,000 per month. This acceptance of the reduction proposed by the Parliament gave general satisfaction; and there is evidence that at this time Cromwell and the Council let themselves be driven to various shifts of economy rather than overstrain their power of ordinance-making in the unpopular particular of supplies. But, indeed, it was on the question of the validity of this power generally, all-essential as it was, that they encountered their greatest difficulties. A merchant named Cony did more to wreck the Protectorate by a suit at law than did the Cavaliers by their armed insurrection. Having refused to pay custom duty because it was levied only by an ordinance of the Lord Protector and Council of March, 1654, and not by authority of Parliament, he had been fined £500 by the Commissioners of Customs, and had been committed to prison for non-payment. On a motion for a writ of habeas corpus his case came on for trial in May 1655. Maynard and two other eminent lawyers who were his counsel pleaded so effectively that they were committed to the Tower for what was called language destructive to the Government. Cony himself then went on with the pleading, and so sturdily that Chief Justice Rolle was non-plussed, and had to confess as much to Cromwell. It was only by delay, and then by some private management of Cony, that a decision was avoided which would have enabled the whole population legally to defy every taxing ordinance of the Protectorate. Similarly the Ordinance of August 1654 for regulating the Court of Chancery, and even the Ordinance of Treason under which the late insurgents had been tried, had brought the Protectorate into collision with the consciences of Lawyers and Judges. There were such remonstrances to Cromwell on the subject that he had to re-arrange the whole Bench. He removed Rolle and two other Judges, appointing Glynne and Steele in their stead, and he deprived Whitlocke and Widdrington of their Commissionerships of the Great Seal, compensating them after a while by Commissionerships of the Treasury. For all this "arbitrariness" Cromwell avowed, in the simplest and most downright manner, the plea of absolute necessity. The very existence of his Protectorate was at peril; and that meant, he declared, the existence of the Commonwealth.¹

For such "arbitrariness" in some of the Protector's home-proceedings there was, most people allowed, a splendid atonement in the marvels of his foreign policy. Never had there been on the throne of England a sovereign more bent upon making England the champion-nation of the world. The deference, the sycophancy, of foreign princes and potentates to him, and the proofs of the same in letters and embassies, and in presents of hawks and horses, had become a theme for jests and caricatures among foreigners themselves. Parliaments might come and go in Westminster; but there sat Cromwell, immoveable through all, the impersonation of the British Islands. His dissolution of the late Parliament, and his easy suppression of the subsequent tumult, had but increased the respect for him abroad. Whether he would finally declare himself for Spain or for France was still the momentous question. The Marquis of Leyda, Spanish Governor of Dunkirk, had come to London to assist Cardenas in the negotiations for Spain; but Mazarin was indefatigable in his offers, through M. de Bordeaux and otherwise.¹

While the Parliament was still sitting, Cromwell had sent out two fleets, one under the command of Blake (Oct. 1654), the other under that of Penn (Dec. 1654). There was the utmost secrecy as to the destination and objects of both, but the mystery did not last long about Blake's. He had received instructions to go into the Mediterranean, make calls there on all powers against which the Commonwealth had claims, and bring them to account. Blake fulfilled his mission with his usual precision and success. His first call of any importance was on the Grand Duke of Tuscany, formerly so much in the good graces of the Commonwealth (Vol. IV. pp. 483-485), but whom Cromwell, after looking more into matters, had found culpable. Blake's demands were for heavy money-damages on account of English ships taken by Prince Rupert in 1650, and sold in Tuscan ports, and also on account of English ships ordered out of Leghorn harbour in March 1653, so that they fell into the hands of the Dutch. There was the utmost consternation among the Tuscans, and the alarm extended even to Rome, inasmuch as some of Rupert's prizes had been sold in the Papal States. A disembarcation of the English heretics and even their march to Rome did not seem impossible; and Tuscans and Romans were greatly relieved when the Grand Duke paid £60,000 and the Pope 20,000 pistoles (£14,000), and Blake retired. His next call was at Tunis, where there were accounts with the Dey. That Mussulman having pointed to his forts, and dared Blake to do his worst, there was a tremendous bombardment on the 3rd of April, 1655, reducing the forts to ruins, followed by the burning of the Dey's entire war-squadron of nine ships. This sufficed not only for Tunis, but also for Tripoli and Algiers. All the Moorish powers of the African coast gave up their English captives, and engaged that there should be no more piracy upon English vessels. Malta, Venice, Toulon, Marseilles, and various Spanish ports were then visited for one reason or another; and in the autumn of 1655 Blake was still in the Mediterranean for ulterior purposes, understood between him and Cromwell.¹

While Blake was in the Mediterranean, one Italian potentate did a sudden act of infamy, which resounded through Europe, and for which Cromwell would fain have clutched him by the throat in his own inland capital. This was Carlo Emanuele II., Duke of Savoy and Prince of Piedmont.

In the territories of this young prince, in the Piedmontese valleys of Luserna, Perosa, and San Martino, on the east side of the Cottian Alps, lived the remarkable people known as the Vaudois or Waldenses. From time immemorial these obscure mountaineers, speaking a peculiar Romance tongue of their own, had kept themselves distinct from the Church of Rome, maintaining doctrines and forms of worship of such a kind that, after the Lutheran Reformation, they were regarded as primitive Protestants who had never swerved from the truth through the darkest ages, and could therefore be adopted with acclamation into the general Reformed communion. The Reformation, indeed; had penetrated into their valleys, rendering them more polemical for their faith, and more fierce against the Church of Rome, than they had been before. They had experienced persecutions through their whole history, and especially after the Reformation; but, on the whole, the two last Dukes of Savoy, and also Christine, daughter of Henry IV. of France, and Duchess-Regent through the minority of her son, the present Duke, had protected them in their privileges, even while extirpating Protestantism in the rest of the Piedmontese dominions. Latterly, however, there had been a passion at Turin and at Rome for their conversion to the Catholic faith, and priests had been traversing their valleys for the purpose. The murder of one such priest, and some open insults to the Catholic worship, about Christmas 1654, are said to have occasioned what followed.

On the 25th of January, 1654-5, an edict was issued, under the authority of the Duke of Savoy, "commanding and enjoining every head of a family, with its members, of the pretended Reformed Religion, of what rank, degree, or condition soever, none excepted, inhabiting and possessing estates in the places of Luserna, Lucernetta, San Giovanni, La Torre, Bubbiana, and Fenile, Campiglione, Briccherassio, and San Secondo, within three days, to withdraw and depart, and be, with their families, withdrawn, out of the said places, and transported into the places and limits marked out for toleration by his Royal Highness during his good pleasure, namely Bobbio, Villaro, Angrogna, Rorata, and the County of Bonetti, under pain of death and confiscation of goods and houses, unless they gave evidence within twenty days of having become Catholics." Furthermore it was commanded that in every one even of the tolerated places there should be regular celebration of the Holy Mass, and that there should be no interference therewith, nor any dissuasion of any one from turning a Catholic, also on pain of death. All the places named are in the Valley of Luserna, and the object was a wholesale shifting of the Protestants of that valley out of nine of its communes and their concentration into five higher up. In vain were there remonstrances at Turin from those immediately concerned. On the 17th of April, 1655, the Marquis di Pianezza entered the doomed region with a body of troops, mainly Piedmontese, but with French and Irish among them. There was resistance, fighting, burning, pillaging, flight to the mountains, and chasing and murdering for eight days, Saturday, April 24, being the climax. The names of about three hundred of those murdered individually are on record, with the ways of the deaths of many of them. Women were ripped open, or carried about impaled on spikes; men, women, and children, were flung from precipices, hacked, tortured, roasted alive; the heads of some of the dead were boiled and the brains eaten; there are forty printed pages, and twenty-six ghastly engravings, by way of Protestant tradition of the ascertained variety of the devilry. The massacre was chiefly in the Valley of Luserna, but extended also into the other two valleys. The fugitives were huddled in crowds high among the mountains, moaning and starving; and not a few, women and infants especially, perished amid the snows. On the 27th of April some of the remaining Protestant pastors and others, gathered together somewhere, addressed a circular letter to Protestants outside the Valleys, stating the hard case of the survivors. "Our beautiful and flourishing churches," they said, "are utterly lost, and that without remedy, unless God Almighty work miracles for us. Their time is come, and our measure is full. O have pity upon the desolations of Jerusalem, and be grieved for the afflictions of poor Joseph! Shew the real effects of your compassions, and let your bowels yearn for so many thousands of poor souls who are reduced to a morsel of bread for following the Lamb whithersoever he goes."¹

There was a shudder of abhorrence through Protestant Europe, but no one was so much roused as Cromwell. In the interval between the Duke of Savoy's edict and the Massacre he had been desirous that the Vaudois should publicly appeal to him rather than to the Swiss; and, when the news of the Massacre reached England, he avowed that it came "as near his heart as if his own nearest and dearest had been concerned." On Thursday the 17th of May, and for many days more, the business of the Savoy Protestants was the chief occupation of the Council. Letters, all in Milton's Latin, but signed by the Lord Protector in his own name, were despatched (May 25) to the Duke of Savoy himself, to the French King, to the States General of the United Provinces, to the Protestant Swiss Cantons, to the King of Sweden, to the King of Denmark, and to Ragotski, Prince of Transylvania. A day of humiliation was appointed for the Cities of London and Westminster, and another for all England. A Committee was appointed, consisting of all the Councillors, with Sir Christopher Pack and other eminent citizens, and also some ministers, to organize a general collection of money throughout England and Wales in behalf of the suffering Vaudois. The collection, as arranged June 1, was to take the form of a house-to-house visitation by the ministers and churchwardens in every city, town, and parish on a particular Lord's day, for the receipt of whatever sum each householder might freely give, every such sum to be noted in presence of the donor, and the aggregates, parish by parish, or city by city, to be remitted to the treasurers in London, who were to enter them duly in a general register. The subscription, which lagged for a time in some districts, produced at length a total of £38,097 7s. 3d.—equal to about £137,000 now. Of this sum £2000 (equal to about £7500 now) was Cromwell's own contribution, while London and Westminster contributed £9384 6s. 11d., and the various counties sums of various magnitudes, according to their size, wealth, and zeal, from Devonshire at the head, with £1965 0s. 3d., Yorkshire next, with £1786 14s. 5d., and Essex next, with £1512 17s. 7d., down to Merionethshire yielding £3 0s. 1d. from her eight parishes, and Radnorshire £1 14s. 4d. from her seven. Cromwell's own donation of £2000 went at once to Geneva for immediate use; and £10,000 followed on the 10th of July, as the first instalment of the general subscription. There were similar subscriptions, it ought to be added, in other Protestant countries.¹

At the time of the massacre Cromwell had two agents in Switzerland, viz. Mr. JOHN PELL (Vol. IV. p. 449) and the ubiquitous JOHN DURIE. They had been sent abroad early in 1654, to cultivate the friendly intercourse already begun between the Evangelical Cantons and the Commonwealth, and also to watch the progress of a struggle which had just broken out between the Popish Cantons of the Confederacy and the Evangelical Cantons. As the Evangelical Cantons were also astir about the Vaudois, whose cause was so closely connected with their own, the services of Pell and Durie were now available for that business. Cromwell, however, had thought an express Commissioner necessary, with instructions to negotiate directly with the Duke of Savoy, and had selected for the purpose Mr, SAMUEL MORLAND, an able and ingenious man, about thirty years of age, who had been with Whitlocke in his Swedish Embassy, and had been taken into the Council office on his return as assistant to Thurloe. On the 26th of May Morland left London, carrying with him the letters addressed to Louis XIV. and the Duke of Savoy. He was at La Fère in France on the 1st of June, treating with the French King and Mazarin, and was able to despatch thence a letter from the French King to Cromwell, expressing willingness to do all that could be done for the Vaudois, and explaining that he had already conveyed his views on the subject to the Duke of Savoy. Thence Morland continued his journey to Rivoli, near Turin, where he arrived on the 21st of June. He was received most politely, was entertained and driven about both at Rivoli and at Turin itself, and was admitted to a formal audience on or about the 24th. He there made a speech in Latin to the Duke, the Duchess-mother being also present, and delivered Cromwell's letter, The speech was a very bold one. He spared no detail of horror in his picture of the massacre as he had authentically ascertained it, and added, "Were all the Neros of all times and ages alive again (I would be understood to say it with out any offence to your Highness, inasmuch as we believe that none of these things was done by any fault of yours), they would be ashamed at finding that they had contrived nothing that was not even mild and humane in comparison. Meanwhile angels are horrorstruck, mortals amazed!" The Duchess-mother, replying for her son, could hardly avoid hinting that Mr. Morland had been rather rude. She was, nevertheless, profuse in expressions of respect for the Lord Protector, who had no doubt received very exaggerated representations of what had happened, but at whose request she was sure her son would willingly pardon his rebellious subjects and restore them to their privileges. During the rest of Morland's stay in Turin or its neighbourhood the object of the Duke's counsellors, and also of the French minister, was to furnish him with what they called a more correct account of the facts, and induce him to convey to Cromwell a gentler view of the whole affair. Morland kept his own counsel; but, having had a second audience, and received the Duke's submissive but guarded answer to Cromwell, and also several other papers, he left Turin on the 19th of July and proceeded, according to his instructions, to Geneva.¹

Meanwhile Cromwell, dissatisfied with the coolness of the French King and Mazarin, and also with the shuffling and timidity of the Swiss Cantons, had been taking the affair more and more into his own hands. He had despatched, late in July, another Commissioner, Mr. GEORGE DOWNING, to meet Morland at Geneva, help Morland to infuse some energy into the Cantons, and then proceed with him to Turin to bring matters to a definite issue. He had been inquiring also about the fittest place for landing an invading force against the Duke, and had thought of Nice or Villafranca. Blake's presence in the Mediterranean was not forgotten. All which being known to Mazarin, that wily statesman saw that no time was to be lost. While Mr. Downing was still only on his way to Geneva through France, Mazarin had instructed M. Servien, the French minister at Turin, to insist, in the French King's name, on an immediate settlement of the Vaudois business. The result was a Patente di Gratia e Perdono, or "Patent of Grace and Pardon," granted by Charles Emanuel to the Vaudois Protestants, Aug. 19, in terms of a Treaty at Pignerol, in which the French Minister appeared as the real mediating party and certain Envoys from the Swiss Cantons as more or less assenting. As the Patent substantially retracted the Persecuting Edict and restored the Vaudois to all their former privileges, nothing more was to be done. Cromwell, it is true, did not conceal that he was disappointed. He had looked forward to a Treaty at Turin in which his own envoys, Morland and Downing, and D'Ommeren, as envoy from the United Provinces, would have taken the leading part, and he somewhat resented Mazarin's too rapid interference and the too easy compliance of the envoys of the Cantons. The Treaty of Pignerol contained conditions that might occasion farther trouble. Still, as things were, he thought it best to acquiesce. Downing, who had arrived at Geneva early in September, was at once recalled, leaving Morland and Pell still there, to superintend the distribution of the English subscription-money among the poor Vaudois, instalment after instalment, as they arrived. The charitable work was to detain Morland in Geneva or its neighbourhood for more than a year, nor was the great business of the Piedmontese Protestants to be wholly out of Cromwell's mind to the day of his death.¹

Just at the date of the happy, though not perfect, conclusion of the Piedmontese business, came almost the only chagrin ever experienced by Cromwell in the shape of the failure of an enterprise. It was now some months since he had made up his mind in private to a rupture with Spain, intending that the fact should be first announced to the world in the actions of the fleet which he had sent with sealed orders to the West Indies under Penn's command. The instructions to Penn and to General Robert Venables, who went with him as commander of the troops, were nothing less, indeed, than that they should strike some shattering blow at that dominion of Spain in the New World which was at once her pride and the source of her wealth. It might be in one of her great West-India Islands, St. Domingo, Cuba, or Porto Rico, or it might be at Cartagena on the South-American mainland, where the treasures of Peru were amassed, for annual conveyance across the Atlantic. Much discretion was left to Penn and Venables, but on the whole St. Domingo, then called Hispaniola, was indicated for a beginning. Blake's presence in the Mediterranean with the other fleet had been timed for an assault on Spain at home when the news should arrive of the disaster to her colonies.¹

Penn and Venables together were not equal to one Blake. They opened their sealed instructions at Barbadoes, one of the two or three small Islands of the West-Indies then possessed by the English, and, after counsel and preparation, proceeded to Hispaniola. The fleet now consisted of about sixty vessels, and there were about 9000 soldiers on board, some of them veterans, but most of them recruits of bad quality. They were off St. Domingo, the capital of the Island, on the 14th of April, 1655, and from that moment there was misunderstanding and blundering. Penn, Venables, and the Chief Commissioner who had been sent out with them, differed as to the proper landing point; the wrong landing point was chosen for the main body; the men fell ill and mutinied; the Spaniards, who might have been surprised at first by a direct assault on St. Domingo, resisted bravely, and poured shot among the troops from ambuscade. Two attempts to get into St. Domingo were both foiled with heavy loss, including the death of Major-General Heane and others of the best officers. The mortality from climate and bad food being also great, the enterprise on Hispaniola was then abandoned; but, dreading a return to England with nothing accomplished, Penn and Venables bethought themselves of Jamaica. Here, where they arrived May 10, they were rather more fortunate. The Spaniards, utterly unforewarned, deserted the coast, and fled inland. There was no difficulty, therefore, in taking nominal possession of the chief town, though even that was done in a bungling manner. Then, leaving the Island in charge of a portion of the troops, under Major-General Fortescue, with Vice-Admiral Goodson to sail about it with a protecting squadron, Penn hastened back to England, Venables quickly following him. They arrived in London, within a few days of each other, early in September, and were at once committed to the Tower for having returned without orders. The news of the failure of their enterprise had preceded them, and Cromwell was profoundly angry. A bilious illness which he had about this time was attributed by the French ambassador Bordeaux to his brooding over the West-Indian mischance. He was soon himself again, however, and Penn and Venables had nothing to fear. They were released after a few weeks. After all, Jamaica was better than nothing.¹

One result of the West Indian expedition was that the long-delayed alliance with France was now a settled affair. Cardenas had his pass-ports sent him, and on the 22nd of October, 1655, he left England. The Court of Madrid had already recalled him, laid an embargo on all English property in Spain, and conferred a Marquisate and pension on the Governor of Hispaniola. On the 24th of October the Treaty of Peace and Commerce between Cromwell and Louis XIV. was finally signed; and within a few days afterwards there was out in London an elaborate document entitled "Scriptum Domini Protectoris, ex consensu atque sententia Concilii sui editum, in quo hujus Reipublica causa contra Hispanos justa esse demonstratur" ("The Lord-Protector's Manifesto, published with the consent and advice of his Council, in which the justice of the Cause of this Commonwealth against the Spaniards is demonstrated"). Now, accordingly, the Commonwealth entered on a new era of her history. Cromwell and Mazarin were to be fast friends, and the Stuarts were to have no help or countenance any more from the French crown; while, on the other hand, there was to be war to the death between the Commonwealth and Spain, war in the new world and war in the old, and Spain was thus naturally to adopt the cause of Charles II., and employ exiled English Royalism everywhere as one of her agencies,—Of the consciousness of the Lord-Protector and the Council of this increased complexity of the foreign relations of the Commonwealth in consequence of the rupture with Spain there is a curious incidental illustration. "That several volumes of the book called The New Atlas be bought for the use of the Council, and that the Globe heretofore standing in the Council Chamber be again brought thither," had been one of the Council's instructions to Thurloe at their meeting of Oct. 2. Thenceforth, doubtless, both the Globe and the Atlas were to be much in request.—More important, however, than such fixed apparatus in the Council Room was the moving instrumentality of envoys and diplomatists in the chief European cities and capitals. Above all, an able ambassador in Paris was now an absolute necessity. Nor was the fit man wanting. Among the former Royalists of the Presbyterian section that had become reconciled to the Commonwealth, and attached to the Protector by strong personal loyalty, was the Scottish WILLIAM LOCKHART, member for Lanarkshire in the late Parliament. He had been trained to arms in France in his youth, and had since then served as a Colonel among the Scots. In this capacity he had been in Hamilton's Army of the Engagement, defeated by Cromwell at Preston, and in David Leslie's subsequent Army for Charles II., defeated at Dunbar. Having received some insults from Charles, of such a kind that he had declared that "no King on earth should use him in that manner," he had snapped his connexion with the Stuarts before the Battle of Worcester; and for some time after that battle he had lived moodily in Scotland, meditating a return to France for military employment. A visit to London and an interview with Cromwell had retained his talents for the service of the Protectorate, and his affection for that service had been confirmed by his marriage, in 1654, with Robina Sewster, the orphan niece of the Protector. Altogether Cromwell had judged him to be the very man to represent the Protectorate at Paris, and be even a match for Mazarin. He was now thirty-four years of age. He was nominated to the embassy in December 1655; but he did not go to his post till the following April.—Hardly a less important appointment was that, in January 1655-6, of young Edward Montague to be one of the Admirals of the Fleet. Blake, who had been cruising off Cadiz, and on whom there was the chief dependence for action against the Spaniards at sea, had felt the responsibility too great, and had applied for a colleague. Penn, being in disgrace, was out of the question; and Montague, then a member of the Protector's Council, was chosen. He had been one of Cromwell's favourites and disciples since the days of Marston Moor and Naseby, when, though hardly out of his teens, he had distinguished himself highly as a Parliamentary Colonel. Henceforth the sea was to be his chief element; and, as Admiral or General at sea, he was to become very famous.¹

It was just about this time of change and extension in the foreign relations of the Commonwealth that the people of England and Wales became aware that they were, and had been for some time, under an entirely new system of home-government, called Government by Major-Generals.

The difficulties of the home-government of the Protectorate were great and peculiar. The power of the Lord-Protector and his Council to pass ordinances had been called in question. Judges and lawyers were not only pretty unanimous in the opinion that resistance to payment of imposts not enacted by Parliamentary authority might be made good at law, and that the Ordinance for Chancery Reform was also legally invalid; they doubted even whether, in strict law, there could be proceedings for the preservation of the public peace, by courts and magistrates, under any Council ordinance about crimes and treasons. All this Cromwell had been meditating. How was revenue to be raised? How were Royalist and Anabaptist plottings to be suppressed? How were police regulations about public manners and morals to be enforced? How was the will of the Central Government at Whitehall, in any matter whatsoever, to be transmitted to any spot in the community and made really operative? Meditating these questions, Cromwell, as he expressed it afterwards, "did find out a little poor invention": "I say," he repeated, "there was a little thing invented."¹ The little invention consisted in a formal identification of the Protector's Chief Magistracy with his Headship of the Army. He had resolved to map out England and Wales into districts, and to plant in each district a trusty officer, with the title of Major-General, who should be nominally in command of the militia of that district, but should be really also the executive there for the Central Government in all things. A beginning had been made in the business as early as May 1655, when Desborough was appointed Major-General of the Militia in the six southwestern counties; and the districts had been all marked out and the Major-Generals chosen in August. But there had been very great secrecy about the scheme; and not till the 31st of October was there official announcement of the new organization. Only about mid-winter, 1655-6, did people fully realise what it meant. The Major-Generalcies then stood thus:—

The powers intrusted to these Major-Generals and to their subordinate officers in the several counties were all but universal. They were to patrol the counties with horse and foot, but especially with horse. They were to guard against robberies and tumults and to bring criminals to punishment. They were to take charge of the public morals, and see the laws put in force against drunkenness, blasphemy, plays and interludes, profanation of the Lord's Day, and disorderliness generally. They were to keep a register of all disaffected persons, remove arms from their houses, note their changes of residence, and take security for the good behaviour of themselves, their families, and servants. All travellers and strangers were bound to appear before them, and give an account of themselves and their business. They were to arrest vagabonds and persons with no visible means of living. Above all, they were to see to the execution of a certain very severe and far-reaching measure which the Protector and the Council had determined to adopt in consequence of the late Royalist insurrection and conspiracy.

Either from information that had been received, or merely in terrorem, there had, during the past summer and autumn, been numerous arrests of persons of rank and wealth that had hitherto been allowed to live quietly in their country mansions, on the understanding that, though Royalists, they had ceased to be such, in any active sense. The Marquis of Hertford, the Earl of Lindsey, the Earl of Newport, the Earl of Northampton, the Earl of Rivers, the Earl of Peterborough, Viscount Falkland, and Lords Lovelace, St. John, Petre, Coventry, Maynard, Lucas, and Willoughby of Parham, with a great many commoners of distinction, had been thus arrested. There was a general consternation among the peaceful Royalists throughout the country. It looked as if their peacefulness was to be of no avail, as if the Act of Oblivion of Feb. 1651-2 was to be a dead letter, as if Cromwell had suddenly changed his policy of universal conciliation. In reality, Cromwell had no intention of reversing his policy of universal conciliation; but he wanted to teach the lesson that Royalist insurrections and conspiracies would fall heavily on the Royalists themselves, and he wanted particularly, at that moment, to make the Royalists pay the expenses of the police kept up on their account. Under cover of the consternation caused by the numerous arrests, he introduced, in fact, a Decimation upon the Royalists, i.e. an income tax of ten per cent, upon all Royalists possessing estates in land of £100 a year and upwards or personal property worth £1500. It was to be the main business of the Major-Generals to assess this tax within their bounds, and to collect it strictly and swiftly. It is astonishing with what ease they succeeded. It seems to have been even a relief to the Royalists to know definitely what their principles were to cost them, and to have arrest or the dread of it commuted into a fixed money payment. As soon as the tax was fairly in operation, all or most of those who had been arrested were liberated, and subsequent arrests by the Major-Generals themselves were only of vagabonds or suspicious persons. The only appeal from the Major-Generals was to his Highness himself and the Council.¹

What with the vigilance of the Major-Generals in their districts, what with the edicts of the Protector and the Council for the direction of the Major-Generals, the public order now kept over all England and Wales was wonderfully strict. At no time since the beginning of the Commonwealth had there been so much of that general decorum of external behaviour which Cromwell liked to see. Cock-fights, dancing at fairs, and other such amusements, were under ban. Indecent publications that had flourished long in the guise of weekly pamphlets disappeared; and books of the same sort were more closely looked after than they had been. But what shall we say about this Order, affecting the newspaper press especially:—"Wednesday, 5th Sept., 1655—At the Council at Whitehall, Ordered by his Highness the Lord Protector and the Council, That no person whatever do presume to publish in print any matter of public news or intelligence without leave of the Secretary of State"? The effect of the order was that not only the indecent publications purporting to be newspapers were suppressed, but also a considerable number of newspapers proper, insomuch that the London newspaper press was reduced thenceforth to two weekly prints, authorized by Thurloe, viz. Needham's Mercurius Politicus, published on Thursdays, and The Public Intelligencer, a more recent adventure, published on Mondays. Just after the order, I note, the Mercurius Politicus enlarged its size somewhat, to match with the Public Intelligencer, and in the first number of the new size (Sept. 22-Oct. 4, 1655) the Editor speaks with great approbation of the Order of Council "silencing the many pamphlets that have hitherto presumed to come abroad." Needham seems now to have assumed the editorship of both papers; and after the twenty-third number of the Intelligencer (March 3-10, 1655-6) the publisher of it, as well as of the Mercurius Politicus, was Thomas Newcome. The newspaper press of the Protectorate was thus pretty well consolidated by Mr. Thurloe. There were two papers only, under one management, or rather there was a single bi-weekly newspaper with alternative names.¹

It was part of the duty of the Major-Generals to assist, so far as might still be necessary, in the execution of the Ordinance of Aug. 1654 for the ejection of scandalous and insufficient ministers and schoolmasters (Vol. IV. p. 564 and p. 571), The County Committees of Ejectors under that Ordinance had already performed their disagreeable work in part, but were still busy. On the whole, though they turned out many, they seem not to have abused their powers. "I must needs say," is Baxter's testimony, "that in all the counties where I was acquainted, six to one at least, if not many more, that were sequestered by the Committees were, by the oaths of witnesses, proved insufficient or scandalous, or both—especially guilty of drunkenness or swearing,—and those that, being able godly preachers, were cast out for the war alone, as for their opinions' sake, were comparatively very few. This, I know, will displease that party; but this is true." Baxter admits, indeed, that there were cases in which the Committees were swayed too much by mere political feeling, and ejected men from their pulpits whom it would have been better to retain. Other authorities assert the same more strongly, but rather fail in the proof. The most notorious instance produced of a blunder on the part of any of the Committees was in Berkshire. The Rector of Childrey in this county was the learned orientalist Pocock, who had lost his Professorship of Hebrew in the University of Oxford for refusing the engagement to the Commonwealth, but still held the Arabic lectureship there, because there was no one else who knew Arabic sufficiently. Not liking his look, or not seeing what Orientalism had to do with the Gospel, the rude Berkshire Committee were on the point of turning him out of his Rectory, when Dr. Owen interfered manfully and prevented the scandal. About the same time, it is said, Thomas Fuller was in some trepidation about his living of Waltham Abbey, in Essex, but acquitted himself before the Committee handsomely.¹

Distinct from the County Committees of Ejectors, and forming the other great constitutional power in Cromwell's Church-Establishment, was the Central or London Committee of the Thirty-eight Triers (Vol. IV. p. 571). It was their duty to examine "all candidates for the public ministry," i.e. all persons presented to livings by the patrons of the same, and pass only those that were fit. Baxter's report of the work of these Triers, as done either by themselves in conclave, or by Sub-commissioners for them in the counties, is the more remarkable because he disowned the authority under which the Triers acted and was in controversy with most of them. "Though their authority was null," he says, "and though some few over-busy and over-rigid Independents among them, were too severe against all that were Arminians, and too particular in inquiring after evidences of sanctification in those whom they examined, and somewhat too lax in their admission of unlearned and erroneous men that favoured Antinomianism or Anabaptism, yet, to give them their due, they did abundance of good to the Church. They saved many a congregation from ignorant, ungodly, drunken teachers. That sort of men that intended no more in the ministry than to say a sermon as readers say their common prayers, and so patch up a few good words together to talk the people asleep with on Sunday, and all the rest of the week go with them to the ale-house and harden them in sin; and that sort of ministers that either preached against a holy life, or preached as men that never were acquainted with it; all those that used the ministry but as a common trade to live by, and were never likely to convert a soul:—all these they usually rejected, and in their stead admitted of any that were able serious preachers, and lived a godly life, of what tolerable opinion soever they were. So that, though they were many of them somewhat partial for the Independents, Separatists, Fifth Monarchy men, and Anabaptists, and against the Prelatists and Arminians, yet so great was the benefit above the hurt which they brought to the Church that many thousands of souls blessed God for the faithful ministers whom they let in." Royalist writers after the Restoration give, of course, a different picture. "Ignorant, bold, canting fellows," they say, "laics, mechanics, and pedlars," were brought into the Church by Cromwell's Triers. One may, in the main, trust Baxter.¹

Cromwell's Established Church of England and Wales may now be imaged with tolerable accuracy. It contained two patches of completed Presbyterian organization, one in London and the other in Lancashire. The system of Presbyteries or Classes, with half-yearly Provincial Assemblies, which had been set up by the Long Parliament in these two districts, remained undisturbed. Both in London and in Lancashire, however, the system was in a languid state; and for the rest of the country, and indeed for non-Presbyterians in London and Lancashire too, the Church or Public Ministry was practically on the principle of the Independency of Congregations. Each parish had, or was to have, its regular minister, recognised by the State, and the association of ministers among themselves for consultation or mutual criticism was very much left to chance and discretion. Ministers and deacons, however, did draw up Agreements and form voluntary Associations in various counties, holding monthly or other periodical meetings; and, as it was the rule in such associations not to meddle with matters of Civil Government, they were countenanced by the Protectorate. Baxter tells us much of the Association in Worcestershire which he had helped to form in 1653, and adds that similar associations sprang up afterwards in Cumberland and Westmorland, Wilts, Dorset, Somersetshire, Hampshire, and Essex. These Associations are to be conceived as imperfect substitutes for the regular Presbyterian organization, and most of the ministers belonging to them were eclectics or quasi-Presbyterians, like Baxter himself, making the most of untoward circumstances, while the stricter Presbyterians, who sighed for the perfect model, held aloof. Perhaps the majority of the State-clergy all over the country consisted of these two classes of Presbyterians baulked of their full Presbyterianism,—the Rigid Presbyterians, who would accept nothing short of the system as exemplified in London and Lancashire, and the Eclectics or Quasi-Presbyterians grouped in voluntary Associations. But among the State-clergy collectively there were several other varieties. There were many of the old Church-of-England Rectors and Vicars, still Prelatic in sentiment, and, though obliged to disuse the Book of Common Prayer, maintaining some sweet remnant of Anglicanism. Some of these, not of the High Church school, did not scruple to join the quasi-Presbyterian Associations that were liberal enough to admit them; but most found more liberty in keeping by themselves. Then there were the Independents proper, drawn from all those various Evangelical Sects, however named separately, whose principle of Independency stopped short of absolute Voluntaryism, and therefore did not prevent them from belonging to a State-Church. The more moderate of these Independents might easily enough, in consistency with their theory of Congregationalism, join the quasi-Presbyterian Associations, and some of them did so; but not very many. The majority of them were simply ministers of the State-Church, in charge of individual parishes and congregations, and consulting each other, if at all, only in informal ways. Among the Independent Sectaries of all sorts thus officiating individually in the State-Church, the difficulty, as far as one can see, must have been chiefly, or solely, with the Baptists. How could preachers who rejected the rite of Infant Baptism, maintained the necessity of the rebaptism of adults, and thought dipping the proper form of the rite, be ministers of parishes, or be included in any way among the State-clergy? That such ministers did hold livings in Cromwell's Established Church is a fact. Mr. John Tombes, the chief of the Anti-Pædobaptists, and himself one of Cromwell's Triers, retained the vicarage of Leominster in Herefordshire, with the parsonage of Boss in the same county, and a living at Bewdley in Worcestershire; and there are other instances. Baxter's language already quoted implies nothing less, indeed, than that Anti-Pædobaptists in considerable numbers were presented to Church-livings by the patrons and passed by the Triers; and he elsewhere signifies that he did not himself greatly object to this. "Let there be no withdrawing," he says, "from the ministry and church of that place [i.e. a parish of mixed Pædobaptists and Anti-Pædobaptists] upon the mere ground of Baptism. If the minister be an Anabaptist, let not us withdraw from him on that ground; and, if he be a Pædobaptist, let not them withdraw from us." He even suggests that the pastor of a church might openly record his opinion on the Baptism subject, if it were contrary to that of the majority of the members, and then proceed in his pastorate all the same, and that, on the other hand, private members might publicly enter their dissent from their pastor's opinion, and yet abide with him lovingly and obediently in all other things. How far, and in how many places, this method of leaving Pædo-baptism an open question was actually in operation in the Established Church of the Protectorate, and whether Infant Baptism thus fell into complete abeyance in some parishes where Anabaptists of eminence were settled, or whether the Pædobaptist parishioners in such eases quietly avoided that result by having their children baptized by other ministers, are points of some obscurity. On the whole, the difficulty can have been felt but exceptionally and here and there, for it was obviated on the great scale by the fact that most of the real Anabaptists, preachers and people alike, were Voluntaries, disowning the State-Church altogether, and meeting only in separate congregations. Even for such, however, in localities where they were pretty numerous, there seems to have been a desire to make some provision. Thus on March 13, 1655-56, it was ordered by His Highness and the Council "that it be referred to General Desborough, Major-General for the County of Devon, to take care that the Church under the form of Baptism at Exeter have such one of the public meeting-places assigned to them for their place of worship as is best in repair, and may with most conveniency be spared and set apart for that use." The Exeter Baptists may have thought it not inconsistent with their principles to accept so much of State favour. Not the public buildings, so much as the Tithes and Lay Patronage with which they were connected, were the abominations of the State-Church in the eyes of the Anabaptist Voluntaries. For let it not be forgotten that Cromwell's ardent passion for a Church-Establishment under his Protectorate had come more and more to involve, in his reasonings, the preservation of the Tithe-system and the continuance of lay Patronage. The legal patrons of livings retained their right of nominating to vacancies; the Triers only checked that right by examination of nominees and the rejection of the unfit. Cromwell himself combined in his own person, to a most extraordinary extent, the functions both of Patron and Trier. "It is observable that, his Highness having near one half of the livings in England, one way or other, in his own immediate disposal by presentation, he seldom bestoweth one of them upon any man whom himself doth not first examine and make trial of in person, save only that, at such times as his great affairs happen to be more urgent than ordinary, he useth to appoint some other to do it in his behalf; which is so rare an example of piety that the like is not to be found in the stories of Princes." We have not exaggerated, it will be seen, Cromwell's personal anxiety about his Established Church. That, indeed, is farther proved, in a very interesting manner, by certain entries in the Order Books of his Council which become more and more frequent in this middle section of his Protectorate. They refer to "augmentations of ministers' stipends." Thus, in December 1655, there is an order for the augmentation of the stipends of seventy-five ministers in different counties, all in one batch; and succeeding entries in 1656 show the steady progress of the same work by repeated orders for other augmentations, batch after batch. Clearly Cromwell had resolved that there should be a systematic increase of the salaries of the parochial clergy all over England, beginning with those who needed it most. The details of the business were managed by that body of "Trustees for maintenance of ministers" which had been appointed by Ordinance in Sept. 1654 (Vol. IV. p. 564); but the final Orders for Augmentations came from the Protector and Council, and there was no part of his work in which the Protector seemed to have more pleasure.¹

But what of that Toleration of Dissent from the Established Church which he professed to be equally dear to him? That Cromwell was faithful still to the principle of Liberty of Conscience, to the fullest extent of his past professions, there can be no doubt. It may be more doubtful whether his past professions pledged him to a theory of Toleration as absolute as that which had been advocated eleven or twelve years before by Roger Williams and John Goodwin, and then adopted by the Army Independents generally, and which was still upheld by the main body of the Anabaptists. The evidence, however, rather favours the idea that he had already been in sympathy even with this extreme theory of Toleration, and so that now, though he had bitterly disappointed his old Anabaptist associates by declaring himself for the Civil Magistrate's Authority in matters of Religion, he still cherished the extreme theory of Toleration as it might be applied round about his Established Church. In his heart, I believe, he was for persecuting nobody whatsoever, troubling nobody whatsoever, for mere religious heresy, even of the kinds he himself most abhorred. But, though this might be his private ideal, his difficulties publicly and practically were enormous. The other unlimited Tolerationists in England were Anabaptists and the like, detesting his Established Church as incompatible with true Toleration, and in league for battering it down. Through the rest of the community there was but little voice for Toleration. The frantic and idiotic stringency of the Presbyterians of 1644-6 was now, indeed, rather out of fashion, and a certain mild babble about a Limited Toleration was common in the public mouth. But the old leaven was at work in many quarters; occasional pamphlets from the Presbyterian camp still wailed lamentably about "the effects of the present Toleration, especially as to the increase of Blasphemy and Damnable Errors;" and some Presbyterian booksellers had recently published A Second Beacon Fired, in which they insidiously tried to work upon the Lord Protector's new Conservative and State-Church instincts; by denouncing the books of some leading Anabaptists and other heretics, hostile to his Government, and humbly adjuring him to "do what might be expected from Christian magistrates" in such flagrant cases. In the late Parliament there had been much of this Presbyterian spirit, and it had been proved abundantly that the Protector's idea of Toleration would have been voted down by the national representatives. Then what a harassing definition of proper Christian Toleration had come even from Cromwell's favourite Independents, Messrs. Owen and the rest, with their twenty fundamentals! Add the difficulties arising from the nature of some of the current heresies themselves, as tending directly to the defamation of his government, the subversion of laws and institutions, and the disturbance of the peace.¹

A very fair amount of Liberty of the Press, though not to newspapers, nor to publications clearly immoral, seems to have been allowed by Cromwell. Through 1655 and 1656 there were books and pamphlets of the most various kinds, and advocating the most various opinions. There were Episcopalian books and Anabaptist books, arguments for Tithes and arguments against Tithes, Fifth Monarchy tracts, Quaker Tracts and Anti-Quaker Tracts, in extraordinary profusion. Prynne would publish one day The Quakers unmasked and clearly detected to be but the spawn of Romish frogs, Jesuits and Franciscan Friars, sent from Rome to seduce the intoxicated giddy-headed English nation, and George Fox would print the next day The Unmasking and Discovery of Antichrist, with all the False Prophets, by the true light which comes from Christ Jesus. Nor, of course, was there, any interference with the religious meetings of any of the ordinary Puritan sects, Baptists or whatever else, that chose to form separatist congregations. Even those who so far passed the bounds that they were called Ranters or Fanatics were quite safe in their own conventicles; and altogether one has to conclude that much that went by the still worse names of Blasphemy, Atheism, Infidelity, and Anti-Christianism, had as quiet a life under the Protectorate as in any later time. Practically, all that is of interest in the enquiry as to the amount of Religious Toleration under Cromwell's Government lies in what is known of his dealings with five denominations of Dissenters from his Established Church—the Papists, the Episcopalians, the Socinians or Anti-Trinitarians, the Quakers, and the Jews.

(1) The Papists. Papists might be Papists under Cromwell's government in the sense that there was no positive compulsion on them to abjure their creed and profess another. The question, however, is as to open liberty of Roman Catholic worship. This question had passed through Cromwell's mind, and the results of his ruminations upon it appear most succinctly in one of his letters to Mazarin. After the Treaty made with France, the Cardinal very naturally pressed the subject of a toleration for Catholics in England, the rather as Cromwell was always so energetic for a toleration of Protestants in Catholic countries. "Although I have this set home to my spirit," Cromwell wrote in reply, "I may not (shall I tell you I cannot?) at this juncture of time, and as the face of my affairs now stands, answer your call for Toleration. I say I cannot, as to a public declaration of my sense in that point; although I believe that under my government your Eminency, in behalf of Catholics, has less reason for complaint, as to rigour on men's consciences, than under the Parliament. For I have of some, and those very many, had compassion; making a difference. Truly I have (and I may speak it with cheerfulness in the presence of God, who is a witness within me to the truth of what I affirm) made a difference; and, as Jude speaks, 'plucked many out of the fire,'—the raging fire of persecution, which did tyrannise over their consciences, and encroached by an arbitrariness of power upon their estates. And herein it is my purpose, as soon as I can remove impediments, and some weights that press me down, to make a farther progress, and discharge my promise to your Eminency in relation to that."¹

(2) The Episcopalians. The question under this heading is not about those moderate Episcopalian divines who had conformed so far as to retain their rectories and vicarages in the Established Church, but about those Episcopalians of stronger principle, whether High Church and Arminian or not, who had been ejected from their former livings, or were trying to maintain themselves by some kind of private practice of their clerical profession in various parts of England. Against these, just at the time when the Major-Generalcies were coming into full operation, there did issue one fell Ordinance. It was published Nov. 24, 1655, under the title of An Ordinance for Securing the Peace of the Commonwealth, and it ordered that after Jan. 1, 1655-6 no persons should keep in their houses as chaplains or tutors any of the ejected clergy, and also that none of the ejected should teach in schools, preach publicly or privately, celebrate baptism or marriage, or use the Book of Common Prayer, under pain of being prosecuted. The Ordinance seems to have been issued merely as part and parcel of that almost ostentatious menace of severities against the Royalists by which Cromwell sought at that particular time to terrify them into submission and prevent farther plottings. At all events, it was announced in the Ordinance itself that there would be great delicacy in the application of it, so as to favour such of the ejected as deserved tender treatment; and, in fact, it was never applied or executed at all. No one was prosecuted under it; and, though it was not recalled, it was understood that it was suspended by the pleasure of his Highness, and that chaplains, teachers, and preachers, of the Episcopal persuasion, might go on as before, and reckon on all the toleration accorded to other Dissenters. On this footing they did go on, ex-Bishops and future Bishops among them, with increasing security; and gradually the notion got abroad that the Protector began to have even a kindly feeling for the "good old Church." Many Royalist authorities concur to that effect. "The Protector," says one, "indulged the use of the Common-Prayer in families and in private conventicles; and, though the condition of the Church of England was but melancholy, yet it cannot be denied that they had a great deal more favour and indulgence than under the Parliament." Burnet, on the authority of Dr. Wilkins, afterwards Bishop Wilkins, who was the second husband of Cromwell's youngest sister, adds a more startling statement. "Dr. Wilkins told me," says Burnet, "he (Cromwell) often said to him (Wilkins) no temporal government could have a sure support without a national church that adhered to it, and he thought England was capable of no constitution but Episcopacy; to which he told me he did not doubt but Cromwell would have turned." Wilkins probably liked to think this after he himself had turned; but it is hardly credible in the form in which Burnet has expressed it. Yet Cromwell, in that temper of conservatism, or desire of a settled order in all things, which more and more grew upon him after he had assumed the Protectorate, had undoubtedly the old Episcopalian clergy in view as a body to be conciliated, and employed as a counterpoise to the Anabaptists. He cannot but have been aware, too, of the spontaneous movements in some of the quasi-Presbyterian Associations of the clergy for a reunion as far as possible with the more moderate Episcopalians, as distinct from the High-Church Prelatists or Laudians. Among others, Baxter was extremely zealous for such a project; and his accounts of his correspondence about it with ex-Bishop Brownrigg in 1655, and his conversations about it at the same time with ex-Primate Usher, are very curious and interesting. Baxter and many more were quite willing that there should be a restored Episcopacy after Usher's own celebrated model: i.e. an Episcopacy not professing to be jure divino, but only for ecclesiastical conveniency,—the Bishops to be permanent Presidents of clusters of the clergy, and to be fitted into an otherwise Presbyterian system of Classes and Provincial Synods. They were willing, moreover, in the interest of such a scheme, to reconsider the old questions of a Liturgy, kneeling at the Sacrament, and other matters of Anglican ceremonial. Enough all this to rouse the angry souls of Smectymnuus, Milton, and the other Root-and-Branch Anti-Prelatists who had led the English Revolution. But, as times change, men change, and it is not impossible that Cromwell, the first real mover of the Root-and-Branch Bill of 1641, may now, fifteen years later, have looked speculatively sometimes at the old trunk in the timberyard. It is certain that he treated with profound respect the man whose advice about any remodelling of Episcopacy would have been the most authoritative generally. Ex-Primate Usher had lived in London through the Commonwealth and the Protectorate with the highest honour, pensioned at the rate of £400 a year, and holding also the preachership to the Society of Lincoln's Inn. Cromwell had shown him every attention, and had consulted him on several occasions. He had retired to Reigate a short time before his death, which happened on the 21st of March, 1655-6. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, a sum of £200 having been voted for his funeral by the Protector and Council. Eight months after his death there was published from his manuscript, by his friend and former chaplain, Dr. Nicholas Bernard, that famous Reduction of Episcopacy into the form of Synodical Government which had got about surreptitiously in 1641 (Vol. II. 229-230), and which was then regarded, and has been regarded ever since, as the most feasible model of a Low-Church Episcopacy adapted to Presbyterian forms.¹

(3) Anti-Trinitarians. The crucial test of Cromwell's Toleration policy as regarded this class of heretics, and indeed as regarded all heresies of the higher order, was the case of poor Mr. John Biddle. The dissolution of the late Parliament had been so far fortunate for him that the prosecution begun against him by that Parliament under the old Blasphemy Ordinance of 1648 had been stopped and he had been set at liberty (March 1655). But it was only to get into fresh trouble. The orthodox in London were determined that he should not be at large, and it was reported to the Council on the 3rd of July that on the preceding Thursday, June 28, "in the new meeting-house at Paul's, commonly called Captain Chillingdon's church meeting-place, John Biddle did then and there, in presence of about 500 persons, maintain, some hours together, in a dispute, that Jesus Christ was not the Almighty or most High God, and hath undertaken to proceed in the game dispute the next Thursday." Cromwell himself was present at this meeting of the Council, with Lawrence, Lambert, the Earl of Mulgrave, Skippon, Rous, Sydenham, Pickering, Montague, Fiennes, Viscount Lisle, Wolseley, and Strickland. What were they to do? They ordered the Lord Mayor to stop the intended meeting, and all such meetings in future, and to arrest Biddle if necessary; and they referred the affair for farther enquiry to Skippon and Rous. The affair, it seems, could not possibly be hushed up; Biddle was committed to Poultry Compter, and then to Newgate, and his trial came on at the Old Bailey, again under the Blasphemy Ordinance of 1648. Having, with difficulty, been allowed counsel, he put in legal objections, and the trial was adjourned till next term. Meanwhile London was greatly agitated. The Presbyterians and the orthodox generally were eager for Biddle's conviction; but a very considerable number of persons, including not only Biddle's own followers and free-thinkers of other sorts, but also some Independent and Baptist ministers, whose orthodoxy was beyond suspicion, bestirred themselves in his behalf. Pamphlets appeared in that interest, one entitled The Spirit of Persecution again broken loose against Mr. John Biddle, and a numerously signed petition was addressed to Cromwell, requesting his merciful interference. The Petition, as we learn from Mercurius Politicus, was very badly managed. "The persons who presented a petition some few days since to his Highness on the behalf of Biddle," says that paper under date Sept. 28, "came this day in expectation of an answer. They had access, and divers godly ministers were present. And, the Petition being read in the hearing of divers of those under whose countenance it was presented, many of them disowned it, as being altered both in the matter and title of it since they signed it, and so looked upon it as a forged thing, wherein both his Highness and they were greatly abused, and desired that the original which they signed might be produced; which Mr. Ives and some others of the contrivers and presenters of it were not able to do, nor had they anything to say in excuse of so foul a miscarriage. Whereupon they were dismissed, his Highness having opened to them the evil of such a practice [tampering with petitions after they had been signed], as also how inconsistent it was for them, who professed to be members of the Churches of Christ and to worship him with the worship due to God, to give any countenance to one who reproached themselves and all the Christian Churches in the world as being guilty of idolatry: showing that, if it be true which Mr. Biddle holds, to wit that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is but a creature, then all those who worship him with the worship due to God are idolaters. His Highness showed moreover that the maintainers of this opinion of Mr. Biddle's are guilty of great blasphemy against Christ, who is God equal with the Father; and he referred it to them to consider whether any who loved the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity could give any countenance to such a person as he is." But, while the petitioners were thus dismissed with a severe lecture, Cromwell had made up his mind to save Mr. Biddle. On the 5th of October it was resolved by the Council that he should be removed to the Isle of Scilly and there shut up; and Cromwell's warrant to that effect was at once issued. In no other way could the trial have been quashed, and it was the kindest thing that could have been done for Biddle in the circumstances. He lived comfortably enough in his seclusion in the distant Island for the next two years and a half, receiving an allowance of a hundred crowns per annum from Cromwell, and employing his leisure in the deep study of the Apocalypse and the preparation of a treatise against the Doctrine of the Fifth Monarchy.¹

(4) The Quakers. There was immense difficulty with this new sect—from the fact, as has been already explained, that they had not settled down into mere local groups of individuals, asking toleration for themselves, but were still in open war with all other sects, all other forms of ministry, and prosecuting the war everywhere by itinerant propagandism. George Fox himself and the best of his followers seem by this time indeed to have given up the method of actually interrupting the regular service in the steeple-houses in order to preach Quakerism; but they were constantly tending to the steeple-houses for the purpose of prophesying there, as was the custom in country-places, after the regular service was over. Thus, as well as by their conflicts with parsons of every sect wherever they met them, and their rebukings of iniquity on highways and in market-places, not to speak of their obstinate refusals to pay tithes in their own parishes, they were continually getting into the hands of justices of the peace and the assize-judges. Take as one example of their treatment in superior courts the appearance of William Dewsbury and other Quakers before Judge Atkins at Northampton after they had been half a year in Northampton jail.—Seeing them at the bar with their hats on, the Judge told the jailor he had a good mind to fine him ten pounds for bringing prisoners into the Court in that fashion, and ordered the hats to be removed by the jailor's man. Then, after some preliminary parley, "What is thy name?" said the Judge to Dewsbury, who had made himself spokesman for all. "Unknown to the World," said Dewsbury. "Let us hear what that name is that the World knows not," said the Judge goodhumouredly. "It is," quoth Dewsbury, "known in the light, and none can know it but he that hath it; but the name the world knows me by is William Dewsbury." Then to the question of the Judge, "What countryman art thou?" the reply was, "Of the Land of Canaan." The Judge remarked that Canaan was far off. "Nay," answered Dewsbury, "for all that dwell in God are in the holy city, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from Heaven, where the soul is in rest, and enjoys the love of God in Jesus Christ, in whom the union is with the Father of Light." The Judge admitted that to be very true, but asked Dewsbury whether, being an Englishman, he was ashamed of that more prosaic fact. "Nay," said Dewsbury, "I am free to declare that my natural birth was in Yorkshire, nine miles from York towards Hull." The Judge then said, "You pretend to be extraordinary men, and to have an extraordinary knowledge of God." Dewsbury replied, "We witness the work of regeneration to be an extraordinary work, wrought in us by the Spirit of God." The conversation then turned on their preaching itinerancy, and abstinence from all ordinary callings, the Judge remarking that even the Apostles had worked with their hands. Dewsbury admitted that some of the Apostles had been fishermen, and Paul a tent-maker, but asserted that, "when they were called to the ministry of Christ, they left their callings to follow Christ whither he led them by his Spirit," and that he and his fellow-prisoners had but done the same. The end of the colloquy was that the Judge, with every wish to be lenient, could not make up his mind to discharge the prisoners. "I see by your carriage," he said, "that what my brother Hale did at the last assizes, in requiring bond for your good behaviour, he might justly do it, for you are against magistrates and ministers"; and they were remitted to Northampton jail accordingly.—If judges like Hale and Atkins had to act thus, one may imagine how the poor Quakers fared in the hands of inferior and rougher functionaries. Fines and imprisonment for vagrancy, contempt of court, or non-payment of tithes, were the ordinary discipline for all; but there were cases here and there of whipping by the hangman, and other more ferocious cruelties. For among the Quakers themselves there were varieties of milder and wilder, less provoking and more provoking. The Quakerism of men like Fox and Dewsbury was, at worst, but an obdurate and irritating eccentricity, in comparison, for example, with the Quakerism run mad of James Nayler. This enthusiast, once quarter-master in a horse troop under Lambert, and regarded as "a man of excellent natural parts," had for three or four years kept himself within bounds, and been known only as one of the most eminent preachers of the ordinary Gospel of the Quakers and a prolific writer of Quaker tracts. But, having come to London in 1655, he had been unbalanced by the adulation of some Quaker women, with a Martha Simmons for their chief. "Fear and doubting then entered him," say the Quaker records, "so that he came to be clouded in his understanding, bewildered, and at a loss in his judgment, and became estranged from his best friends, because they did not approve his conduct." In other words, he became stark mad, and set up for himself, as "The Everlasting Son, the Prince of Peace, the Fairest among Ten Thousand, the Altogether Lovely." In this capacity he went into the West of England early in 1656, the admiring women following him, and chaunting his praises with every variety of epithet from the Song of Solomon, till he was clapped up in Exeter jail. Nor was Nayler the only madman among the Quakers about this time. A kind of epidemic of madness seems to have broken out in the sect, or among those reputed to belong to it. "One while," says Baxter, "divers of them went naked through divers chief towns and cities of the land, as a prophetical act: some of them have famished and drowned themselves in melancholy;" and he adds, more especially, as his own experience in Kidderminster, "I seldom preached a lecture, but going and coming I was railed at by a Quaker in the market-place in the way, and frequently in the congregation bawled at by the names of Hireling, Deceiver, False Prophet, Dog, and such like language." The Protector's own chapel in Whitehall was not safe. On April 13, 1656, "being the Lord's day," says the Public Intelligencer for that week, "a certain Quaker came into the chapel in sermon time, and in a very audacious manner disturbed the preacher, so that he was fain to be silent a while, till the fellow was taken away. His Highness, being present, did after sermon give order for the sending him to a justice of peace, to be dealt with according to law."—Naturally, the whole sect suffered for these indecencies and extravagances of some of its members, and the very name Quakerism became a synonym for all that was intolerable. The belief had got abroad, moreover, that "subtle and dangerous heads," Jesuits and others, had begun to "creep in among them," to turn Quakerism to political account, and "drive on designs of disturbance." Altogether the Protector and Council were sorely tried. Their policy seems, on the whole, to have been to let Quakerism run its course of public obloquy, and get into jail, or even to the whipping-post ad libitum, for offences against the peace, but at the same time to instruct the Major-Generals privately to be as discreet as possible, making differences between the sorts of Quakers, and especially letting none of them come to harm for their mere beliefs. "Making a difference," as by the injunction in Jude's epistle, was, as we know, Cromwell's own great rule in all cases where complete toleration was impossible, and he does not seem to have been able to do more for the Quakers. He had not, however, forgotten his interview with their chief, and may have been interested in knowing more especially what had become of him.—Fox, after much wandering in the West without serious mishap, had fallen among Philistines in Cornwall early in 1656, and had been arrested, with two companions, for spreading papers and for general vagrancy and contumacy. He had been in Launceston prison for some weeks, when Chief Justice Glynne came to hold the assizes in those parts. There had been the usual encounter between the Judge and the Quakers on the eternal question of the hats. "Where had they hats at all, from Moses to Daniel?" said the Chief Justice, rather rashly, meaning to laugh at the notion that Scripture could be brought to bear on the question in any way whatever. "Thou mayest read in the third of Daniel," said Fox, "that the three children were cast into the fiery furnace, by Nebuchadnezzar's command, with their coats, their hose, and their hats on." Glynne, though he had lost his joke, and though Fox put him further out of temper by distributing among the jurymen a paper against swearing, did not behave badly on the whole, and the issue was the simple recommitment of Fox and his friends to Launceston prison. There, however, as they would not any longer pay the jailor the seven shillings a week he demanded for the board of each, they were put into the most horrible hole in the place and treated abominably. They were in this predicament when Cromwell heard of them. "While G. Fox was still in prison, one of his friends went to Oliver Cromwell, and offered himself, body for body, to lie in prison in his stead, if he would take him and let G. Fox go at liberty. But Cromwell said he could not do it, for it was contrary to law; and, turning to those of his Council, 'Which of you,' quoth he, 'would do as much for me if I were in the same condition?'" An order was sent by Cromwell to the Governor of Pendennis Castle to enquire meantime into the treatment of the Launceston prisoners, and their release followed after a little while. It was noted also, in proof of his personal kindness towards the Quakers, that, though he received letters from some of them violently abusive of himself and his government, he never showed any anger on that account.¹

(5)The Jews. A very interesting incident of Cromwell's Protectorate was his attempt to obtain an open toleration for the Jews in England. Since the year 1290, when they had been banished in a body out of the kingdom under Edward I., there had been only isolated and furtive instances of visits to England or residence in England by persons of the proscribed race. Of late, however, a certain Manasseh Ben Israel, an able and earnest Portuguese Jew, settled in Amsterdam as a physician, had conceived the idea that, in the new age of liberty and other great things in England, there might be a permission for the Jews to return and live and trade freely. He had opened negotiations by letter, first with the Rump and then with the Barebones Parliament, but had at length come over to London to deal directly with the Protector. "To his Highness the Lord Protector, &c. the Humble Addresses of Manasseh Ben Israel, Divine and Doctor of Physic, in behalf of the Jewish Nation," were in print on the 5th of November, 1655; and they were formally before the Council on the 13th, his Highness present in person. The petition was for a general protection of such Jews as might come to reside in England, with liberty of trade, freedom for their worship, the possession of a Jewish synagogue and a Jewish cemetery in London, and a revocation of all statutes contrary to such privileges. Cromwell was thoroughly in favour of the proposal and let the fact be known; but, as it was necessary to proceed with caution, the matter was referred to a conference between the Council and twenty-eight persons outside of it, fourteen of whom were clergymen (Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Nye, Cudworth, Hugh Peters, Sterry, &c.), and the rest lawyers (St. John, Glynne, Steele, &c.), or city merchants (Lord Mayor Dethicke, Aldermen Pack and Tichbourne, &c.) There were four meetings of this Conference at Whitehall in December, Cromwell himself taking part. "I never heard a man speak so well," says an auditor of his speech at one of the meetings. On the whole, however, the Conference could not agree with his Highness. Some of the city-men objected, on commercial grounds, to the admission of the Jews; and the clergy were against it almost to a man, partly on the authority of Scripture texts, partly from fear of the effects of the importation into London of the new sect of Judaism. The Conference was discontinued; and, though the good Rabbi lingered on in London till April 1656, nothing could be done. Prejudice in the religious world was too strong. Nevertheless the Protector found means of giving effect to his own views. Not only did he mark his respect for Manasseh Ben Israel by a pension of £100 a year, to be paid him in Amsterdam; he admitted so many Jews, one by one, by private dispensation, that there was soon a little colony of them in London, with a synagogue to suit, and a piece of ground at Stepney leased for a cemetery. In effect, the readmission of the Jews into England dates from Cromwell's Protectorate.¹

Although making no great pretensions to learning himself, Cromwell seems to have taken especial pleasure in that part of his powers and privileges which gave him an influence on the literature and education of the country. Here, in fact, he but carried out in a special department that general notion of the Civil Magistrate's powers and duties which had led him to declare himself so strongly for the preservation and extension of an Established Church. The more thorough-going champions of Voluntaryism in that day, Anabaptists and others, had begun, as we have seen, to agitate not only for the abolition of a national Church or State-paid clergy of any kind, but also for the abolition of the Universities, the public schools, and all endowments for science or learning. But, if Cromwell had so signally disowned and condemned the system of sheer Voluntaryism in Religion, it was not to be expected that the more peculiar and exceptional Voluntaryism which challenged even State Endowments for education should find any countenance from his Protectorate. Nor did it.

The two English Universities had been sufficiently Puritanized long before Cromwell's accession to the supreme power—Cambridge in 1644-5, under the Chancellorship of the Earl of Manchester (III. 92-6), and Oxford in 1647-8, under the Chancellorship of the Earl of Pembroke (IV. 51-52). The Earl of Manchester, who had been living in complete retirement from public affairs since the establishment of the Commonwealth, still retained the nominal dignity of the Cambridge Chancellorship; but Cromwell had already for five years been Chancellor of the University of Oxford himself, having been elected to the office in January 1650-1, after the Earl of Pembroke's death. His interest in University matters had been naturally sustained by this official connexion with Oxford, and had shown itself in various ways before his Protectorate; but his Protectorate added fresh powers to those of his mere Chancellorship for Oxford, and brought his native University of Cambridge also within his grasp. He availed himself of his powers largely and punctually in the affairs of both, and was applauded in both as the steady defender of their honours and privileges.—To rectify what might still be amiss in them, or too much after the mere Presbyterian standard of Puritanism, he had appointed, by ordinance of September 2, 1654, (Vol. IV. p. 565), a new body of Visitors for each, to inquire into abuses, determine disputes, &c. The result was that the two Universities were now in better and quieter working order than they had been since the first stormy interruption of their old routine by the Civil War. Each reckoned a number of really able and efficient men among its heads of colleges, and in its staff of professors and tutors. In Oxford there was Dr. John Owen, head of Christ Church, and all but permanently Vice-Chancellor of the University, with Dr. Thomas Goodwin, Dr. John Wilkins, Dr. Robert Harris, Dr. Thankful Owen, Dr. John Conant, Dr. Jonathan Goddard, and others, as heads of other Colleges, and Dr. Henry Wilkinson, Dr. Lewis Du Moulin, Dr. Pocock, and the mathematicians Dr. Seth Ward and Dr. John Wallis among the Professors. Cambridge boasted of such men as Dr. Ralph Cudworth, Dr. Benjamin Whichcote, Dr. John Worthington, Dr. John Lightfoot, Dr. Lazarus Seaman, Dr. John Arrowsmith, Dr. Anthony Tuckney, Dr. Henry More, and others now less remembered. And under the discipline and teaching of such chiefs there was growing up in both Universities a generation of young men as well grounded in all the older sorts of learning as any generation of their predecessors, with the benefit also of newer lights, as was to be proved by the names and appearances of many of them in English history to the end of the century. Even Clarendon admits as much. It was a wonder to him to find, in the subsequent days of his own Chancellorship of the University of Oxford, that the "several tyrannical governments mutually succeeding each other" through so many previous years had not so affected the place but that it still "yielded a harvest of extraordinary good and sound knowledge in all parts of learning." He attributed this to the inherent virtues of the academic soil itself, which could choke bad seeds, cherish the good, and even defy barrenness by finding its own seeds; but it may be more reasonable to suppose that the superintendence of the Universities under the "tyrannical governments," and especially under Cromwell's as the latest of them, had not been barbaric.—The University Commissioners, it may be added, had authority to inspect Westminster School, Eton, Winchester, and Merchant Taylors'. But, indeed, there seems hardly to have been a foundation for learning anywhere in England that was not, in one way or another, brought under Cromwell's eye. In his inquiries after moneys that might still be recoverable out of the wreck of the old ecclesiastical revenues one can see that, next to the increase and better sustenance of his Established Ministry, additions to the endowed scholastic machinery of the country were always in his mind. It is clear indeed that one of those characteristics of conservatism by which Cromwell intended that his government should be distinguished from the preceding Governments of the Revolution was greater care of the surviving educational institutions of England and Wales, with the resuscitation of some that had fallen into decay. The money-difficulties were great, and less could be accomplished than he desired; but, apart from what may have been done for the refreshment of the older foundations, it is memorable that Cromwell was able to give effect to at least one very considerable design of English University extension. A College in Durham, expressly for the benefit of the North of England, with a Provostship, four Professorships, and tutorships and fellowships to match, was one of the creations of the Protectorate.¹

While it was chiefly through the organized means afforded by the Universities and Colleges that Cromwell did what he could for the encouragement of learning, his relations to the learned men individually that were living in the time of his Protectorate were always at least courteous, and in some instances peculiarly friendly.

Usher being dead (March 21, 1655-6), and also the great Selden (Nov. 20, 1654) and the venerable and learned Gataker (July 27, 1654), the following were the Englishmen of greatest literary celebrity already, or of greatest coming note in English literary history, who were alive at the midpoint of Oliver's Protectorate, and could and did then range themselves (for we exclude those of insufficient age) as his adherents on the whole, his subjects by mere compulsion, or his implacable and exiled enemies. We divide the list into groups according to that classification, as calculated for the year 1656; but the names within each group are arranged in the order of seniority:¹—

ADHERENTS MORE OR LESS CORDIAL.

• George Wither (ætat 68).
• John Goodwin (ætat 63).
• Edmund Calamy (ætat 56).
• Thomas Goodwin (ætat 56).
• John Lightfoot (ætat 54).
• Edmund Waller (ætat 51).
• John Rushworth (ætat 49).
• Milton (ætat 48).
• Benjamin Whichcote (ætat 46).
• James Harrington (ætat 45).
• Henry More (ætat 42).
• John Wilkins (ætat 42).
• John Owen (ætat 40).
• John Wallis (ætat 40).
• Ralph Cudworth (ætat 39).
• Algernon Sidney (ætat 39).
• Marchamont Needham (ætat 36).
• Andrew Marvell (ætat 36).
• Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill (ætat 35).
• William Petty (ætat 33).
• Thomas Stanley (ætat 31).
• John Aubrey (ætat 30).
• Robert Boyle (ætat 29).
• John Bunyan (ætat 28).
• Sir William Temple (ætat 27).
• John Tillotson (ætat 26).
• John Howe (ætat 26).
• Edward Phillips (ætat 26).
• John Phillips (ætat 25).
• John Dryden (ætat 25).
• Henry Stubbe (ætat 25).
• John Locke (ætat 24).
• Samuel Pepys (ætat 24).
• Edward Stillingfleet (ætat 21).

SUBJECTS BY COMPULSION.

• Ex-Bishop Hall (died Sept. 8, 1656, ætat 82).
• John Hales (died May 19, 1656, ætat 72).
• Robert Sanderson (ætat 69).
• Thomas Hobbes (ætat 68).
• Robert Herrick (ætat 65).
• John Hacket (ætat 64).
• Izaak Walton (ætat 63).
• James Shirley (ætat 62).
• James Howell (ætat 62).
• Gilbert Sheldon (ætat 58).
• William Prynne (ætat 56).
• Brian Walton (ætat 56).
• Peter Heylin (ætat 56).
• Jasper Mayne (ætat 52).
• Thomas Fuller (ætat 52).
• Edward Pocock (ætat 52).
• Sir William Davenant (ætat 51).
• Thomas Browne of Norwich (ætat 51).
• William Dugdale (ætat 51).
• Henry Hammond (ætat 51).
• Richard Fanshawe (ætat 48).
• Aston Cockayne (ætat 48).
• Samuel Butler (ætat 44).
• Jeremy Taylor (ætat 43).
• John Cleveland (ætat 43).
• John Pearson (ætat 43).
• John Birkenhead (ætat 41).
• John Denham (ætat 41).
• Richard Baxter (ætat 41).
• Roger L'Estrange (ætat 40).
• Abraham Cowley (ætat 38).
• John Evelyn (ætat 36).
• Isaac Barrow (ætat 26).
• Anthony Wood (ætat 25).
• Robert South (ætat 23).

ACTIVE ENEMIES IN EXILE.

• John Bramhall (ætat 63).
• George Morley (ætat 58).
• John Earle (ætat 55).
• Sir Kenelm Digby (ætat 53).
• Sir Edward Hyde (ætat 48).
• Thomas Killigrew (ætat 45).
• George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (ætat 29).

The relations of Cromwell to such persons varied, of course, with their attitudes towards himself and his government.

The theologian among his adherents to whom he seems to have been drawn by the strongest elective affinity was Dr. John Owen. "Sir, you are a person I must be acquainted with," he had said to Owen in Fairfax's garden; laying his hand on his shoulder, one day in April 1649, just after he had first heard Owen preach;¹ and so, from being merely minister of Coggeshall in Essex, Owen had become Cromwell's friend and chaplain in Ireland, and had still, through his subsequent promotions, ending with the Deanery of Christ Church and the Vice-Chancellorship of Oxford, been much about Cromwell and much trusted by him. Perhaps the only difference now between them was that Owen's theory of Toleration was less broad than Cromwell's. Next to Owen among the divines of the Commonwealth, the Protector seems to have retained his liking for Dr. Thomas Goodwin, and for such other fervid or Evangelical Independents as Caryl, Sterry, Hugh Peters, and Nicholas Lockyer, with a gradual tendency to John Howe, the youngest of his chaplains. For the veteran free-lance and Arminian John Goodwin, a keen critic now of Cromwell's Commission of Triers and of other parts of his Church-policy, his liking must have been less; but Goodwin's merits were fairly appreciated, and he had at least perfect liberty to conduct his congregation as he pleased and to publish his pamphlets. So, on the other hand, eminent Presbyterian divines like Calamy, accommodated amply in Cromwell's Established Church, had all freedom and respect.—As to his dealings with non-clerical men of letters friendly to his government, we know a good deal already. Milton, of whose relations to the Protectorate we shall have to speak more at large, was his Latin Secretary; Needham was his journalist; Marvell was in his private employment and was looking for something more public. Still younger men were growing up, in the Universities or just out of them, regarding the Protectorate as now the settled order of things, in which they must pass their future lives. Cudworth, recently promoted from the mastership of Clare College, Cambridge, to that of Milton's old College of Christ's, had been asked by the Protector to recommend to him any very promising young Cambridge men he might discover;² and, doubtless, there had been a similar request to Owen of Oxford. Dryden, still at Cambridge, though now twenty-five years of age, and already, by his father's death, a small Northamptonshire squire of £40 a year, was looking forward, we shall find, as his family connexions with the Parliamentarians and the Commonwealth made natural, to a life in London under the great Protector's shadow.

All that could be expected by divines and scholars ranking in our second category, i.e. as subjects of the Protectorate by mere compulsion, and known to be strongly disaffected to it, was protection and safety on condition of remaining quiet. This they did receive. For a month or two, indeed, after the terrible ordinance of Nov. 24, 1655, threatening the expulsion of the ejected Anglican clergy from the family-chaplaincies, schoolmasterships, and tutorships, in which so many of them had found refuge, and forbidding them to preach anywhere or use the Book of Common Prayer, there had been a flutter of consternation among the poor dispersed clerics. That Ordinance, however, as we saw, had merely been in terrorem at a particular moment, and had remained a dead letter. The admirable John Hales, it is true, did resign a chaplaincy which he held near Eton rather than bring the good lady who sheltered him into trouble; and by his death soon afterwards England lost a man of whom the Protector must have had as kindly thoughts as of any of the old Anglicans. That case was exceptional. Ex-Bishop Hall, in the end of his much-battered life, lived quietly near Norwich, remembering his past losses and sequestrations under the Long Parliament rather than suffering anything more of the kind. Peter Heylin was in similar circumstances in Oxfordshire, and by no means bashful. Jeremy Taylor alternated between the Earl of Carbery's seat, called "the Golden Grove," in Caernarvonshire, near which he taught a school, and the society of his friend John Evelyn, in London or at Sayes Court in Surrey,—tending on the whole to London, where he resumed preaching, and, after a brief arrest and some little questioning, was left unmolested. Hammond was mainly at Sir John Packington's in Worcestershire; Sanderson and Fuller were actually in parochial livings, the one in Lincolnshire, the other in Essex; and Pocock was in a Professorship. Sorely vexed as such men were, and poorer in the world's goods than they had been, this was the time of the greatest literary productiveness of some of them. Old Bishop Hall had not ceased to write, but was to leave trifles of his last days to be published after the Restoration as "Shakings of the Olive Tree"; and works, or tracts and sermons, by Sanderson, Heylin, Hammond, Fuller, and Jeremy Taylor, some of them of a highly Episcopal tenor, were among the publications of the Protectorate. Fuller's Church History of Britain, one of the best and most lightsome books in our language, was published in 1655-6. Brian Walton's great Polyglott had not yet been carried farther than the third volume; but the Protector had continued to that scholar the material furtherance in his arduous work which had been yielded first by the Rump Government, apparently on some solicitation by Milton (Vol. IV. pp. 446, 447); and the work, when it did appear complete in six volumes folio, in 1657, was to contain handsome acknowledgment by Walton of this generosity. Of the incessant literary activity of the Presbyterian Baxter through the Protectorate we need say nothing. It is more remarkable that there was no interruption of William Prynne's interminable series of pamphlets on all sorts of public questions, and often violently against the Government. For the rest, where were the Herricks, the Shirleys, the Clevelands, and the other old Royalist wits and satirists of the lighter sort? Keeping schools, most of them, or living with friends in the country, and now and then sending out, as before, some light thing in print. Samuel Butler, a secretary or the like in private families, was yet unknown to fame, but was taking notes and sure to print them some day; and the two most placid and imperturbable men in all England were Browne of Norwich and Izaak Walton. Browne, all his best known writings published long ago, but appearing in new editions, was contented now with attending his patients; and, when Izaak Walton was not in his house in Clerkenwell (to which neighbourhood he seems to have removed after giving up his shop in Chancery Lane), he was away on some fishing ramble. His Complete Angler, or The Contemplative Man's Recreation had appeared in May 1653, and a second edition of it was just out.¹

The number of wits and men of letters still hostile to the Protectorate to such a degree that they would undergo the hardships of exile rather than live in England was, it will have been observed, comparatively small. This arose from the fact that some who had been in exile at the death of Charles I, or even afterwards in the train of Charles II., had reluctantly lost faith in the possibility of a restoration of the Stuarts, and had returned to England, to join themselves with those whom we have classed generally as Cromwell's "subjects by compulsion." Leading cases were those of Hobbes, Sir William Davenant, and Abraham Cowley; with which, for convenience, may be associated that of the satirist Cleveland, though he had never gone into exile, but had remained in England, taking the risks.—HOBBES, who had been in Paris since 1641, to be out of the bustle of the English confusions, but who had come into central connexion with the Stuart cause there by his appointment in 1646 to be tutor to young Charles, had been obliged to leave that connexion, ostensibly at least, in 1651 or 1652. The occasion is said to have been the publication of his Leviathan. That famous book of 1651, like its two predecessors of 1650, Human Nature and De Corpore Politico, he had found it convenient to publish in London, where the Commonwealth authorities do not seem to have made the least objection. But by this time Hobbes's infidelity, or Atheism, or Hobbism, or whatever it was, had become a dreadful notoriety in the world; and, when Hobbes presented a fine copy of his great book to Charles II., that pious young prince had been instructed by the Royalist divines about him that it would not do to countenance either Mr. Hobbes or his books any longer. Charles retained privately all his own real regard for his old tutor, and Hobbes perfectly understood that; but the hint had been taken. Back in England at last, and permitted to live in the house of his old pupil and patron, the Earl of Devonshire, where his only annoyance was the society of the Earl's chaplain, Jasper Mayne, he had found the Protectorate comfortable enough for all his purposes, and had been publishing new books under it, including his pungent disputations with ex-Bishop Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity and with Wallis of Oxford on Mathematics.¹—Hobbes's friend DAVENANT had for some time been less lucky. His return to England had been involuntary. He had been captured at sea in 1650 on his way to Virginia (Vol. IV. p. 193), had been a prisoner in the Isle of Wight and in the Tower and in danger of trial for his life, and had been released only by strong intercession in his favour, in which Milton is thought to have helped. This result, however, had reconciled him, and Davenant too had become one of the subjects of the Protectorate. Nay he had struck out an ingenious mode of livelihood for himself under Cromwell, somewhat in his old line of business. "At that time," says Wood, "tragedies and comedies being esteemed very scandalous by the Presbyterians, and therefore by them silenced, he contrived a way to set up an Italian Opera, to be performed by declamations and music; and, that they might be performed with all decency, seemliness, and without rudeness and profaneness, John Maynard, serjeant-at-law, and several sufficient citizens, were engagers. This Italian Opera began in Rutland House in Charter-house yard, May 23, 1656, and was afterwards transferred to the Cockpit in Drury Lane." Cromwell's own fondness for music may have prompted him to this relaxation, in Davenants favour, of the old theatre-closing Ordinance of September 1642. At all events, money was coming in for Davenant, and he was not very unhappy.²—The Satirist JOHN CLEVELAND, as we have said, had never gone into exile. This was the more remarkable because, through the Civil War, he had adhered to the King's cause most tenaciously, not only in official employment for it, but also serving it by the circulation of squibs and satires very offensive to the Parliamentarians, and to the Scots in particular. Through the Commonwealth, however, and also into the Protectorate, he had lived on in England, in obscurity and with risks, latterly somewhere in or about Norfolk, as tutor or quasi-tutor to a gentleman, on £30 a year. By ill luck, in Nov. 1655, just when the police of the Major-Generals was coming into operation, he had been apprehended, on his way to Newark, by the vigilance of Major-General Haynes, and committed to prison in Yarmouth, There seems to have been no definite charge, other than that he was "the poet Cleveland" and was a questionable kind of vagrant. He had been in prison for some months when it occurred to him to address a letter to the Protector himself. "May it please your Highness," it began, "Rulers within the circle of their government have a claim to that which is said of the Deity: they have their centre everywhere and their circumference nowhere, It is in this confidence that I address your Highness, as knowing no place in the nation is so remote as not to share in the ubiquity of your care, no prison so close as to shut me up from the partaking of your influence." After explaining that he had been and still was a Royalist, but that he had taken no active part in affairs for about ten years, he concludes, in a clever vein of compliment, thus: "If you graciously please to extend indulgence to your suppliant in taking me out of this withering durance, you will find mercy will establish you more than power, though all the days of your life were as pregnant with victories as your twice-auspicious Third of September." The appeal to Cromwell's magnanimity was successful. Cleveland was released, came to London, and lived by his wits there till his death in May 1658.³—A much later returner from among the Royalist exiles than either Hobbes or Davenant was the poet COWLEY. His return was late in 1655 or early in 1656, and seems to have been attended with some mystery. He had been for years at Paris or St. Germains, in the household of Lord Jermyn, acting as secretary to his Lordship and to Queen Henrietta Maria, deciphering the secret letters that came to them, and therefore at the very heart of the intrigues for Charles II. Yet, after a temporary imprisonment, security in £1000 had been accepted in his behalf, and he had been allowed to remain in London. The story afterwards by his Royalist friends was that he had come over, by understanding with Jermyn and the ex-Queen, to watch affairs in their interest and send them intelligence, and that, the better to disguise the design, he pretended compliance with the existing powers, meaning to obtain the degree of M.D. from Oxford, and set up cautiously as a medical practitioner. It is very unlikely that such a dangerous game could have been safely tried under eyes like Thurloe's; and the fact seems to be that Cowley was honestly tired of exile and willing to comply, in a manly way, for the sake of life once more at home. One of his first acts after his return was to publish his Collected Poems in a volume of four parts. They appeared, on or about April 1656, from the shop of Humphrey Moseley, the publisher of Milton's Poems ten years before, and still always dealing, as then, in the finer literature. In a preface to the book Cowley distinctly avowed his intention to accept the inevitable, treat the controversy as at length determined against the Stuarts by the unaccountable will of God, and no longer persist in the ridiculous business of weaving laurels for the conquered. He announced at the same time that he had not only excluded from the volume all his pieces of this last kind, but had even burnt the manuscripts. In a copy of the book presented by him to the Bodleian Library at Oxford there is a "Pindarique Ode" in his own hand, dated June 26, 1656, breathing the same sentiment. The book is supposed to be addressing the great Library; and, after congratulating itself on being admitted into such a glorious company without deserts of its own, but by mere predestination, it is made to say:—

As the Muses were returning to England in full number, and ceasing to be so Stuartist as they had been, it was natural that there should be express celebrations of the Protectorate in their name. There had been dedications of books to Cromwell, and applauses of him in prose and verse, from the time of his first great successes as a Parliamentary General; and such things had been increasing since, till they defied enumeration. In the Protectorate they swarmed. Matchless still among the tributes in verse was Milton's single Sonnet of May 1652, "Cromwell, our chief of men," and Milton had written no more to or about Cromwell in the metrical form since the Protectorate had begun, but had contented himself with adding to his former prose tributes in various pamphlets that most splendid and subtle one of all which flames through several pages of his Defensio Secunda. It is Milton now, almost alone, that we remember as Cromwell's laureate; but among the sub-laureates there were some by no means insignificant. Old George Wither, though his marvellous metrical fluency had now lapsed into doggrel and senility, had done his best by sending forth, in 1654-5, from some kind of military superintendentship he held in the county of Surrey (Wood calls it distinctly a Major-Generalship at last, but that is surely an exaggeration), two Oliverian poems, one called The Protector: A Poem briefly illustrating the Supereminency of that Dignity, the other A Rapture occasioned by the late miraculous Deliverance of his Highness the Lord Protector from a desperate danger.¹ In stronger and more compact style, though still rather rough, Andrew Marvell, in the same year, had added to his former praises of Cromwell a poem of 400 lines, published in a broad-sheet, with the title The First Anniversary of the Government under his Highness the Lord Protector. It began:—

But the most far-blazoned eulogy at the time, and the smoothest to read now, was one in forty-seven stanzas, which appeared May 31, 1655, with the title A Panegyric to my Lord Protector of the present greatness and joint interest of his Highness and this Nation, by E. W., Esq. The author was Edmund Waller, still under a cloud for his old transgression, but recovering himself gradually by his wealth, his plausibility and fine manners, and his powers of versifying. Here are four of the stanzas:—

Waller's verses, if nothing else, would suggest that we ought to know something more, at this point, of the state of Scotland, Ireland, and even the Colonies, under Cromwell's Protectorate.

SCOTLAND.

After August 1654, when the Glencairn-Middleton insurrection had been suppressed (Vol. IV, p. 532), the administration of Scotland had been again for some time wholly in the hands of Monk, as the Commander-in-chief there, with assistance from the four resident English Judges and minor officials. Cromwell and his Council in London, however, had been thinking of a more regular method for the Government of Scotland; and, at length, in the end of July 1655, the following was the arrangement:

I. CIVIL ESTABLISHMENT.

COUNCIL, SITTING IN EDINBURGH.

President of Council (£2000 a year): Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill.

• General Monk.
• Major-General Charles Howard.
• Colonel Adrian Scroope.
• Colonel Cooper.
• Colonel Nathaniel Whetham.
• Colonel William Lockhart (soon afterwards Sir William, and Ambassador to France).
• John Swinton, Laird of Swinton (afterwards Sir John).
• Samuel Desborough, Esq. (brother of the Regicide).

Chief Clerk to the Council (£300 a year): Emanuel Downing.

SUPREME COMMISSIONERS OF JUSTICE (in lieu of the Old Scotch Court of Session):—This was a body of Seven Judges; four of whom were English—George Smith, Edward Moseley, William Lawrence, and Henry Goodyere (the last two in the places of two of the original four of 1652),—but three of them native Scots, accustomed to Scottish law and practice. These native Judges had been added for some time already, and there had been, and were to be, changes of the persons; but one hears most of Lockhart, Swinton, Sir James Learmont, Alexander Pearson, and Andrew Ker. At hand, and helping much, though no longer now the great man he had been in Scotland, was Sir Archibald Johnstone of Warriston.

STATE OFFICERS:—Most of the state-offices of the old Scottish constitution were still kept up, but were held, of course, by the new Councillors and Judges. The Keepership of the Great Seal was given to Desborough; the Signet or Privy Seal, with the fees of the old Secretaryship, to Lockhart; the Clerk Registership to Judge Smith; &c.

TRUSTEES OF FORFEITED AND SEQUESTRATED ESTATES:—Under this name, by the Ordinance of April 12, 1654 (Vol. IV. pp. 561-562), there was a body of seven persons, about half of them English, looking after the rents and revenues of those numerous Scottish nobles and lairds the punishment of whom, for past delinquency, by total or partial seizing of their estates, had been one of the necessary incidents of the Conquest (Vol. IV. pp. 559-561).

II. MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT.

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, General George Monk (head-quarters Dalkeith), with Major-General Howard, Colonels Cooper, Scroope, and Whetham, and other Colonels and inferior officers, under him. The total force of horse and foot in Scotland may have been about 7000 or 8000. It was distributed over the country in forts and garrisons, the chief being those of Edinburgh, Leith, Glasgow, Stirling, Dundee, Perth, Aberdeen, Dunnottar, Burntisland, Linlithgow, Dumbarton, Ayr, Dunstaffnage, and Inverness. Everywhere the English soldiers acted as a police, and their officers superseded, or were conjoined with, the native magistrates and sheriffs in the local courts.¹

Under this government Scotland was now very tranquil and tolerably prosperous. True, almost all the old poppy-heads or thistle-heads, the native nobles and notables, were gone. Those of them who had been taken at Worcester, or had been sent out of Scotland as prisoners about the same time by Monk, were still, for the most part, in durance in England; others were in foreign exile; the few that remained in Scotland, such as Argyle, Loudoun, Lothian, the Marquis of Douglas, and his son Angus, were out of sight in their country-houses, utterly broken by private debts or fines and forfeitures, and in very low esteem. Then, among many Scots of good status throughout the community, there were complaints and grumblings on account of the taxes for the support of the English Army, or on account of loss of posts and chances by the admission of Englishmen to the same, or by the promotion of such other Scots as the English saw fit to favour, Incidents of this kind, much noted at the time, had been the ejection of some Professors from the Universities by the English Visitors in 1653, and the appointments by the same visitors of men of their own choice to University posts—e.g. Mr. Robert Leighton, minister of Newbattle, to the Principalship of Edinburgh University, and Mr. Patrick Gillespie to that of the University of Glasgow. But even Baillie, whose complaints on such grounds had been bitter in 1654, and to whom the appointment of Gillespie to the Glasgow Principal-ship had been a particular private grievance, was in better spirits before 1656. Glasgow, he then reports, was flourishing. "Through God's mercy, our town, in its proportion, thrives above all the land. The Word of God is well loved and regarded; albeit not as it ought and we desire, yet in no town of our land better. Our people has much more trade in comparison than any other: their buildings increase strangely both for number and fairness." Burnet's account is that the whole country partook of this growing prosperity, which he attributes to the excellent police of the English, the trading they introduced, and the money they put in circulation. "A man may ride over all Scotland with a switch in his hand and a hundred pounds in his pocket, which he could not have done these five hundred years," was Mr. Samuel Desborough's summary account afterwards of the state of the country which he had helped to administer under the Protectorate; and Cromwell's own reference to the subject is even more interesting and precise. Acknowledging that the Scots had suffered much, and were in fact "a very ruined nation," yet what had befallen them had introduced, he hinted, a very desirable change in the constitution of Scottish society. It had enfranchised and encouraged the middle and lower classes. "The meaner sort in Scotland," he said, "love us well, and are likely to come into as thriving a condition as when they were under their own great lords, who made them work for their living no better than the peasants of France;" and "The middle sort of people," he added, "do grow up there into such a substance as makes their lives comfortable, if not better than they were before." Of course, in neither of these classes, any more than from among the dispossessed nobles and lairds, can the sentiment of Scottish nationality and the pain of its abolition have been extinct. Yet one notices, towards the end of 1656, a soothing even in that respect. The Scots, all but universally, by that time, had acquired the habit of speaking deferentially of "His Highness" or "His Highness the Lord Protector"; correspondence with Charles II. had entirely ceased; the Edinburgh barristers had returned to the bar; and the Scottish clergy, pretty generally, left off praying for Charles publicly. Lord Broghill's admirable management had helped much to this reconciliation. "If men of my Lord Broghill's parts and temper be long among us," wrote Baillie, "they will make the present Government more beloved than some men wish. From our public praying for the King Broghill's courtesies, more than his threats, brought off our leading men." Baillie himself had yielded that point at last.¹

Raging yet among the Scottish clergy, and dividing the Scottish community so far as the clergy had influence, was the controversy between the Resolutioners and the Remonstrants or Protesters (Vol. IV. pp. 201-214, 281-284, 288-289, and 361). By a law of political life, every community, at every time, must have some polarizing controversy; and this was Scotland's through the whole period of her absorption in the English Commonwealth and Protectorate. The Protesters were the Whigs, and the Resolutioners the Tories, of Scotland through that time; and the strife between the parties was all the fiercer because, Scottish autonomy being lost, it was the only native strife left for Scotsmen, and they were battened down to it, as an indulgence among themselves, by a larger and unconcerned rule overhead. General Assemblies of the Kirk being no longer allowed, it had to be conducted in Provincial Synods and Presbyteries only, or in sermons and pamphlets of mutual reproach. The exasperation was great; Church-censures and threats of such passed and repassed; all attempts at agreement failed; the best friends were parted. Leaders among the majority, or Resolutioner clergy, were Mr. Robert Douglas of Edinburgh, who had preached the coronation sermon of Charles II. at Scone, Mr. James Sharp of Crail (these two back for some time from the imprisonment in London to which Monk had sent them in 1651: Vol. IV. 296), Mr. James Wood of St. Andrews, old Mr. David Dickson, now Professor of Divinity in Edinburgh, and our perpetual friend Baillie. The minority, or Protesters, were led by such ministers as Mr. James Guthrie of Stirling, their first oracle, Mr. Patrick Giliespie of Glasgow University, Mr. John Livingston of Ancram, Mr, Samuel Rutherford of St. Andrews, and Mr. Andrew Cant of Aberdeen; with whom, as their best lay head, was Johnstone of Warriston. Peace-makers, such as Mr. Robert Blair of St. Andrews and Mr. James Durham of Glasgow, negociated between the two sides; and Mr. Robert Leighton, in his Edinburgh Principalship, looked on with saintly and philosophic indifference. He hoped that, while so many brethren "preached to the times," one brother might be allowed "to preach on eternity" and that the differences on earth would "make heaven the sweeter." In fact, however, the controversy was not merely a theoretical one. Not only was it involved whether the two last General Assemblies, of 1651 and 1652, swayed as they had been by the Resolutioners, should be recognised and their acts held valid, and what should be the spirit and constitution of the Kirk in future: present interests were also involved. It had been to the Protesters that Cromwell had turned with greatest liking and hope, both on political grounds and from spiritual sympathy, when he was fighting in Scotland; and, since the beginning of his Protectorate, they had been most in favour. Early in 1654 three of their number, Mr. Patrick Gillespie, Mr. John Livingston, and Mr. John Menzies, had been summoned to London to advise the Protector; they had been there two or three months; and the effects of their advice had been visible in an ordinance about vacant Kirk-livings very favourable to the Protesters, and generally in a continued inclination towards the Protesters in the proceedings of the English Government in Scotland. The ministers and others ejected by Cromwell's visitors had been mostly of the Resolutioner species; and one of Baillie's complaints is that Protesters, whether fit or not, were put into vacant livings by the English, and that only Scotsmen of that colour were conjoined with the English in the executive and the judicatories. Till 1656 all this had been very natural. The dregs of Stuartism, and consequent antipathy to the Protectorate, had persisted till then most visibly among the Resolutioners.¹

Though the Protesters were originally what we have called super-ultra-Presbyterians, it was not surprising that some of them had moved into Independency. There certainly were some Independents among the Scottish parish clergy at this time, especially about Aberdeen; and the Independents apart from the National Church had become numerous. But mere Independency now, or even Anabaptism, was nothing very shocking in Scotland; it was the increase of newer sectaries that alarmed the clergy. Quakerism had found its way into Scotland; so that there were now, we are told by a contemporary, "great numbers of that damnable sect of the Quakers, who, being deluded by Satan, drew away many to their profession, both men and women." As in England, Quaker preachers went about disturbing the regular service in churches, or denouncing every form of ministry but their own to open-air congregations, and often with physical convulsions and fits of insane phrenzy. The Church-courts and the civil authorities were much exercised by the innovation, and had begun action against the sect, the rather because many of the common people, in their weariness of the strife among their own clergy, "resetted" the Quaker preachers and said they "got as much good of them as of anybody else."¹

Not an importation like Quakerism, but of ineradicable native growth, was the crime of witchcraft; and, though that crime was known in England too, and occupied English law-courts, Scotland maintained her fearful superiority in witch-trials and witch-burnings. "There is much witchery up and down our land," wrote Baillie: "the English be but too sparing to try it, but some they execute." Against crimes of other orders the English judges were willing enough to act; and nothing is more startling to one who is new to such facts than to find how much of their business, in pious and Presbyterian Scotland, consisted in trials of cases of hideous and abnormal sexualism. But, indeed, very strange isms of quite another sort, and of which mere modern theory would have pronounced the Scotland of that time incapable, lurked underneath all the piety, all the preaching, all the exercise of Presbyterian discipline, all the seeming distribution of the population universally into Resolutioners and Protesters, with interspersed Independents, Baptists, Quakers, and other vehement Christians. Bead, from the Scottish correspondence of Needham's Mercurius Politicus, in the number for June 26-July 3, 1656, the following account of one of the cases that had come before Judge Smith and Judge Lawrence in their Dumfriesshire circuit of the previous May:—

"Alexander Agnew, commonly called Jock of Broad Scotland," [apparently an itinerant beggar, or Edie Ochiltree, of Dumfriesshire] was tried on this indictment.—"First, the said Alexander, being desired to go to church, answered 'Hang God: God was hanged long since; what had he to do with God? he had nothing to do with God'. Secondly, He answered he was nothing in God's common; God gave him nothing, and he was no more obliged to God than to the Devil; and God was very greedy. Thirdly, When he was desired to seek anything in God's name, he said he would never seek anything for God's sake, and that it was neither God nor the Devil that gave the fruits of the land: the wives of the country gave him his meat. Fourthly, Being asked how many persons were in the Godhead, answered there was only one person in the Godhead, who made all; but, for Christ, he was not God, because he was made, and came into the world after it was made, and died as other men, being nothing but a mere man. Sixthly, He declared that he knew not whether God or the Devil had the greater power; but he thought the Devil had the greatest; and 'When I die,' said he, 'let God and the Devil strive for my soul, and let him that is strongest take it.' Seventhly, He denied there was a Holy Ghost, or knew there was a Spirit, and denied he was a sinner or needed mercy. Eighthly, He denied he was a sinner, and [said] that he scorned to seek God's mercy. Ninthly, He ordinarily mocked all exercise of God's worship and convocation in His name, in derision saying 'Pray you to your God, and I will pray to mine when I think time.' And, when he was desired by some to give thanks for his meat, he said, 'Take a sackful of prayers to the mill, and shill them, and grind them, and take your breakfast off them.' To others he said, 'I will give you a twopence, and [if ye] pray until a boll of meal and one stone of butter fall down from heaven through the house-rigging to you.' To others, when bread and cheese was given him, and was laid on the ground by him, he said, 'If I leave this, I will [shall] long cry to God before he give it me again.' To others he said, 'Take a bannock, and break it in two, and lay down one half thereof, and ye will long-pray to God before he put the other half to it again.' Tenthly, Being posed whether or not he knew God or Christ, he answered he had never had any profession, nor never would—he had never had any religion, nor never would: also that there was no God nor Christ, and that he never received anything from God, but from Nature, which he said ever reigned and ever would, and that to speak of Gods and their persons was an idle thing, and that he would never name such names, for he had shaken his cap of such things long since. And he denied that a man has a soul, or that there is a Heaven or a Hell, or that the Scriptures are the Word of God. Concerning Christ, he said that he heard of such, a man; but, for the second person of the Trinity, he had been the second person of the Trinity if the ministers had not put him in prison, and that he was no more obliged to God nor the Devil.—And these aforesaid blasphemies are not rarely or seldom uttered by him, but frequently and ordinarily in several places where he resorted, to the entangling, deluding, and seducing of the common people. Through the committing of which blasphemies, he hath contravened the tenor of the laws and acts of Parliament, and incurred the pain of death mentioned therein; which ought to be inflicted upon him with all rigour, in manner specified in the indictment.—Which indictment being put to the knowledge of an assize, the said Alexander Agnew, called Jock of Broad Scotland, was by the said assize, all in one voice, by the mouth of William Carlyle, late bailie of Dumfries, their chancellor, found guilty of the said crimes of blasphemy mentioned in his indictment; for which the commissioners ordained him, upon Wednesday, 21 May, 1656, betwixt two and four hours in the afternoon, to be taken to the ordinary place of execution for the Burgh of Dumfries, and there to be hanged on a gibbet while [till] he be dead, and all his moveable goods to be escheat."

The intercourse between Scotland and London, both by letters and by journeys to and fro, was now very brisk.¹ Not only were Lauderdale, Eglinton, Marischal, David Leslie, and a number of the other distinguished Scottish prisoners of 1651, still detained in London, in more or less strict custody, with their wives and retainers near them; but many Scots whose proper residence was in Scotland were coming to London, on visits of some length, for their own or for public business. Among these, late in 1655, was Lockhart,—to be converted, as we know, into the Protector's ambassador to the Court of France. The eccentric ex-Judge Scot of Scotstarvet had already been in London, petitioning for the remission or reduction of his fine of £1500 for former delinquency, and succeeding completely at last, "in consideration of the pains he hath taken and the service he hath done to the Commonwealth." The Earl of Lothian was in London, painfully prosecuting petitions for the recovery of certain lost family-properties. But the most remarkable apparition was that of the Marquis of Argyle. He came to London in September, 1655, and he seems to have remained there for a long while. What had brought him up was also a suit with the Protector and the Council for reparation of some portions of his lost fortunes and for favour generally; but he seems to have gone about a good deal, visiting various people. "Came to visit me." says Evelyn, the naturalist and virtuoso of Sayes Court, in his diary, under date May 28, 1656, "the old Marquis of Argyle. Lord Lothian, and some other Scotch noblemen, all strangers to me. Note: The Marquis took the turtle-doves in the aviary for owls." It had been his characteristic mistake through life.²

Any influence which the Marquis could now have with the Protector in matters of Scottish Government must have been small; but it was understood that, such as it was, it would be on the side of the Kirk party of the Protesters. And this had become of some consequence. In and through 1656, if not earlier, it had become obvious that the inclinations of the Protector to that party had been considerably shaken. The change was attributed partly to Lord President Broghill. Almost from his first coming to Scotland, this nobleman had found it desirable to win over the Resolutioners. "The President Broghill," says Baillie, "is reported by all to be a man exceeding wise and moderate, and by profession a Presbyterian: he has gained more on the affections of the people than all the English that ever were among us. He has been very civil to Mr. Douglas and Mr. Dickson, and is very intime with Mr. James Sharp. By this means we [the Resolutioners] have an equal hearing in all we have ado with the Council. Yet their way is exceeding longsome, and all must be done first at London." So far as Broghill's communications with London might serve, the Resolutioners, therefore, might count on him as their friend. And by this time he had reasons to show. Had he not succeeded, where the stern Monk had failed, in inducing the Resolutioner clergy to give up public praying for King Charles and otherwise to conform; and was it not on this ground that Monk was believed still to befriend the Protesters? But perhaps it hardly needed Broghill's representations to induce Cromwell to reconsider his Scottish policy in regard to the Kirk. That same Conservatism which had been gaining on him in the English department of his Protectorate, leading him rather to discourage extreme men while tolerating them, had begun to affect his views of Kirk parties in Scotland. The Resolutioners were numerically the larger party: if they would be reconciled, might they not be his most massive support in North Britain? It is possible that the institution of the new Scottish Council under Broghill's Presidency may have been the result of such thoughts, and that Broghill thus only took a course indicated for him by Cromwell. At all events, various relaxations of former orders, about admission to vacant livings and the like, had already been made in favour of the Resolutioners; and, in and from 1656, it was noted that extreme men in Scotland too were not to his Highness's taste, and that, contrary to what might have been expected from his former relations to Scottish Presbyterianism, his aim now was to rebuild a good and solid Established Church in Scotland mainly on the native Presbyterian principle, though under control, and to leave extravagant spirits, including even those too forward for Independency among the Scots, to the mere benefits of an outside toleration. It was not his way to proceed hurriedly, however; and, as the Protesters were religiously the men most to his liking, and must by all means be kept within the Kirk, an agreement between them and the Resolutioners was a political necessity. To this end he had again, more than once recently, requested some of the leaders of both parties to come to London for consultation, as Gillespie, Livingston, and Menzies, for the Protesters, had done before. Appeals to the Civil Power in ecclesiastical matters being against the Presbyterian theory which the parties professed in common, that suggestion had not been taken, notwithstanding the precedent, and the parties had persisted in their war of mutual invective in Scotland, each getting what it could by private dealings with the Council there,—the Resolutioners through Broghill and the Protesters through Monk. But that could not last for ever; and, in August 1656, strict Presbyterian theory had been so far waived by both parties that both had resolved on direct appeal to his Highness in London. The Resolutioners had the start. They had picked out as their fittest single emissary Mr. James Sharp of Crail, then forty-three years of age, already well acquainted with London by his former compulsory stay there, and with the advantage now of intimacy with Broghill. His Instructions, signed by three of the leading Resolutioners, were ready on the 23rd of August. They were substantially that he should clear the Resolutioners with the Protector from the misrepresentations of the Protesters, paint the Protesters in return as mainly hot young spirits and disturbers, and obtain from his Highness a restoration of Presbyterian use and wont through the whole Kirk, with preponderance to the Resolutioners, though not with a General Assembly till times were more quiet. Per contra, the Protesters had drawn out certain propositions to be submitted to Cromwell. They asked for a Commission for the plantation of kirks, to be appointed by his authority and to consist of those he might think fit, to administer the revenues of the Kirk according to the Acts of Assemblies and the laws of the land prior to 1651, the fatal year of the "Resolutions." They asked also for a Commission of Visitation, one half to be elected by the Resolutioners and one half by the Protesters, to have the power of "planting and purging" in parishes and of composing differences in Synods and Presbyteries. For urging these propositions a deputation to Cromwell had been thought of, and actually appointed. As it was postponed, however, Sharp was to be in London first by himself. Hence some importance for the Protesters in any counterweight there might be in Argyle's presence there already. ¹

No one was more anxious for the success of Mr. Sharp's mission than the good Baillie of Glasgow University, now in his fifty-fifth year, a widower for three years, but about to marry again, and known as one of the stoutest Resolutioners and Anti-Protesters since that controversy had begun. He had had his discomforts and losses in the University under the new Principalship of Mr. Patrick Gillespie; but had been busy with his lectures and books, and the correspondence of which he was so fond. Among his letters of 1654-5, besides those to Spang, are two hearty ones to his old friend Lauderdale in his London captivity, one or two to London Presbyterian ministers, and an interesting one to Thomas Fuller, regretting that they had not been sooner acquainted, and saying he had "fallen in love" with Fuller's books and was longing for his Church History. This was not the only sign of Baillie's mellower temper by this time towards the Anglicans. He was inquiring much about Brian Walton, whose name had not been so much as heard of when Baillie was in London, and whose Polyglott seemed now to him the book of the age. Baxter, on the other hand, was an Ishmaelite, a man to be put down. All these matters, however, had been absorbed at length in Baillie's interest in Mr. Sharp's mission. He was to write to his old London friends, Rous, Calamy, and Ashe, urging them to help Mr. Sharp to the utmost, and he was to correspond with Sharp himself. "I pray God help you and guide you; you had need of a long spoon [in supping with a certain personage]: trust no words nor faces, for all men are liars," is the memorable ending of the first letter that Sharp in London was to receive from Baillie.¹

IRELAND.

There had been little of novelty in Ireland for some time after the proclamation of the Protectorate (Vol. IV. p. 551). Fleetwood, with the full title of "Lord Deputy" since Sept. 1654, had conducted the Government, as well as he could, with a Council of assessors, consisting, after that date, of Miles Corbet, Robert Goodwin, Colonel Matthew Tomlinson, and Colonel Robert Hammond. This last, so brought into the Protector's service after long retirement, died at Dublin in July 1655. Ludlow still kept aloof, disowning the Protectorate, though remaining in Ireland with his old military commission. Left very much to themselves, Fleetwood and his Council had carried out, as far as possible, the Acts for the Settlement of the country passed or proposed by the Rump in 1652, but not pushing too severely the great business which the Rump had schemed out, of a general and gradual cooping up of the Roman Catholics within the single province of Connaught. In the nature of things, that business, or indeed any actual prevention of the exercise of the Catholic Religion wherever Roman Catholics abounded, was impracticable. It was enough, in the Lord Protector's view, that the land lay quiet, the Roman Catholics and their faithful priests not stirring too publicly, the English soldiery keeping all under sufficient pressure, and English and Scottish colonization shooting in here and there, with Protestant preaching and Protestant farming in its track. On the whole, Fleetwood's Lord-Deputyship, if not eventful, was far from unpopular. ¹

It had occurred to Cromwell, however, that more could be done in Ireland, and that his son-in-law Fleetwood was perhaps not sufficiently energetic, or sufficiently Oliverian, for the purpose. Accordingly, about the same time that Fleetwood had been raised to the Lord-Deputyship, Cromwell's second son, Henry, had been appointed Major-General of the Irish Army. The good impression he had made in his former mission to Ireland (Vol. IV. p. 551) justified the appointment. Not till the middle of 1655, however, did he arrive in Ireland. His reception then was enthusiastic, and was followed by the sudden recall of Fleetwood to London, professedly for a visit only, but really not to return. The title of Lord-Deputy of Ireland was still to be Fleetwood's for the full term of his original appointment; but he was to be occupied by the duties of his English Major-Generalship and his membership of Oliver's Council at home, and the actual government of Ireland was thenceforth in the hands of Henry Cromwell. The young Governor, whose wife had accompanied him, held a kind of Court in Dublin, with Fleetwood's Councillors about him, or others in their stead, and a number of new Judges. The diverse tempers of these advisers, among whom were some Anabaptists or Anti-Oliverians, and his own doubts as to some of the instructions that reached him from his father, made his position a very difficult one; but, though very anxious and sensitive, he managed admirably. In particular, it was observed that, in matters of religion, he had all his father's liberality. It was "against his conscience," he said, "to bear hard upon any merely on account of a different judgment." He conciliated the Presbyterian clergy in a remarkable manner; the Royalists liked him; he would not quarrel with the Anabaptists; and he was as moderate as possible towards the Roman Catholics.¹

One of Henry Cromwell's difficulties would have been Ludlow, had that uncompromising Republican remained in Ireland. From that he was relieved. In January 1655 Fleetwood had been ordered by the Protector to make Ludlow give up his commission; and, as Ludlow questioned the legality of the demand, he had arranged with Fleetwood to go and settle the matter with the Protector himself. The Protector seeming to prefer that Ludlow should stay where he was, and having sent orders to that effect, Fleetwood was himself In England, and Henry Cromwell was in his place in Dublin, and still there seemed no chance of leave for Ludlow to cross the Channel. At length, without distinct leave, but trusting to a written engagement Fleetwood had given him, he ventured on the passage; and on Dec. 12, 1655, after the experience of a most stormy sea, he had that of a more stormy interview with the Protector and some of his Council at Whitehall. Cromwell rated him roundly for his past behaviour generally and for his return without leave, and demanded his parole of submission to the established Government for the future. Some kind of parole Ludlow was willing to give, declaring that he saw no immediate chance of a subversion of the Government and knew of no design for that end, but refusing to tie his hands "if Providence should offer an occasion." With that Cromwell, who had begun to "carry himself more calmly" towards the end of the interview, was obliged to be content. He became quite civil to Ludlow, saying he "wished him as well as he did any of his Council," and desiring him to make "choice of some place to live in where he might have good air." Ludlow retired into Essex¹.

THE COLONIES.

With the exception of a factory of the London East India Company, which had been established at Surat on the west coast of Hindostan in 1612, and a settlement on the Gambia on the western coast of Africa, dating from 1631, all the considerable Colonies of England in 1656 were American:—I. NEW ENGLAND. The four chief New England Colonies, Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven, confederated since 1643, together with the outlying Plantations of Providence and Rhode-Island, &c., still belonged politically to the mother-country; and through Cromwell's Protectorate, as before, the connexion had been signified by references of various subjects to the Home-Government, discussions of these by that Government, and orders and advices transmitted in return. In the main, however, the Colonies remained independent, each with its annually elected Governor, and the Confederacy with its annually elected Board of Commissioners besides; and, while professing high admiration of Cromwell and approval generally of his rule, they were not troubled with questions of rule seriously affecting their own interests. The war with the Dutch did for some time involve them in inconveniences with their Dutch neighbours; but their dissensions were chiefly with each other, or domestically within each colony. The harsh proceedings in Massachusetts and elsewhere against Baptists and other Sectaries gave some colour to Roger Williams's assertion that, in the matter of religious toleration, New England was becoming old while Old England was becoming new; and, as soon as Quakerism had broken out in New England and Quakers had appeared there (1656), it became evident that there would be even less mercy for that sect in New England than on the other side of the Atlantic. Nevertheless, with their zealous Puritanism, their energy and industry, and the abilities of their Bradfords, Bradstreets, Winslows, Winthrops, Standishes, Endicotts, Hayneses, Hopkinses, Newmans, Williamses, and other prominent governors or assistant-governors, the Confederacy and the Plantations went on prosperously towards their ultimate, though yet unforeseen, destiny in the formation of the United States. Cromwell, indeed, had a scheme which would have stopped that issue. He had a scheme for fetching all the Puritans of New England back and planting them splendidly in Ireland. Communications on the subject had passed as early as 1651, when Ireland had been just reconquered; but naturally without effect. The New Englanders were not then too numerous perhaps to have been transported to Ireland bodily; but, as one of their historians says, "they had taken root." Their increase, however, for more than a century thenceforward was to be mainly within themselves, for new arrivals from England had become scarce.¹ II. OTHER COLONIES AND SETTLEMENTS IN NORTH AMERICA. These too went on very much at their own will, though not quite unnoticed. Virginia, dating from 1608, and Maryland, dating from 1634, continued to be the favourite colonies for Royalist settlers, Anglican or Roman Catholic; but there had been recent additions of English Puritans, and of transported Scottish prisoners of war, to the population of Virginia, and the connexions with the mother-country had remained unbroken. There were commercial regulations about both Colonies by the English Council, and grants of passes to them. Canada and the other regions about the St. Lawrence, the possession of which had been contested by the English and the French in the reign of Charles I, had lapsed long ago into the hands of the French; but Major Sedgwick had wrested back for Cromwell, in 1654, the peninsula then called Acadie, but now Nova Scotia, being part of the territory that had been granted under that name by Charles to his Scottish Secretary, the Earl of Stirling, and had been colonised by Scots, to some extent, from 1625 onwards. Off the mainland, Newfoundland, which had contained an English fishing population for at least twenty years, was not neglected; and, beyond the bounds of any of the North-American Colonies or Plantations that were definitely named and recognised, there may have been stragglers knowing themselves to be subjects of the Protectorate.² III. THE WEST INDIES. The Bermudas or Summer Islands had been English since 1612, and had now a considerable population of opulent settlers, attracted by their beauty and the salubrity of the climate; Barbadoes, English since 1605, and with a population of more than 50,000, had been a refuge of Royalists, but had been taken for the Commonwealth in 1652, and had been much used of late for the reception of banished prisoners; such other Islands of the Lesser Antilles as Antigua, Nevis, Montserrat, and the Virgin Islands, together with The Bahamas, to the north of Cuba, had been colonised in the late reign; and Jamaica had been Cromwell's own conquest from the Spaniards, by Penn's blunder, in 1655. The war with Spain had given new importance to those West India possessions of the Protectorate. They had become war-stations for ships, with considerable armed forces on some of them; and some of Cromwell's best officers had been sent out, or were to be sent out, to command in them. Of them all Jamaica was Cromwell's pet island. He had resolved to keep it and do his best with it. The charge of it had been given to a commission consisting of Admiral Goodson, Major-General Fortescue, Major-General Sedgwick (the recaptor of Nova Scotia from the French), and Daniel Serle, Governor of Barbadoes; and Fortescue and Sedgwick, and others in succession, were to die at their posts there. To have the rich island colonised at once with the right material was the Protector's great anxiety; and his first thoughts on that subject, as soon as he had learnt that the Island was his, had issued in a most serious modification of his former offer to the New Englanders. As they had refused to come back and colonise Ireland, would they not accept Jamaica? "He did apprehend the people of New England had as clear a call to transport themselves thence to Jamaica as they had had from England to New England, in order to the bettering of their outward condition;" besides which, their removal thither would have a "tendency to the overthrow of the Man of Sin." They should be transported free of cost; they should have lands rent-free for seven years, and after that at a penny an acre; they should be free from customs, excise, or any tax for four years; they should have the most liberal constitution that could be framed: only his Highness would keep the right of appointing the successive Governors and their Assistants. The answer of the Massachusetts people, when it did arrive, was evasive. They spoke of the reported unhealthiness of Jamaica, and they assured Ms Highness of their admiration, their gratitude, and their prayers. The answer had not been received at the date we have reached (Sept. 1656), and the Protector still cherished his idea. As it proved, the New Englanders were to remain New Englanders, and Jamaica was to be colonised slowly and with less select material.³

SECTION III.

OLIVER AND THE FIRST SESSION OP HIS SECOND PARLIAMENT: SEPT. 17, 1656-JUNE 26, 1657.

SECOND PARLIAMENT OF THE PROTECTORATE CALLED: VANE'S HEALING QUESTION AND ANOTHER ANTI-OLIVERIAN PAMPHLET: PRECAUTIONS AND ARRESTS: MEETING OF THE PARLIAMENT: ITS COMPOSITION: SUMMARY OF CROMWELL'S OPENING SPEECH: EXCLUSION OF NINETY-THREE ANTI-OLIVERIAN MEMBERS: DECIDEDLY OLIVERIAN TEMPER OF THE REST: QUESTION OF THE EXCLUDED MEMBERS: THEIR PROTEST: SUMMARY OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARLIAMENT FOR FIVE MONTHS (SEPT. 1656-FEB. 1656-7): ADMINISTRATION OF CROMWELL AND HIS COUNCIL DURING THOSE MONTHS: APPROACHES TO DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN CROMWELL AND THE PARLIAMENT IN THE CASE OF JAMES NAYLER AND ON THE QUESTION OF CONTINUATION OF THE MILITIA BY MAJOR-GENERALS: NO RUPTURE.—THE SEXBY-SINDERCOMBE PLOT.—SIR CHRISTOPHER PACK'S MOTION FOR A NEW CONSTITUTION (FEB. 23, 1656-7): ITS ISSUE IN THE PETITION AND ADVICE AND OFFER OF THE CROWN TO CROMWELL: DIVISION OF PUBLIC OPINION ON THE KINGSHIP QUESTION: OPPOSITION AMONG THE ARMY OFFICERS: CROMWELL'S NEUTRAL ATTITUDE: HIS RECEPTION OF THE OFFER: HIS LONG HESITATIONS AND SEVERAL SPEECHES OVER THE AFFAIR: HIS FINAL REFUSAL (MAY 8, 1657): LUDLOW'S STORY OF THE CAUSE.—HARRISON AND THE FIFTH-MONARCHY MEN: VENNER'S OUTBREAK AT MILE-END-GREEN.—PROPOSED NEW CONSTITUTION OF THE PETITION AND ADVICE RETAINED IN THE FORM OF A CONTINUED PROTECTORATE: SUPPLEMENTS TO THE PETITION AND ADVICE: BILLS ASSENTED TO BY THE PROTECTOR, JUNE 9: VOTES FOR THE SPANISH WAR,—TREATY OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE WITH FRANCE AGAINST SPAIN: DISPATCH OF ENGLISH AUXILIARY ARMY, UNDER REYNOLDS, FOR SERVICE IN FLANDERS: BLAKE'S ACTION IN SANTA CRUZ BAY.—"KILLING—NO MURDER": ADDITIONAL AND EXPLANATORY PETITION AND ADVICE: ABSTRACT OF THE ARTICLES OP THE NEW CONSTITUTION AS ARRANGED BY THE TWO DOCUMENTS: CROMWELL'S COMPLETED ASSENT TO THE NEW CONSTITUTION, AND HIS ASSENT TO OTHER BILLS, JUNE 26, 1657: INAUGURATION OF THE SECOND PROTECTORATE THAT DAY: CLOSE OF THE FIRST SESSION OF THE SECOND PARLIAMENT.

Willing to relieve his government, if possible, from the character of "arbitrariness" it had so long borne, Cromwell had at last resolved on calling another Parliament. The matter had been secretly deliberated in Council in May and June 1656, and the writs were out on July 10. There had ensued, throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, a great bustle of elections, the Major-Generals in England and the Councils in Scotland and Ireland exerting themselves to secure the return of Oliverians, and the Protector and his Council by no means easy as to the result. Two recent Republican pamphlets had caused agitation. One, which had been called forth by a Proclamation of a General East a month or two before, was by Sir Henry Vane, and was entitled A Healing Question Propounded and Resolved. It was temperate enough, approving of the government in some respects, and even suggesting the continuance of some kind of sovereignty in a single person, but containing censures of the "great interruption" of popular liberties, and appeals to the people to do their part. The other and later pamphlet (Aug. 1), directly intended to bear on the Elections, was called England's Remembrancer, and was virtually a call on all to use their votes so as to return a Parliament that should unseat Oliver. The author of this second pamphlet evaded detection; but Vane was brought to task for his. He was summoned to London from his seat of Belleau in Lincolnshire, July 29; by an order of Aug. 21 he was required to give security in £5000 that he would do nothing "to prejudice the present government"; and, on his refusal, there issued a warrant, signed by Henry Lawrence, as President of the Council, for his committal to King Charles's old prison, Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight. About the same time, precautions were taken with Bradshaw, Harrison, Ludlow, Lawson, Rich, Okey, Alured, and others. Bradshaw was suspended for a week or two from his Chief-Justiceship of Chester; Harrison was sent to Pendennis Castle in Cornwall; Rich to Windsor; security in £5000 was exacted from Ludlow, or rather arranged for him by Cromwell; and the others were variously under guard. Nor did leading royalists escape. Just before the meeting of the Parliament, a dozen of them, including Lord Willoughly of Parham and Sir John Ashburnham, were sent to the Tower. The Republican Overton was still there. All this new "arbitrariness" for the moment was for the purpose of sufficiently tuning the Parliament.¹

It met on Wednesday, Sept. 17, when the first business was attendance, with the Protector, in the Abbey Church, to hear a sermon from Dr. Owen. Among the 400 members returned from England and Wales were the Protector's eldest son, Richard Cromwell (for Cambridge University), Lord President Lawrence and at least twelve other members of the Council (Fleetwood, Lambert, Desborough, Skippon, Jones, Montague, Sydenham, Pickering, Wolseley, Rous, Strickland, and Nathaniel Fiennes), with Mr. Secretary Thurloe, Admiral Blake, and most of the Major-Generals not of the Council (Howard, Berry, Whalley, Haynes, Butler, Barkstead, Goffe, Kelsey, and Lilburne). Other members, of miscellaneous note and various antecedents, were Whitlocke, Ingoldsby, Scott, Dennis Bond, Maynard, Prideaux, Glynne, Sir Harbottle Grimston, the Earl of Salisbury, Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Sir Anthony Irby, Alderman Sir Christopher Pack, Lord Claypole, Sir Thomas Widdrington, Ex-Speaker Lenthall, Richard Norton, Pride (now Sir Thomas), and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper,—this last long an absentee from the Council, Of the thirty members returned from the shires, burghs, or groups of such, in Scotland; about half were Englishmen: e.g. President Lord Broghill for Edinburgh, Samuel Desborough for Midlothian, Judge Smith for Dumfriesshire, the physician Dr. Thomas Clarges (Monk's brother-in-law) for Ross, Sutherland, and Cromarty, Colonel Nathaniel Whetham for St. Andrews, &c.; while among the native Scots returned were Ambassador Lockhart, Swinton, the Earl of Tweeddale, and Colonel David Barclay. Ireland had returned, among her thirty (who were nearly all Englishmen), Sir Hardress Waller, Major-General Jephson, Sir Charles Coote, and several Colonels.¹—Not a few of the chief members had been returned by more than one constituency: e.g. Lord Broghill, for Cork as well as for Edinburgh. Several of those returned cannot have been expected to give attendance, at least at first. Thus, Admirals Blake and Montague were away with their fleets, off Spain and Portugal. But Broghill did come up from Scotland to attend, and Swinton and most of the other members of the Scottish Council with him, leaving Monk once more in his familiar charge. Ambassador Lockhart also had come over, or was coming.

There were two rather important interventions between Dr. Owen's opening sermon to the Parliament and their settling down to business.

One was the Lord Protector's opening speech in the Painted Chamber, now numbered as Speech V, of the Cromwell series. It was very long, of extremely gnarled structure, but full of matter. The pervading topic was the war with Spain. This was justified, with approving references to the published Latin Declaration of Oct. 1655 on the subject, entitled Scriptum Domini Protectoris, &c. (Milton's?), and with vehement expressions of his Highness's personal abhorrence of Spain and her policy. He represented her and her allies and dependents as the anti-English and anti-Christian Hydra of the world, while France, though Roman Catholic too, stood apart from all the other Catholic powers in not being under the Pope's lash and so able to be fair and reasonable. He urged the most energetic prosecution of the war that had been begun. But with the Spanish war he connected the dangers to England from the Royalist risings and conspiracies of the last two years, announcing moreover that he had now full intelligence of a compact between Spain and Charles II., a force of 7000 or 8000 Spaniards ready at Bruges in consequence, and other forces promised by Popish princes, clients of Spain. There were English agents of the alliance at work, he said, and one miscreant in particular who had been an Anabaptist Colonel; and, necessarily, all schemes and conspiracies against the present government would drift into the Hispano-Stuartist interest. He acquitted some of the opponents of his government, calling themselves "Commonwealth's men" and "Fifth Monarchy men," from any intention of that conjunction; but so it would happen. His arrests of some such had been necessary for the public safety. He knew his system of Major-Generalships was much criticised, and thought arbitrary; but that had been necessary too, and a most useful invention. He had called this Parliament with a hope of united constitutional action with them for the future, and would recommend, in the domestic programme, under the general head of "Reformation," certain great matters to their care. There was the Sustentation of the Church and the Universities; there was Reformation of Manners; and there was the still needed Reformation of the Laws. On the Church-question he avowed, more strongly than ever before, his desire to uphold and perpetuate an Established Church. "For my part," he said, "I should think I were very treacherous if I took away Tithes, till I see the Legislative Power settle maintenance to Ministers another way." He knew that some of the ministers themselves would prefer some other form of State-provision; but, on the whole, believing that some distinct State-maintenance of the Clergy, whether by tithes or otherwise, was "the root of visible profession." he adjured the Parliament not to swerve from that. He expounded also his principle of comprehending Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and all earnest Evangelical men amicably in the Established Church, with small concern about their differences from each, other, and expressed his especial satisfaction that the Presbyterians had at length come round to this view, and given up much of their old Anti-Toleration tenet. "I confess I look at that as the blessedest thing which hath been since the adventuring upon this government." Towards the end of the speech there was just a hint that he stood on his Protectorship for life, and regarded that as a fundamental, not to be called in question. "I say, Look up to God: have peace among yourselves. Know assuredly that, if I have an interest, I am by the voice of the People the Supreme Magistrate, and, it may be, do know somewhat that might satisfy my conscience, if I stood in doubt. But it is a union, really it is a union, between you and me; and, both of us united in faith and love to Jesus Christ, and to His peculiar Interest in the world,-that must ground this work. And in that, if I have any peculiar interest which is personal to myself, which is not subservient to the public end, it were not an extravagant thing for me to curse myself, because I know God will curse me if I have." After quoting the 85th Psalm, he dismissed them to choose their Speaker.¹

Then, however, there was the second intervention. It was in the lobby of the House. Some persons, acting for the Clerk of the Commonwealth in Chancery, stood there, with tickets certifying that such and such members had been duly returned and also "approved by his Highness's Council"; the doors of the House were guarded by soldiers; and none but those for whom the tickets had been made out were allowed to enter. About ninety-three found themselves thus excluded; among whom, were Hasilrig, Scott, Irby, Sir Harbottle Grimston, the Earl of Salisbury, Maynard, four of the six members for the city of London, and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. The residue, who had received tickets, proceeded to constitute the House, and unanimously elected Sir Thomas Widdrington, Sergeant at Law and one of the Commissioners of the Treasury, for their Speaker. Almost the only other business that day was to thank Dr. Owen for his sermon, and order it to be printed.¹

The next day there was read in the House a letter to the Speaker, signed by a number of the excluded, informing him of the fact and desiring to be admitted. Through that and the two following sittings, an inquiry into the circumstances of the exclusion formed part of the proceedings. The Clerk of the Commonwealth in Chancery, being required to attend, did at last present himself, and explained that he had but obeyed orders. He had received a letter from Mr. Jessop, the Clerk of the Council, ordering him to deliver tickets only to such of the persons elected as should be certified to him as approved by the Council; and he had acted accordingly. With some reluctance, he produced the letter; and the House then resolved to ask the Council for their reasons for excluding so many members. These were given, on the 20th, by Fiennes for the Council. They were to the effect that Article XXI. of the constituting Instrument of the Protectorate, called The Government of the Commonwealth (Vol. IV. pp. 542-544), required the Clerk of the Commonwealth in Chancery, for the first three Parliaments of the Protectorate, to report to the Council what persons had been returned, and empowered the Council to admit those duly qualified and to exclude others, and also that, by another clause in the same Instrument (Art. XVII.), it was required that the persons elected should be "of known integrity, fearing God, and of good conversation." All which being undeniable, it was resolved by the House, after debate, Sept. 22, by a majority of 125 to twenty-nine, to refer the excluded to the Council itself for any farther satisfaction they wanted, and meanwhile "to proceed with the great affairs of the nation." The House, without the excluded, it will be seen, was decidedly Oliverian in the main. The excluded, or some of them, took their revenge by printing and distributing a Protest or Remonstrance addressed to the Nation, with the names of all the ninety-three attached, those of Hasilrig and Scott first. It was a document of extreme vehemence, denouncing the Protector as an armed tyrant and all who had abetted him in his last act as capital enemies to the Commonwealth, and disowning beforehand, as null and void, all that the truncated Parliament might do. Cromwell took no notice whatever of this Remonstrance. By one more stroke of "arbitrariness," bolder than any before, but allowed, he might plead, by the Instrument of his Protectorate, he had fashioned for himself a Second Parliament, likely to be more to his mind than his First.¹

So it proved. Some of the excluded having been admitted after all, and new elections having been made in cases where members had been returned by two or more constituencies, the House went on for the first five months (Sept. 1656-Feb. 1656-7) with a pretty steady working attendance of about 220 at the maximum—which implies that, besides the excluded, there must have been a large number of absentees or very lax attenders. During these five months a large amount of miscellaneous business was done, with occasional divisions, but no vital disagreement within the House, or between it and the Protector. There was an Act for renouncing and disavowing Charles II, over again, and an Act for the safety of the Lord Protector's person and government, both made law, by Cromwell's assent, Oct. 27. There was a vote of approbation of the war with Spain, with votes of means for carrying it on. There were Bills, more formal than before, for adjusting and completing the incorporation of Scotland and Ireland with the Commonwealth. There were Committees of all sorts for maturing these and other Bills. Among the grand Committees was one for Religion. There were votes of reward to various persons for past services. The better observance of the Lord's Day was one of the subjects of discussion. Amid the minor or more private business one notes a great many naturalizings of foreigners resident in England, or of persons of English descent born abroad or otherwise requiring to be naturalized. Theodore Haak and his family, Dr. Lewis Du Moulin, a number of Lawrences and Carews, and a daughter of the poet Waller, are among the scores included in such Naturalization Bills. Through all this, hardly a week, of course, without an order to Dr. Owen, Dr. Thomas Goodwin, Caryl, Nye, Sterry, Manton, or some other leading divine, to preach a special sermon, with thanks after for his "great pains," and generally a request that the sermon should be printed. On the whole, Speaker Widdrington had no light post. Indeed, in January 1656-7, the House, perceiving him to be very ill and weak, insisted on his taking leave of absence, and appointed Whitlocke as his substitute. Whitlocke acted as pro-Speaker, he tells us, from January 27 to Feb. 18, with great acceptance and rapid despatch of business. On the last of these days, however, Widdrington, though at the risk of his life, reappeared and resumed duty. A fee of £5, it seems, was due to the Speaker from every person naturalized by bill, and all such fees would have gone to Whitlocke had Widdrington remained absent. The loss to Whitlocke was made up handsomely by the House in a vote of £2000, besides repayment of £500 he had expended over his allowance in his Swedish embassy, and thanks for his many eminent services.¹

About a fortnight after the Parliament had met (Oct. 2), there had come splendid news from Blake and Montague. A Spanish fleet from the West Indies, with the ex-Viceroy of Peru and his family on board, and a vast treasure of silver, had been attacked in Cadiz bay by six English frigates under the command of Captain Stayner. Two of the ships had been taken, two burnt and sunk (the ex-Viceroy, his wife, and eldest daughter, perishing most tragically in the flames), and there had been a great capture of silver. The rejoicing in London was great, and it was renewed a month afterwards by the actual arrival of the silver from Portsmouth, a long train of waggon-loads through the open streets, on its way to the Mint, Admiral Montague himself had come with it. He was in the House Nov. 4, welcomed with thanks and applauses to his place for a while among the legislators.¹

Legislative work being back in the hands of a Parliament, the Protector and his Council had confined themselves meanwhile to matters of administration, war, and diplomacy. Vane had been released from his imprisonment in the Isle of Wight by order of Council, Dec. 11, and permitted to return to Lincolnshire; and there had been other relaxations of the severities attending the opening of the Parliament. There had been an order of Council (Oct. 2) for the release of imprisoned Quakers at Exeter, Dorchester, Colchester, and other places, with instructions to the Major-Generals in the respective districts to see the order carried out and the fines of the poor people discharged. The business of the Piedmontese Protestants still occupied the Council, and there were letters to various foreign powers. Of new diplomatic arrangements of the Protector about this time, and through the whole session of the Parliament, account will be more conveniently taken hereafter; but Ambassador Lockhart's temporary presence in London, and his frequent colloquies with the Protector over French affairs, Spanish affairs, the movements of Charles II abroad, a rumoured dissension between Charles II. and his brother the Duke of York, and Mazarin's astute intimacy with all, are worthy of remark even now. It was on Dec. 10, 1656, that Lockhart received from his Highness the honour of knighthood at Whitehall; and on Feb. 3, 1656-7, it was settled by his Highness and the Council that Lockhart's allowance thenceforward in his Embassy should be £100 a week, i.e, about £18,000 a year in present value. Lockhart's real post being in Paris, his attendance in Parliament can have been but brief. His fellow-Scotsman, Swinton of Swinton, also gave but brief attendance. The Protector had taken the opportunity of Swinton's visit to London to show him special attention, and to promote in the Council certain very substantial recognitions of his adhesion to the Commonwealth when other Scots abhorred it, and of his good services in Scotland to it and the Protectorate since. But, as his proper place was in Edinburgh, it was ordered, Dec. 25, 1656, that he, and his fellow-members of the Scottish Council, Major-General Charles Howard and Colonel Adrian Scroope, should return thither. This was the more necessary because Lord Broghill did not mean to return to Scotland, the air of which did not suit him, but preferred employment for the future either in England or in his native Ireland. Broghill's Presidency in Scotland had now, indeed, virtually ceased, and the administration there, with the difficult steering between the Resolutioners and the Protesters of the Kirk, had been left to Monk and the rest. Nay, as we know, the hearing of that vital Scottish question had been transferred to London. Sharp, who had come to London in Broghill's train as agent for the Resolutioners, "presently got access to the Protector" and "was well liked of and accepted." But the Marquis of Argyle had weight enough yet to stop any concession to him till the other party had been heard. Accordingly, in October, 1656, a Mr. James Simson, minister of Airth, had been sent up by the Protesters, to be followed, more effectively, in January, by Mr. James Guthrie himself, Principal Gillespie of Glasgow, and three elders, of whom one was Warriston. There had been a conference and debate between Sharp and these Protesters before Cromwell, three of his Council being present, and Owen, Lockyer, Manton, and Ashe attending as representative English divines; but his Highness had not yet made up his mind. The rumour in Scotland was that Sharp was likely to succeed, and that he had driven Warriston and Gillespie very hard in the Conference, and contrived, in particular, to make Warriston, in self-defence, betray some awkward secrets. One finds, however, that Principal Gillespie was invited to preach twice before the Parliament, and thanked for his sermons, and that he had influence enough to move in the Council a suit in the interests of the University of Glasgow. Though Sharp, as Baillie advised him, was "supping with a long spoon," Cromwell had probably taken estimate of him.¹

One matter In which there had been an approach to disagreement between the Parliament and the Protector was the famous Case of James Nayler;—Quakerism and its extravagancies were irritating the sober part of the nation unspeakably, and this maddest of all the Quakers, on account of the outrageous "blasphemies" of his recent Song-of-Simon procession through the west of England—repeated at Bristol after his release from Exeter jail—had been selected by Parliament for an example. On the 31st of October, 1856, a large committee was appointed on his case; and on the 5th of December, Nayler and others having been brought prisoners to London meanwhile, the report of the Committee was made, and there began a debate on the case, which was protracted through ten sittings, Nayler himself brought once or twice to the bar. It was easily resolved that he had been "guilty of horrid blasphemy" and was a "grand impostor and great seducer of the people": the difficult question was as to his punishment. On the 16th of December it was carried but by ninety-six votes to eighty-two that it should not be death, and, after some faint farther argument on the side of mercy, this was the sentence: "That James Nayler be set on the pillory, with his head in the pillory, in the New Palace, Westminster, during the space of two hours, on Thursday next, and shall be whipped by the hangman through the streets from Westminster to the Old Exchange, London, there likewise to be set on the pillory, with his head in the pillory, for the space of two hours, between the hours of eleven and one on Saturday next—in each of the said places wearing a paper containing an inscription of his crimes: and that at the Old Exchange his tongue shall be bored through with a hot iron; and that he be there also stigmatized in the forehead with the letter B: And that he be afterwards sent to Bristol, and conveyed into and through the said city on a horse bare-ridged, with his face backwards, and there also publicly whipped the next market-day after he comes thither: And that from thence he be committed to prison in Bridewell, London, and there restrained from the society of all people, and kept to hard labour, till he be released by Parliament, and during that time be debarred from the use of pen, ink, and paper, and have no relief but what he earns by his daily labour." Though petitions for clemency had already been presented to Parliament by some very orthodox people, the first part of this atrocious sentence was duly executed Dec. 18. Then came more earnest petitions both to Parliament and the Protector, with the effect of a respite of the next part from the 20th to the 27th; between which dates this letter from the Protector was read in the House: "O.P. Right Trusty and Well-beloved, We greet you well. Having taken notice of a judgment lately given by yourselves against one James Nayler, Although we detest and abhor the giving or occasioning the least countenance to persons of such opinions and practices, or who are guilty of the crimes commonly imputed to the said person: Yet, We, being intrusted in the present Government on behalf of the People of these Nations, and not knowing how far such Proceeding, entered into wholly without Us, may extend in the consequence of it, Do desire that the House will let Us know the grounds and reasons whereupon they have proceeded." Two things are here to be perceived. One is that Cromwell did not approve of the course taken with Nayler. The other, and more important, is that he regarded this action of the House, without his consent, as an intrenchment on that part of his prerogative which concerned Toleration. He thought himself, by the constitution of his Protectorate, entrusted with a certain guardianship of this principle, even against Parliament; and he did not know how far Nayler's case might be made a precedent for religious persecutions. What may have been the exact reply to Cromwell from the House we do not know; but the House was not in a mood to spare Nayler. He had not satisfied the clergymen sent to confer with him. Accordingly, on the 27th, a motion to respite him for another week having been lost by 113 to 59, the second part of his punishment was inflicted to the letter; after which he was removed to Bristol to receive the rest. All that one can say is that, though Cromwell was far from pleased with the business, and even thought it a horrible one, he did not feel that he could at that time make it the occasion of an actual quarrel with the Parliament.¹

Another matter in which a disagreement might have been feared between Cromwell and his Parliament was that of The Major-Generalships. This "invention" of Cromwell's for the police of England and Wales generally, and specially for the collection of the Decimation or Militia Tax from the Royalists, had been so successful that he had congratulated himself on It in his opening speech to the Parliament. He, doubtless, desired that Parliament should adopt and continue it. On the 7th of January, 1656-7, accordingly, there was read for the first time "a Bill for the continuing and assessing of a Tax for the paying and maintaining of the Militia forces in England and Wales," i.e. for prolonging Cromwell's Decimation Tax of 1655, and virtually the whole machinery of the Major-Generalships. That there would be serious opposition in the House had been foreseen since Dec. 25, when there had been two divisions on the question of leave to bring in the Bill, and leave had been obtained only by eighty-eight votes to sixty-three. Among the opponents were Whitlocke and the other lawyers, all those indeed who wanted to terminate the time of "arbitrariness," and objected to a tax now on old political delinquents as contrary to the Parliamentary Act of Oblivion of Feb. 1651-2. On the other hand, the Bill was strongly supported by Lambert. Fiennes, Lisle, Pickering, Sydenham, other members of Council, and the Major-Generals themselves. It was, in fact, a Government Bill, Nevertheless, after a protracted debate of six days, the second reading of the Bill was negatived Jan. 29 by 121 to 78, and the Bill absolutely rejected by 124 to 88. Cromwell himself had helped to bring about this result. Much as he liked his "invention," he had perceived, in the course of the debate, that it must be given up; and he had given hints to that effect. The House, in short, had understood that they were left to their own free will. And so the Major-Generalships disappeared, the police of the country reverted to the ordinary magistracy, and Cromwell was to trust to Parliament for necessary supplies in more regular ways.¹

What drew the Parliament and the Protector more closely together about this time was the explosion of a new plot against the Protector's life. At the centre of the plot was that "wretched creature, an apostate from religion and all honesty," of whom Cromwell had spoken in his opening speech as going between Charles II. and the King of Spain, and negotiating for a Spanish invasion of England. In other words, he was Edward Sexby, once a stout trooper and agitator in the Parliamentarian army (Vol. III. p. 534), afterwards Captain and even Colonel in the same, but since then one of the fiercest Anabaptist malcontents. He had been in the Wildman plot of Feb. 1654-5, but had then escaped abroad; and since then his occupation had been as described by Cromwell,—now in Flanders, now in Madrid, shuttling alliance between Spain and the Stuarts. But, though a Spanish invasion of England to restore the Stuarts was his great game, an assassination of Cromwell anyhow, whether without a Spanish invasion or in anticipation of it, was nearest to his heart. Actually he had been in London just before the meeting of the Parliament, trying to arrange for such "fiddling things"—so Cromwell had called them—as shooting him in the Park or blowing him up in his chamber at Whitehall. Before Thurloe had traces of him, he had again decamped to Flanders; but he had left a substitute in Miles Sindercombe, an old leveller and mutineer of 1647, but since then a quarter-master in Monk's Army in Scotland, and dismissed for his complicity in the Overton project. Sexby had left Sindercombe £1600; and with this money Sindercombe had been again tampering with Cromwell's guard, taking a house at Hammersmith convenient for shots at Cromwell's coach when he drove to Hampton Court, and buying gunpowder and combustibles for a nearer attempt in Whitehall. He had been, seen in the Chapel at Whitehall on the evening of January 8, and that night the sentinel on duty smelt fire just in time to extinguish a slow-match that was to explode a mass of blazing chemicals at midnight. All Whitehall having been roused, the Protector with the rest, information led at once to Sindercombe. He was arrested in his lodging, and sent to the Tower; and, his trial having followed, Feb. 9, he was convicted on evidence given by accomplices, and doomed to execution on the 14th. In the night preceding he was found dead in his bed, having poisoned himself. He had left intimation that he was under no concern about his immortal soul, having passed out of any form of religion recognising such an entity, and become a Materialist or Soul-sleeper. Meanwhile his plot had raised a ferment of new loyalty round the Protector. On the 19th of January, when Thurloe made a formal disclosure to the House of all the particulars of the plot, a general thanksgiving throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, was ordered, and it was resolved that the whole House should wait upon his Highness "to congratulate with his Highness on this great mercy and deliverance." The interview was on January the 23rd, in the Banqueting House in Whitehall, when Speaker Widdrington made the address for the House, and Cromwell replied in a most affectionate speech (Speech VI.). The thanksgiving was on Feb. 20; on which day Principal Gillespie of Glasgow and Mr. Warren had the honour of preaching the special sermons before the House in St. Margaret's, Westminster. The day was wound up by a noble dinner in Whitehall, to which the whole House had been invited by the Protector, followed by a concert, vocal and instrumental, in the part of the Palace called the Cockpit.¹

Three days after the great dinner in Whitehall, i.e. on Monday, Feb. 23, 1656-7, there was an incident in the House which turned all the future proceedings of this Second Parliament of the Protectorate into a new channel. It is thus entered in the Journals:—

" ... Sir Christopher Pack [Ex-Mayor of London, knighted by Cromwell, Sept. 25, 1655, and now one of the members for the City] presented a Paper to the House, declaring it was somewhat come to his hand tending to the Settlement of the Nation and of Liberty and Property, and prayed it might be received and read; and, it being much controverted whether the same should be read without farther opening [preliminary explanation] thereof, the Question being propounded That this Paper, offered by Sir Christopher Pack, be further opened by him before it is read, and the Question being put That this Question be now put, it passed in the Negative. The Question being propounded That this Paper, offered by Sir Christopher Pack, be now read, and the Question being put That that Question be now put, the House was divided. The Noes went forth:—Colonel Sydenham, Mr. Robinson, Tellers for the Noes—with the Noes 54; Sir Charles Wolseley, Colonel Fitzjames, Tellers for the Yeas—with the Yeas 144. So it passed in the Affirmative. And, the main Question being put, it was Resolved That this Paper, offered by Sir Christopher Pack, be now read. The said Paper was read accordingly, and was entitled 'The Humble Address and Remonstrance of the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses, now assembled in the Parliament of this Commonwealth.'"¹

The debate on the Paper was protracted to the evening "a candle" having been ordered in for the purpose; and it was then adjourned to the next day. In fact, for the next four months, or through the whole remainder of the session, the House was to continue the debate, or questions arising out of it, and to do little else. For, on the 24th of February, it was resolved by a majority of 100 to 44 (Lambert and Strickland tellers for the Minority) that the paper should be taken up and discussed in its successive parts, "beginning at the first Article after the Preamble;" and, though an attempt was made next day to throw the subject into Grand Committee, that was defeated by 118 to 63. In evidence of the momentousness of the occasion, a whole Parliamentary day was set apart for "seeking the Lord" upon it, with prayers and sermons by Dr. Owen and others; and, when the House met again after that ceremonial (Feb. 28), it was resolved that no vote passed on any part of the Paper should be binding till all should be completed.¹

Sir Christopher Pack's paper of Feb. 23, 1656-7, entitled The Humble Address and Remonstrance, &c., was nothing less than a proposed address by Parliament to the Protector, asking him to concur with the Parliament in a total recast of the existing Constitution. It had been privately considered and prepared by several persons, and Whitlocke had been requested to introduce it, "Not liking—several things in it," he had declined to do so; but, Sir Christopher having volunteered, Whitlocke, Broghill, Glynne and others, were to back him. Indeed, all the Oliverians were to back him. Or, rather, there was to grow out of the business, according as the Oliverians were more hearty or less hearty in their cooperation, a new distinction of that body into Thorough Oliverians and Distressed Oliverians or Contrariants. Why this should have been the case will appear if we quote the First Article of the proposed Address after the Preamble. It ran thus: "That your Highness will be pleased to assume the name, style, title, dignity, and office of KING of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the respective Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging, and exercise thereof, to hold and enjoy the same, with the rights and privileges and prerogatives justly, legally, and rightfully, belonging thereunto: That your Highness will be pleased, during your life-time, to appoint and declare the person who shall, immediately after your death, succeed you in the Government of these Nations." The rest of the Address was to correspond. Thus Article II. proposed a return to the system of two Houses of Parliament, and generally the tenor was towards royal institutions. On the other hand, the regality proposed was to be strictly constitutional. There was to be an end to all arbitrary power. There were to be free and full Parliaments once in three years at farthest; there was to be no violent interference in future with the process of Parliament, no exclusion of any persons that had been duly returned by the constituencies; and his Highness and Council were not to make ordinances by their own authority, but all laws, and changes or abrogations of laws, were to be by Act of Parliament. Oliver was to be King, if he chose, and a King with very large powers; but he was to keep within Statute.¹

On March 2 and 3 the First Article of the Address was debated, with the result that it was agreed to postpone any vote on the first and most important part of the Article, offering Oliver the Kingship, but with the passing of the second part, offering him, whether it should be as King or not, the power of nominating his successor. A motion for postponing the vote on this part also was lost by 120 to 63. Then, on the 5th, Article II., proposing Parliaments of two Houses, was discussed, and adopted without a division; after which there were discussions and adoptions of the remaining proposals, day after day, with occasional divisions about the wording, till March 24. On that day, the House, their survey of the document being tolerably complete, went back on the postponed clause of the First Article, involving the all-important question of the offer of the Kingship. Through two sittings that day, and again on March 25 (New Year's Day, 1657), there was a very anxious and earnest debate with closed doors, the opposition trying to stave off the final vote by two motions for adjournment. These having failed, the final vote was taken (March 25); when, by a majority of 123 to 62, the Kingship clause was carried in this amended form: "That your Highness will be pleased to assume the name, style, title, dignity, and office of King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the respective Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging, and to exercise the same according to the laws of these Nations." Then, it seemed, all was over, except verbal revision of the entire address. Next day (March 26) it was referred to a Committee, with Chief Justice Glynne for Chairman, to perform this—i.e. to "consider of the title, preamble, and conclusion, and read over the whole, and consider the coherence, and make it perfect." All which having been done that same day, and the House having given some last touches, the document was ready to be engrossed for presentation to Cromwell. By recommendation of the Committee, the title had been changed from Address and Remonstrance into Petition and Advice.¹

Of course, the great proposal in Parliament had been rumoured through the land, notwithstanding the instructed reticence or mysterious vagueness of the London newspapers; and, in the interval between the introduction of Sir Christopher Pack's paper and the conversion of the same into the Petition and Advice, with the distinct offer of Kingship in its forefront, there had been wide discussion of the affair, with much division of opinion. Against the Kingship, even horrified by the proposal of it, were most of those Army-men who had hitherto been Oliverians, and had helped to found the Protectorate. Lambert, Fleetwood, and Desborough, were at the head of this military opposition, which included nearly all the other ex-Major-Generals, and the bulk of the Colonels and inferior officers. One of their motives was dread of the consequences to themselves from a subversion of the system under which they had been acting and a return to a Constitutional and Royal system in which Cromwell and they might have to part company. This, and a theoretical Republicanism still lingering in their minds, tended, in the present emergency, almost to a reunion between them and the old or Anti-Oliverian Republicans. It had been some of the Oliverian Army-men in Parliament, at all events, that had first resisted Pack's motion. Ludlow's story is that they very nearly laid violent hands on Pack when he produced his paper; and the divisions in the Commons Journals exhibit Lambert and various Colonels, with Strickland, as among the chief obstructors of the Petition and Advice in its passage through the House. Strickland, it will be remembered, was an eminent member of the Protector's own Council; and, as far as one can gather, several others of that body, besides Lambert, Fleetwood, Desborough, and Strickland—perhaps half of the whole number of those now habitually attending the Council—were opposed to the Kingship. On the other hand, the more enthusiastic Oliverians of the Council, those most attached to Cromwell personally, e.g. Sir Charles Wolseley, appear to have been acquiescent, or even zealous for the Kingship; and there were at least some military Oliverians, out of the Council, of the same mind. In the final vote of March 25, carrying the offer of Kingship, the tellers for the majority were Sir John Reynolds (Tipperary and Waterford), and Major-General Charles Howard (Cumberland), while those for the minority were Major-General Butler (Northamptonshire), and Colonel Salmon (Dumfries Burghs). Undoubtedly, however, the chief managers of the Petition and Advice in the House from the first had been Whitlocke, Glynne, and others of the lawyers, with Lord Broghill. The lawyers had been long anxious for a constitutional Kingship: nothing else, they thought, could restore the proper machinery of Law and State, and make things safe. Accordingly, out of doors, in the whole civilian class, and largely also among the more conservative citizens, the idea of Oliver's Kingship was far from unwelcome. The Presbyterians generally, it is believed, were very favourable to it, their dispositions towards Cromwell having changed greatly of late; nor of the old Presbyterian Royalists were all averse. There were Royalists now who were not Stuartists, who wanted a king on grounds of general principle and expediency, but were not resolute that he should be Charles II. only. The real combination of elements against Oliver's Kingship consisted, therefore, of the unyielding old Royalists of the Stuart adhesion, regarding the elevation of the usurping "brewer" to the throne as abomination upon abomination, the Army Oliverians or Lambert and Fleetwood men, interested in the preservation of the existing Protectorate, and the passionate Republicans and Levellers, who had not yet condoned even the Protectorate, and whom the prospect of King and House of Lords over again, with all their belongings, made positively frantic.

How far Cromwell had been aware beforehand of such a project as that of Sir Christopher Pack's paper may be a question. That he had let it be known for some time that he was not disinclined to a revision and enlargement of the constitution of the original Protectorate may be fairly assumed; but that he had concocted Pack's project and arranged for bringing it on (which is Ludlow's representation, and, of course, that of all the Histories) is very unlikely. The project, as in Pack's paper, and as agreed upon by Whitlocke, Glynne, and other lawyers and Parliament men, was by no means, in all its parts, such a project as Cromwell himself would have originated. To the Kingship he may have had no objection, and we have his own word afterwards that he favoured the idea of a Second House of Parliament; but there were accompanying provisions not so satisfactory. What he had hitherto valued in his Protectorate was the place and scope given to his own supreme personality, his power to judge what was best and to carry it through as he could, unhampered by those popular suffrages and Parliamentary checks and privileges which he held to be mere euphemisms for ruin and mutual throat-cutting all through the British Islands in their then state of distraction; and it must therefore have been a serious consideration with him how far, in the public interests, or for his own comfort, he could put himself in new shackles for the mere name of King. What, for example, of the proposed restitution of the ninety-and-odd excluded members to the present Parliament? How could he get on after that? In short, there was so much in Pack's paper suggestive of new and difficult questions as to the futurity of Cromwell, his real influence in affairs, if he exchanged the Protectorship for Kingship, that the paper, or the exact project it embodied, cannot have been of Cromwell's devising. There are subsequent events in proof of the fact.

On the 27th of February, the fourth day after the introduction of Pack's paper, and the very day of the Fast appointed by the House prior to consideration of it in detail, Cromwell had been waited on by a hundred officers, headed by the alarmed Major-Generals, imploring him not to allow the thing to go farther. His reply was that, though he then specifically heard of the whole project for the first time, he could by no means share their instantaneous alarm. Kingship was nothing in itself, at best "a mere feather in a man's hat"; but it need be no bugbear, and at least ought to be no new thing to them. Had they not offered it to him at the institution of the Protectorate, though the title of Protector had been then preferred? Under that title he had been often a mere drudge of the Army, constrained to things not to his own liking. For the rest, were there not reasons for amending, in other respects, the constitution of the Protectorate? Had it not broken down in several matters, and were there not deficiencies in it? If there had been a Second House of Parliament, for example, would there have been that indiscreet decision in the case of James Nayler, a decision that might extend farther than Nayler, and leave no man safe?—Thus, with the distinct information that Cromwell would not interfere with Pack's project in its course through the House, had the Officers been dismissed. It was probably in consequence of their remonstrance with Cromwell, however, that the vote on the Kingship clause of the First Article had been postponed from the 2nd of March to the 25th. The delay had been useful. Though Lambert, Fleetwood, Desborough, and the mass of the military men, still remained "contrariants," not a few of them had been shaken by Cromwell's arguments, or at least by his judgment. If he, whom it was their habit to trust, was prepared to take the Kingship, and saw reasons for it, why should they stand out? So, before the vote did come on, Major-Generals Berry, Goffe, and Whalley, with others, had ceased to oppose, and the Kingship clause, reserved to the last, as the keystone of the otherwise completed arch, had been carried, as we have seen, by two-thirds of the House.¹

It was on Tuesday, March 31, in the Banqueting House in Whitehall, that Speaker Widdrington, attended by the whole House, and by all the high State-officers, formally presented to Cromwell, after a long speech, the Petition and Advice, engrossed on vellum. The understanding, by vote of the House, was that his Highness must accept the whole, and that otherwise no part would be binding. Cromwell's answer, in language very calm and somewhat sad (Speech VII.), was one of thanks, with a request for time to consider. On the 3rd of April, a Committee of the House, appointed by his request, waited on him for farther answer. It was still one of thanks: e.g. "I should be very brutish did I not acknowledge the exceeding high honour and respect you have had for me in this Paper"; but it was in effect a refusal, on the ground that, being shut up to accept all or none, he could not see his way to accept (Speech VIII.). Notwithstanding this answer, which could hardly be construed as final, the House next day resolved, after two divisions, to adhere to their Petition and Advice, and to make new application to the Protector. On the previous question the division was seventy-seven to sixty-five, Major-Generals Howard and Jephson telling for the majority, and Major-General Whalley and Colonel Talbot for the minority; on the main question there was a majority of seventy-eight, with Admiral Montague and Sir John Hobart for tellers, against sixty-five, told by General Desborough and Colonel Hewson. A Committee having then prepared a brief paper representing to his Highness the serious obligation he was under in such a matter, there was a second Conference of the whole House with his Highness (April 8). His reply to Widdrington then (Speech IX.) did not withdraw his former refusal, but signified willingness to receive farther information and counsel. To give such information and counsel, and In fact to reason out the matter thoroughly with Cromwell, the House then appointed a large Committee of ninety-nine, composed in the main, one must fancy, of members who were now eager for the Kingship, or at least had ceased to object. Whitlocke, Broghill, Glynne, Fiennes, Lenthall, Lord Commissioner Lisle, Sir Charles Wolseley, and Thurloe, were to be the most active members of this Committee; but it included also Admiral Montague, Generals Howard, Jephson, Whalley, Pack, Goffe, and Berry, with Sydenham, Rous, the Scotch Earl of Tweeddale, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, the poet Waller, and even Strickland. The Committee was appointed April 9, and the House was to await the issue.¹

It seemed as if it would never be reached. The Conferences of the Committee with Cromwell between April 11 to May 8, their reasonings with him to induce him to accept the Kingship, his reasonings in reply in the four speeches now numbered X.-XIII. of the Cromwell series, his doubts, delays, avoidances of several meetings, and constant adjournments of his final answer, make a story of great interest in the study of Cromwell's character, not without remarkable flashes of light on past transactions, and on Cromwell's theory of his Protectorship and of Government in general. Speech XIII., in particular, which is by far the longest, and which was addressed to the Committee on April 21, is full of instruction. Having in his previous speeches dealt chiefly with the subject of the Kingship, and stated such various objections to the kingly title as the bad associations with it, the blasting as if for ever which it had received from God's Providence in England, and the antipathy to it of many good men, he here took up the rest of the Petition and Advice. Approving, on the whole, of the spirit and contents of the document, and especially of the apparent rejection in it of that notion of perpetually-sitting Single-House Parliaments which he considered the most fatal fallacy in politics, and persistence in which by the Rump had left him no option but to dissolve that body forcibly and assume the Dictatorship, he yet found serious defects in some of the Articles, and want of precision on this point and that. His criticisms of this kind were masterly examples of his breadth of thought, his foresight, and his practical sagacity, and made an immediate impression. For, at this stage of the proceedings, the belief being that he would ultimately accept the Kingship, the House, whose sittings had been little more than nominal during the great Whitehall Conferences, applied itself vigorously, by deliberations in Committee and exchanges of papers with the Protector, to such amendments of the Petition and Advice as he had indicated. On April 30 sufficient intimation of such amendments was ready, and the former Committee of Ninety-nine were required to let his Highness know the same and ask him to appoint a time for his positive answer. For another week, notwithstanding two appointments for the purpose, all was still in suspense. During that week we are to suppose Cromwell either in perplexed solitary meditation, or shut up in those confidential meetings with a few of the most zealous promoters of the Kingship which Whitlocke describes. "The Protector," says Whitlocke, "often advised about this and other great businesses with the Lord Broghill, Pierrepoint, myself, Sir Charles Wolseley and Thurloe, and would be shut up three or four hours together in private discourse, and none were admitted to come in to him. He would sometimes be very cheerful with us, and, laying aside his greatness, he would be exceeding familiar with us, and by way of diversion would make verses with us, and every one must try his fancy. He commonly called for tobacco, pipes, and a candle, and would now and then take tobacco himself: then he would fall again to his serious and great business." At length, on Friday, May 8, the Parliament, assembled once more in the Banqueting House, did receive their positive answer. It was in a brief speech (Speech XIV.) ending "I cannot undertake this Government with the title of King; and that is mine Answer to this great and weighty business."¹

The story in Ludlow is that to the last moment Cromwell had meant to accept, and that his sudden and unexpected refusal was occasioned by a bold stroke of the Army-men. Having invited himself to dine at Desborough's, says Ludlow, he had taken Fleetwood with him, and had begun "to droll with them about monarchy," and ask them why sensible men like them should make so much of the affair, and refuse to please the children by permitting them to have "their rattle." Fleetwood and Desborough still remaining grave, he had called them "a couple of scrupulous fellows," and left them. Next day (May 6) he had sent a message to the House to meet him in the Painted Chamber next morning; and, casually encountering Desborough again, he had told Desborough what he intended. That same day Desborough had told Pride, whereupon that resolute colonel had surprised Desborongh by saying he would prevent it still. Going to Dr. Owen on the instant, Pride had made him draft an Officers' Petition to the House. It was to the effect that the petitioners, having "hazarded their lives against monarchy," and being "still ready to do so," observed with pain the "great endeavours to bring the nation again under their old servitude," and begged the House not to allow a title to be pressed upon their General which would be destructive to himself and the Commonwealth. To this petition Pride had obtained the signatures of two Colonels, seven Lieutenant-Colonels, eight Majors, and sixteen Captains, not members of the House; and Cromwell, learning what was in progress, had sent for Fleetwood, and scolded him for allowing such a thing, the rather as Fleetwood must know "his resolution not to accept the crown without the consent of the Army." The appointment with the House in the Painted Chamber for the 7th was changed, however, into that in the Banqueting House on the 8th, the latter place, as the more familiar, being fitter for the negative answer he now meant to give.—Ludlow's story, though he cites Desborough as his chief informant, is not perfectly credible in all its details; but the Commons Journals do show that the meeting originally appointed by Cromwell on the 6th for the Painted Chamber on the 7th was put off to the 8th, and then held in the Banqueting House, and also that there was an Officers' Petition in the interim. It was brought to the doors of the House, by "divers officers of the Army," on the 8th, just as the House was adjourning to the Banqueting House; and the Journals only record that the officers were admitted, and that, a Colonel Mason having presented the Petition in their name and his own, they withdrew. The rest is guess; but two main facts cannot be doubted. One is that Cromwell's great, if not sole, reason at last for refusing the Crown was his knowledge of the persistent opposition of a great number of the Army men. The other is that he remembered afterwards who had been the chief Contrariants.¹

While the great question of the Kingship had been in progress there had been a detection of a conspiracy of the Fifth-Monarchy Men.

Ever since the abortive ending of the Barebones Parliament these enthusiasts had been recognisable as a class of enemies of the Protectorate distinct from the ordinary and cooler Republicans. While Vane and Bradshaw might represent the Republicans or Commonwealth's men generally, the head of the Fifth-Monarchy Republicans was Harrison. The Harrisonian Republic, the impassioned dream of this really great-hearted soldier, was the coming Reign of Christ on Earth, and the trampling down, in anticipation of that reign, of all dignities, institutions, ministries, and magistracies, that might be inconsistent with it. In the Barebones Parliament, where the Fifth-Monarchy Men had been numerous, and where Harrison had led them, they had gone far, as we know, in conjunction with the Anabaptists, in a practical attempt to convert Cromwell's interim Dictatorship, with Cromwell's assent or acquiescence, into a beginning of the great new era. They had voted down Tithes, Church-Establishments, and all their connexions, and only the steadiness of Rons, Sydenham, and the other sober spirits, in making that vote the occasion of a resurrender of all power into Cromwell's hands, had prevented the consequences. And so, Cromwell's Protectorate having come in where Harrison wanted to keep a vacuum for the Fifth Monarchy, and that Protectorate having not only conserved Tithes and an Established Church, but professed them to be parts of its very basis, Harrison had abjured Cromwell for ever. "Those who had been to me as the apple of my eye," said Harrison afterwards, "when they had turned aside, said to me, Sit thou on my right hand; but I loathed it." Through the Protectorate, accordingly, Harrison, dismissed from the Army, had been living as a suspected person, with great powers of harm; and, three or four times, when there were Republican risings, or threatenings of such, it had been thought necessary to question him, or put him under temporary arrest. The last occasion had been just before the opening of the present Parliament, when he was arrested with Vane, Rich, and others, and had the distinction of being sent as far off as Pendennis Castle in Cornwall, while Vane was sent only to the Isle of Wight, and Rich only to Windsor. The imprisonments, however, being merely precautionary, had been but short; and, at the time of the proposal of the Kingship to Cromwell, Harrison, as well as the others, was again at liberty.

That Harrison had ever practically implicated himself in any attempt to upset the Protectorate by force hardly appears from the evidence. He was an experienced soldier, and, with all his fervid notions of a Fifth Monarchy, too massive a man to stir without calculation. All that can be said is that he was an avowed enemy of Cromwell's rule, that he was looked up to by all the Fifth-Monarchy Republicans, and that he held himself free to act should there be fit opportunity. But there were Harrisonians of a lower grade than Harrison. Especially in London, since the winter of 1655, there had been a kind of society of Fifth-Monarchy Men, holding small meetings in five places, only one man in each meeting knowing who belonged to the others, but the five connecting links forming a central Committee for management and propagandism. It must have been from this Committee, I suppose, that there emanated, in Sept. 1656, a pamphlet called "The Banner of Truth displayed, or a Testimony for Christ and against Antichrist: being the substance of several consultations holden and kept by a certain number of Christians who are waiting for the visible appearance of Christ's Kingdom in and over the World, and residing in and about the City of London." Probably as yet these humble Fifth-Monarchy Men had not gone beyond private aspirations. At all events, Thurloe, though aware of their existence, had not thought them worth notice. But Sindercombe's Plot of Feb. 1656-7, and the subsequent proposal of the Kingship for Cromwell, had excited them prodigiously, and they had been longing for action, and looking about for leaders. Harrison was their chief hope, and they had applied to him, but also to other Republicans who were not specially Fifth-Monarchy Men, such as Rich, Lawson, and Okey. What encouragement they had or thought they had from such men one does not know; but they had fixed Thursday, April 9, the very day of the appointment of the great Committee of Ninety-nine to deal with Cromwell about the Kingship, for an experimental rendezvous and standard-raising on Mile-End-Green. This being known to Thurloe, a horse-troop or two finished the affair by the capture of about twenty of them at Shoreditch, ready to ride to Mile-End-Green, and also by the capture at Mile-End-Green itself of their intended standard, some arms, and a quantity of Fifth-Monarchy books and manifestos. Five or six of the captured, among whom was Thomas Venner, a wine-cooper, the real soul of the conspiracy, were imprisoned in the Tower, and the rest elsewhere; but, in accordance with Cromwell's lenient custom in such cases, there was no trial, or other public notice of the affair, beyond a report about it by Thurloe to the House (April 11). Harrison, however, was again arrested, with Rich, Lawson, and Major Danvers; and amongst those taken was a Mr. Arthur Squib, who had been in the Barebones Parliament, and one of Harrison's chief followers there. Squib's connexion with Venner in the present wretched conspiracy seems to have been much closer than Harrison's.¹

Cromwell had used the Venner outbreak to point a moral in one or two of his speeches on the Kingship Question. The standard taken at Mile-End-Green bore a Red Lion couchant, with the motto Who shall rouse him up?; and among the tracts or manifestos taken was one called A Standard set up, whereunto the true Seed and Saints of the Most High may be gathered together for the lamb, against the Beast and the False Prophet. It was a fierce diatribe against Cromwell, with a scheme for the government of the Commonwealth on Fifth-Monarchy principles after his overthrow. The supreme authority was to be the Lord Jesus Christ; but there was to be an annually elected Sanhedrim or Supreme Council to represent Him, and to administer Biblical Law, and no other, with inferior elected judges for towns and counties. The Bible being the sole Law, a formal Legislature would be unnecessary; and all other magistracy besides the Sanhedrim and the Judgeships was to be abolished, and also, of course, all State ministry of Religion. Now, to Cromwell, who had read the Tract, all this furnished excellent illustration of the kind he wanted. Always frankly admitting that it might be said he had "griped at the government of the nations without a legal assent," he had never ceased to declare that this had been a sheer necessity for the nations themselves. But the Standard set up of the Fifth-Monarchy insurgents of Mile-End-Green had enabled him to return to the topic with reference specifically to the Barebones Parliament and the transition thence to the Protectorate. That wild pamphlet, he had told his auditors, in Speech XII. (April 20), was by one who had been "a leading person" in the Barebones Parliament (Harrison or Squib?); and in Speech XIII. (April 21) he had dwelt on the fact again more at large, revealing a story, as he said, of his "own weakness and folly." The Barebones Parliament had been one of his own choosing; he had filled it with "men of our own judgment, who had fought in the wars, and were all of a piece upon that account." This he had done in his "simplicity," expecting the best results. But, as it had happened, there was a band of men in that Parliament driving even then for nothing but the principles of this wretched Fifth-Monarchy manifesto, the abolition of Church and Magistracy, and a trial of a fantastic government by the Law of Moses. Major-General Harrison and Mr. Squib had been the leaders of this band, with the Anabaptist minister Mr. Feak as their confidant out of doors; and what they did from day to day in the Parliament had been concocted in private meetings in Mr. Squib's house. "This was so de facto: I know it to be true." Had he not done well in accepting the Protectorate at such a moment, and so saving the Commonwealth from the delirium of which they had just seen a new spurt at Mile-End-Green?¹

After the Protector's refusal of the Kingship the House proceeded to adjust the new constitution they had prepared in the Petition and Advice to that unavoidable fact. Not much was necessary. It was only necessary to re-shape the key-stone, by removing the word "King" from the first clause of the First Article and retaining the word "Protector": all the rest would hold good. Accordingly, after some days of debate, it was finally agreed, May 22, that the former first clause of the First Article should be cancelled, and this substituted: "That your Highness will be pleased, by and under the name and style of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging, to hold and exercise the office of Chief Magistrate of these Nations, and to govern according to this Petition and Advice in all things therein contained, and in all other things according to the Laws of these Nations, and not otherwise." The remaining clause of the First Article, empowering Cromwell to appoint his immediate successor, was left untouched, as well as all the subsequent Articles. To the whole of the Petition and Advice, so arranged, Cromwell solemnly gave his assent in the Painted Chamber, May 25, addressing the House in a short speech, in which he expressed his thorough confidence in them in respect to those explanations or modifications of the document which they had promised in order to meet the objections he had taken the liberty of making. He did not doubt there would be "a perfecting of those things."¹

The "perfecting of those things" occupied a good deal of time. What was necessary was to cast the resolutions already come to in supplement to the Petition and Advice, or those that might yet suggest themselves, into a valid legal form; and it was agreed, June 4, that, except in as far as it might be well to pass express Bills on specific matters, the best way would be to frame and submit to his Highness a Humble Additional and Explanatory Petition and Advice. The due framing of this, and the preparation of the necessary Bills, were to be work for three weeks more.¹

Meanwhile, in evidence that the Session of the Parliament up to this point, notwithstanding the great business of the Petition and Advice and the Kingship question, had by no means been barren in legislation, the House had gathered up all the Bills already passed, but not yet assented to, for presentation to his Highness in a body. On the 9th of June thirty-eight such Bills, "some of the public, and the others of a more private, concernment," were presented to his Highness by the whole House, assembled in the Painted Chamber, the Speaker, "after a short and pithy speech," offering them as some grapes preceding the full vintage, and his Highness ratifying all by his assent.—Among these was one very comprehensive Act with this preamble: "Whereas, since the 20th of April, 1653, in the great exigences and necessities of these nations, divers Acts and Ordinances have been made without the consent of the People assembled in Parliament—which is not according to the fundamental laws of the nations and the rights of the People, and is not for the future to be drawn into example—yet, the actings thereupon tending to the settlement of the estates of several persons and families and the peace and quiet of the nations: Be it enacted by his Highness the Lord Protector and this present Parliament," &c. What is enacted is that about a hundred Acts and Ordinances, all duly enumerated, out of those made by the Barebones Parliament in 1653 or by Oliver and his Council after the establishment of the Protectorate in Dec. 1656, together with all acts and ordinances of the same touching customs and excise, shall by this Act be confirmed and made good, either wholly and absolutely (which is the case with nearly all) or with specified modifications—"all other Acts and Ordinances, and every branch and clause therein contained, not confirmed by these presents, which have been made or passed between the 20th day of April 1653 and the 17th day of September 1656" to be absolutely null and void. In other words, the House had been revising long and carefully the Acts of the Barebones Parliament and the arbitrary Ordinances of Oliver and his Council from Dec. 1653 onwards, with a view to adopt all that might stand and to give them new constitutional sanction. Among the Acts of the Barebones Parliament so confirmed and continued was their famous Act for the forms and ceremonial of Marriage and for the Registration of Births and Burials (Vol. IV. p. 511), except only the clause therein declaring any other marriages than as these prescribed to be illegal. Of Cromwell's own Ordinances from Dec. 1653 onwards all were preserved that, I suppose, he really cared for. Thus, of his eighty-two first public Ordinances, passed between Dec. 1653 and the meeting of his First Parliament Sept. 3, 1654, thirty-six were expressly confirmed; which, as most of the rest were Excise or Customs Ordinances or Orders for temporary occasion, means that substantially all his legislation on his entering on the Protectorate was to remain in force. More particularly, I may note that Nos. 7, 16, 24, 30, 31, 32, 33, 50, 54, 58, 60, 66, 67, 69, 71, 81, and 82, in our List of his first eighty-two Public Ordinances (Vol. IV. pp. 558-565) were among those confirmed. These included his Ordinances against Cockfights and Duels, his Ordinance for Reform of the Court of Chancery, his various Ordinances for the incorporation and management of Scotland, and his various Church-Establishment Ordinances for England and Wales, with his two commissions of Triers and Ejectors. Among contemporary ordinances of his also confirmed, over and above those in the main list of Eighty-two, were that for setting up Lectures in Scotland, that in favour of Glasgow University, and that for the better support of the Universities of Scotland—this last, however, limited to the Universities alone by the omission of what related to "the encouragement of public preachers" (Vol. IV. p. 565: footnote). The most noticeable Ordinances of Cromwell's not confirmed are those relating to Treasons—No. 8 in the List of Eighty-two, and its appendages Nos. 12 and 49. Altogether, the Parliament had handsomely cleared Cromwell in respect of his Interim Dictatorship and what was past of his Protectorate, and he had every reason to be satisfied. But, besides this all-comprehensive Act of retrospection, several of the other Acts presented for his assent at the same time must have been very much to his mind.—There was an Act for settling lands in Scotland upon General Monk, with similar Acts for settling lands in Ireland on Fleetwood, Dr. Owen, Sir Hardress Waller, and other persons of desert; there were several Naturalization Bills in favour of a great number of foreigners and English aliens; there was "An Act for limiting and settling the prices of Wines"; and there was "An Act against Vagrants, and wandering, idle, dissolute Persons." Most welcome to Cromwell, and drawing from him a few words of special acknowledgment after his assent to all the Bills (Speech XV.), were "Two Bills for an Assessment towards the defraying of the charge of the Spanish war and other occasions of the Commonwealth." One was for £60,000 a month from England for the three months ending June 24; the other for an assessment of £20,000 from Ireland for the same three months. These were instalments of a lump sum of £400,000, which the House had voted as long ago as Jan. 30, 1656-7, for the carrying on of the Spanish war, and the remainder of which was to be raised in other ways. The House had already before it a general Bill for the continued assessment of England, Scotland, and Ireland, for Army and Navy purposes, beyond the period specified; but that Bill had not yet passed.¹

Army and Navy purposes, and the carrying on of the Spanish War: these, through all the bustle of the Kingship question, had still been the deepest things in Cromwell's mind. His alliance with France, settled so far by the Treaty of Peace and Commerce dated Oct. 24, 1655, but much imperilled since by Mazarin's dexterity in evasion and his occasional oscillations towards Spain, had at length, by Lockhart's exertions, been converted into a great Treaty "offensive and defensive," signed at Paris, March 23rd, 1656-7, and ratified by Louis XIV. April 30, and by Cromwell himself May 4, 1657. By this treaty it was provided that there should be joint action against Spain, by sea and land, for the reduction and capture of Gravelines, Mardyke, and Dunkirk, the three coast-towns of Spanish Flanders adjoining the French territories on the north-east. Gravelines, if taken, was to belong to France ultimately, but, if taken first, was to be held by the English till Mardyke and Dunkirk were taken—which two towns were to belong permanently to England, only with stipulation of inviolability of Roman Catholic worship for the inhabitants, and of no further English encroachments on Flanders. For the joint-enterprise France was to supply 20,000 men, and Cromwell an auxiliary army of 6000 foot (half at the expense of France), besides a fleet for coast-service. A secret article of the Treaty was that neither power should make separate peace with the Spanish Crown for the space of one year from the date of the Treaty.¹—Cromwell had lost no time in fulfilling his part of the engagement. To command the auxiliary English army in Flanders he had selected Sir John Reynolds, who had served ably heretofore in Ireland, and was now, as we have seen, member for Tipperary and Waterford in the present Parliament, and a strong Oliverian. His commission was dated April 25; and by May 14 he and his 6000 English foot had all been landed at Boulogne. They were thought the most splendid body of soldiers in Europe, and were admired and complimented by Louis XIV., who went purposely, with Lockhart, to review them. The promised fleet of cooperation was to be under the command of young Admiral Montague, who was still, however, detained in England.²—Meanwhile Blake, in his wider command off the coasts of Spain itself, or wherever in the Atlantic there could be a dash at the Spaniard, had added one more to the series of his naval exploits. To intercept a rich Spanish fleet from Mexico, he had gone to the Canary Isles; he had found the fleet there, sixteen ships in all, impregnably ensconced, as it was thought, in the fortified bay of Santa Cruz in Teneriffe; and, after a council of war, in which it was agreed that, though the ships could not be taken, they might be destroyed, he had ventured that tremendous feat April 20, with the most extraordinary success. He had emerged from Santa Cruz Bay, after eleven hours of connonading and fighting, all but undamaged himself, but leaving not a ship of the Spanish fleet extant, and every fort in ruins. Not till May 28 did the news reach London; but on that day Thurloe presented a narrative of the glorious action to the House, who forthwith ordered a special thanksgiving, and a jewel worth £500 to Blake. On the 10th of June the jewel was sent, with a letter of honour from the Protector, and instructions to leave fourteen of his ships off Cadiz, and return home himself with the rest of his fleet.³

"Killing no Murder: briefly discoursed, in Three Questions, by William Allen:" such was the title of a pamphlet in secret circulation in London in June, 1657, and still of some celebrity. It began with a letter "To His Highness, Oliver Cromwell," in this strain: "To your Highness justly belongs the honour of dying for the people; and it cannot choose but be an unspeakable consolation to you in the last moments of your life to consider with how much benefit to the world you are likely to leave it ... To hasten this great good is the chief end of my writing this paper." There follows, accordingly, a letter to those officers and soldiers of the army who remember their engagements, urging them to assassinate Cromwell. "We wish we had rather endured thee, O Charles," it says, "than have been condemned to this mean tyrant, not that we desire any kind of slavery, but that the quality of the master sometimes graces the condition of the slave." Sindercombe is spoken of as "a brave man," of as "great a mind" as any of the old Romans. At the end there is this postscript: "Courteous reader, expect another sheet or two of paper on this subject, if I escape the Tyrant's hands, although he gets in the interim the crown upon his head, which he hath underhand put his confederates on to petition his acceptance thereof." This would imply that, though not in circulation till June, the pamphlet had been written while the Kingship question was in suspense, i.e, before May 8. The name "William Allen" on the title-page was, of course, assumed. The pamphlet, hardly any one now doubts, was by Edward Sexby, the Stuartist arch-conspirator, then moving between England and the continent, and known to have been the real principal of Sindercombe's plot. Actually, when the pamphlet appeared, the desperate man was again in England, despite Thurloe's police. The pamphlet was greedily sought after, and much talked of. The sale was, of course, dangerous. A copy could not be had under five shillings.¹

People were still talking of Killing no Murder when the First Protectorate came to a close. We have now only to take account of the circumstances of that event, and of the differences there were to be, constitutionally, between the First Protectorate and the Second.

On the 25th of June, 1657, all the details of the Humble Additional and Explanatory Petition and Advice having been at length settled by the House, that supplement to the original Petition and Advice was also ready for his Highness's assent. The two documents together, to be known comprehensively as The Petition and Advice, were to supersede the more military Instrument, called The Government of the Commonwealth, to which Cromwell had sworn in Dec. 1653, at his first installation, and were to be the charter of his new and constitutionalized Protectorate. The Articles of this new Constitution were seventeen in all, and deserve some attention:—Article I., as we know, confirmed Cromwell's Protectorship and empowered him to choose his successor.—Article II. provided for the calling of Parliaments of Two Houses once in three years at furthest.—Article III. stipulated for all Parliamentary privileges and the non-exclusion of any of the duly elected members except by judgment of the House of which they might be members.—Article IV., which was much the longest, determined the classes of persons who should be disqualified from being elected or voting in elections. Universally, all Roman Catholics were to be excluded, and all who had abetted the Irish Rebellion. Farther, in England, were to be excluded all who had been engaged in any war against Parliament since Jan. I, 1641-2, unless they had afterwards given "signal testimony" of their good affections, and all who, since the establishment of the Protectorate, had been engaged in any plot or insurrection against it. In Scotland were to be excluded all who had been in arms against the Parliament of England or against that of Scotland before April 1, 1648 (old Malignants and Montrosists), except such as had afterwards given "signal testimony," &c., and also all who, since April 1, 1648, had been in arms against the English Parliament or the Commonwealth (the Hamiltonians of 1648, and the Scottish Royalists of all varieties who had fought for Charles II. in 1650-51), except such as had since March 1, 1651-2, "lived peaceably"—but with the supplementary proviso, required by his Highness, that, while "having lived peaceably" since Worcester would suffice for the miscellaneous Royalists of 1650-51, who were indeed nearly the whole population of Scotland, the less pardonable Hamiltonians of 1648 would have to pass much stricter tests. In Ireland, though Protestants generally were to be qualified, there was to be like caution in admitting such as, though faithful before March 1, 1649-50, had afterwards opposed the Commonwealth or the Protector. These disqualifications affected both voting and eligibility; but eligibility was restricted still farther. Ineligible were to be all atheistic persons, scoffers at Religion, unbelievers in the divine authority of the Bible, or other execrable heretics, all profaners of the Lord's Day, all habitual drunkards or swearers, and all who had married Roman Catholics or allowed their children to marry such. For the rest, all persons of the voting sex, over the age of twenty-one, and "of known integrity, fearing God, and of good conversation," were to be eligible. One farther exception had been made in the original Petition and Advice; to wit, all in holy orders, all ministers or public preachers. "There may be some of us, it may be, who have been a little guilty of that, who would be loath to be excluded from sitting in Parliament," Cromwell had said laughingly while commenting on this clause; and it had accordingly been defined as excluding only regular pastors of congregations. He had procured an important modification of another clause of the same Article. It had been proposed that the business of examining who had been duly elected, and the power of suspending members till the House itself should decide, should be vested in a body of forty-one commissioners to be appointed by Parliament; but, Cromwell having pointed out that this would be a clumsy process, and that the commissioners themselves might be "uncertain persons," and might "keep out good men," it was agreed that the judgment of the House itself, with a fine of £1000 on every unqualified person that might take his seat, would fully answer the purpose.—Article V. related to the Second House of Parliament, called simply "the other House." It was to consist of not more than seventy nor fewer than forty persons, qualified as by the last Article, to be nominated by the Protector and approved by the Commons House, twenty-one to be a quorum, and no proxies allowed. Vacancies were to be filled up by nominations by the Protector, approved by the House itself. The powers of the House were also defined. They were to try no criminal cases whatsoever, unless on an impeachment sent up from the Commons, and only certain specified kinds of civil cases. All their final determinations were to be by the House itself, and not by delegates or Committees.—Article VI. ruled that all other particulars concerning "the calling and holding of Parliaments" should be by law and statute, and that there should be no legislation, or suspension, or abrogation of law, but by Act of Parliament.—Article VII. guaranteed a yearly revenue of £1,300,000, whereof £1,000,000 to be for the Army and Navy, and the remaining £300,000 for the support of the Government, the sums not to be altered without the consent of Parliament, and no part of them to be raised by a land-tax. There might also be "temporary supplies" over and above, to be voted by the Commons; but on no account was his Highness to impose any tax, or require any contribution, by his own authority. By Cromwell's request it was added that his expenditure of the Army and Navy money should be with the advice of his Council, and that accounts should be rendered to Parliament.—Article VIII. settled that his Highness's Privy Council should consist of not more than twenty-one persons, seven a quorum, to be approved by both Houses, and to be irremovable but by the consent of Parliament, though in the intervals of Parliament any of them might be suspended by the Protector. It was asked that the Government should always be with the advice of the Council, and stipulated that, after Cromwell's death, all appointments to the Commandership-in-chief, or to Generalships at land or sea, should be by the future Protectors with consent of the Council.—Article IX. required that the Lord Chancellor, or Lord Keeper, or Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal, the Lord Treasurer or Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, the Judges, and all the great State-officers in England, Scotland, or Ireland, should, in cases of future appointment by the Protector and his Council, be approved by Parliament.—Article X. congratulated the Protector on his Established Church, and begged him to punish, according to law, all open revilers of the same.—Article XI. related to Religion and Toleration. The Protestant Faith, as contained in the Old and New Testaments, and as yet to be formulated in a Confession of Faith to be agreed upon between his Highness and the Parliament, was to be the professed public Religion, and to be universally respected as such; but all believers in the Trinity and in the divine authority of the Scriptures, though they might dissent otherwise in doctrine, worship, or discipline from the Established Church, were to be protected in the exercise of their own religion and worship,—this liberty not to extend to Popery, Prelacy, or the countenancing of blasphemous publications. Ministers and Preachers agreeing in "matters of faith" with "the public profession," though differing in "matters of worship and discipline," were not to be excluded from the Established Church by that difference, but might have "the public maintenance appointed for the ministry" and promotion and employment in the Church according to their abilities. None but those whose difference extended to matters of faith need remain outside the Established Church. Dissenters from the Established Church, if sufficiently right in the faith, were to have equal admission with others to all civil trusts and appointments, subject only to any disqualification for civil office attached to the ministerial profession. His Highness was requested to agree to the repeal of all laws inconsistent with these provisions.—Article XII. required that all past Acts for disestablishing or disendowing the old Prelatic Church, and appropriating the revenues of the same, should hold good.—Article XIII. required that Old Malignants, and other such classes of persons as those disqualified for Parliament in Article IV., should be excluded also from other public trusts.—Article XIV. stipulated that nothing in the Petition and Advice should be construed as implying the dissolution of the present Parliament before such time as his Highness should independently think fit.—Article XV. provided that the Petition and Advice should not be construed as repealing or annulling any Laws or Ordinances already in force, not distinctly incompatible with itself.—Article XVI. protected in a similar way all writs, commissions, grants, law-processes, &c., issued and in operation already, even though the wording should seem a little past date.—Article XVII. and Last requested his Highness to be pleased to take an oath of office. A form of such oath appeared in the Additional Petition and Advice, with another form of oath for his Highness's Councillors in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and a third for the members of either House of Parliament. This last, besides a promise to uphold and promote the true Protestant Religion, contained a special promise of fidelity to the Lord Protector and his Government. Farther, by the same Additional Petition and Advice, the Lord Protector was requested and empowered to issue writs calling qualified persons to the other House in convenient time before the next session of Parliament, and such persons were empowered to meet and constitute the other House at the time and place appointed without requiring farther approbation from the present Single House.¹

Friday, June 26, 1657, was the last day of the present Single House, and a day of high ceremonial in London. The House, having met as usual in the morning, and transacted some overstanding business, rose about two o'clock to meet his Highness in the Painted Chamber. There, with the words "The Lord Protector doth consent," the Additional Petition and Advice, and therefore the whole new Constitution of the Protectorate, as just described, became law, and assent was given also to a number of Bills that had passed the House since the 9th. Among these was an "Act for convicting, discovering, and repressing of Popish Recusants," an "Act for the Better Observation of the Lord's Day," and an "Act for punishing such persons as live at high rates and have no visible estate, profession, or calling, answerable thereto." There were also two Money Bills for temporary supplies: viz. one for raising £15,000 from Scotland, to go along with the £180,000 from England, and the £20,000 from Ireland, voted for the three months just ended, and another general and prospective one, assessing England at £35,000 a month, Scotland at £6000 a month, and Ireland at £9000 a month, for the next three years. All these assents having been received, there was an adjournment to Westminster Hall for the solemn installation of his Highness in his Second Protectorate.—The Hall had been magnificently prepared, and contained a vast assemblage. The members of the House, the Judges in their robes, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen in their robes, and other dignitaries, were ranged in the midst round, a canopied chair of state. It was the royal chair of Scotland, with the mystic coronation-stone underneath it, brought for the purpose from the Abbey. In front of the chair was a table, covered with pink-coloured Geneva velvet fringed with gold; and on the table lay a large Bible, a sword, the sceptre, and a robe of purple velvet, lined with ermine. His Highness, having entered, attended by his Council, the great state officers, his son Richard, the French Ambassador, the Dutch Ambassador, and "divers of the nobility and other persons of great quality," stood, beside the chair under the canopy. The Speaker, assisted by the Earl of Warwick, Whitlocke, and others, then attired his Highness in the purple velvet robe; after which he delivered to him the richly-gilt Bible, girt him with the sword, and put the gold sceptre into his hand. His Highness then swore the oath of office, administered to him by the Speaker, After that, the Speaker addressed him in a well-turned speech. "You have no new name," he said, "but a new date now added to the old name: the 16th of December is now changed into the 26th of June." He explained that the robe, the Bible, the sword, and the sceptre were presents to his Highness from the Parliament, and dwelt poetically on the significance of each. "What a comely and glorious sight," he concluded, "it is to behold a Lord Protector in a purple robe, with a sceptre in his hand, a sword of justice girt about him, and his eyes fixed upon the Bible! Long may you prosperously enjoy them all, to your own comfort, and the comfort of the people of these three Nations!" His Highness still standing, Mr. Manton offered up a prayer. Then, the assemblage giving several great shouts, and the trumpets sounding, his Highness sat down in the chair, still holding the sceptre. Then a herald stood up aloft, and signalled for three trumpet-blasts, at the end of which, by authority of Parliament, he proclaimed the Protector. There were new trumpet-blasts, loud hurrahs through the Hall, and cries of "God save the Lord Protector." Once more there was proclamation, and once more a burst of applauses. Then, all being ended, his Highness, with his robe borne up by several young persons of rank, passed with his retinue from the Hall by the great gate, where his coach was in waiting. And so, with the Earl of Warwick seated opposite to him in the coach, his son Richard and Whitlocke on one side, and Viscount Lisle and Admiral Montague on the other, he was driven through the crowd to Whitehall, surrounded by his life-guards, and followed by the Lord Mayor and other dignitaries in their coaches.—There was a brief sitting of the House after the Installation. It was agreed to recommend to his Highness to "encourage Christian endeavours for uniting the Protestant Churches abroad," and also to recommend to him to take some effectual course "for reforming the government of the Inns of Court, and likewise for placing of godly and able ministers there"; and it was ordered that the Acts passed by the House should be printed collectively, and that every member should have a copy. Then, according to one of the Acts to which his Highness had that day assented, the House adjourned itself for seven months, i.e. to Jan. 20, 1657-8.¹

CHAPTER II.

MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED: SEPTEMBER 1654—JUNE 1657.

For more than reasons of mere mechanical symmetry, it will be well to divide this Chapter of Milton's Biography into Sections corresponding with those of Oliver's Continued Protectorate in the preceding Chapter.

SECTION I: FROM SEPTEMBER 1654 TO JANUARY 1654-5, OR THROUGH OLIVER'S FIRST PARLIAMENT.

ULAC'S HAGUE EDITION OF MILTON'S DEFENSIO SECUNDA, WITH THE FIDES PUBLICA OF MORUS ANNEXED: PREFACE BY DR. CRANTZIUS TO THE REPRINT: ULAC'S OWN PREFACE OF SELF-DEFENCE: ACCOUNT OF MORUS'S FIDES PUBLICA, WITH EXTRACTS: HIS CITATION OF TESTIMONIES TO HIS CHARACTER: TESTIMONY OF DIODATI OF GENEVA: ABRUPT ENDING OF THE BOOK AT THIS POINT, WITH ULAC'S EXPLANATION OF THE CAUSE.—PARTICULARS OF THE ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT OF MILTON'S FRIEND OVERTON.—THREE MORE LATIN STATE-LETTERS BY MILTON FOR OLIVER (NOS. XLIX.—LI.): NO STATE-LETTERS BY MILTON FOR THE NEXT THREE MONTHS: MILTON THEN BUSY ON A REPLY TO THE FIDES PUBLICA OF MORUS.

In October 1654 there was out at the Hague, from Ulac's press, a volume in two parts, with this title: "Joannis Miltoni Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano contra infamem Libellum, cujus titulus 'Regii Sanguinis Clamor adversus Parricidas Anglicanos.' Accessit Alexandri Mori, Ecclesiastæ, Sacrarumque Litterarum Professoris, Fides Publica contra calumnias Joannis Miltoni, Scurræ. Hagæ-Comitum, ex Typographia Adriani Ulac, MDCLIV." ("John Milton's Second Defence for the English People in reply to an infamous Book entitled 'Cry of the King's Blood against the English Parricides.' To which is added A Public Testimony of Alexander Morus, Churchman, and Professor of Sacred Literature, in reply to the Calumnies of John Milton, Buffoon. Printed at the Hague by Adrian Ulac, 1654.") The reprint of Milton's Defensio Secunda fills 128 pages of the volume; More's appended Fides Publica, or Public Testimony, in reply, is in larger type and fills 129 pages separately numbered. Morus, after all, it will be seen, had been obliged to acquiesce in Ulac's arrangement (Vol. IV. p. 634). Instead of trying vainly any longer to suppress Milton's book on the Continent, he had exerted himself to the utmost in preparing a Reply to it, to go forth with that reprint of it for the foreign market which Ulac had been pushing through the press and would not keep back.

Although Milton complains that Ulac's edition of his book for the foreign market was not only a piracy, but also slovenly in itself, with printer's errors vitiating the sense and arrangement in some cases,¹ it was substantially a reprint of the original. Its interest for us, therefore, lies wholly in the preliminary matter. This consists of a short Preface headed "Lectori" ("To the Reader") and signed "GEORGIUS CRANTZIUS, S.S. Theol. D.," and a longer statement headed "Typographus pro Se-ipso" ("The Printer in his own behalf") and signed "A. ULACQ."

The Rev. Dr. Crantzius, who does not give his exact address, writes in an authoritative clerical manner. Though in bad health, he says, he cannot refrain from penning a few lines, to say how much he is shocked at the length to which personalities in controversy are going. He really thinks Governments ought to interfere to put such things down. Readers will find in the following book of Milton's a lamentable specimen. He knows nothing of Milton himself; but Milton's writings show him to be a man of a most damnable disposition, and Salmasius had once shown him (Dr. Crantzius) an English book of Milton's propounding the blasphemy "that the doctrine of the Gospel, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, concerning Divorce is devilish." Dr. Crantzius had known Salmasius very well; and O what a man he was! Nothing amiss in him, except perhaps a hasty temper, and too great subjection to a peculiar connubial fate! There was a posthumous book of Salmasius against Milton; and, should it ever appear, Milton would feel that even the dead could bite. Dr. Crantzius had seen a portion of it; and, "Good Heavens! what a blackguard is Milton, if Salmasius may be trusted." Dr. Crantzius had known Morus both at Geneva and in Holland. He was certainly a man often at feud with enemies and rivals, and giving them too great opportunities by his irascibility and freedom of speech. But he was a man of high aspirations; and the late Rev. Dr. Spanheim had once told Dr. Crantzius that Morus's only fault was that he was altier, as the French say, i.e. haughty. As for Milton's special accusations against Morus, Dr. Crantzius knew them for a certainty to be false. Even after the Bontia scandal had got abroad and the lawsuit of Morus with the Salmasian household was running its course, Dr. Crantzius had heard Salmasius, who was not in the habit of praising people, speak highly of Morus. Salmasius had admitted at the same time that his wife had injured Morus, though he could not afford to destroy his "domestic peace" by opposing her in the matter. On the Bontia affair specifically, Salmasius's express words, not only to Dr. Crantzius, but to others whom he names, had been, "If Morus is guilty, then I am the pimp, and my wife the procuress." As to the sequel of the case Dr. Crantzius is ignorant; and he furnishes Ulac with this preface to the Book only in the interests of truth. But what a quarrelsome fellow Milton must be, who had not kept his hands off even the "innocent printer"!

The "innocent printer's" own preface to the Reprint shows him to have been a very shrewd person indeed. He keeps his temper better than any of them. Two years had elapsed., he says, since he printed the Regii Sanguinis Clamor. Who the real author of the book was he did not even yet know. All he knew was that some one, who wanted to be anonymous, had sent the manuscript to Salmasius, and that, after some delay and hesitation, he had obliged Salmasius by putting the book to press. Ulac then relates the circumstances, already known to us, of his correspondence with Hartlib about the book, and his offers to Milton, through Hartlib, to publish any reply Milton might make. He had been surprised at the long delay of this reply, and also at the extraordinary ignorance of business shown by Milton and his friends in their resentment of his part in the matter. It was for a tradesman to be neutral in his dealings; he had relations with both the Parliamentarians and the Royalists, and would publish for either side; and, as to his lending his name to the Dedicatory Preface to Charles II., everybody knew that printers did such things every day. However, here now is Mr. Milton's Defensio Secunda in an edition for the foreign market, printed with the same good will as if Milton had himself given the commission. It contains, he finds, a most unjustifiable attack on M. Morus, with abuse also of Salmasius, who is now in his grave; but that is other people's business, not Ulac's. He cannot pass, however, the defamation of himself inserted in Milton's book.—Ulac then quotes the substance of Milton's account of him as once a swindler and bankrupt in London, then the same in Paris, &c. (Vol. IV. p. 588). This information, Ulac has little doubt, Milton has received from a particular London bookseller, whom Ulac believes also to have been the real publisher of Milton's book, though Newcome's name appears on it. It is all a tissue of lies, however, and Ulac will meet it by a sketch of his own life since he first dealt in books. This takes him twenty-six years back. It was at that time that, being in Holland, which is his native country, and having till then not been in trade at all, he received from England a copy of the Arithmetica Logarithmica of the famous mathematician Henry Briggs [published 1624]. Greatly enamoured with this work and with the whole new science of Logarithms, and observing that Briggs had given the Logarithms for numbers only from 1 to 20,000, and then from 90,000 to 100,000, he had set himself to fill up the gap by finding the Logarithms for numbers from 20,000 to 90,000, and had had the satisfaction, in an incredibly short space of time, of bringing out the result [in an extended edition of Briggs's book published at Gouda, 1628]. Briggs and the English mathematicians were highly gratified, and Ulac was asked to publish also Briggs's Trigonometria Britannica. This also he had done [at Gouda in 1633, Briggs having died in 1630, and left the work in charge of his friend Henry Gellibrand]; after which he had engaged in the heavy labour of converting into Logarithms the Sines and Tangents to a Radius of 10,000,000,000 given in the Opus Palatinum, and had issued the same under the title Trigonometria Artificialis. These labours of Ulac's were not unknown to the mathematical world; and it was somewhat surprising that Milton had not heard of them, especially as, in his sketch of his own life in the Defensio Secunda, he professed his interest in Mathematics, and spoke of his visits to London from Horton for the purpose of picking up any novelties in that science. At any rate, it was zeal for the dissemination of the mathematical books above-mentioned that had turned Ulac into a printer and bookseller. In that capacity he certainly had been in London, trading in books generally, and he had been in difficulties there, though not of a kind discreditable to himself. After he had been some years in London, trading peaceably, some London booksellers, jealous for their monopoly, had conspired against him, and tried to obtain an order from Archbishop Laud for the confiscation of his whole stock in trade. Through the kind offices of Dr. Juxon, Bishop of London, this had been prevented, and he had been empowered to sell off his existing stock. Nay, a little while afterwards, he had had a prospect, through the Royal Printers, of a full trading licence from the Archbishop, on condition of his buying from them copies of two heavy works they had printed by the Archbishop's desire—viz. Theophylact on St. Paul's Epistles and the Catena of the Greek Fathers on Job. He had actually obtained such a licence for two years, and had hopes of its renewal, when the Civil War broke out. On that account only, and not in any disgrace, as Milton said, he had, after having been about ten years in all in London, transferred himself to Paris.¹ He had been there about six years, dealing honestly, and publishing important theological and other books, the titles of some of which he gives; but here also he had been the victim of trade jealousy. He had found it impossible to get on in Paris, though it was utterly false that he dared not now show his face there. He had shown his face there, since he had returned to his native Holland and made the Hague his head-quarters; and he could show his face there again without any inconvenience. Meanwhile he was in the Hague, comfortable enough; and his character there might easily be ascertained.—To return to Milton's present book. Though Ulac had reprinted it, he had done so in doubt whether, now that there was peace between the United Provinces and the Protector, such irritating books between the two nations ought not to be mutually suppressed. His own leanings had always been rather to the English Parliamentarians than to the Royalists, and hence he had been disposed to think well of Milton. Though he cannot think so well of him now, he will not retaliate by any abuse of Milton. "If Milton is acknowledged in his own country to be a good man, let him be glad of it; but I hear that many Englishmen who know him are of another opinion. I would decide nothing on mere rumour; nay, if I had ascertained anything scandalous about him with positive certainty, I should think it better to hold my tongue than to blazon it about publicly." How strange, however, that Milton had fallen foul of Morus at such a violent rate! Had he not been told two years ago, through Hartlib, that Morus was not the author of the book for which he made him suffer? It was the more inexcusable inasmuch as in the Joannis Philippi, Angli, Responsio ad Apologiam Anonymi Cujusdam—which work Milton had superintended, if he had not written it—there had been the same mistake of attributing a work to the wrong person. It would be for Morus himself, however, to take cognisance of that.

And now for More's own Fides Publica or Public Testimony for Himself. It is a most painful book on the whole. Gradually it impresses you with considerable respect for the ability of the author, and especially for his skill both in logical and pathetic pleading; and throughout you cannot but pity him, and remember that he was placed in about the most terrible position that a human being, and especially a clergyman of wide celebrity, could occupy—placed there too by what would now be called an act of literary savagery, outraging all the modern proprieties of personal controversy. Still the impression left finally is not satisfactory. It is but fair, however, that he should speak for himself. The book opens thus:—

"If I could acknowledge as true of me any of those things which you, by a wild and unbridled licence, have not only attributed to me, but have even, to your eternal disgrace, dared to publish, I should be angry with you to a greater degree than I am, you most foolish Milton: for let that be your not unfitting, though mild, designation in the outset, while that of liar and others will fashion themselves out of the sequel. But, as the charges are such that there is no one of those to whom I am a little more closely known, however unfavourable to me, but could convict them of falsehood from beginning to end, I might afford, strong in the sole consciousness of my rectitude, to despise them, and perhaps this is what I ought to do. Still, with a mind as calm as a sense of the indignity of the occasion will permit, I have resolved to expostulate with you. Yet I confess myself to be somewhat moved; not by anger, but by another feeling. I am sorry, let me tell you, for your own case, and shall be sorry until you prove penitent, and this whether it is from sheer mental derangement that you have assailed with mad and impotent fury a man who had done you no harm, and who was, as you cannot deny, entirely unknown to you, or whether you have let out the empty house of your ears, as those good masters of yours say, to foul whisperings going about, and, with your ears, put your hand and pen too, for I know not what wages, but certainly little honourable, at the disposal of other people's malicious humour. Choose which you please. I pray God Almighty to be merciful to you, and I beg Him also in my own behalf that, as I proceed to the just defence of my reputation, He may suggest to me a true and modest oration, utterly free from all lying and obscenity,—that is, very unlike yours."

On the point of the authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor Morus is emphatic enough. He declares over and over again that he was not the author, and he declares that Milton knew this perfectly well,—might have known it for two years, but had beyond all doubt known it before he had published the Defensio Secunda. We shall bring together the passages that refer to this subject:—

I neither wrote it, nor ever pretended to have done so,—this I here solemnly declare, and make God my witness,—nor did I contribute anything to the writing of it.... The real author is alive and well, unknown to me by face, but very well known to several good men, on the strength of whose joint knowledge of the fact I challenge with righteous detestation the public lie which wriggles everywhere through your whole book.... Let the author answer for himself: I neither take up his quarrel, nor thrust my sickle into his corn.... But I wish the anonymous author would come forth some time or other openly in his own name.... What then would Milton think? He might have reason to fame and detest the light of life, being manifestly convicted of lying before the world. He might say, indeed, "I had not thought of it: I have been under a mistake" ... But what if I prove by clear evidence that you knew well enough already that the author of this book was another person, not I? ... [Morus then goes on to say that Milton might have learnt the fact in various ways, even from a comparison of the style of the book with that of Morus's acknowledged writings; but he lays stress chiefly on the information actually sent to Milton in 1652 by Ulac, and on the subsequent communications to him, through Durie and the Dutch Ambassador Nieuport, before the Defensio Secunda had left the press] ... Will you hear a word of truth? You had certainly learnt the fact, and cannot for two whole years have been ignorant of it. But, as you perceived it would not suit your convenience to vent your spleen against an anonymous opponent, that is a nobody, and some definite person must be pitched upon as an adversary to bear your rage expressly, no one else seemed to you more opportune than I as an object of calumny, whether because you heard that I had many enemies, though (what proves their savageness) without any cause, who would hold up both thumbs in applause of your jocosities, or because you knew that, by the arts of a Juno, I was involved in a lawsuit, more troublesome in reality than dangerous, and you did not believe that I should be, as I have been, the winner before all the tribunals.... Your book once written, Morus must of necessity stand for your opponent, or Milton, the Defender of the People, would have done nothing in two years! He would have lost all the laborious compilation of his days and nights, all his punnings upon my name, all his sarcasms on my sacred office and profession.... For, if you had taken out of your book all the reproaches thrown at me, how little would there have been, certainly not more than a few pages, remaining for your "People"! What fine things would have perished, what flowery, I had almost said Floralian, expressions! What would have become of your "gardens of Alcinous and Adonis," of your little story about "Hortensius"; what of the "sycamore," what of "Pyramus and Thisbe," what of the "Mulberry tree"? [All these are phrases in Milton's book, introduced whenever he refers circumstantially to the naughty particulars of the scandals against Morus, whether in Geneva or in Leyden. The name Morus, which means "mulberry tree" and "fool" in Latin and Greek, and may be taken also for "Moor" or "Ethiop," and in still other meanings, had yielded to the Dutch wits, as well as to Milton, no end of metaphors and punning etymologies in their squibs against the poor man] ... The real author of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor neither lives among the Dutch,—is not "stabled" among them, to use your own expression—nor has he, I believe, anything in common with them ... Vehemently and almost tragically you complain that I have upbraided you with your blindness. I can positively affirm that I did not know till I read it in your own book that you had lost your eyesight. For, if anything occurred to me that might seem to look that way, I referred to the mind [Note this sentence: the Latin is "Nam, si quid fortè se dabat quod eò spectare videretur, ad animum referebam"] ... Could I then upbraid you with blindness who did not know that you were blind,—with personal deformity who believed you even good-looking, chiefly in consequence of having seen the rather neat likeness of you prefixed to your Poems [Marshall's ludicrous botch of 1645 which Milton had disowned] ... Nor did I know any more that you had written on Divorce. I have never read that book of yours; I have never seen it ... I will have done with this subject. That book is not mine. I have published, and shall yet publish, other books, not one letter of which shall you, while I am alive and aware of it, attack with impunity. Some Sermons of mine are in men's hands; my books On Grace and Free Will are to be had; there are in print my Exercitations on the Holy Scripture, or on the Cause of God, which I know have passed into England, so that you have no excuse,—as well as my Apology for Calvin, dedicated to the illustrious Usher of Armagh, your countryman, my very great friend, whose highly honourable opinion of me, if the golden old man would permit, I would put against a thousand Miltons. With God's help others will appear, some of which, as but partly finished, I am keeping back, while others are ready for issue. [A list of some of these, including Orationes Argumenti Sacri, cum Poematiis: the list closed with a statement that he has mentioned only his Latin works, and not his French Sermons].

Every now and then there is a passage of retaliation on Milton. Here are two specimens:

MILTON'S OWN CHARACTER AND REPUTATION:—"Do not think, obscurely though you live, that, because you have had the first innings in this game in the art of slander, you therefore stand aloft beyond the reach of darts. You have not the ring of Gyges to make you invisible. Your virtues are taken note of. You are not such a person, my friend, that Fame should fear to tell lies even about you; and, unless Fame lies, there is not a meaner or more worthless man going, and nothing is clearer than that you estimate by your own morals the characters of other people. But I hope Fame lies in this. For who could hear without the greatest pain—what I for my part hardly, nay not to the extent of hardly, bring my mind to credit—that there is a man living among Christians who, being himself a concrete of every form of outrageous iniquity, could so censure others?"

MILTON'S PRODIGIOUS SELF-ESTEEM:—"All which has so elated you that you would be reckoned next after the very first man in England, and sometimes put yourself higher than the supreme Cromwell himself; whom you name familiarly, without giving him any title of rank, whom you lecture under the guise of praising him, to whom you dictate laws, assign boundaries to his rights, prescribe duties, suggest counsels, and even hold out threats if he shall not behave accordingly. You grant him arms and rule; you claim genius and the gown for yourself. 'He only is to be called great,' you say, 'who has either done great things'—Cromwell, to wit!—-'or teaches great things'—Milton on Divorce, to wit!—'or writes of them worthily'—the same twice-great Milton, I suppose, in his Defence of the English People!"

How does Morus proceed in the main business of clearing his own character from Milton's charges? His plan was to produce a dated and authenticated series of testimonials from others, extending over the period of his life which had been attacked, and to interweave these with explanations and an autobiographic memoir. He has reached the eightieth page of his book before he properly begins this enterprise. He gives first a testimonial from the Genevan Church, dated Jan. 25, 1648, and signed by seventeen ministers, of whom Diodati is one; then another from the Genevan Senate or Town Council, dated Jan. 26, 1648; then two more, one from the Church again, and one from the Senate again, both dated April 1648; then, among others, a special testimonial from Diodati, in the form of a long letter to Salmasius, dated "Geneva, 9th May, 1648." Diodati's testimonial, which is given both in French and in Latin, is the most interesting in itself, and will represent the others. "As to his morals," says Diodati, writing of Morus to Salmasius, "I can speak from intimate knowledge, and do so with, strict conscientiousness. His natural disposition is good and without deceit or reservation, frank and noble, such as ought to put him in very harmonious relations with all persons of honour and virtue, of whatsoever condition,—quick and very sensible to indignities, but easily coming to himself again: not one to provoke others, but yet one who has terrible spurs for his own defence. I have hardly seen any who have done themselves credit by attacking him. Conscia virtus, and you may add what belongs to the genus irritabile vatum, make him well armed against his assailants. For the rest, piety, honesty, temperance, freedom from all avarice or meanness, are found in him in a degree suitable to his profession."

Suddenly, just when we have read this, and seen Morus self-described as far as to the year 1648, when he was about to leave Geneva for Holland, the book comes to a dead stop. Diodati's letter ends on page 129; and when we turn over the leaf we find a Latin note from Ulac, headed "The Printer to the Reader" and expressed as follows:—

"Our labours towards finishing this Treatise had come to this point, when lo! M. Morus, who had been staying for some time here at the Hague with the intention of completing it, called away by I know not what occasion to France, and with a favourable wind hastening his journey, was prevented from bringing all to an end, and so gratifying with every possible speed the desire of many curious persons to read both Treatises at once, Milton's and More's. What to do I was for some days uncertain; but some gentlemen, not of small condition, at length persuaded me that I should not defer longer the publication of what of his I had already in print,—alleging that the remaining and still wanting testimonies of eminent men, and of the Senates and Churches of Middleburg, Amsterdam, &c., given for the vindication of M. Morus, and which were here to have been subjoined, might be afterwards printed separately when they reached me. Wishing to comply with their request, and my own inclination too, I now therefore do publish, Reader, what I am confident will please your curiosity, if not in full measure, at least a good deal. Let whosoever desires to see the sequel expect it as soon as possible."

Was there ever such an unfortunate as Morus? Everything everywhere seems to go wrong with him. Here, at the Hague, having absented himself from Amsterdam for the purpose, he has been writing his Defence of Himself against Milton, doing it cleverly and in a way likely to make some impression, when, suddenly, for some reason unknown even to his printer, he is obliged to break off for a journey into France, just as he was approaching the heart of his subject. Had he absconded? This seems actually to have been the construction, abroad. "Morus is gone into France," writes a Hague correspondent of Thurloe, Nov. 3, 1654; "it is believed that he has a calling, et quidem a Castris, and that he will not return to Amsterdam. They love well his renown and learning, but not his conversation; for they do not desire that he should come to visit the daughters of condition as he was used to do. He promised Ulac to finish his Apology; but he went away without taking his leave of him: so that you see that Ulac hath finished abrupt." Morus, as we shall find, did finish the book; but the Fides Publica, as it was first circulated in Holland towards the end of 1654, and as it first reached Milton, was the book abruptly broken off as above, at page 130, with the testimonials and the autobiography coming no farther down than the year 1648, when Morus had not yet left Geneva.

In January, 1654-5, when Milton had read Morus's Fides Publica in its imperfect state, and was considering in what form he should reply to it, his thoughts on the subject must have been interrupted by the new misfortune of his friend Overton. What that was has already been explained generally (ante pp. 32-33); but the details of the incident belong to Milton's biography.

Overton's former misunderstanding with the Protector having been made up, he had been sent back to Scotland, as we saw, in September, 1654, to be Major-General there under Monk, and pledged to be faithful in his trust until he should himself give the Protector notice of his desire to withdraw from it. For a month or two, accordingly, all had gone well, Monk in the main charge of Scotland, with his head-quarters at Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, and Overton in special charge of the North of Scotland, with his head-quarters at Aberdeen. Meanwhile, as Oliver's First Parliament had been incessantly opposing him, questioning his Protectorship, and labouring to subvert it, the anti-Oliverian temper had again been strongly roused throughout the country, and not least among the officers and soldiers of the army in Scotland. There had been meetings and consultations among them, and secret correspondence with scattered Republicans in England and with some of the Parliamentary Oppositionists, till at length, if Thurloe's informations were true, the design was nothing less than to depose Monk, put Overton in supreme command, and march into England under an anti-Oliverian banner. The Levellers, on the one side, and the Royalists, on the other, were to be drawn into the movement, if indeed there had not been actual communications already with agents of Charles II. It may be a question how far Overton himself was a party to the design; but it is certain that he had relapsed into his former anti-Oliverian humour, and was very uneasy in his post at Aberdeen. "I bless the Lord," he writes mysteriously from that town, Dec. 26, in answer to a letter of condolence from some friend—"I bless the Lord I do remember you and yours (by whom I am much remembered) so far as I am able in everything. I know right well you and others do it much for me; and, pray, dear Sir, do it still. Heave me up upon the wings of your prayers to Him who is a God hearing prayers and granting requests. Entreat Him to enable me to stand to his Truth; which I shall not do if He deject or forsake me." This letter, as well as several letters to Overton, had been intercepted by Monk's vigilance; and hardly had it been written when Overton was arrested by Monk's orders, and brought to Leith. At Leith his papers were searched, and there was found in his letter-case this copy of verses in his own hand:—

With this piece of doggrel, the intercepted letters, and the other informations, Overton was shipped off by Monk from Leith to London on the 4th of January, 1654-5; and on the 16th of that month he was committed to the Tower. Thence the next day he wrote a long letter to a private friend, in which he enumerates the charges against him, and replies to them one by one. He denies that he has broken trust with the Protector; he denies that he is a Leveller; and, what pleases us best of all, he denies the authorship of the doggrel lines just quoted. His exact words about these may be given. "But, say some, you made a copy of scandalous verses upon the Lord Protector, whereby his Highness and divers others were offended and displeased ... I must acknowledge I copied a paper of verses called The Character of a Protector; but I did neither compose them, nor (to the best of my remembrance) show them to any after I had writ them forth. They were taken out of my letter-case at Leith, where they had been a long time by me, neglected and forgotten. I had them from a friend, who wished my Lord [Cromwell] well, and who told me that his Lordship had seen them, and, I believe, laughed at them, as, to my knowledge, he hath done at papers and pamphlets of more personal and particular import and abuse." It is really a relief to know that Overton, who is still credited with these lines by Godwin, Guizot, and others, was not the author of them, and this not because of their peculiar political import, but because of their utter vulgarity. How else could we have retained our faith in Milton's character of Overton—"you, Overton, bound to me these many years past in a friendship of more than brotherly closeness and affection, both by the similarity of our tastes, and the sweetness of your manners"? Still to have copied and kept such lines implied some sympathy with their political meaning; and, Thurloe's investigations having made it credible otherwise that Overton was implicated, more than he would admit, in the design of a general rising against the Protector's Government, there was an end to the promising career of Milton's friend under the Protectorate. He remained from that time a close prisoner while Oliver lived. On the 3rd of July, 1656, I find, his wife, "Mrs. Anne Overton," had liberty from the Council "to abide with her husband in the Tower, if she shall so think fit."¹

At the date of Overton's imprisonment the Protector was making up his mind to dismiss his troublesome First Parliament after his four months and a half of experience of its temper; and six days after that date he did dismiss it, to its own surprise, before it had sent him up a single Bill. How many Latin letters had Overton's friend Milton written for the Protector in his official capacity during the four months and a half of that troublesome Parliament? So far as the records show, only three. They were as follows:—

(XLIX.) "To THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS LORD, LUIS MENDEZ DE HARO," Sept. 4, 1654:¹—The Spanish Prime Minister, Luis de Haro, had recently, in the Protector's apparent indecision between the Spanish alliance and the French alliance, resolved to try to secure him for Spain by sending over a new Ambassador, to supersede Cardenas, or to co-operate with him. He had announced the same in letters to Cromwell; who now thanks him, professes his desire to be in friendship with Spain, and promises every attention to the new Ambassador when he may arrive, Cromwell pays a compliment to the minister himself. "To have your affection and approbation," he says, "who by your worth and prudence have acquired such authority with the King of Spain that you preside, with a mind to match, over the greatest affairs of that kingdom, ought truly to be a pleasure to me corresponding with my apprehension of the honour I shall have from the good opinion of a man of excellence." Milton is dexterous in wording his documents.

(L.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF THE CITY OF BREMEN, Oct. 25, 1654:—There has come to be a conflict between the City of Bremen and the new King of Sweden, arising from military designs of that King on the southern shores of the North Sea and the Baltic, Bremen is in great straits; and the authorities have represented this to Cromwell through their agent, Milton's friend, Henry Oldenburg, and have requested Cromwell's good offices with the Swedish King. Cromwell answers that he has done what they want. He has great respect for Bremen as a thoroughly Protestant city, and he regrets that there should he a quarrel between it and the powerful Protestant Kingdom of Sweden, having no stronger desire than that "the whole Protestant denomination should at length coalesce in one by fraternal agreement and concord."

(LI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, Oct. 28, 1654:—As announced to the Bremeners in the last letter, Cromwell did write on their behalf to the Swedish King. He had hoped that the great Peace of Munster or Westphalia (1648) had left all continental Protestants united, and he regrets to hear that a dispute between Sweden and the Bremeners has arisen out of that Treaty. How dreadful that Protestant Swedes and Protestant Bremeners, once in league against the common foe, should now be slaughtering each other! Can nothing be done? Could not advantage be taken of the present truce? He will himself do anything in his power to bring about a permanent reconciliation.

These three letters, it will be observed, belong to the first two months of that cramped and exasperated condition in which Oliver found himself when he had his First Parliament by his side; and there is not a single preserved letter of Milton for Oliver between Oct. 26, 1654, the date of the last of the three, and Jan. 22, 1654-5, the date of the sudden dissolution of the Parliament. The reason of this idleness of Milton, in his Secretaryship during those three months, leaving all the work to Meadows, must have been, I believe, that he was then engaged on a Reply to More's Fides Publica in the imperfect state in which it had just come forth. All along, as we have seen, the Literary Defence of the Commonwealth on every occasion of importance had been regarded as the special charge of Milton in his Secretaryship, to which routine duty must give way; and, as his Defensio Secunda in reply to the Regii Sanguinis Clamor had been, like several of his preceding writings, a task performed by him on actual commission from the Rump Government, though not finished till the Protectorate had begun, Oliver and his Council may have thought it but fair that another pamphlet of the same series in reply to the Fides Publica of Morus should count also to the credit of Milton's official services, even though it must necessarily be more a pamphlet of mere personal concern than any of its predecessors. But, indeed, by this time, Mr. Milton was a privileged man, who might regulate matters very much for himself, and drop in on Thurloe and Meadows at the office only when he liked.

SECTION II: FROM JANUARY 1654-5 TO SEPTEMBER 1656, OR THROUGH THE PERIOD OF ARBITRARINESS.

LETTER TO MILTON FROM LEO DE AITZEMA: MILTON'S REPLY: LETTER TO EZEKIEL SPANHEIM AT GENEVA: MILTON'S GENEVESE RECOLLECTIONS AND ACQUAINTANCES: TWO MORE OF MILTON'S LATIN STATE-LETTERS (NOS. LII., LIII.): SMALL AMOUNT OF MILTON'S DESPATCH-WRITING FOR CROMWELL HITHERTO.—REDUCTION OF OFFICIAL SALARIES, AND PROPOSAL TO REDUCE MILTON'S TO £150 A YEAR: ACTUAL COMMUTATION OF HIS £288 A YEAR AT PLEASURE INTO £200 FOR LIFE: ORDERS OF THE PROTECTOR AND COUNCIL RELATING TO THE PIEDMONTESE MASSACRE, MAY 1655: SUDDEN DEMAND ON MILTON'S PEN IN THAT BUSINESS: HIS LETTER OF REMONSTRANCE FROM THE PROTECTOR TO THE DUKE OF SAVOY, WITH TEN OTHER LETTERS TO FOREIGN STATES AND PRINCES ON THE SAME SUBJECT (NOS. LIV.—LXIV.): HIS SONNET ON THE SUBJECT.—PUBLICATION OF THE SUPPLEMENTUM TO MORE'S FIDES PUBLICA: ACCOUNT OF THE SUPPLEMENTUM, WITH EXTRACTS: MILTON'S ANSWER TO THE FIDES PUBLICA AND THE SUPPLEMENTUM TOGETHER IN HIS PRO SE DEFENSIO, AUG. 1655: ACCOUNT OF THAT BOOK, WITH SPECIMENS: MILTON'S DISBELIEF IN MORUS'S DENIALS OF THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE REGII SANGUINIS CLAMOR: HIS REASONS, AND HIS REASSERTIONS OF THE CHARGE IN A MODIFIED FORM: HIS NOTICES OF DR. CRANTZIUS AND ULAC: HIS RENEWED ONSLAUGHTS ON MORUS: HIS REPETITION OF THE BONTIA ACCUSATION AND OTHERS: HIS EXAMINATION OF MORUS'S PRINTED TESTIMONIALS: FEROCITY OF THE BOOK TO THE LAST: ITS EFFECTS ON MORUS.—QUESTION OF THE REAL AUTHORSHIP OF THE REGII SANGUINIS CLAMOR AND OF THE AMOUNT OF MORUS'S CONCERN IN IT: THE DU MOULIN FAMILY: DR. PETER DU MOULIN THE YOUNGER THE REAL AUTHOR OF THE REGII SANGUINIS CLAMOR, BUT MORUS THE ACTIVE EDITOR AND THE WRITER OF THE DEDICATORY EPISTLE: DU MOULIN'S OWN ACCOUNT OF THE WHOLE AFFAIR: HIS CLOSE CONTACT WITH MILTON ALL THE WHILE, AND DREAD OF BEING FOUND OUT.—CALM IN MILTON'S LIFE AFTER THE CESSATION OF THE MORUS-SALMASIUS CONTROVERSY: HOME-LIFE IN PETTY FRANCE: DABBLINGS OF THE TWO NEPHEWS IN LITERATURE: JOHN PHILLIPS'S SATYR AGAINST HYPOCRITES: FREQUENT VISITORS AT PETTY FRANCE: MARVELL, NEEDHAM, CYRIACK SKINNER, &C.: THE VISCOUNTESS RANELAGH, MR. RICHARD JONES, AND THE BOYLE CONNEXION: DR. PETER DU MOULIN IN THAT CONNEXION: MILTON'S PRIVATE SONNET ON HIS BLINDNESS. HIS TWO SONNETS TO CYRIACK SKINNER, AND HIS SONNET TO YOUNG LAWRENCE: EXPLANATION OF THESE FOUR SONNETS.—SCRIPTUM DOMINI PROTECTORIS CONTRA HISPANOS: THIRTEEN MORE LATIN STATE-LETTERS OF MILTON FOR THE PROTECTOR (NOS. LXV.—LXXVII.), WITH SPECIAL ACCOUNT OF COUNT BUNDT AND THE SWEDISH EMBASSY IN LONDON: COUNT BUNDT AND MR. MILTON.—INCREASE OF LIGHT LITERATURE IN LONDON: EROTIC PUBLICATIONS: JOHN PHILLIPS IN TROUBLE FOR SUCH: EDWARD PHILLIPS'S LONDON EDITION OF THE POEMS OF DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN: MILTON'S COGNISANCE OF THE SAME.—HENRY OLDENBURG AND MR. RICHARD JONES AT OXFORD: LETTERS OF MILTON TO JONES AND OLDENBURG.—THIRTEEN MORE STATE-LETTERS OF THE MILTON SERIES (NOS. LXXVIII.—XC.): IMPORTANCE OF SOME OF THEM.

Oliver had just entered on his period of Arbitrariness, or Government without a Parliament, when Milton received the following letter in Latin from Leo de Aitzema, or Lieuwe van Aitzema, formerly known to him as agent for Hamburg and the Hanse Towns in London, but now residing at the Hague in the same capacity (IV. 378-379). Aitzema, we may now mention, was a Frieslander by birth, eight years older than Milton, and is remembered still, it is said, for a voluminous and valuable History of the United Provinces, consisting of a great collection of documents, with commentaries by himself in Dutch.¹ This had not yet been published.

"To the honourable and highly esteemed Mr. John Milton, Secretary to the Council of State, London.

"Partly because Morus, in his book, has made some aspersions on you for your English Book on Divorce, partly because many have been inquiring eagerly about the arguments with which you support your opinion, I have, most honoured and esteemed Sir, given your little work entire to a friend of mine to be translated into Dutch, with a desire to have it printed soon. Not knowing, however, whether you would like anything corrected therein or added, I take the liberty to give you this notice, and to request you to let me know your mind on the subject. Best wishes and greetings from

"Your very obedient

"LEO AITZEMA¹

"Hague: Jan. 29, 1654-5."

Milton's answer, rather unusually for him, was immediate.

TO LEO VAN AITZEMA.

It is very gratifying to me that you retain the same amount of recollection of me as you very politely showed of good will by once and again visiting me while you resided among us. As regards the Book on Divorce which you tell me you have given to some one to be turned into Dutch, I would rather you had given it to be turned into Latin. For my experience in those books of mine has now been that the vulgar still receive according to their wont opinions not already common. I wrote a good while ago, I may mention, three treatises on the subject:—the first, in two books, in which The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (for that is the title of the book) is contained at large; a second, which is called Tetrachordon, and in which the four chief passages of Scripture concerning that doctrine are explicated; the third called Colasterion, in which answer is made to a certain sciolist. [The Bucer Tract omitted in the enumeration.] Which of these Treatises you have given to be translated, or what edition, I do not know: the first of them was twice issued, and was much enlarged in the second edition. Should you not have been made aware of this already, or should I understand that you desire anything else on my part, such as sending you the more correct edition or the rest of the Treatises, I shall attend to the matter carefully and with pleasure. For there is not anything at present that I should wish changed in them or added. Therefore, should you keep to your intention, I earnestly hope for myself a faithful translator, and for you all prosperity.

Westminster: Feb. 5, 1654-5.¹

The next letter, written in the following month, also connects itself, but still more closely, with the Morus controversy. It is addressed to Ezekiel Spanheim, the eldest son of that Frederick Spanheim, by birth a German, of whom we have heard as Professor of Theology successively at Geneva (1631-1642) and at Leyden (1642-1649). This elder Spanheim, it will be remembered, had been implicated in the opposition to Morus in both places—the story being that he had contracted a bad opinion of Morus during his colleagueship with him in Geneva, and that, when Salmasius, partly to spite Spanheim, of whose popularity at Leyden he was jealous, had negotiated for bringing Morus to Holland, Spanheim "moved heaven and earth to prevent his coming." It is added that Spanheim's death (May 1649) was caused by the news that Morus was on his way, and that he had said on his death-bed that "Salmasius had killed him and Morus had been the dagger."¹ On the other hand, we have had recently the assurance of Dr. Crantzius that Spanheim had once told him that the only fault in Morus was that he was altier, or self-confident. That the stronger story is the truer one substantially, if not to its last detail, appears from the fact that an antipathy to Morus was hereditary in the Spanheim family, or at least in the eldest son, Ezekiel. As a scholar, an antiquarian, and a diplomatist, this Ezekiel Spanheim was to attain to even greater celebrity than his father, and his varied career in different parts of Europe was not to close till 1710. At present he was only in his twenty-fifth year, and was living at Geneva, where he had been born, and whither he had returned from Leyden in 1651, to accept a kind of honorary Professorship that had been offered him, in compliment partly to his father's memory, partly to his own extraordinary promise. As one who had lived the first thirteen years of his age in Geneva, and the next nine in Leyden (1642-1651), and who was now back in Geneva, he had been amply and closely on the track of Morus; and how little he liked him will now appear:—

TO EZEKIEL SPANHEIM OF GENEVA.

I know not by what accident it has happened that your letter has reached me little less than three months after date. There is clearly extreme need of a speedier conveyance of mine to you; for, though from day to day I was resolving to write it, I now perceive that, hindered by some constant occupations, I have put it off nearly another three months. I would not have you understand from this my tardiness in replying that my grateful sense of your kindness to me has cooled, but rather that the remembrance has sunk deeper from my longer and more frequent daily thinking of my duty to you in return. Late performance of duty has at least this excuse for itself, that there is a clearer confession of obligation to do a thing when it is done so long after than if it had been done immediately.

You are not wrong, in the first place, in the opinion of me expressed in the beginning of your letter—to wit, that I am not likely to be surprised at being addressed by a foreigner; nor could you, indeed, have a more correct impression of me than precisely by thinking that I regard no good man in the character of a foreigner or a stranger. That you are such I am readily persuaded by your being the son of a most learned and most saintly father, also by your being well esteemed by good men, and also finally by the fact that you hate the bad. With which kind of cattle as I too happen to have a warfare, Calandrini has but acted with his usual courtesy, and in accordance with my own sentiment, in signifying to you that it would be very gratifying to me if you lent me your help against a common adversary. This you have most obligingly done in this very letter, part of which, with the author's name not mentioned, I have not hesitated, trusting in your regard for me, to insert by way of evidence in my forthcoming Defensio [in reply to More's Fides Publica]. This book, as soon as it is published, I will direct to be sent to you, if there is any one to whose care I may rightly entrust it. Any letters you may intend for me, meanwhile, you will not, I think, be unsafe if you send under cover to Turretin of Geneva, now staying in London, whose brother in Geneva you know; through whom as this of mine will reach you most conveniently, so will yours reach me. For the rest I would assure you that you have won a high place in my esteem, and that I particularly wish to be loved by you yet more.

Westminster: March 24, 1654-5.¹

In writing this letter Milton must have had brought back to his recollection his visit to Geneva fifteen years before (June 1639) on his way home from Italy. The venerable Diodati, the uncle of his friend Charles, was the person in Geneva of whom he had seen most, and who dwelt most in his memory; but the elder Spanheim had then been in the same city, and Morus too, and the present Ezekiel Spanheim, as a boy in his tenth year, and others, still alive, who had then known Morus, and had since that time had him in view. Milton had certainly not then himself seen Morus, though he must have heard of him; but it is possible he may have seen the elder Spanheim, and may now, in writing to Spanheim's son, have remembered the fact. In any case there were links of acquaintanceship still connecting Milton with Geneva and its gossip. The "Calandrini," for example, who is mentioned in Milton's letter, and who may be identified with a Genevese merchant named "Jean Louis Calandrin," heard of in Thurloe's correspondence, must in some way have been known to Milton personally, and interested in serving him.¹ It had been in in consequence of a suggestion of this Calandrini, "acting-with his usual courtesy," that young Spanheim had, in October 1654, when Morus's fragmentary Fides Publica was just out or nearly so, addressed a polite letter to Milton, sending him some additional information about the Genevese portion of Morus's career. The letter had not readied Milton till the end of December or the beginning of January 1654-5; and for nearly three months after that he had left it unacknowledged. That he had been moved to acknowledge it at last was, doubtless, as his letter itself suggests, and as we shall see yet more precisely, because he had then nearly ready his Reply to the Fides Publica, and had used Spanheim's information there, only suppressing the name of his informant. But that Milton had already had no lack of private informants about Morus's career, whether in Geneva or in Holland, has appeared abundantly. The Hartlib-Durie-Haak-Oldenburg connexion about him in London was a perfect sponge for all kinds of gossip from, abroad. We hear now, however, of another person in particular who may have supplied Milton with his earlier information as to the Genevese part of Morus's life, A family long of note in Geneva had been that of the Turretins, originally from Italy, and indeed from Lucca, whence they had been driven, as the Diodatis had been, by their Protestantism, One of this family, Benedict Turretin, born in Geneva, had been a distinguished Theology Professor there, and at his death in 1631 had left at least two sons. One of these, Francis Turretin, born at Geneva in 1623, had, after the usual wanderings of Continental scholars in those days, just returned to Geneva (1653), and settled there in what may be called the family-business, i.e. the profession of Theology. In this he was to attain extraordinary celebrity, his Institutio Theologiæ Elencticæ ranking to this day among Calvinistic Theologians as a master-work of its kind. Well, this Francis Turretin, rising into fame at Geneva, just as Ezekiel Spanheim was, and seeing Spanheim daily, had, it seems from Milton's letter, a brother in London, on intimate terms with Milton; and Milton's proposition to young Spanheim was that they should correspond in future through the two Turretins. Who would have thought to find the future author of the Institutio Theologiæ Elencticæ used by Milton for postal purposes? Is it not clear too that the London Turretin must have been one of Milton's informants about Morus's reasons for leaving Geneva? Respectability everywhere, at our present date at least, seems adverse to Morus.²

Busy over his reply to the Fides Publica, Milton had stretched his dispensation from routine duty in his Secretaryship not only through November and December 1654 and January 1654-5, as was noted in last section, but as far as to April 1655 in the present section. Through these five months there is, so far as the records show, a total blank, at all events, in his official letter-writing. In April 1655, however, as if his reply to the Fides Publica were then off his mind, and lying in the house in Petty France complete or nearly complete in manuscript, we do come upon two more of his Latin State-letters, as follows:—

(LII.) TO THE PRINCE OF TARENTE, April 4, 1655¹:—This Prince, one of the chiefs of the French nobility, but connected with Germany by marriage, was a Protestant by education, had been mixed up with the wars of the Fronde, and was altogether a very stirring man abroad. He had written to Cromwell invoking his interest in behalf of foreign, and especially of French, Protestantism. Cromwell expresses his satisfaction in having had such an address from so eminent a representative of the Reformed faith in a kingdom in which so many have lapsed from it, and declares that nothing would please him more than "to be able to promote the enlargement, the safety, or, what is most important, the peace, of the Reformed Church." Meanwhile he exhorts the Prince to be himself firm and faithful to his creed to the very last.—The Prince of Tarente, it may be mentioned, had interested himself much in the lawsuit between Morus and Salmasius. He had tried to act as mediator and induce Morus to withdraw his action—a condescension which Morus acknowledges, though he felt himself obliged, he says, to go on.

(LIII.) To ARCHDUKE LEOPOLD of AUSTRIA, GOVERNOR OF THE SPANISH NETHERLANDS (undated):—Sir Charles Harbord, an Englishman, has had certain goods and household stuff violently seized at Bruges by Sir Richard Grenville. The goods had originally been sent from England to Holland in 1643 by the then Earl of Suffolk, in pledge for a debt owing to Harbord; and Grenville's pretext was that he also was a creditor of the Earl, and had obtained a decree of the English Chancery in his favour. Now, by the English law, neither was the present Earl of Suffolk bound by that decree nor could the goods be distrained under it. The decision of the Court to that effect is herewith transmitted; and His Serenity is requested to cause Grenville to restore the goods, inasmuch as it is against the comity of nations that any one should be allowed an action in foreign jurisdiction which he would not be allowed in the country where the cause of the action first arose. "The justice of the case itself and the universal reputation of your Serenity for fair dealing have moved us to commend the matter to your attention; and, if at any time there shall be occasion to discuss the rights or convenience of your subjects with as, I promise that you shall find our diligence in the same not remiss, but at all times most ready."¹

In April 1655, when these two letters were written, Oliver was in the sixteenth month of his Protectorship. His first nine months of personal sovereignty without a Parliament, and his next four months and a half of unsatisfactory experience with his First Parliaments were left behind, and he had advanced two months and more into his period of compulsory Arbitrariness, when he had to govern, with the help of his Council only, by any means he could. Count all the Latin State-Letters registered by Milton himself as having been written by him for Cromwell during those first fifteen months and more of the Protectorate, and they number only nine (Nos. XLV.-XLVIII in Vol. IV. pp. 635-636, and Nos. XLIX.-LIII. in the present volume). These nine Letters, with the completion and publication of his Defensio Secunda, and now the preparation of a Reply to More's Fides Publica, and also perhaps occasional calls at Thurloe's office and occasional presences at interviews with ambassadors and envoys in Whitehall, were all he had been doing for fifteen months for his salary of £288 a year. The fact cannot have escaped notice. He had himself called attention to it, as if by anticipation, in that passage of his Defensio Secunda in which he spoke of the kind indulgence of the State-authorities in retaining him honourably in full office, and not abridging his emoluments on account of his disability by blindness. The passage may have touched Cromwell and some of the Councillors, and there was doubtless a general feeling among them of the worth, beyond estimate in money, of Milton's name to the Commonwealth, and of his past acts of literary championship for her. Economy, however, is a virtue easily recommended to statesmen by any pinch of necessity, and it so chanced that at the very time we have now reached, April 1655, the Protector and his Council, being in money straits, were in a very economical mood (see ante p. 35). Here, accordingly, is what we find in the Council Order Books under date April 17, 1655.

Tuesday, April 17, 1655:—Present the Lord President Lawrence, Lord Lambert (styled so in the minute), Colonel Montague, Colonel Sydenham, Sir Charles Wolseley, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Major-General Skippon.

"The Council resumed the debate upon the Report made from the Committee of the Council to whom it was referred to consider of the Establishment of the Council's Contingencies.

"Ordered:—

"That the salary of £400 per annum granted to MR. GUALTER FROST as Treasurer for the Council's Contingencies be reduced to £300 per annum, and be continued to be paid after that proportion till further order.

"That the former yearly salary of MR. JOHN MILTON, of £288, &c., formerly charged on the Council's Contingencies, be reduced to £150 per annum, and paid to him during his life out of his Highness's Exchequer.

"That the yearly salaries hereafter mentioned, being formerly paid out of the Council's Contingencies,—that is to say £45 12s. 6d. per annum to Mr. Henry Giffard, Mr. Gualter Frost's assistant,—per annum to Mr. John Hall,—per annum to Mr. Marchamont Needham,—per annum to Mr. George Vaux, the house-keeper at Whitehall,—per annum for the rent of Sir Abraham Williams's house [for the entertainment of Ambassadors], and—per annum to M. René Angler,—be for the future retrenched and taken away.

"That some convenient rooms at Somerset House be set apart for the entertainment of Foreign Ambassadors upon their address to his Highness.

"That it be referred to Mr. Secretary Thurloe to put that part of the Intelligence [from abroad] which is managed by M. René Augier into the common charge of Intelligence, and to order it for the future by M, Augier or otherwise, as he shall see most for the Commonwealth's service.

"That it be offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council that several warrants be issued under the great seal for authorizing and requiring the Commissioners of his Highness's Treasury to pay, by quarterly payments, at the receipt of his Highness's Exchequer, to the several officers, clerks, and other persons after-named, according to the proportions allowed them for their salary in respect of their several respective offices and employments during their continuance or till his Highness or the Council shall give other order: that is to say:—

"To John Thurloe, Esq., Secretary of State:—For his own office, after the proportion of £800 per annum; for the office of Mr. Philip Meadows, Secretary for the Latin Tongue, after the rate of £200 per annum; for the salaries of—clerks attending his [Thurloe's] office at 6s. 8d. per diem, a piece (which together amount to——); for the salaries of eleven messengers at 5s. per diem, apiece (which together amount to £1003 15s.): amounting in the whole to ——

"To Mr. Henry Scobell and Mr. William Jessop, Clerks to the Council, or to either of them:—For their own offices, viz. Mr. Scobell £500 per annum, Mr. Jessop £500 per annum; for the salaries of—clerks attending their office at 6s. 8d. per diem (which together amount to ——): amounting in the whole to ——

"To Mr, Edward Dendy, Serjeant at Arms attending the Council:—For his own office after the proportion of £365 per annum; for the salaries of his ten deputies at 3s. 4d. per diem a piece (which together amount to £608 6s. 8d.); amounting in the whole to £973 6 8

"To Richard Scutt, Usher of the Council Chamber:—For himself and his assistants at 13s. per diem, (being £237 5s, per annum); for Thomas Bennett's salary, keeper of the back-door of the Council Chamber, at 4s. per diem (being £73 per annum); for the salary of Robert Stebbin, fire-maker to the clerks, at 2s. per diem (being £36 10s. per annum): amounting in the whole to £346 15 0

"The first payment of the said several and respective sums before-mentioned to commence from the 1st of April instant.

"To Richard Nutt, master of his Highness's barge:—For his own office after £80 per annum; for Thomas Washborne, his assistant, for his salary, after £20 per annum; for the salaries of 25 watermen to attend his Highness's barge, at £4 per annum to each (amounting together to £100 per annum): amounting in the whole to £200 per ann.

"The same to commence from 25th March, 1655."

Clearly the Council were in a mood of economy. Not only were certain salaries to be reduced, but a good many outlays were to be stopped altogether, including Needham's subsidy or pension for his journalistic services. But more appears from the document. In spite of the general tendency to retrenchment, the salaries of Scobell and Jessop, the two clerks of the Council, are to be raised from £365 a year to £500 a year. This alone would suggest that not retrenchment only, but an improvement also in the system of the Council's business, was intended. The document as a whole confirms that idea. It maps out the service of the Council more definitely than hitherto into departments. Thurloe, of course, is general head, styled now "Secretary of State"; but it will be observed that the department of Foreign Affairs, including the management of Intelligence from abroad, is spoken of as now wholly and especially his, and that Meadows, with the designation of "Secretary for the Latin Tongue," ranks distinctly under him in that department. Scobell and Jessop, as "Clerks to the Council," though under Thurloe too, are now important enough to be jointly at the head of a separate staff; the Bailiff or Constable department is separate from theirs, and under the charge of Mr. Sergeant-at-Arms Dendy; and minor divisions of service, nameable as Ushership and Barge-attendance, are under the charge of Messrs. Scutt and Nutt respectively. The payments of salaries are henceforward not to be vaguely through Mr. Gualter Frost, as Treasurer for the Council's Contingencies, but by warrants to the Treasury to pay regularly to the several heads the definite sums-total in their departments, their own salaries included.

Milton's case was evidently treated as a peculiar one. It was certainly proposed that his allowance should be reduced from £288 18s. 6d. a year, which had hitherto been its rate, to £150 a year—i.e. by nearly one half. Most of us perhaps are disappointed by this, and would have preferred to hear that Milton's allowance had been doubled or tripled under the Protectorate,—made equal, say, to Thurloe's. Records must stand as they are, however, and must be construed coolly. Milton's £288 a year for his lighter and more occasional duties had doubtless been all along in fair proportion to the elder Frost's £600 a year, or Thurloe's £800, for their more vast and miscellaneous drudgery. Nor, if Milton had ceased to be able to perform the duties, and another salaried officer had been required in consequence, was there anything extraordinary, in a time of general revision of salaries, that the fact should come into consideration. The question was precisely as if now a high official under government, who had been in receipt of a salary of over £1000 a year, was struggling on in blindness after six years of service, and an extra officer at £700 a year had been for some time employed for his relief. In such a case, the official being a man of great public celebrity and having rendered extraordinary services in his post, would not superannuation on a pension or retiring-allowance be considered the proper course? But this was exactly the course proposed in Milton's case. The reduction from £288 to £150 a year was, it ought to be noted, only part of the proposition; for, whereas the £288 a year had been at the Council's pleasure, it was now proposed that the £150 a year should be for life. In short, what was proposed was the conversion of a terminable salary of £288 a year, payable out of the Council's contingencies, into a life-pension of £150 a year, payable out of the Protector's Exchequer: which was as if in a corresponding modern case a terminable salary of over £1000 a year were converted into a life-pension of between £500 and £600. On studying the document, I have no doubt that the intention was to relieve Milton from that moment from all duty whatsoever, putting an end to that anomalous Latin Secretaryship Extraordinary, into which his connexion with the Council had shaped itself since his blindness, and remitting him, as Ex-Secretary Milton, a perfectly free and highly-honoured man, to pensioned leisure in his house in Petty France. For it is impossible that the Council could have intended to retain. Milton in any way in the working Secretaryship at a reduced salary of £150 a year while Meadows, his former assistant, had the title of "Secretary for the Latin Tongue," with a higher salary of £200 a year. Perhaps one may detect Thurloe's notions of official symmetry in the proposed change. Milton's Latin Secretaryship Extraordinary or Foreign Secretaryship Extraordinary may have begun to seem to Thurloe an excrescence upon his own general Secretaryship of State, and he may have desired that Milton should retire altogether, and leave the Latin Secretaryship complete to Meadows as his own special subordinate in the foreign department.

The document, however, we have to add farther, though it purports to be an Order of Council, did not actually or fully take effect. I find, for example, that Needham's pension or subsidy of £100 a year, which is one of the outlays the document proposed to "retrench and take away," did not suffer a whit. He went on drawing his salary, sometimes quarterly and sometimes half-yearly, just as before, and precisely in the same form, viz. by warrant from President Lawrence and six others of the Council to Mr. Frost to pay Mr. Needham so much out of the Council's Contingencies. Thus on May 24, 1655, or five weeks after the date of the present Order, there was a warrant to Frost to pay Needham £50, "being for half a year's salary due unto him from the 15th of Nov. last to the 15th of this instant May"; and the subsequent series of warrants in Needham's favour is complete to the end of the Protectorate.¹ Again, Mr. George Vaux, whom our present order seems to discharge from his house-keepership of Whitehall, is found alive in that post and in receipt of his salary of £150 a year for it to as late as Oct. 1659.² There must, therefore, have been a reconsideration of the Order by the Council, or between the Council and the Protector, with modifications of the several proposals. The proposal to raise the salaries of Scobell and Jessop from £365 a year to £500 a year each must, indeed, have been made good,—for Scobell and Jessop's successor in the colleagueship to Scobell are found afterwards in receipt of £500 a year.³ But, on the same evidence, we have to conclude that the reductions proposed in the cases of Mr. Gualter Frost and Milton were not confirmed, or were confirmed only partially. Frost is found afterwards distinctly in receipt of £365 a year,⁴ The actual reduction, in his case, therefore, was not from £400 to £300, as had been proposed, but only from £400 to £365, or back to what his salary had been formerly (Vol. IV. 575-578). Milton again is found at the end of the Protectorate in receipt of £200 a year, and not of £150 only, as had been proposed In the Order.⁵ The inference must be, therefore, that there had been a reconsideration and modification of the Order in his case also, ratifying the proposal of a reduction, but diminishing considerably the proposed amount of the reduction. One would like to know to what influence the modification was owing, and how far Cromwell himself may have interfered in the matter. On the whole, while one infers that the reconsideration of the Order generally may have been owing to direct remonstrances from those whom it affected injuriously, such as Frost, Vaux, and Needham, there is little difficulty in seeing what must have happened in Milton's particular. My belief is that he signified, or caused it to be signified, that he had no desire to retire on a life-pension, that it would be much more agreeable to him to continue in active employment for the State, that for certain kinds of such employment he found his blindness less and less a disqualification, that the arrangement as to salary might be as the Council pleased, but that his own suggestion would be that his salary should be reduced to £200, so that he and Mr. Meadows should henceforth be on an equality in that respect. Such, at all events, was the arrangement adopted; and we may now dismiss this whole incident in Milton's biography by saying that, though in April 1655 there was a proposal to superannuate him entirely on a life-pension of £150 a year, the proposal did not take effect, but he went on from that date, just as before, in the Latin Secretaryship Extraordinary, though at the reduced salary of £200 a year instead of his original £288.

As if to prove that the arrangement was a perfectly suitable one, and that Milton's retirement into ex-Secretaryship would have been a loss, there came from him, immediately after the arrangement had been made, that burst of Latin State-letters which is now the most famous of his official performances for Cromwell. It was in the second week of May, 1655, that the news of the Massacre of the Piedmontese Protestants reached England; and from the 17th of that month, onwards for weeks and weeks, the attention of the Protector and the Council was all but engrossed, as we have seen (ante pp. 38-44), by that dreadful topic. Here are a few of the first Minutes of Council relating to it:—

Thursday, May 17, 1655:—Present: HIS HIGHNESS THE LORD PROTECTOR, Lord President Lawrence, the Earl of Mulgrave, Colonel Fiennes, Lord Lambert, Mr. Rous, Major-General Skippon, Lord Viscount Lisle, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Colonel Montague, Colonel Jones, General Desborough, Colonel Sydenham, Sir Charles Wolseley, Mr. Strickland. Ordered, "That it be referred to the Earl of Mulgrave, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Mr. Rous, and Colonel Jones, or any—of them to consider of the Petition [a Petition from London ministers and others], and also of the papers of intelligence already come touching the Protestants under the Duke of Savoy, and such other intelligence as shall come to Mr. Secretary Thurloe, and to offer to the Council what they shall think fit, as well touching writing of letters, collections, or otherwise, in order to their relief ... That it be referred to Colonel Fiennes, Mr. Strickland, Sir Gilbert Pickering, and Mr. Secretary Thurloe, to prepare the draft of a letter to the French King upon this day's debate touching the Protestants suffering in the Dukedom of Savoy, and to bring in the same to-morrow morning."

Friday, May 18:—At a second, or afternoon sitting (present: Lord President Lawrence, Lord Lambert, General Desborough, the Earl of Mulgrave, Colonel Fiennes, Colonel Jones, Colonel Sydenham, Colonel Montague), "Colonel Fiennes reports from the Committee of the Council to whom the same was referred the draft of a Letter to be sent from his Highness to the King of France concerning the Protestants in the Dukedom of Savoy; which, after some amendments, was approved and ordered to be offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council."

Tuesday, May 22:—Present: Lord President Lawrence, Colonel Sydenham, Mr. Rous, Colonel Montague, Colonel Jones, General Desborough, Mr. Strickland, Colonel Fiennes, Lord Viscount Lisle, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Lord Lambert. "The Latin draft of a Letter to the Duke of Savoy in behalf of the Protestants in his Territory was this day read. Ordered, That it be offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council that his Highness will please to sign the said Letter and cause it to be sent to the said Duke."

Wednesday, May 23:—"Colonel Fiennes reports from the Committee of the Council the draft of two letters in reference to the sufferings of the Protestants in the territories of the Duke of Savoy, the one to the States-General of the United Provinces, the other to the Cantons of the Swisses professing the Protestant Religion; which were read, and, after several amendments, agreed. Ordered, That it be offered to his Highness the Lord Protector as the advice of the Council that he will please to send the said letters in his Highness's name to the said States-General and the Cantons respectively."

Though Milton's name is not mentioned in these minutes, it was he, and no other, that penned, or at least turned into Latin, for the Committee, and so for the Council and the Protector, the particular letters minuted, and indeed all the other documents required by the occasion. The following is a list of them:—

(LIV.) TO THE DUKE OF SAVOY, May 25, 1655:¹—This Letter may be translated entire. It is superscribed "OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, &c., to the Most Serene Prince, EMANUEL, Duke of Savoy, Prince of Piedmont, Greeting "; and it is worded as follows:—"Most Serene Prince,—Letters have reached us from Geneva, and also from the Dauphinate and many other places bordering upon your dominion, by which we are informed that the subjects of your Royal Highness professing the Reformed Religion were recently commanded by your edict and authority, within three days after the promulgation of the said edict, to depart from their habitations and properties under pain of death and forfeiture of all their estates, unless they should give security that, abandoning their own religion, they would within twenty days embrace the Roman Catholic one, and that, though they applied as suppliants to your Royal Highness, begging that the edict might be revoked, and that they might be taken into their ancient favour and restored to the liberty granted them by your Most Serene ancestors, yet part of your army attacked them, butchered many most cruelly, threw others into chains, and drove the rest into the deserts and snow-covered mountains, where some hundreds of families are reduced to such extremities that it is to be feared that all will soon perish miserably by cold and hunger. When such news was brought us, we could not possibly, in hearing of so great a calamity to that sorely afflicted people, but be moved with extreme grief and compassion. But, confessing ourselves bound up with them not by common humanity only, but also by community of Religion, and so by an altogether brotherly relationship, we have thought that we should not be discharging sufficiently either our duty to God, or the obligations of brotherly love and the profession of the same religion, if we were merely affected with feelings of grief over this disaster and misery of our brethren, and did not exert ourselves to the very utmost of our strength and ability for their rescue from so many unexpected misfortunes. Wherefore the more we most earnestly beseech and adjure your Royal Highness that you will bethink yourself again of the maxims of your Most Serene ancestors and of the liberty granted and confirmed by them time after time to their Vaudois subjects. In granting and confirming which, as they performed what in itself was doubtless most agreeable to God, who has pleased to reserve the inviolable jurisdiction and power over Conscience for Himself alone, so there is no doubt either that they had a due regard for their subjects, whom they found hardy and faithful in war and obedient always in peace. And, as your Royal Serenity most laudably treads in the footsteps of your forefathers in all their other kindly and glorious actions, so it is our prayer to you again and again not to depart from them in this matter either, but to repeal this edict, and any other measure that may have been passed for the molestation of your subjects of the Reformed Religion, restoring them to their habitations and goods, ratifying the rights and liberty anciently granted them, and ordering their losses to be repaired and an end to be put to their troubles. If your Royal Highness shall do this, you will have done a deed most acceptable to God, you will have raised up and comforted those miserable and distressed sufferers, and you will have highly obliged all your neighbours that profess the Reformed Religion,—ourselves most of all, who shall then regard your kindness and clemency to those poor people as the fruit of our solicitation. Which will moreover tie us to the performance of all good offices in return, and lay the firmest foundations not only for the establishment but even for the increase of the relationship and friendship between this Commonwealth and your Dominion. Nor do we less promise this to ourselves from your justice and moderation. We beg Almighty God to bend your mind and thoughts in this direction, and we heartily pray for you and for your people peace and truth and prosperity in all your affairs."²—The bearer of this letter to the Duke, as we know, was Mr. Samuel Morland, who had been selected as the Protector's special Commissioner for the purpose. He left London on the 26th of May. He took with him, also, a copy of the Latin speech which he was to deliver to the Duke in presenting the letter. As there is much probability that this Latin speech is also in part of Milton's composition, and as it is in even a bolder and more indignant strain than the letter, it may be well to translate it too:—"Your Serene and Royal Highnesses [the Duke and his mother both addressed?],—The Most Serene Lord, Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, has sent me to your Royal Highnesses; whom he salutes very heartily, and to whom, with a very high affection and peculiar regard for your Serenities, he wishes a long life and reign, and a prosperous issue of all your affairs, amid the applauses and respect of your people. And this is due to you, whether in consideration of the excellent character and royal descent of your Highnesses, and the great expectation of the world from so many eminent good qualities, or in recollection, after reference to records, of the ancient friendship of our Kings with the Royal house of Savoy. Though I am, I confess, but a young man, and not very ripe in experience of affairs, yet it has pleased my Most Serene and Gracious Master to send me, as one much devoted to your Royal Highnesses and ardently attached to all bearing the Italian name, on what is really a great mission.—The ancient legend is that the son of Croesus was completely dumb from his birth. When, however, he saw a soldier aiming a wound at his father, straightway he had the use of his tongue. No other is my predicament, feeling as I do my tongue loosened by those very recent and bloody wounds of Mother Church. A great mission surely that is to be called wherein all the safety and hope of many poor people is comprehended—their sole hope lying in the chance that they shall be able, by all their loyalty, obedience, and most humble prayers, to mollify and appease the minds of your Royal Highnesses, now irritated against them. In behalf of these poor people, whose cause pity itself may seem to make its own, the Most Serene Protector of England also comes as an intercessor, and most earnestly requests and beseeches your Royal Highnesses to deign to extend your mercy to these your very poor and most outcast subjects—those, I mean, who, inhabiting the roots of the Alps and certain valleys in your dominion, have professed nominally the Religion of the Protestants. For he has heard (what no one can say has been done by the will of your Royal Highnesses) that those wretched creatures have been partly killed by your forces, partly expelled by violence and driven from their home and country, so that they are now wandering, with their wives and children, houseless, roofless, poor, and destitute of all resource, through rugged and inhospitable spots and over snow-covered mountains. And, through the days of this transaction, if only the things are true that fame at present reports everywhere (would that Fame were proved a liar!), what was not dared and attempted against them? Houses smoking everywhere, torn limbs, the ground bloody! Ay, and virgins, ravished and hideously abused, breathed their last miserably; and old men and persons labouring under illness were committed to the flames; and some infants were dashed against the rocks, and the brains of others were cooked and eaten. Atrocity horrible and before unheard of, savagery such that, good God, were all the Neros of all times and ages to come to life again, what a shame they would feel at having contrived nothing equally inhuman! Verily, verily, Angels are horrorstruck, men are amazed; heaven itself seems to be astounded by these cries, and the earth itself to blush with the shed blood of so many innocent men. Do not, great God, do not seek the revenge due to this iniquity. May thy blood, Christ, wash away this stain!—But it is not for me to relate these things in order as they happened, or to dwell longer upon them; and what my Most Serene Master requests from your Royal Highnesses you will understand better from his own Letter. Which letter I am ordered to deliver to your Royal Highnesses with all observance and due respect; and, should your Royal Highnesses, as we greatly hope, grant a favourable and speedy answer, you will both do an act most gratifying to the Lord Protector, who has taken this business deeply to heart, and to the whole Commonwealth of England, and also restore, by an exercise of mercy very worthy of your Royal Highnesses, life, safety, spirit, country, and estates to many thousands of most afflicted people who depend on your pleasure; and me you will send back to my native country as the happy messenger of your conspicuous clemency, with great joy and report of your exalted virtues, the deeply obliged servant of your Royal Highnesses for evermore."³

(LV.) TO THE EVANGELICAL SWISS CANTONS, May 25, 1655¹:—His Highness in this letter recapitulates the facts at some length, and expresses his conviction that the Cantons, so much nearer the scene of the horrors, are already duly roused. He informs them that he has written to the Duke of Savoy and hopes the intercession may have effect; but adds, "If, however, he should determine otherwise, we are prepared to exchange counsels with you on the subject of the means by which we may be able most effectively to relieve, re-establish, and save from certain and undeserved ruin, an innocent people oppressed and tormented by so many injuries, they being also our dearest brothers in Christ."²

(LVI.) TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, May 25, 1655:—To the same effect as the last, mutatis mutandis. What sovereign can be more ready to stir in such a cause than his Swedish majesty, the successor of those who have been champions of the Protestantism of Europe? Gladly will the Protector form a league with him and with other powers to do whatever may be necessary.

(LVII.) TO THE KING OF DENMARK, May 25, 1655:¹—An appeal in the same strain to his Danish Majesty: phraseology varied a little, But matter the same.

(LVIII.) TO LOUIS XIV., KING OF FRANCE, May 25, 1655:¹—The story recapitulated for the benefit of his French Majesty, with the addition that it is reported that some troops of his Majesty had assisted the Piedmontese soldiery in the attack on the Vaudois. This the Protector can hardly believe: it would be so much against that policy of Toleration which the Kings of France have found essential for the peace of their own dominions. The Protector cannot doubt, at all events, that his Majesty will use his powerful influence with the Duke of Savoy to induce him at once, as far as may be possible, to repair the outrageous wrong already done.

(LIX.) TO THE MOST EMINENT LORD, CARDINAL MAZARIN, May 25, 1625:¹—Not content with writing to Louis XIV., Cromwell addressed also the great French Minister. After mentioning the dreadful occasion, the letter proceeds—"There is clearly nothing which has obtained for the French nation greater esteem with all their neighbours professing the Reformed Religion than the liberty and privileges permitted and granted to Protestants by edicts and public acts. It is for this reason chiefly, though for others as well, that this Commonwealth has sought for the friendship and alliance of the French to a greater degree than before. For the settlement of this there have now for a good while been dealings here with the King's Ambassador, and his Treaty is now almost brought to a conclusion. Moreover, the singular benignity and moderation of your Eminence, always manifest hitherto in the most important transactions of the Kingdom relating to the French Protestants, causes me to hope much from your own prudence and magnanimity."

(LX.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, May 25, 1655:¹—To the same effect as the letters to the Swiss Cantons and the Kings of Sweden and Denmark, but with emphatic expression of his Highness's peculiar confidence In the Dutch Republic in such a crisis. He offers in the close to act in concert with the States-General and other Protestant powers for any interference that may be necessary.

(LXI.) TO THE PRINCE OF TRANSYLVANIA, May, 1655:¹—Transylvania, now included in the Austrian Empire, was then an independent Principality of Eastern Europe, in precarious and variable relations with Austria, Poland, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire. The population, a mixture of Wallachs, Magyars. Germans, and Slavs, was largely Protestant; and the present Prince, George Ragotzki, was an energetic supporter of the Protestant interest in that part of Europe, and a man generally of much political and military activity. He had written, it appears, to Cromwell on the 16th of November, 1654, and had sent an Envoy to England with the letter. It had expressed his earnest desire for friendship and alliance with the Protector, and for co-operation with him in the defence of the Reformed Religion. Cromwell now acknowledges the letter and embassy, with high compliments to the Prince personally, of whose merits and labours there had been so much fame. This leads him at once to the Piedmontese business. Is not that an opportunity for the co-operation his Serenity had mentioned? At any rate, it behoves all Protestant princes to be on the alert; for who knows how far the Duke of Savoy's example may spread?

(LXII.) TO THE CITY OF GENEVA, June 8, 1655:—This letter announces the collection in progress in England for the relief of the Piedmontese Protestants. It will take some time to complete the collection; but meanwhile the first instalment of £2000 [Cromwell's personal contribution] is remitted for immediate use. His Highness is quite sure that the City authorities of Geneva will cheerfully take charge of the money, and see it distributed among those most in need. A postscript bids the Genevese expect £1500 of the sum through Gerard Hensch of Paris, and the remaining £500 through Mr. Stoupe, a well known travelling agent of Cromwell and Thurloe.

(LXIII.) TO THE KING OF FRANCE, July 29, 1655:—The Protector here acknowledges an answer received to his previous letter of May 25. [The answer had been delivered to Morland early in June, when he was on his way through Paris, and transmitted by him to the Protector. A translation of it is given in Morland's book, pp. 566-567.] He is glad to be confirmed in his belief that the French officers who lent their troops to assist the Piedmontese soldiery in that bloody business did so without his Majesty's order and against his will—glad also to learn that these officers have been rebuked, and that his Majesty has, of his own accord, remonstrated with the Duke of Savoy, and advised him to stop his persecution of the Vaudois. As no effect has yet been produced however, [Morland has by this time delivered his speech at Turin, and reported the dubious answer given by the Duke of Savoy: ante pp. 42-43], the Protector is now despatching a special envoy [i.e. Mr. George Downing] to Turin, to make farther remonstrances. This envoy will pass through Paris, and his mission will have the greater chance of success if his Majesty will take the opportunity of again impressing his views upon the Duke. By so doing, by punishing those French officers who employed his Majesty's troops so disgracefully, and by sheltering such of the poor Vaudois as may have sought refuge in France, his Majesty will earn the respect of other Powers, and will strengthen the loyalty of his own Protestant subjects.

(LXIV.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, July 29, 1655:—This is a special note, accompanying the foregoing letter, and introducing and recommending Mr. Downing to his Eminence.

Besides these official documents for Cromwell on the Piedmontese business, there came from Milton his memorable Sonnet on the same, expressing his own feelings, and Cromwell's too, with less restraint. It may have been in private circulation at the Protector's Court at the date of the last two of the ten letters:

ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT.

From the Piedmontese Massacre we have now to revert to Morus. His Fides Publica, in reply to Milton's Defensio Secunda, had been published in an incomplete state, as we have seen, by Ulac at the Hague in August or September 1654; and Milton had a rejoinder to this publication ready or nearly ready, as we have also seen, by the end of March 1655. The reason why this Rejoinder had not already appeared has now to be stated.

One of Morus's reasons for hurrying into France so unexpectedly, and leaving his unfinished book in Ulac's hands, seems to have been the chance of a professorship or pastorship there that would enable him to quit Holland permanently, and settle at length in his own country. "Some speak of calling Morus, against whom Mr. Milton writes so sharply, to be Professor of Divinity at Nismes; but most men say it will ruin that church," is a piece of Parisian news sent by Pell to Thurloe in a letter from Zurich dated Oct. 28, 1654;¹ and, with that prospect, or some other, Morus seems to have remained in France for some time after that date. When copies of his incomplete Fides Publica reached him there, he may not have thanked Ulac for issuing the book in such a state without leave given. All the more, however, he must have felt himself obliged to complete the book. Accordingly he did, from France, forward the rest of the MS. to Ulac, with the result of the appearance at last from Ulac's press of a supplementary volume with this title: "Alexandri Mori, Ecclesiastæ et Sacrarum Litterum Professoris, Supplementum Fidei Publicæ contra calumnias Joannis Miltoni. Hagae-Comitum, Typis Adriani Ulacq, 1655." ("Supplement to the Public Testimony of Alexander Morus, Churchman and Professor of Sacred Literature, in reply to the Calumnies of John Milton. Hague: Printed by Adrian Ulac, 1655.") Ulac prefixes, under the heading "The Printer to the Reader," a brief explanatory Preface. "You have here, good Reader," he says, "the missing remainder of the edition of a Treatise which we lately printed and published under the title Aleaxandri Mori Fides Publica contra calumnias Joannis Miltoni. This remainder that Reverend gentleman has sent me from France. Of the whole matter judge as may seem fair and just to you. Let it suffice for me to have satisfied your curiosity. Farewell." It must have been this Supplementum of Morus, reaching London perhaps in April 1655, or perhaps during the first busy correspondence about the Piedmontese massacre, that delayed the appearance of Milton's already written Rejoinder to the imperfect Fides Publica. He would notice this "Supplement" as well as the volume already published, and so have done with Morus altogether.

Morus's Supplementum consists of 105 pages, added to the original Fides Publica, but numbered onwards from the last page there, so as to admit of the binding of the two volumes into one volume consecutively paged, though with two title-pages, differently dated. The matter also proceeds continuously from the point at which the Fides Publica, broke off. Referring to the testimony borne to his character in the venerable Diodati's Letter from Geneva to Salmasius, dated May 9, 1648, and connecting it with Milton's mention of his personal acquaintance with Diodati formed in his visit to Geneva in 1639, Morus addresses Milton thus:

"This is that John Diodati upon whom you cast no small stain by your praise, and who truly, if he were alive, would prefer to be in the number of those who are vituperated by you. Would he were alive! How he would beat back your pride, not indeed with other pride, but with the gravest smile of contempt! How he would despise in his great mind your thoughts, sayings, acts, all in one! How he would anticipate your fine satire, and, moved with holy loathing, spit upon it! 'With him,' you say, 'I had daily society at Geneva.' But what did you learn from him? What of desirable contagion did you carry away from his acquaintance? Often have we heard him enumerating those friends he had in your country whom he commended on the score of either learning or goodness. Of you we never heard a syllable from him."

Then, after telling of his affectionate parting with Diodati at Geneva, when both, were in tears and the old man blessed him, he proceeds to quote other Testimonials, either in French or in Latin. Four more are still from former Swiss friends:—viz. an extract from another letter of Diodati, addressed to M. L'Empereur; a letter from M. Sartoris to Salmasius, dated Geneva, April 5, 1648; a testimonial from the lawyer Gothofridius, dated Geneva, May 24, 1648; and a subsequent letter from the same, dated Basel, April 23, 1651. All are very complimentary. Passing then to his life in Holland after leaving Switzerland, Morus continues the series of his testimonials. We have first, in French or Latin, or both, a letter from the Church at Middleburg to the Church at Geneva, dated Nov. 2, 1649, an extract from a letter of the Synod of the Walloon Churches of the United Provinces to the Pastors and Professors of Geneva, dated May 6, 1650, and a testimonial from the Church of Middleburg, on the occasion of sending M. Morus as deputy to the said Synod, dated April 19, 1650. More documents of the same kind follow, chiefly for the purpose of disproving the assertion that M. Morus had been condemned and ejected by the Middleburg Church. They include an extract from the Acts of the Consistory of the Walloon Church of Middleburg, dated July 10, 1652, a testimonial from the Middleburg Church of the same date, and an extract from the Articles of the Synod of the Walloon Churches held at Groede, Aug. 21-23, 1652. Having thus brought himself, with ample testimonials of character, to the date of his removal from the Middleburg Church to the Professorship in Amsterdam, he takes up more expressly the Accusatio de Bontid or Bontia scandal. He gives what he calls the true and exact version of that story, with those details about Madame de Saumaise and her quarrel with him on Bontia's account which have already appeared in our narrative. He lays stress on the fact that it was himself that had instituted the law-process, and persevered in it to the end; and he dwells at some length on the successful issue of the case both in the Walloon Synod and in the Supreme Court of Holland. He has evidence, he says, that Salmasius, to his dying day, spoke in high terms of him, and admitted that Madame de Saumaise was in the wrong. "This statement has been made," he says, "not solely in reply to your insolence, but also out of regard for the weakness and ignorance of those at a distance who have imbibed the venom of the calumny and heard of the spiteful revenge to which I was subject, but not of the unusual sequel of its judicial discomfiture. All of whom, but especially my friends and countrymen, amid whom there has happened to me the same that happened to Basil among his neighbours, I request and beseech by all that is sacred not rashly to credit mere report, much less the letters which my adversaries have sent hither and thither through all nations, especially after they perceived that they were driven from all their defences at home, judging that they would more easily invest their lie with belief and authority in distant parts. Fair critics, I doubt not, will at least suspend their judgment, and not incline to either side, until there shall have reached them a just narrative of the facts, truly and freely written by a friend, the publication of which has hitherto been kept back at my desire." Three additional testimonials are then appended to show that his reputation had not suffered in Amsterdam on account of the Saumaise-Bontia scandal, and especially that the rumour that he had been suspended from ministerial functions there was utterly untrue. These Amsterdam testimonials, as being the latest in date, and the most important in Morus's favour, may be given in abstract:—

From the Magistrates of Amsterdam, July 11, 1654:—"Whereas the Reverend and very learned Mr. Alexander Morus, Professor of Sacred History in our illustrious School, has complained to us that one John Milton, in a lately published book, has attacked his reputation with atrocious calumnies, and has added moreover that the Magistrates of Amsterdam have interdicted him the pulpit, and that only his Professorship of Greek remains,... We, &c., testify." What they testify is that, since Morus had come to Amsterdam, "not only had he done nothing which could afford ground for such calumnies, or was unworthy of a Christian and Theologian," but he had also discharged the duties of his Professorship with extraordinary learning, eloquence and acceptance. So far, therefore, were the Magistrates from censuring M. Morus that, on the contrary, they were ready still, on any occasion, to afford him all the protection and show him all the good will in their power. The certificate is sealed with the City seal, and signed by "N. Nicolai," the City clerk.

From the Amsterdam Church (about same date):—Three Pastors of this Church—Gothofrid Hotton, Henry Blanche-Tete, and Nicolas de la Bassecour—certify, "in the name of the whole convocation of the Gallo-Belgie Church of Amsterdam," that Morus discharges his Professorship with high credit; also "that, as regards his life and conversation, they are so far from knowing or acknowledging him to be guilty of those things of which he is accused by one Milton, an Englishman, in his lately published book, that, on the contrary, they have frequently requested sermons from him, and he has delivered such in the church, excellent in quality and perfectly orthodox,—which could not have occurred if anything of the alleged kind had been known to his brethren (quod heud factum fuisset si hujusmodi quioquam nobis innotuisset)."

From the Curators of the Amsterdam School, July 29, 1654:—To the same effect, with the story of the circumstances of the appointment of Morus to the Professorship. They had been very anxious to get him, and he had justified their choice. "We think the calumnies with which he is undeservedly loaded arise from nothing else than the ill-will which is the inseparable accompaniment of especially distinguished virtue." Signed, for the Curators, by "C. de Graef" and "Simon van Hoorne."

After asking Milton how he can face these flat contradictions of his charges, not from mere individuals, but from important public bodies, and saying that "one favourable nod from any one of the persons concerned would be worth more than the vociferations of a thousand Miltons to all eternity," Morus corrects Milton's mistake as to the nature of his Professorship. It is not a Professorship of Greek, but of Sacred History, involving Greek only in so far as one might refer in one's lectures to Josephus or the Greek Fathers. But he had been a Professor of Greek—in Geneva, to wit, when little over twenty years of age. Nor, in spite of all Milton's facetiousness on the subject of Greek, and his puns on Morus in Greek, was he ashamed of the fact. "For all learning whatever is Greek, so that whoever despises Greek Literature, or professors of the same, must necessarily be a sciolist." And here he detects the reason of Milton's incessant onslaughts on Salmasius. Milton was evidently most ambitious of the fame of scholarship, as appeared from his anticipations of immortality in his Latin poems; and, though he might be a fair Latinist—not immaculate in Latin either, as he might hear some time or other from Salmasius himself, though that was a secret yet—he knew that he could never snatch away from Salmasius the palm of the highest, i.e. of Greek, scholarship. Morus does not claim for himself the title of a perfect classic; he is content with his present position and its duties. Admirable lessons in life are to be obtained from the study of Church History. Of these not the least is the verification of the words in the Gospel, "Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you." What calumnies had been borne by Jerome, Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Athanasius, and others of the best of men! With such examples before one, why should an insignificant person, like the writer, conscious too of many faults and weaknesses, take calumny too much to heart? This pathetic strain, attained towards the close of the book, is maintained most skilfully in the peroration.

"But, if credit enough is not given to my own solemn affirmation, nor to this Public Testimony, Thee, Lord God, I make finally my witness, who explorest the inmost recesses of the spirit, who triest the reins, and knowest the secret motives of the breast, a Searcher of hearts to whom, as if by thorough dissection, all things are bare. Thee, God, Thee I call as my witness, who shalt one day be my Judge and the Judge of all, whether it is not the case that men see in this heart of mine what Thou seest not. Would that Thou didst not also see in the same heart what they do not see! But ah me! I am far baser in reality than they feign. Suppliantly I adore the will of Thy Providence that permits me to be falsely accused among men on account of so many hidden faults of which I am truly guilty in Thy sight. Thou, Lord, saidst to Shimei, 'Curse David.' Glory be to Thy name that hast chosen to preserve me, exercised with so many griefs, that I may serve Thyself. There is one great sin discernible in my soul, which I confess before the whole world. I have never served Thee in proportion to my strength; that little talent of Thy grace which Thou hast deigned to grant me I have not yet turned to full account—whether because I have followed too much the pleasures of mere study, or whether I have consumed too much time and labour in refuting the invectives of the evil-disposed, to whom, such has been Thy pleasure, I have been constantly an object of attack. Cover the past for me, regulate the future. Cleared before men, before Thee I shall be cleared never, unless Thy mercy shall be my succour. I confess I have sinned against Thee, nor shall I do so more. Thou seest how this paper on which I write is now all wet with my tears: pardon me, Redeemer mine, and grant that the vow I now take to Thee I may sacredly perform. Let a thousand dogs bark at me, a thousand bulls of Bashan rush upon me, as many lions war against my soul, and threaten me with destruction, I will reply no more, defended enough if only I feel Thee propitious. I will no more waste the time due to Thee, sacred to Thee, in mere trifles, or lose it in beating off the importunity of moths. Whatever extent of life it shall please Thee to appoint me still, I vow, I dedicate, all to Thee, all to Thy Church. So shall we be revenged on our enemies. Convert us all, Thou who only canst. Forgive us, forgive them also; nor to us, nor to them, but to Thy name, be the glory!"

Milton read this, but was not moved. On the 8th of August, 1655, there was published his Rejoinder to the original Fides Publica, with his notice of the Supplementum appended. It is a small volume of 204 pages, entitled Joannis Miltoni, Angli, Pro Se Defensio contra Alexandrum Morum, Ecclesiasten, Libelli famosi, cui titulus 'Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Cælum adversus Parricidas Anglicanus', authorem recte dictum. Londini, Typis Newcomianis, 1655 ("The English, John Milton's Defence for Himself, in reply to Alexander Morus, Churchman, rightly called the author of the notorious book entitled 'Cry of the King's Blood to Heaven against the English Parricides,' London, from Newcome's Press, 1655"). This is perhaps the least known now of all Milton's writings. It has never been translated, even in the wretched fashion in which his Defensio Prima and Defensio Secunda have been; and it is omitted altogether in some professed editions of Milton's whole works.¹

After a brief Introduction, in which Milton remarks that the quarrel, which was originally for Liberty and the English People, has now dwindled into a poor personal one, he discusses afresh, as the first real point in dispute, the question of the authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor. Morus's denials, or seeming denials, go for nothing. Any man may deny anything; there are various ways of denial; and he still maintains that Morus is, to all legal intents and purposes, responsible for the book. "Unless I show this." he says, "unless I make it plain either that you are the author of that most notorious book against us, or that you have given sufficient occasion for justly regarding you as the author, I do not object to the conclusion that I have been beaten by you in this controversy, and come out of it ignominiously, with disgrace and shame." How is this strong statement supported? In the first place, there is reproduced the evidence of original, universal, and persistent rumour. "This I say religiously, that through two whole years I met no one, whether a countryman of my own or a foreigner, with whom there could be talk about that book, but they all agreed unanimously that you were called its author, and they named no one for the author but you." To Morus's assertion that he had openly, loudly, and energetically disowned the book, where suspected of the authorship, Milton returns a complex answer. Partly he does not believe the assertion, on the ground that there were many who had heard Morus confessing to the book and boasting of it. Partly he asks why such energetic repudiations were necessary, and why, in spite of them, intimate friends of Morus retained their former opinion. Partly he admits that there may latterly have been such repudiations, but not till there was danger in being thought the author. Any criminal will deny his crime in sight of the axe; and, apart from the punishment which Morus had reason to expect when he knew that Milton's reply to the Regii Sanguinis Clamor was forthcoming, what had not the author of that book to dread after the Peace between the Dutch and the Commonwealth had been concluded? By articles IX., X., and XI. of the Peace it was provided that no public enemy of the Commonwealth should have residence, shelter, living, or commerce, within the bounds of the United Provinces; and who more a public enemy of the Commonwealth than the author of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor? No wonder that, after that Peace, Morus had trembled for the consequences of his handiwork. The loss of his Amsterdam Professorship, instant ejection from Holland, and prohibition of return under pain of death, were what he had to fear. Were not these powerful enough motives for denial to a man like Morus? Had not Milton, when he learnt by letters from Durie in May 1654 that Morus was disowning—the book, been entitled to remember these motives? For what other evidence had been produced besides Morus's own word? His friend Hotton's only; and that was no independent testimony, but only Morus's at second hand. And even now, after Morus's repeated and studiously-worded denials in his Fides Publica, how did the case stand?

"That book [the Regii Sanguinis Clamor] consists of various prooemia and epilogues [i.e. addition to the central text]—to wit, An Epistle to Charles, another To the Reader, and two sets of verses at the close, one eulogistic of Salmasius, the other in defamation of me. Now, if I find that you wrote or contributed any page of this whole book, even a single verse, or that you published it, or procured it, or advised it, or superintended the publishing, or even lent the smallest particle of aid therein, you alone, since no one else is to the fore, shall be to me responsible for the whole, the author, the 'Crier'. Nor can you call this merely my severity or vehemence; for this is the procedure established among almost all nations by right and laws of equity. I will adduce, as universally accepted, the Imperial Civil Law. Read Institut. Justiniani l. IV. De Injuriis, Tit. 4: 'If any one shall write, compose, or publish, or with evil design cause the writing, composing, or publishing, of a book or poem (or story) for the defamation of any one,' &c. Other laws add 'Even should he publish in the name of another, or without name;' and all decree that the person is to be taken for the author and punished as such. I ask you now, not whether you wrote the text of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, but whether you made, wrote, published, or caused to be published, the Epistle Dedicatory to Charles prefixed to the Clamor, or any particle thereof; I ask whether you composed or caused to be published the other Epistle to the Reader, or finally that Defamatory Poem, You have replied nothing yet to these precise questions. By merely disowning the Clamor itself and strenuously swearing that you wrote no portion of it, you thought to escape with safe credit, and make game of us, inasmuch as the Epistle to Charles the Son, or that to the Reader, or the set of Iambic verses, is not the Regii Sanguinis Clamor. Take now this in brief, therefore, that you may not be able so to wheel about or prevaricate in future, or hope for any escape or concealment, and that all may know how far from mendacious, how veritable on the contrary, or at least not unfounded, was that report which arose about you: take, I say, this in brief,—that I have ascertained, not by report alone, but by testimony than which none can be surer, that you managed the bringing out of the whole book entitled Regii Sanguinis Clamor, and corrected the printer's proofs, and composed, either alone, or in association with one or two others, the Epistle to Charles II. which bears Ulac's name. Of this your own name 'ALEXANDER MORUS,' subscribed to some copies of that Epistle, has been too clear and ocular proof to many witnesses of the fact for you to be able to deny the charge or to get rid of it.... There are several who have heard yourself either admit, on interrogation, that that Epistle is yours, or declare the fact spontaneously.... If you ask on what evidence I, at such a distance, make these statements, and how they can have become so certain to myself, I reply that it is not on the evidence of rumour merely, but partly on that of most scrupulous witnesses who have most solemnly made the assertions to myself personally, partly on that of letters written either to myself or to others. I will quote the very words of the letters, but will not give the names of the writers, considering that unnecessary in matters of such notoriety independently. Here you have first an extract from a letter to me from the Hague, the writer of which is a man of probity and had no common means of investigating this affair:—'I have ascertained beyond doubt (exploratissimum mihi est) that Morus himself offered the copy of the Clamor Regii Sanguinis to some other printers before Ulac received it, that he superintended the correction of the errors of the press, and that, as soon as the book was finished, copies were given and distributed by him to not a few.'... Take again the following, which a highly honourable and intelligent man in Amsterdam writes as certainly known to himself and as abundantly witnessed there:—'It is most certain that almost all through these parts have regarded Morus as the author of the book called Regii Sanguinis Clamor; for he corrected the sheets as they came from the press, and some copies bore the name of Morus subscribed to the Dedicatory Epistle, of which also he was the author. He himself told a certain friend of mine that he was the author of that Epistle: nay there is nothing more certain than that Morus either assumed or acknowledged the authorship of the same.' ... I add yet a third extract. It is from another letter from the Hague:—'A man of the first rank in the Hague has told me that he has in his possession a copy of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor with Morus's own letter.'"

Farther on Milton re-adverts to the same topic, in a passage which it is also well to quote:

"You say you 'will produce not rumours merely, not conversations merely, but letters, in proof that I had been warned not to assail an innocent man.' Let us then inspect the letter you publish, which was written to you by 'that highly distinguished man, Lord Nieuport, ambassador of the Dutch Confederation,'—a letter, it is evident, which you bring forward to be read, not for any force of proof in it, for it has none, but merely in ostentation. He—and it shows the singular kindliness of 'the highly distinguished man' (for what but goodness in him should make him take so much trouble on your most unworthy account?)—goes to Mr. Secretary Thurloe. He communicates your letter to Mr. Secretary. When he saw that he had no success, he sends to me two honourable persons, friends of mine, with that same letter of yours. What do they do? They read me that letter of Morus, and they request, and say that Ambassador Nieuport also requests, that I will trust to your letter in which you deny being the author of the Clamor Regii Sanguinis. I answered that what they asked was not fair—that neither was Morus's word worth so much, nor was it customary to believe, in contradiction to common report and other ascertained evidence, the mere letter of an accused person and an adversary denying what was alleged against him. They, having nothing more to say on the other side, give up the debate.... When afterwards the Ambassador wanted to persuade Mr. Secretary Thurloe, he had still no argument to produce but the same copy of your letter; whence it is quite clear that those 'reasons' brought to me 'for which he desired' me to be so good as not to publish my book had nothing to do with reasons of State. Do not then corrupt the Ambassador's letter. Nothing there of 'hostile spirit,' nothing of the 'inopportune time;' all he writes is that he 'is sorry I had chosen, notwithstanding his request, to show so little moderation'—sorry, that is, that I had not chosen, at his private request, to oblige you, a public adversary, and to recall and completely rewrite a work already printed and all but out. Let 'the highly distinguished man,' especially as an Ambassador, hold me excused if I would not, and really could not, condone public injuries on private intercessions."

Before Milton passes to the review of Morus's vindication of his character and past career, he disposes of Dr. Crantzius and Ulac, as objects intervening between him and that main task. For the Fides Publica, it will be remembered, had been bound up with that Hague edition of Milton's Defensio Secunda to which the Rev. Dr. Crantzius had prefixed a preface in rebuke of Milton and in defence of Morus, and to which Ulac had also prefixed a statement replying to Milton's charges against him of dishonesty and bankruptcy. Several pages are given to Dr. Crantzius, who is called "a certain I know not what sort of a bed-ridden little Doctor," then taxed with ignorance, garrulity, and general imbecility, and at last kicked out of the way with the phrase "But I do marvellously delight in Doctors." Ulac, as having been reckoned with before, receives briefer notice. "You are a swindler, Ulac, said I; I am a good Arithmetician, says Ulac:" so the notice begins; and then follow some sentences to the effect that Ulac's creditors had been very ill satisfied with his counting, that the rule of probity is not the Logarithmic canon, that correct accounts are different things from Tables of Sines or Tables of Tangents and Secants, and that acting on the square is not necessarily taught by Trigonometry. After which Milton reverts to Ulac's double-dealings with himself, first in his fathering the abusive Dedication of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor while he was corresponding with Milton's friends in London and making kind inquiries about Milton's health, and next in bringing out a pirated edition of the Defensio Secunda, printing the same inaccurately, and actually binding it up with the Fides Publica of Morus, so as to compel a united sale of the two books for his own profit. How a man could have published so coolly a book in which he was himself held up as a rogue and swindler passes Milton's comprehension; but Ulac, he seems to admit, was no ordinary tradesman.

For poor Morus himself there is not an atom of mercy yet. All his dexterous pleading, all his declarations of innocence, all his pathetic appeals, all his citations of the decisions in his favour in the Bontia case by the Walloon Synod and the Supreme Court of Holland, are simply trampled under foot, and the charges formerly made against him are ruthlessly reiterated as true nevertheless. There are even additional details, and fresh charges of the same kind, derived from more recent information. The plan adopted by Milton is to go over the Fides Publica, extracting phrases and sentences from it, and commenting on each extract; but the general effect of the book is that of the ruthless chasing round and round of the poor ecclesiastic in a biographical ellipse, the two foci of which are Geneva and Leyden.

Distinct evidence is produced that both at Geneva and in Holland the fama against Morus was still as strong as ever. The evidence takes the form of extracts from two letters received by Milton since the Fides Publica had appeared;—

From a Letter from Geneva, dated Oct. 14, 1654 (i.e. from that letter of Ezekiel Spanheim of which Milton had told Spanheim that he meant to avail himself, though without mentioning the writer's name: sec ante pp. 172-173). "Our people here cannot sufficiently express their wonder that you are so thoroughly acquainted with the private history of a man unknown to you personally, and that you have painted him so in his native colours that not even by those with whom he has been on the most familiar terms could the whole play-acting career of the man (tota, hominis histrionia) have been more accurately or happily set forth; whence they are at a loss, and I with them, to understand with what face, shameless though he is and impudent-mouthed, he is on the point of daring again to appear in the public theatre. For it is the consummation and completeness of your success in this part of the business that you have not brought forward either imagined or otherwise unknown charges against the man, but charges of common repetition in the mouths of all his greatest friends even, and which can be clearly corroborated by the authority and vote of the whole assembly, and even by the accession of farther criminations to the same effect... I would assure you that hardly any one can now longer be found here, where for many years he discharged a public-office, but greatly to the disgrace of this Church, who would dare or undertake longer to lend his countenance to the man's prostituted character."

From a Letter from Durie at Basel, Oct. 3, 1654:—"As regards Morus's vices and profligacy, Hotton does not seem to entertain that opinion of him; I know, however, that others speak very ill of him, that his hands are against nearly everybody and everybody's hands against him, and that many ministers even of the Walloon Synod are doing their best to have him deprived of the pastoral office. Nor here in Basel do I find men's opinion of him different from that in Holland of those who like him least."

The fresh, particulars of information that Milton had received about Morus and his alleged misdeeds are unsparingly brought out. The name of the woman of bad character at Geneva with whom Morus was said to have been implicated there, and the scandal about whom had driven him from Geneva, has now been ascertained by Milton. It was Claudia Pelletta; and of her name, and all the topographical details of Morus's alleged meetings with her, there is enough and more than enough. Claudia Pelletta at Geneva, and Bontia at Leyden, pull Morus between them page after page: not that they only have claims, for in one sentence we hear of an insulted widow somewhere in Holland, and in another of a dubious female figure seen one rainy night with Morus in a street in Amsterdam. But Bontia is still Milton's favourite. He repeats the Latin epigram about her and Morus; he apologizes for having hitherto called her Pontia, attributes the error to a misreading of the MS. of that epigram when it first came from Holland, but says he still thinks Pontia the prettier name; and, using information that had recently reached him, though we have been in prior possession of something equivalent (Vol. IV. p. 465), he thus reminds Morus of his most memorable meeting with that brave damsel:—

"You remember perhaps that day, nay I am sure you remember the day, and the hour and the place too, when, as I think, you and Pontia [he still keeps to the form 'Pontia'] last met in the house of Salmasius—you to renounce the marriage-bond, she to make you name the day for the nuptials. When she saw, on the contrary, that it was your intention to dissolve the marriage-engagement made in the seduction, then lo! your unmarried bride, for I will not call her Tisiphone, not able to bear such a wrong, flew furiously at your face and eyes with uncut nails. You who, on the testimony of Crantzius (for it is right that so great a contest should not begin without quotation from your own Fides Publica)—you who, on the testimony of Crantzius, were altier in French, or fiercish in Latin, and on the testimony of Diodati had terrible spurs for self-defence, prepare to do your manly utmost in this feminine kind of fight. Madame de Saumaise stands by as Juno, arbiter of the contest, Salmasius himself, lying in the next room ill with the gout, when he heard the battle begun, almost dies with laughing. But alas! and O fie! our unwarlike Alexander, no match for his Amazon, falls down vanquished. She, getting her man underneath, then first, from her position of vantage, goes at his forehead, his eye-brows, his nose; with wonderful arabesques, and in a Phrygian style of execution, she runs her finger-points over the whole countenace of her prostrate subject: never were you less pleased, Morus, with Pontia's lines of beauty. At last, with difficulty, either margin of his cheeks fully written on, but the chin not yet finished, up he rises, a man, by your leave, absolutely nail-perfect, no mere Professor now but a Pontifical Doctor,—for you might have inscribed upon him, as on a painting, Pontia fecit. [We see now the reason for keeping to the form 'Pontia.'] Doctor? Nay rather a codex in which his vengeful critic had scraped her adverse comments with a new stilus. You felt then, I think, Ulac's Tables of Tangents and Secants, to a radius of I know not how many painful ciphers, printed on your skin."

How does Milton meet Morus's protestations of his innocence both at Geneva and in Leyden, and the evidence he adduces in his behalf? Respecting the protestations, he notes that they are merely general and that, like his denials of the authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, they are worded equivocally or indistinctly. Why does he not deny the Pelletta charge and the Bontia charge, and the other charges, one by one specifically, and in a downright manner? Why does he not go back to Geneva, face the living witnesses and the documentary evidence there waiting him, and abide the issue? As for the decisions in his favour in the Bontia case by the Walloon Synod and the Supreme Court of Holland, of what worth are they? One could see, one had even been informed, that there had been influences at work with both tribunals to procure the result, such as it was. Many good, but easy, men had thought it best, for the reputation of the Christian ministry, not to rake too deeply into such an unpleasant business. Especially in the Synod the proceedings had been a farce. When Riverius, the moderator of the Synod, at the close of the proceedings, had said to Morus, "Never was a Moor so whitewashed as you have been to-day," could not everybody, with any sense of humour, perceive that the Reverend gentleman had been joking? Then, what had been the formal decision of the Synod? "That nothing had been found in the papers of weight to take away from the Churches their wonted liberty of inviting M. Morus to preach when there was occasion." Was that a whitewashing with which to be content? No wonder that Morus had taken refuge among his paper testimonials. About the whole system of Testimonials Milton is considerably dubious. He does not deny that a public testimonial may be an honour, and that there may be proper occasion for such things; but, real discernment of merit being rare, and those who give and those who seek testimonials being but a jumble of the good and the bad together, the abuses of the system bring it into discredit. "The man of highest quality needs another's testimonial the least; nor does any good man ever do anything merely to make himself known." Waiving that general question, however, one may examine Morus's testimonials.

This examination of the testimonials is begun in the first or main part of Milton's Pro Se Defensio; but, as Morus had only entered on his testimonials in the Fides Publica as originally published, and presented most of them in his Supplementum to that book, so Milton prolongs this branch of his criticism into an appendix entitled separately Authoris ad Aleasandri Mori Supplementum Responsio ("The Author's Answer to Alexander More's Supplement.") Prom the first sentences of this Appendix we learn that the preceding part of Milton's book had been written two months before the Supplementum had come into his hands.

Morus's published Testimonials divide themselves chronologically, it may have been observed, into three sets—(1) those given him at Geneva early in the year 1648, and brought by him into Holland on his removal thither, (2) those given him at Middleburg between Nov. 1649 and Aug. 1652, and (3) the three given him at Amsterdam in July 1654, after Milton's Defensio Secunda had appeared, and in contradiction of statements made in that book.—On the Genevese set of Testimonials, including that from the venerable Diodati, Milton's criticism, in substance, is that they were vitiated by their date. They had been given, or obtained by hard begging, not perhaps before the Pelletta scandal had been heard of, but before it had been sufficiently notorious, and while it still seemed credible to many that Morus was innocent, and others were good-naturedly willing to stop the investigation by speeding him off to another scene, Theodore Tronchin, pastor and Professor of Theology, and Mermilliod and Pittet, two other pastors, had been the first movers, among the Genevese clergy, for an inquiry into Morus's conduct; the elder Spanheim had, as Milton believed, been one of those that even then would have nothing to do with the Testimonials; the aged Diodati had then for some time ceased to attend the meetings of his brethren, and might not know all. But, in any case, nearly a year had elapsed between the date of the last of those Genevese Testimonials which Morus had published and Morus's actual departure from Geneva. During that interval there had been a progress of Genevese opinion on the subject of his character and conduct, and he had been furnished with fresh papers in the nature of farewell Testimonials. Morus had suppressed those. Would he venture to produce them?—On the Middleburg Testimonials the criticism is that they do not matter much one way or another, but that they show Morus on the whole to have soon been found a troublesome person in Holland also, some business about whom was always coming up in the Walloon Synods. In Middleburg too there had been a progress of opinion about him with farther experience. His co-pastor there. M. Jean Long, who had been his firm friend for a while, and had signed some of the testimonials, was now understood to speak of him with absolute detestation. Morus having produced some of these testimonials to disprove Milton's assertion that he had been ejected by the Middleburg church, Milton explains that he had not said ejected, but only turned adrift, and that this was substantially the fact. Now, however, if Durie's report is correct, not only would the single Middleburg church, but nearly the whole Walloon Synod also, willingly eject him.—Milton's greatest difficulty is with the three Amsterdam testimonials of July 1654. He has to admit that they prove him to have been misinformed when he said that the Amsterdam authorities had interdicted Morus from the pulpit, just as he had been wrong in calling Morus's Amsterdam professorship that of Greek. That admission made (and it was hard for Milton ever to admit he was wrong, even in a trifle), he contents himself with quoting sentences from the Amsterdam testimonials to show how merely formal they were, how little hearty, and with this characteristic observation about the Amsterdam dignitaries, tossing their testimony aside in any case: "Et id nescio, [Greek: aristindên] an [Greek: ploutindên], virtute an censu, magistratum ilium in civitate suâ obtineant: And I know not, moreover, whether it is by merit or by wealth that the gentlemen hold that magistracy in their city." This is, doubtless, Milton's return for the slighting mention of himself in the Amsterdam testimonials.¹

While we have thus given, with tolerable completeness, an abstract of Milton's extraordinary Pro Se Defensio contra Alexandrum Morum, we have by no means noticed everything in it that might be of interest in the study of Milton's character. There is, for example, one very curious passage in which Milton, in reply to a criticism of Morus, defends his use of very gross words (verba nuda et prætextata) in speaking of very gross things. He makes two daring quotations, one from Piso's Annals and the other from Sallust, to show that he had good precedent; and he cites Herodotus, Seneca, Suetonius, Plutarch, Erasmus, Thomas More, Clement of Alexandria, Arnobius, Lactantlas, Eusebius, and the Bible itself, as examples occasionally of the very reverse of a squeamish euphemism. Of even greater interest is a passage in which he foresees the charges of cruelty, ruthlessness, and breach of literary etiquette, likely to be brought against him on account of his treatment of Morus, and expounds his theory on that subject. The passage may fitly conclude our account of the Pro Se Defensio:—

"To defame the bad and to praise the good, the one on the principle of severe punishment and the other on that of high reward, are equally just, and make up together almost the sum of justice; and we see in fact that the two are of nearly equal efficacy for the right management of life. The two things, in short, are so interrelated, and so involved in one and the same act, that the vituperation of the bad may in a sense be called the praising of the good. But, though right, reason, and use are equal on both sides, the acceptability is not the same likewise; for whoever vituperates another bears the burden and imputation of two very heavy things at once,—accusing another, and thinking well of himself. Accordingly, all are ready enough with praise, good and bad alike, and the objects of their praise worthy and unworthy together; but no one either dares or is able to accuse freely and intrepidly but the man of integrity alone. Accustomed in our youth, under so many masters, to make laborious displays of imaginary eloquence, and taught to think that the demonstrative force of the same lies no less in invective than in praise, we certainly do at the desk hack to pieces bravely the traditional tyrants of antiquity. Mezentius, if such is the chance, we slay over again with unsavoury antitheta; or we roast to perfection Phalaris of Agrigentum, as in his own bull, with lamentable bellowing of enthymemes. In the debating room or lecture-room, I mean; for in the State for the most part we rather adore and worship such, and call them most powerful, most great, most august. The proper thing would be either not to have spent our first years in sport as imaginary declaimers, or else, when our country or the State needs, to leave our mere fencing-foils, and venture sometimes into the sun, and dust, and field of battle, to exert real brawn, shake real arms, seek a real foe. The Suffeni and Sophists of the past, on the one hand, the Pharisees and Simons and Hymenæi and Alexanders of the past on the other, we go at with many a weapon: those of the present day, and come to life again in the Church, we praise with studied eulogies, we honour with professorships, and stipends, and chairs, the incomparable men that they are, the highly-learned and saintly. If it comes to the censuring of one of them, if the mask and specious skin of one of them are dragged off, if he is shown to be base within, or even publicly and openly criminal, there are some who, for what purpose or through what timidity I know not, would have him publicly defended by testimonies in his favour rather than marked with due animadversion. My principle, I confess, and as the fact has several times proved, is far enough apart from theirs, inasmuch as, if I have made any profit when young in the literary leisure I then had, whether by the instructions of learned men or by my own lucubrations, I would employ the whole of it to the advantage of life and of the human race, could I range so far, to the utmost of my weak ability. And, if sometimes even out of private enmities public delinquencies come to be exposed and corrected, and I have now, impelled by all possible reasons, prosecuted with most just invective, nor yet without proper result, not an adversary of my own merely, but one who is the common adversary of almost all, a nefarious man, a disgrace to the Reformed Religion and to the sacred order especially, a dishonour to learning, a most pernicious teacher of youth, an unclean ecclesiastic, it will be seen, I hope, by those who are chiefly interested in making an example of him (for why should I not so trust?), that herein I have performed an action neither displeasing to God, nor unwholesome to the Church, nor unuseful to the State."

What a blast this to pursue poor Morus over the Continent! It would seem as if, in expectation of it, he had put himself as far as he could out of hearing. When Milton's Pro Se Defensio appeared, Morus was no longer in France, but in Italy; and it was not till May, 1656, or nine months after, that he reappeared in Holland. Then, as he had outrun by more than a year his formal leave of absence from his Amsterdam professorship, granted Dec, 20, 1654, there seem to have been strict inquiries as to the causes of his long absence. It was explained that he had fallen ill at Florence; it also came out that he had had a very distinguished reception from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and that the Venetian Senate had presented him with a chain of gold for a Latin poem he had written on a recent defeat of the Turks at sea by the Venetian navy; and, what was most to the point, it appeared, by addresses of his own at Amsterdam, and at a meeting of the Walloon Synod at Leyden, that he had found in Italy great opportunities "for advancing the glory of God by the preaching of the Gospel." We know independently that, while in Italy, he had made acquaintance with some of those wits and scholars among whom Milton had moved so delightfully in his visit of 1638-9, and among whom Heinsius had been back in 1652-3, to find that they still remembered Milton, and could talk about him (Vol. IV. pp. 475-476); and it is even startling to have evidence from Moms himself that he exchanged especial compliments at Rome with Milton's old friend Holstenius, the Vatican librarian, and became so very intimate at Florence with Milton's beloved Carlo Dati as to receive from Dati the most affectionate attention and nursing through his illness. And so, all seeming fully satisfied at Amsterdam, he resumed his duties in the Amsterdam School. Not to be long at peace, however. Hardly had he returned when, either on the old charges, now so terrifically reblazoned through Holland by Milton's perseverance for his ruin, or on new charges arising from new incidents, he and the Walloon church-authorities were again at feud. In this uncomfortable state we must leave him for the present.¹

It is now high time, however, to answer a question which must have suggested itself again and again in the course of our narrative of the Milton and Morus controversy. Who was the real author of the book for which Morus had been so dreadfully punished, and what was the real amount of Morus's responsibility in it?

That Milton's original belief on this subject had been shaken has been already evident. He had written his Defensio Secunda, in firm reliance on the universal report that Morus was the one proper author of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, or that it had been concocted between him and Salmasius; and, though Morus's denial of the authorship had been formally conveyed to him before the Defensio Secunda left the press, he had let it go forth as it was, in the conviction that he was still not wrong in the main. The more express and reiterated denials of Morus in the Fides Publica, however, with the references there to another person as the real author, though Morus was not at liberty to divulge his name, had produced an effect. The authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor was then indeed a secondary question, inasmuch as in the Fides Publica Morus had interposed himself personally,—not only in self-defence, but also for counter-attack on Milton. Still, as the Fides Publica would never have been written had not Milton assumed Morus to be the author of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor and dragged him before the world solely on that account, Milton had necessarily, in replying to the Fides Publica, adverted to the secondary question. His assertion now, i.e, in the Pro Se Defensio, was a modified one. It was that, whatever facts had yet to be revealed respecting the authorship of the four or five parts of the compound book severally, he yet knew for certain that Morus had been the editor of the whole book, the corrector of the press for the whole, the busy and ostentatious agent in the circulation of early copies, and the writer at least of the Dedicatory Preface to Charles II., put forth in Ulac's name. The question for us now is how far this modified assertion of Milton was correct.

Almost to a tittle, it was. That Morus was the editor of the book, the corrector of the press, and the active agent in the circulation of early copies, may be taken as established by the documentary proofs furnished by Milton, and is corroborated by independent evidence known to ourselves long ago (Vol. IV. pp. 459-465). But was he also partially the author? Here too Milton's evidence may be taken as conclusive, so far as respects the Dedicatory Epistle to Charles II. That Epistle, with its enormous praises of Salmasius, and its extremely malignant notice of Milton, was undoubtedly by Morus, for copies of it signed by himself were still extant. So far, therefore, Milton was right in saying that Morus's denial of the authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor was an equivocation, resting on a tacit distinction between the body of the book and the additional or editorial matter. In several passages Morus himself had betrayed this equivocation, but in none so remarkably as in a sentence to the peculiar phrasing of which we called attention in quoting it (ante p. 159). Protesting that he had not so much as known the fact of Milton's blindness at the time of the publication of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, and therefore could not have been guilty of the heartless allusion to it in the Dedicatory Epistle, he there said, "If anything occurred to me that might seem to look that way, I referred to the mind,"—a phrase which it is difficult to construe otherwise than as an admission that he had written the Dedicatory Epistle, but had employed the familiar quotation there ("monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum") only metaphorically. All in all, then, the authorship of the Dedicatory Epistle, as well as the editorship and adoption of the whole anonymous book, is fastened upon Morus. With this amount of responsibility fastened upon him, however, Morus must be dismissed, and another person brought to the bar. He was the Rev. DR. PETER DU MOULIN the younger.

The Du Moulins were a French family, well known in England. The father, Dr. Peter Du Moulin the elder (called Molinæus in Latin), was a French Protestant theologian of great celebrity. He had resided for a good while in England in the reign of James I., officiating as French minister in London, and in much credit with the King and others; but, on the death of James, he had returned to France. At our present date he was still alive at the age of eighty-seven, and still not so much out of the world but that people in different countries continued to think of him as a contemporary and to quote his writings. There are references to him, far from disrespectful, in one of Milton's Anti-Episcopal Pamphlets in reply to Bishop Hall.¹ Two of his sons, both born in France, had settled permanently in England, and had become passionately interested in English public affairs, though in very different directions.—The younger of these, LEWIS DU MOULIN, born 1606, having taken the degree of Doctor of Physic at Leyden, had come to England when but a young man, and, after having been incorporated in the same degree at Cambridge (1684), had been in medical practice in London. At the beginning of the Long Parliament, he had taken the Parliamentarian side, and had written, under the name of "Irenæus Philalethes," two Latin pamphlets against Bishop Hall's Episcopacy by Divine Right—pamphlets very much in the same vein of root-and-branch Church Reform as those of the Smectymnuans and Milton at the same time. Since then, still adhering to the Parliament through the Civil War, he had become well known as an Independent—much, it is said, to the chagrin of his old father, who was a Presbyterian, with leanings to moderate Episcopacy; and in 1647, in the Parliamentary visitation of the University of Oxford, he had been rewarded with the Camden Professorship of History in that University. He had been made M.D. of Oxford in 1649. At least three publications had come from his pen since his appointment to the Professorship, one of them a Translation into Latin (1650) of the first chapter of Milton's Eikonoklastes. From this we should infer, what is independently likely, that he was acquainted with Milton personally.²—Very different from the Independent and Commonwealth's man Lewis Du Monlin. M.D. and History Professor of Oxford, was his elder brother PETER DU MOULIN, D.D. Born in 1600, he had been educated, like his brother, at Leyden, and had taken his D.D. degree there. He is first heard of in England in 1640, when he was incorporated in the same degree at Cambridge; and at the beginning of the Civil War he was so far a naturalised Englishman as to be Rector of Wheldrake, near York. From that time, though a zealous Calvinist theologically, he was as intensely Royalist and Episcopalian as his brother was Parliamentarian and Independent. So we learn most distinctly from a brief MS. sketch of his life through the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth, written by himself after the Restoration, for insertion into a copy of the second edition of one of his books, of date 1660, presented by him to the library of Canterbury Cathedral. "Our gracious King and now glorious Martyr, Charles the First, he there says, finding that his rebellious subjects, not content to make war against him in his kingdom, assaulted him with another war out of his kingdom with their tongues and pens, he set out a Declaration to invite all his loving subjects and friends that could use the tongues of the neighbouring states to represent with their pens the justice of his cause, especially to Protestant Churches abroad. That Declaration smote my heart, as particularly addressed to me; and I took it as a command laid upon me by God himself. Whereupon I made a solemn vow to God that, as far as Latin and French could go in the world, I would make the justice of the King's and the Church's cause to be known, especially to the Protestants of France and the Low Countries, whom the King's enemies did chiefly labour to seduce and misinform. To pay my vow, I first made this book" [entitled originally "Apologie de la Religion Reformée, et de la Monarchie et de I'Église d'Angleterre, contre les Calomnies de la Ligue Rebelle de quelques Anglois et Écossois"; but in an imperfect English translation the title was afterwards changed into "History of the Presbyterians", and in the second French edition, on a copy of which Du Moulin was now writing, it became "Histoire des Nouveaux Presbytériens, Anglois et Écossois"]—which was begun "at York, during the siege [i.e. June 1644, just before Marston Moor], in a room whose chimney was beaten down by the cannon while I was at my work; and, after the siege and my expulsion from my Rectory at Wheldrake, it was finished in an underground cellar, where I lay hid to avoid warrants that were out against me from committees to apprehend me and carry me prisoner to Hull. Having finished the book, I sent it to be printed in Holland by the means of an officer of the Master of the Posts at London, Mr. Pompeo Calandrini, who was doing great and good services to the King in that place. But, the King being dead, and the face of public businesses altered, I sent for my MS. out of Holland, and reformed it for the new King's service. And it was printed, but very negligently, by Samuel Browne at the Hague [1649?] ... Much about the same time I set out my Latin Poem, Ecclesiæ Gemitus ('Groans of the Church'), with, a long Epistle to all Christians in the defence of the King and the Church of England; and, two years after [1652], Clamor Regii Sanguinis ad Coelum. God blessed these books, and gave them the intended effect, the disabusing of many misinformed persons. And it was so well resented by his Majesty, then at Breda, that, being showed my sister Mary among a great company of ladies, he brake the crowd to salute her, and tell her that he was very sensible of his obligations to her brother, and that, if ever God settled him in his kingdom, he would make him know that he was a grateful prince." Here, then, in Dr. Peter Du Moulin's own hand, though not till after the Restoration, we have the Regii Sanguinis Clamor claimed as his, with the information that it was one of a series of books written by him with the special design of maintaining the cause of Charles II. and discrediting the Commonwealth among Continental Protestants.³

Yet farther proof on the subject, also from Dr. Peter's own hand. In the Library of Canterbury Cathedral there is, or was, his own copy of the original edition of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor; and in that copy the preliminary Dedicatory Epistle in Ulac's name to Charles II. is marked for deletion, and has these words prefixed to it in Du Moulin's hand; "Epistola, quam aiunt esse Alexandri Mori, quæ mihi valde non probatur" ("Epistle which they say is by Alexander Morus, and which is not greatly to my taste"),¹ All the rest, therefore, was his own. But, to remove all possible doubt, we have the still more complete and exact information furnished by him in 1670, Milton then still alive and in the first fame of his Paradise Lost. In that year there appeared from the Cambridge University Press a volume entitled Petri Molinæi P. F. [Greek: Parerga]: Poematum Libelli Tres. It was a collection of Dr. Peter Du Moulin's Latin Poems, written at various times of his life, and now arranged by him in three divisions, separately title-paged, entitled respectively "Hymns to the Apostles' Creed," "Groans of the Church" (Ecclesiæ Gemitus), and "Varieties." In the second division were reprinted the two Latin Poems that had originally formed part of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, with their full titles as at first: to wit, the "Eucharistic Ode," to the great Salmasius for his Defensio Regia, and the set of scurrilous Iambics "To the Bestial Blackguard John Milton, Parricide and Advocate of the Parricide." With reference to the last there are several explanations for the reader in Latin prose at different points in the volume. At one place the reader is assured that, though the Iambics against Milton, and some other things in the volume, may seem savage, zeal for Religion and the Church, in their hour of sore trial, had been a sufficient motive for writing them, and they must not be taken as indicating the private character of the author, as known well enough to his friends. At another place (pp. 141-2 of the volume) there is, by way of afterthought or extension, a larger and more express statement about the Iambics against Milton, which must here be translated in full: "Into what danger I was thrown," says Du Moulin, "by the first appearance of this Poem in the Clamor Regii Sanguinis would not seem to me worthy of public notice now, were it not that the miracle of divine protection by which I was kept safe is most worthy of the common admiration of the good and the praise of the Supreme Deliverer. I had sent my manuscript sheets to the great Salmasius, who entrusted them to the care of that most learned man, Alexander Morus. This Morus delivered them to the printer, and prefixed to them an Epistle to the King, in the Printer's name, exceedingly eloquent and full of good matter. When that care of Morus over the business of printing the book had become known to Milton through the spies of the Regicides in Holland, Milton held it as an ascertained fact that Morus was the author of the Clamor; whence that most virulent book of Milton's against Morus, entitled Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano. It had the effect, moreover, of making enemies for Morus in Holland; for at that time the English Tyrants were very much feared in foreign parts. Meanwhile I looked on in silence, and not without a soft chuckle, at seeing my bantling laid at another man's door, and the blind and furious Milton fighting and slashing the air, like the hoodwinked horse-combatants in the old circus, not knowing by whom he was struck and whom he struck in return. But Morus, unable to stand out against so much ill-will, began to cool in the King's cause, and gave Milton to know who the author of the Clamor really was (Clamoris authorem Miltono indicavit). For, in fact, in his Reply to Milton's attack he produced two witnesses, of the highest credit among the rebels, who might have well known the author, and could divulge him on being asked. Thus over me and my head there hung the most certain destruction. But that great Guardian of Justice, to whom I had willingly devoted both my labour and my life, wrought out my safety through Milton's own pride, as it is customary with His Wisdom to bring good out of evil, and light out of darkness. For Milton, who had gone full tilt at Morus with his canine eloquence, and who had made it almost the sole object of his Defensio Secunda to cut up the life and reputation of Morus, never could be brought to confess that he had been so grossly mistaken: fearing, I suppose, that the public would make fun of his blindness, and that grammar-school boys would compare him to that blind Catullus in Juvenal who, meaning to praise the fish presented to Domitian,

"And so, Milton persisting in his blundering charge against Morus for that dangerous service to the King, the other Rebels could not, without great damage to their good patron, proceed against any other than Morus as guilty of so great a crime. And, as Milton preferred my getting off scatheless to being found in a ridiculous position himself, I had this reward for my pains, that Milton, whom I had treated so roughly, turned out my patron and sedulous body-guard. Don't laugh, reader; but give best thanks, with me, to God, the most good, the most great, and the most wise, deliverer."

This final version of the story of Du Moulin (in 1670, remember) seems to have become current among those who, after the Restoration, retained any interest in the subject. Thus, Aubrey, in his notes for Milton's life, written about 1680, has a memorandum to this effect, giving "Mr. Abr. Hill" as his authority: "His [Milton's] sharp writing against Alexander More of Holland, upon a mistake, notwithstanding he [Morus] had given him [Milton], by the ambassador, all satisfaction to the contrary, viz. that the book called Clamor was writ by Peter Du Moulin. Well, that was all one [said Milton]; he having writ it [the Defensio Secunda], it should go into the world: one of them was as bad as the other.'"—Bentrovato; but there is at least one vital particular in which neither Du Moulin's amusing statement in 1670 nor Aubrey's subsequent anecdote seems to be consistent with the exact truth as already before us in the documents. The secret of the real authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor had been better and longer kept than Du Moulin's statement would lead us to suppose. Even Ulac in 1654, as we have seen, while declaring that Morus was not the author, could not tell who else he was. Morus himself did then know, having been admitted into the secret, probably from the first; and several others then knew, having been told in confidence by Salmasius, Morus, or Du Moulin. Charles II. himself seems to have been informed. But that Morus had refrained from divulging the secret generally, or communicating it in a precise manner to Milton, even at the moment when he was frantically trying to avert Milton's wrath and stop the publication of the Defensio Secunda, seems evident, and must go to his credit. In the remonstrance with Thurloe, in May 1654, through the Dutch ambassador Nieuport, intended to stop the publication when, it was just leaving the press, we hear only of the denial of Morus that he was the author—nothing of any information from him that Du Moulin was the real author; and, though Durie had about the same time informed Milton in a letter from the Hague that he had heard the book attributed, on private authority from Morus, to "a certain French minister," no name was given. Farther, in the Fides Publica, published some months afterwards, Morus was still almost chivalrously reticent. While declaring that the real author was "alive and well," and while describing him negatively so far as to say that he was not in Holland, nor within the circle of Morus's own acquaintances, he still avoids naming him, and only appeals to himself to come forward and own his performance. And so, as late as August 1655, when Milton replied to Morus in his Pro Se Defensio, the evidence still is that, though he had more correct ideas by that time as to the amount and nature of Morus's responsibility for the book, and was aware of some other author at the back of Morus, he had not yet ascertained who this other author was, and still thought that the defamatory Iambics against himself, as well as the Dedicatory Epistle to Charles II., might be Morus's own. It seems to me possible that not till after the Restoration did Milton know that the alleged "French Minister" at the back of Morus in the Regii Sanguinis Clamor was Dr. Peter Du Moulin, or at all events that not till then did he know that the defamatory Iambics, as well as the main text, were that gentleman's. The only person who could have put an end to the mystery completely was Du Moulin himself, and not till after the Restoration, as we have seen, was it convenient, or even safe, for Du Moulin to avow his handiwork.

Yet all the while, as Du Moulin himself hints in his confession of 1670, he had been, if we may so express it, close at Milton's elbow. In 1652, when the Regii Sanguinis Clamor appeared, Du Moulin, then fifty-two years of age, and knows as a semi-naturalized Frenchman, the brother of Professor Lewis Du Moulin of Oxford, had been going about in England as an ejected parson from Yorkshire, the very opposite of his brother in politics. He had necessarily known something of Milton already; and, indeed, in the book itself there is closer knowledge of Milton's position and antecedents than would have been easy for Salmasius, or Morus, or any other absolute foreigner. The author had evidently read Milton's Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and his Eikonoklastes, as well as his Defensio Prima; he was aware of the significance given to the first of these treatises by the coincidence of its date with the King's Trial, and could represent it as actually a cause of the Regicide; he had gone back also upon Milton's Divorce Pamphlets and Anti-Episcopal Pamphlets, and had collected hints to Milton's detriment out of the attacks made upon him by Bishop Hall and others during the Smectymnuan controversy. All this acquaintance with Milton, the phrasing being kept sufficiently indefinite, Du Moulin could show in the book without betraying himself. That, as he has told us, would have been his ruin. The book, though shorter than the Defensio Regia of Salmasius, was even a more impressive and successful vilification of the Commonwealth than that big performance; and not even to the son of the respected European theologian Molinaeus, and the brother of such a favourite of the Commonwealth as Dr. Lewis Du Moulin, could Parliament or the Council of State have shown mercy after such an offence. As for Milton, the attack on whom ran through the more general invective, not for "forty thousand brothers" would he have kept his hands off Dr. Peter had he known. Providentially, however, Dr. Peter remained incognito, and it was Morus that was murdered, Dr. Peter looking on and "softly chuckling." Rather, I should say, getting more and more alarmed, and almost wishing that the book had never been written, or at all events praying more and more earnestly that he might not be found out, and that Morus, murdered irretrievably at any rate, would take his murdering quietly and hold his tongue. For the Commonwealth had firmly established itself meanwhile, and had passed into the Protectorate; and all rational men in Europe had given up the cause of the Stuarts, and come to regard pamphlets in their behalf as so much waste paper; and was it not within the British Islands after all, ruled over though they were by Lord Protector Cromwell, that a poor French divine of talent, tied to England already by various connexions, had the best chances and outlooks for the future? So, it appears, Du Moulin had reasoned with himself, and so he had acted. "After Ireland was reduced by the Parliamentary forces," we are informed by Wood, "he lived there, some time at Lismore, Youghal, and Dublin, under the patronage of Richard, Earl of Cork. Afterward, going into England, he settled in Oxon (where he was tutor or governor to Charles, Viscount Dungarvan, and Mr. Richard Boyle his brother); lived there two or more years, and preached constantly for a considerable time in the church of St. Peter in the East."¹ His settlement at Oxford, near his brother Dr. Lewis, dates itself, as I calculate, about 1654; and it must have been chiefly thence, accordingly, that he had watched Milton's misdirected attentions to poor Morus, knowing himself to be "the actual turbot." There is proof, however, as we shall find, that he was, from that date onwards, a good deal in London, and, what is almost startlingly strange, in a select family society there which must have brought him into relations with Milton, and perhaps now and then into his company. Du Moulin could believe in 1670 that Milton even then knew his secret, and that he owed his escape to Milton's pride and unwillingness to retract his blunder about Morus. We have seen reason to doubt that; and, indeed, Milton, had, in his second Morus publication, put himself substantially right with the public about the extent of Morus's concern in the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, and had scarcely anything to retract. What he could do in addition was Du Moulin's danger. He could drag a new culprit to light and immolate a second victim. That he refrained may have been owing, as we have supposed most likely, to his continued ignorance that the Dr. Du Moulin now going about in Oxford and in London, so near himself, was the original and principal culprit; or, if he did have any suspicions of the fact, there may have been other reasons, in and after 1655, for a dignified silence.

In proceeding from the month of August 1655, when Milton published his Pro Se Defensio, to his life through the rest of Oliver's Protectorate, it is as if we were leaving a cluster of large islands that had detained us long by their size and by the storms on their coasts, and were sailing on into a tract of calmer sea, where the islands, though numerous, are but specks in comparison. The reason of this is that we are now out of the main entanglement of the Salmasius and Morus controversy. Milton had taken leave of that subject, and indeed of controversy altogether for a good while.

In the original memoirs of Milton due note is taken of this calm in his life after his second castigation of Morus. "Being now quiet from state adversaries and public contests," says Phillips, "he had leisure again for his own studies and private designs"; and Wood's phrase is all but identical: "About the time that he had finished these things, he had more leisure and time at command." Both add that, in this new leisure, he turned again at once to those three labours which had been occupying him, at intervals, for so many years, and which were, in fact, always in reserve as his favourite hack-employments when he had nothing else to do—his compilations for his intended Thesaurus Linguæ Latinæ, his History of Britain, and his Body of Biblical Theology. The mere mention of such works as again in progress in the house in Petty France in the third or fourth year of Milton's blindness confirms conclusively the other evidences that he had by this time overcome in a remarkable manner the worst difficulties of his condition. One sees him in his room, daily for hours together, with his readers and amanuenses, directing them to this or that book on the shelves, listening as they read the passages wanted, interrupting and requiring another book, listening again, interrupting again, and so at length dictating his notes, and giving cautions as to the keeping of them. His different sets of papers, with the volumes most in use, are familiar now even to his own touch in their places on the table or the floor; and, when his amanuenses are gone, he can sit on by himself, revising the day's work mentally, and projecting the sequel. And so from day to day, with the variation of his afternoon exercise in the garden, or the walk beyond it in some one's company into the park or farther, or an occasional message from Thurloe on office-business, or calls from friends singly or two or three together, and always, of course, at intervals through the day, the pleased contact of the blind hands with the stops of the organ.

Among the inmates of the house in Petty France in the latter part of 1655, besides the blind widower himself, were his three little orphan girls, the eldest, Anne, but nine years of age, the second, Mary, but seven, and the youngest, Deborah, only three. How they were tended no one knows; but one fancies them seeing little of their father, and left very much to the charge of servants. Two women-servants, with perhaps a man or boy to wait on Milton personally, may have completed the household, unless Milton's two nephews are to be reckoned as also belonging to it.

That the nephews still hovered about Milton, and resided with him occasionally, together or by turn, giving him their services as amanuenses, appears to be certain. Edward Phillips was now twenty-five years of age, and John Phillips twenty-four; but neither of them had taken to any profession, or had any other means of subsistence than private pedagogy, with such work for the booksellers as could be obtained by their own ability or through their uncle's interest. The younger, as we know, had made some name for himself by his Joannis Philippi, Angli, Responsio of 1652, written in behalf of his uncle, and under his uncle's superintendence; and it is probable that both the brothers had in the interval been doing odds and ends of literary work. There are verses by both among the commendatory poems prefixed to the first two parts of Henry Lawes's Ayres and Dialogues for one, two, or three Voices, published in 1653, as a sequel to that previous publication of 1648, entitled Choice Psalmes put into musick for three Voices, which had contained Milton's own sonnet to Lawes; and in the Divine Poems of Thomas Washbourne, a Gloucestershire clergyman, published in 1654, there are "Verses to his friend Thomas Washbourne" by Edward Phillips. In this latter year, I find, John Phillips must have been away for some time in Scotland, for in a letter to Thurloe dated "Wood Street, Compter, 11th April, 1654", the writer—no other than Milton's interesting friend Andrew Sandelands, now back from Scotland himself—mentions Phillips as there instead. Sandelands had not ceased, under the Protectorate, to try to make himself useful to the Government, and so get restored to his Rectory; and, as nothing had come of his grand proposal about the woods of Scotland, he had interested himself in a new business: viz. "the prosecution of that information concerning the Crown Lands in Scotland which his Highness and the late Council of State did refer to the Commissioners at Leith." Assuring Thurloe that he had been diligent in the affair, he says, "I have employed Mr. John Phillips, Mr. Milton's kinsman, to solicit the business, both with the Judges at Edinburgh and with the Commissioners at Leith; who by his last letter promiseth to give me a very good account very speedily." Whether this means that Sandelands had himself sent Phillips from London to Scotland on the business, or only that, knowing Phillips to be already in Scotland, he had put the business into his hands, in either case one discerns an attempt on Milton's part to find some public employment, other than clerkship under himself, for the unsteady Phillips. The attempt, however, must have failed; for in 1655 Phillips was back in London, still a Bohemian, and apparently in a mood that boded ill for his ever being anything else.¹

On the 17th of August, 1655, or just nine days after the publication of Milton's Pro Se Defensio, there appeared anonymously in London, in the form of a small quarto pamphlet of twenty-two pages, a poem in rhyming heroics, entitled A Satyr against Hypocrites. In evidence that it was the work of a scholar, there were two mottoes from Juvenal on the title-page, one of them the well known "Si natura negat, facit indignatio versum." Of the performance itself there can be no more exact description than that of Godwin. "It is certainly written," he says, "with considerable talent; and the scenes which the author brings before us are painted in a very lively manner. He describes successively a Sunday, as it appeared in the time of Cromwell, a christening, a Wednesday, which agreeably to the custom of that period was a weekly fast, and the profuse and extravagant supper with which, according to him, the fast-day concluded. The christening, the bringing home the child to its mother, who is still in confinement, and the talk of the gossips, have a considerable resemblance to the broadest manner of Chaucer." This last remark Godwin at once qualifies. Whereas in Chaucer, he says, we have sheer natural humour, with no ulterior end, the The Satyr against Hypocrites "is an undisguised attack upon the National Religion, upon everything that was then visible in this country and metropolis under the name of Religion." In other words, it is in a vein of anti-Puritanism, or even anti-Cromwellianism, quite as bitter as that of any of the contemporary Royalist writers, or as that of Butler and the post-Restoration wits, with a decided tendency also to indecency in ideas and expression, Of the more serious parts this is a specimen:—

That such "a smart thing," as Wood calls it, should have appeared in the middle of Cromwell's Protectorate, and that, its anti-Cromwellianism being implied in its general anti-Puritanism rather than explicitly avowed, it should have had a considerable circulation, need not surprise us. What is surprising is that the author should have been Milton's younger nephew, who had been brought up from his very childhood under his uncle's roof, and educated wholly and solely by his uncle's own care. It would add to the surprise if the thing had been actually written in Milton's house; and even for that there is, as we shall find, something like evidence. Altogether, I should say, Mr. John Phillips had, of late, got quite beyond his uncle's control, and had taken to courses of his own, not in very good company. Among new acquaintances he had forsworn his uncle's politics, and was no longer perfectly at ease with him.¹

During the whole time of Milton's residence in Petty France, his elder nephew tells us, "he was frequently visited by persons of quality, particularly my lady Ranelagh (whose son for some time he instructed), all learned foreigners of note (who could not part out of this city without giving a visit to a person so eminent), and lastly by particular friends that had a high esteem for him: viz. Mr. Andrew Marvell, young Lawrence (the son of him that was President of Oliver's Council), ... Mr. Marchamont Needham, the writer of Politicus, but above all Mr. Cyriack Skinner." To these may be added Hartlib, Durie (when he was not abroad), Henry Oldenburg, and others of the Hartlib-Durie connexion. Altogether, the group is an interesting one, and it is precisely in and about 1655 that we have the means of seeing all the individuals of it in closest proximity to Milton and to each other. As one's curiosity is keenest, at this point, about Lady Ranelagh, she may have the precedence.

On her own account she deserves it. We have already seen (ante Vol. III. 658-660) who she was,—by marriage the Viscountess Ranelagh, wife of Arthur Jones, second Viscount Ranelagh in the Irish Peerage, but by birth Catharine Boyle, daughter of the great Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, with the four surviving sons of that Earl for her brothers, and his five other surviving daughters for her sisters.—Of her four brothers, the eldest, Richard Boyle, second Earl of Cork, lived generally in Ireland, looking after his great estates there; and indeed it was in Ireland that most of the family had their chief properties. But the second brother, Roger Boyle, Lord Broghhill, already known to us for his services in Ireland under Cromwell, and for his conspicuous fidelity to Cromwell ever since, was now in Scotland, as President of Cromwell's Council there. He may be called the literary brother; for, though his chief activity hitherto had been in war and politics, he had found time to write and publish his long romance or novel called Parthenissa, and so to begin a literary reputation which was to be increased by poems, tragedies, comedies, &c., in no small profusion, in coming years. His age, at our present date, was about thirty-four. Two years younger was Francis Boyle, the third brother, afterwards Lord Shannon, and four years younger still was the philosophical and scientific brother, Mr. Boyle, or "the Honourable Mr. Robert Boyle." When we last saw this extraordinary young man, after his return from his travels, i.e. in 1645-48, he was in retirement at Stalbridge in Dorsetshire, absorbed in studies and in chemical experiments, but corresponding eagerly with Hartlib and others in London, and sometimes coming to town himself, when he would attend those meetings of the Invisible College, the germ of the future Royal Society, about the delights of which Hartlib was never tired of writing to him. This mode of life he had continued, with the interruption of a journey or two abroad, till 1652. "Nor am I here altogether idle," he says in one of his latest letters to Hartlib from Stalbridge; "for I can sometimes make a shift to snatch from the importunity of my affairs leisure to trace such plans, and frame such models, as, if my Irish fortune will afford me quarries and woods to draw competent materials from to construct after them, will fit me to build a pretty house in Athens, where I may live to Philosophy and Mr. Hartlib." The necessity of looking after the Irish fortune of which he here speaks had since then taken him to Ireland and kept him there for the greater part of two years. He found it, he says, "a barbarous country, where chemical spirits were so misunderstood, and chemical instruments so unprocurable, that it was hard to have any Hermetic thoughts in it;" and he had betaken himself to "anatomical dissections" as the only kind of scientific pastime that Irish conditions favoured. On returning to England, in 1654, he had settled in Oxford, to be in the society of Wilkins, Wallis, Goddard, Ward, Petty, Bathurst, Willis, and other kindred scientific spirits, most of them recently transferred from London to posts in the University, and so forming the Oxford offshoot of the Invisible College, as distinct from the London original. But still from Oxford, as formerly from Stalbridge, the young philosopher made occasional visits to London; and always, when there, he was to be found at the house of his sister, Lady Ranelagh.—What property belonged to Lady Ranelagh herself, or to her husband, lay also mainly in Ireland; but for many years, in consequence of the distracted state of that country, her residence had been in London. "In the Pall Mall, in the suburbs of Westminster," is the more exact designation. Her Irish property seems, for the present, to have yielded her but a dubious revenue; and though she had a Government pension of £4 a week on some account or other, she seems to have been dependent in some degree on subsidies from her wealthier relatives. It also appears, though hazily, that there was some deep-rooted disagreement between her and her husband, and that, if he was not generally away in Ireland, he was at least now seldom with her in London. She had her children with her, however. One of these was her only son, styled then simply Mr. Richard Jones, though modern custom would style him Lord Navan. In 1655 he was a boy of fifteen years of age, Lady Ranelagh herself being then just forty. The education of this boy, and of her two or three girls, was her main anxiety; but she took a deep interest as well in the affairs of all the members of the Boyle family, not one of whom would take any step of importance without consulting her. She corresponded with them all, but especially with Lord Broghill and the philosophical young Robert, both of them her juniors, and Robert peculiarly her protegé. In his letters to her, all written carefully and in a strain of stately and respectful affection, we see the most absolute confidence in her judgment; and it is from her letters to him, full of solicitude about his health, and of interest in his experiments and speculations, that we obtain perhaps the best idea of that combination of intellectual and moral excellencies to which her contemporaries felt they could not do justice except by calling her "the incomparable Lady Ranelagh." For that name, which was to be hers through an entire generation more, was already as common in talk about her beyond the circle of her own family as the affectionate one of "Sister Ranelagh" was within that circle. Partly it was because she was one of the best-educated women of her time, with the widest tastes and sympathies in matters literary and philosophical, and with much of that genius of the Boyles, though in feminine form, which was represented by Lord Broghill and Robert Boyle among her brothers. Just before our present date we find her taking lessons in Hebrew from a Scotch teacher of that language then in London, who afterwards dedicated his Gate to the Holy Tongue to her, with much respect for her "proficiency in so short a time," and "amidst so many abstractions as she was surrounded with." And so in things of greater grasp. In writing to her brother Robert her satisfaction with the new Experimental Philosophy which he and others are trying to institute can express itself as a belief that it will "help the considering part of mankind to a clearer prospect into this great frame of the visible world, and therein of the power and wisdom of its great Maker, than the rough draft wherein it has hitherto been represented in the ignorant and wholesale philosophy that has so long, by the power of an implicit faith in the doctrine of Aristotle and the Schools, gone current in the world has ever been able to assist them towards." But it was not merely by variety of intellectual culture that Lady Ranelagh was distinguished. One cannot read her letters without discerning in them a deep foundation of piety in the best sense, real wisdom, a serious determination with herself to make her own life as actively useful as possible, and a disposition always to relate herself to what was sterling around her. "Though some particular opinions might shut her up in a divided communion," said Burnet of her long afterwards, "yet her soul was never of a party. She divided her charities and friendships, her esteem as well as her bounty, with the truest regard to merit and her own obligations, without any difference made upon the account of opinion." This was true even at our present date, when she was an Oliverian in politics, like her brother Broghill, though perhaps more moderately so, and in religious matters what may be called a very liberal Puritan.¹

How long Lady Ranelagh had known Milton is uncertain; but, as her nephew, the young Earl of Barrimore, had been one of Milton's pupils in his house in the Barbican, and as we had express information that he had been sent there by his aunt, the acquaintance must have begun as early as 1646 or 1647. And now, it appears, through all the intermediate eight years of Milton's changes of residence and fortune, including his six in the Latin Secretaryship, the acquaintanceship has been kept up, and has been growing more intimate, till, in 1655, in his widowerhood and blindness in his house in Petty France, there is no one, and certainly no lady, that more frequently calls upon him, or whose voice, on the staircase, announcing who the visitor is, he is more pleased to hear. They were close neighbours, only St. James's Park between their houses; and his having taught her nephew, the young Earl of Barrimore, was not now the only link of that kind between themselves. She had not been satisfied till she had contrived that her own son should, to some extent, be Milton's pupil too. "My Lady Ranelagh, whose son for some time he instructed" are Phillips's words on this point; and, though we included Lady Ranelagh's son, Mr. Richard Jones, afterwards third Viscount and first Earl of Ranelagh, in our general enumeration of Milton's pupils, given under the year 1647, when the Barbican establishment was complete, it was with the intimation that this particular pupil, then but seven years old, could hardly have been one of the Barbican boys, but must have had the benefit of lessons from Milton in some exceptional way afterwards. The fact, on the likeliest construction of the evidence, seems to have been that Milton, to oblige Lady Ranelagh, had quite recently allowed the boy to come daily, or every other day, from his mother's house in Pall Mall to Petty France, to sit with him for an hour or two, and read Greek and Latin. To the end of his life Milton found this easy kind of pedagogy a pleasant amusement in his blindness, and made it indeed one of his devices for help to himself in his readings and references to books; and Lady Ranelagh's son may have been his first experiment in the method. That he retained an interest in this young Ranelagh of a semi-tutorial kind, as well as on his mother's account, the sequel will prove.

Strange things do happen in real life; and actually it was possible that, on the day of one of Lady Ranelagh's visits to Milton, she might have had a call in her own house from Dr. Peter Du Moulin. For her ladyship's circle of acquaintance did include this gentleman. He had been tutor in Ireland to her two nephews, Viscount Dungarvan and Mr. Richard Boyle, sons of her eldest brother, the Earl of Cork, and he had come with them, still in that capacity, to Oxford (ante p. 224), and so had been introduced into the whole Boyle connexion.¹ What amount of awkwardness there may have been in a possible meeting between Du Moulin and Milton themselves through this common social connexion of theirs in London has been already discussed. The Ranelagh circle, for the rest, included all those, or most of them, that were Milton's friends independently, and could converse about him in her ladyship's own spirit. The family of Lord President Lawrence, for example, were in high esteem with Lady Ranelagh; and the President's son, Mr. Henry Lawrence, Milton's young friend, and presumably one of his former pupils of the Barbican days, seems to have been about this time much in the company of her ladyship's nephew, the Earl of Barrimore. That young nobleman, we may mention, had become a married man, shortly after he had ceased to be Milton's pupil in the Barbican, and was now leading a gallant and rather idle life about London, but not quite astray from his aunt's society, or perhaps from Milton's either.² Then there were Hartlib, Durie, Haak, and other lights of the London branch of the Invisible College, friends of Robert Boyle for years past, and corresponding with him and the other luminaries of the Oxford colony of the College. Hartlib, in particular, who now lived at Charing Gross, and who had found a new theme of interest in the wonderful abilities and wonderful experiments of Mr. Clodius, a German chemist, who had recently become his son-in-law, was still in constant correspondence with Boyle, and was often at Lady Ranelagh's on some occasion or other.³ Nor must Milton's new German friend, Henry Oldenburg, the agent for Bremen, be forgotten. He also, as we shall find, had been drawn, in a special manner, into the Boyle and Ranelagh connexion, and was, in fact, entering, by means of this connexion, on that part of his interesting career for which he is remembered in the annals of English science. He was to marry Durie's only daughter, and be retained by that tie, as well as by others, in the Hartlib-Durie cluster of Milton's friends.

Marvell, Needham, and Cyriack Skinner are not certainly known to have been among Lady Ranelagh's acquaintances. Their visits to Milton, therefore, have to be imagined apart. Marvell's, if he were still domiciled at Eton, can have been but occasional, but must have been always welcome. Needham's cannot have been, as formerly, on business connected with the Mercurius Politicus; for Milton had ceased for some years to have anything to do with the editorship of that journal. The duty of licensing it and its weekly double, The Public Intelligencer, also edited by Needham and published by Newcome, was now performed regularly by the omnipotent Thurloe. Both journals would come to Milton's house, to be read to him; and Needham, in his visits, would bring other gossip of the town, and be altogether a very chatty companion. "Above all, Mr. Cyriack Skinner" is, however, Phillips's phrase in his enumeration of those of his uncle's friends who were most frequently with him about this time. The words imply that, since June 1654, when this old pupil of Milton's had again "got near" him (Vol. IV. pp. 621-623), his attention to Milton had been unremitting, so that Milton had come to depend upon it and to expect him almost daily. On that understanding it is that we may read most luminously four private Sonnets of Milton, all of the year 1655, two of them addressed to Cyriack Skinner, and one to young Lawrence. The remaining sonnet, standing first of the four in the printed editions, is addressed to no one in particular; but the four will be read best in connexion. In reading them Cyriack Skinner is to be pictured as about twenty-eight years of age, and Lawrence as a youth of two and twenty:—

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

It has been argued that the last two of these Sonnets must be out of their proper chronological places in the printed editions. They must have been written, it is said, before Milton lost his sight: for how are such invitations to mirth and festivity reconcileable with Milton's circumstances in the third or fourth year of his blindness? There is no mistake in the matter, however. In Milton's own second or 1673 edition of his Minor Poems the sonnets, in the order in which we have printed them,—with the exception of No. 2, which had then to be omitted on account of its political point,—come immediately after the sonnet on the Piedmontese Massacre; and there are other reasons of external evidence which assign Nos. 1, 3, and 4, distinctly to about the same date as No. 2, the opening—words of which date it near the middle of 1655. But, indeed, we should miss much of the biographic interest of the last two sonnets by detaching them from the two first. In No. 1 we have a plaintive soliloquy of Milton on his blind and disabled condition, ending with that beautiful expression of his resignation to God's will in which, under the image of the varieties of service that may be required by some great monarch, he contrasts his own stationariness and inactivity with the energy and bustle of so many of his contemporaries. In No. 2, addressed to Cyriack Skinner, he treats of the same topic, only reverting with pride, as he had done several times in prose, to the literary labour that had brought on his calamity. In both the intimation is that he has disciplined himself to live on as cheerfully as possible, taking daily duties, and little pleasures too, as they come. What more natural, therefore, than that, some little while after those two affecting sonnets on his blindness had been written, there should be two others, in which not a word should be said of his blindness, but young Lawrence and Cyriack Skinner should find themselves invited, in a more express manner than usual, to a day in Milton's company? For that is the proper construction of the Sonnets. They are cards of invitation to little parties, perhaps to one and the same little party, in Milton's house in the winter of 1655-6. It is dull, cold, weather; the Parks are wet, and the country-roads all mire; and for some days Milton has been baulked of his customary walk out of doors, tended by young Lawrence or Cyriack. To make amends, there shall be a little dinner in the warm room at home—"a neat repast" says Milton temptingly, adding "with wine," that there may be no doubt in that particular—to be followed by a long talk and some choice music. So young Lawrence is informed in the metrical missive to him; and the same day (unless, as we may hope, the little dinner became a periodical institution in Milton's house), Cyriack is told to come too. Altogether they are model cards of invitation.¹

We are now in the winter of 1655-6, and we have seen no Secretarial work from Milton since his letters and other documents in the business of the Piedmontese Protestants in May, June, and July, 1655. Officially, therefore, he had had another relapse into idleness. Not, however, into total idleness. "Scriptum Dom. Protectoris Reipublicæ Anglicæ, Scotiæ, Hiberniæ, &c., ex Consensa atque Sententia Concilii Sui Edictum, in quo Hujus Reipublicæ Causa contra Hispanos justa esse demonstratur, 1655" ("Manifesto of the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland. Ireland, &c., put forth by the consent and advice of his Council, in which the justice of the cause of this Commonwealth against the Spaniards is demonstrated, 1655"), is the title of a Latin document, of the length of about twenty such pages as the present, now always included in editions of Milton's prose-writings, on the probability, though not quite the certainty, that it was Milton's performance. If so, it was the third great document in the nature of a Declaration of War furnished by Milton for the Commonwealth, the two former having been his Latin version of the Declaration of the Causes of War against the Scots in June 1650 (IV. 228) and his similar version of the Declaration against the Dutch in July 1652 (IV. 482-483). The present manifesto was perhaps a more difficult document to draft than either of those had been, inasmuch as Cromwell had to justify in it his recent attack upon the Spanish possessions in the West Indies. Accordingly, the manifesto had been prepared with some pains. It passed the Council finally on the 26th of October, 1655, four days after the Spanish ambassador Cardenas had left England, and two days after the Treaty between Cromwell and France had been signed;¹ and the Latin copies of it were out in London on the 9th of November.² Unlike the previous Declarations against the Scots and the Dutch, which had been printed in several languages, it appears to have been printed in Latin only.

A general notion of the document will be obtained from, an extract or two in translation. The opening is as follows:—

"That the causes that induced us to our recent attack on certain Islands in the West Indies, now for some time past in the possession of the Spaniards, are just and in the highest degree reasonable, there is no one but will easily understand if only he will reflect in what manner that King and his subjects have always conducted themselves towards the English nation in that tract of America ... Whenever they have opportunity, though without the least reason of justice, and with no provocation of injury, they are incessantly killing, murdering, nay butchering in cold blood, our countrymen there, as they think fit, seizing their goods and fortunes, destroying their plantations and houses, capturing any of their vessels they may meet on those seas, and treating their crews as enemies and even pirates. For they call by that opprobrious name all of any nation, themselves alone excepted, who dare to navigate those waters. Nor do they profess to have any other or better right for this than reliance on some ridiculous donation of the Pope, and the fact that they were the first discoverers of some parts of that western region ... Certainly it would have been disgraceful and unworthy in us, in possession as we were, by God's bounty, of so many ships, furnished, equipped, and ready for every use of maritime warfare, to have chosen to let them rot idly at home, rather than employ them in those parts in avenging the blood of the English, so unjustly, so inhumanly, and so often, shed by the Spaniards there,—nay, the blood too of the Indians, inasmuch as God 'hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation' [Acts xvii. 26] ... Our purpose, however, is to show the right and equity of the transaction itself, rather than to state all our several reasons for it. And, that we may do this the more clearly, and explain general assertions by particulars, it will be proper to cast our eyes back a little into the past, and to run strictly over the transactions between the English and the Spaniards, observing the state of affairs on both sides, as far as mutual relations were concerned, from the time of the first discovery of the West Indies and of the Reformation of Religion. For those two great events, as they were nearly contemporary, occasioned everywhere in the world vast changes, but especially as between the English and the Spaniards; which two nations have from that time followed diverse and almost opposite methods and principles in the management of their affairs."

The manifesto, accordingly, then reviews the history of the relations between Spain and England from the time of Henry VIII., appending at last a long list of more recent outrages by the Spaniards on English ships and settlements in the West Indies, the dates all duly given, with the names of the ships and their captains, and the values of the cargoes. After which, returning to more general considerations, it discusses the two pretexts of the Spaniards for their sole sovereignty in the West Indies,—the Papal donation, and the right of first discovery. Both are dismissed as absurd; and the document ends with an appeal to the common interests of Protestantism throughout Europe. Even the recent massacre of the Vaudois Protestants is brought into the plea. Thus:—

"If meanwhile we suffer such grievous injuries to be done to our countrymen in the West Indies without any satisfaction or vengeance; if we consent to be all excluded from that so important part of the world; if we permit our bitter and inveterate enemy (especially now that peace has been made with the Dutch) to carry home unmolested those huge treasures from the West Indies, by which he can repair his present losses, and restore his affairs to such a condition that he shall be able again to betake himself to that deliberation of his in 1588 'whether it would be more prudent to begin with England for the recovery of the United Provinces of Holland, or to begin with them for the subjugation of England';—beyond a doubt he will find for himself not fewer, but even more reasons, why the beginning should now be made with England. And, should God permit him ever to carry out these designs, then we should have good grounds for expecting that on us first, but eventually on all Protestants wheresoever, there would be wreaked the residue of that most brutal massacre suffered lately by our brothers in the Alpine valleys: which massacre, if credit is to be given to the published complaints of those poor orthodox Christians, was originally schemed and appointed in the secret councils of the Spanish Court, through the agency of those paltry friars whom they call missionaries (per illos fraterculos missionarios quos vacant Hispanicæ aulæ consiliis intimis informata primitus ac designata erat)."

How far Milton's hand helped in this important document of the Protectorate may fairly be a question. The substance was probably drafted by the Council and Thurloe, and only handed to Milton for re-expression and translation; nay, it is possible that even in the work of translation, to save time, Milton and Meadows may have been partners. All in all, however, as the proofs are all but certain that Milton's hand was to some extent employed in the document, it may mark his return to ordinary official work in Oct.-Nov. 1655, after three months of renewed exemption from such work, following his batch of state-letters on the subject of the Massacre in Piedmont.¹

What adds to the probability that Cromwell's Manifesto against Spain, dated Oct. 26, 1655, and published Nov. 9, was partly of Milton's composition, is the fact, to which we have now to request attention, that he did about this time resume ordinary office-work to an extent beyond expectation. The following is a list of Letters to Foreign States and Princes written by him for Cromwell from Dec. 1655 to May 1656 inclusively. Two or three of them are important Cromwellian documents, and require elucidation:—

(LXV.) TO THE DOGE OF VENICE, Dec. 1655:—His Highness congratulates the Venetians upon their recent naval victory over the Turks, but brings to their notice the fact that among the ships they had taken in that victory there was an English one, called The Great Prince, belonging to William and Daniel Williams and Edward Beal, English merchants. She had been pressed by the Turks at Constantinople, and employed as a transport for Turkish soldiers and provisions to Crete. The crew had been helpless in the affair, and the owners blameless; and his Highness does not doubt that the Doge and Senate will immediately give him a token of their friendship by causing the ship to be restored.—The naval victory of the Venetians was, doubtless, that which Morus had celebrated In the Latin poem for which he received his gold chain (ante pp. 212-213).

(LXVI.) To LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, Dec. 1655:—Samuel Mico, William Cockain, George Poyner, and other English merchants have petitioned his Highness about a ship of theirs, called The Unicorn, which had been seized in the Mediterranean as long ago as 1650 by the Admiral and Vice-Admiral of the French fleet, with a cargo worth £34,000. The capture was originally unfair, as there was then peace between England and France, and express promises had been recently given by Cardinal Mazarin and the French Ambassador, M. de Bordeaux, that amends would be made as soon as the Treaty with France was complete. That happily being now the case, his Highness expects from his Majesty the indemnification of the said merchants as "the first-fruits of the renewed friendship and recently formed alliance."

(LXVII.) To LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, Jan. 1655-56:¹—His Highness has been informed of very extraordinary conduct on the part of the French Governor of Belleisle in the Bay of Biscay. On the 10th of December last, or thereabouts, he not only admitted into his port one Dillon, a piratic enemy of the English Commonwealth, and assisted him with supplies, but also prevented the recapture of a merchant ship from the said Dillon by Captain Robert Vessey of the Nightingale war-ship, and further secured Dillon's escape when Vessey had fought him and had him at his mercy. All this is, of course, utterly against the recent Treaty: and his Majesty will doubtless take due notice of the Governor's conduct and give satisfaction.

(LXVIII.) TO THE EVANGELICAL SWISS CANTONS, Jan. 1655-6. To understand this important letter it is necessary to remember that in 1653 there had broken out, for the second or third time, a Civil War of Religion among the Swiss. The Popish Cantons of Schwytz, Uri, Zug, Unterwalden, Luzern, &c., had quarrelled with the Protestant or Evangelical Cantons of Zurich, Basel, Schaffhausen, Bern, Glarus, Appenzell, &c.; and, as the Popish Cantons trusted to help from surrounding Catholic powers, the Confederation and Swiss Protestantism were in peril. It had been to watch events and proceedings in this struggle that Cromwell had sent into Switzerland, early in 1654, Mr. John Pell and Mr. John Durie, as his agents (ante p. 41). Durie had remained only about a year; but Pell was still there, reinforced now by Morland, who, after his special mission to the Duke of Savoy on the business of the Piedmontese Massacre of April 1655, had taken up his abode in Geneva to superintend the distributing of the money collected for the Piedmontese Protestants. That massacre had been ominous to the Swiss, and had complicated the strife between the Popish and the Evangelical Cantons. In the Popish Cantons, especially that of Schwytz, there had been severe persecutions of Protestant Dissenters; the union of these Cantons among themselves and their Anti-Protestant temper had become stronger; and altogether the news from Switzerland was bad. Application had been made by the Evangelical Cantons, through Pell, for help from Cromwell, similar application being made at the same time to the Dutch; and the following is Cromwell's answer:—"Both from your public acts transmitted to us by our Commissioners at Geneva [Pell and Morland], and from your letter dated at Zürich, Dec. 27, we understand abundantly in what condition your affairs are.—too abundantly, since it is none of the best. Wherein, though we grieve to find your peace at an end and so lasting a Confederacy ruptured, yet, as it appears that this has happened by no fault on your part, we trust that hence, from the very iniquity and obstinacy of your adversaries, there is again being furnished you only so much new occasion for displaying your courage and your long-known constancy in the Evangelical Faith. For what the Schwytz Cantoners are driving at in their resolution to make it a capital offence in any one to embrace our Religion, and who they are that have instigated them to proceedings of such a hostile spirit to the Orthodox Faith, no one can avoid knowing who has not yet forgotten that foul slaughter of our brethren in Piedmont. Wherefore, well-beloved friends, as you always have been, be still, by God's help, brave; do not yield your rights and federate privileges, nay, Liberty of Conscience and Religion itself, to be trampled on by worshippers of idols; and so prepare yourselves that you may not only appear the champions of your own liberty and safety, but may be able also to succour and stand by your neighbouring brethren by all means in your power, especially those most sorrow-stricken Piedmontese: firmly persuaded of this, that the intention was to have opened a passage to your persons over their bodies and deaths. For my part, be assured [the expression in the singular: de me scitote] that your safety and prosperity are no less my care and anxiety than if this fire had broken out in this our own Commonwealth, or than if those axes of the Schwytz Cantoners had been sharpened, and their swords drawn (as they veritably are, for all the Reformed are concerned), for our own necks. No sooner, therefore, have we been informed of the state of your affairs, and the obdurate temper of your enemies, than, taking counsel with some very honourable persons, and some ministers of the Church of highest esteem for their piety, on the subject of the assistance it might be possible to send you consistently with our own present requirements, we have come to those resolutions which our agent Pell will communicate to you. For the rest, we cease not to commend to the favour of Almighty God all your plans, and the protection of this most righteous cause of yours, whether in peace or in war."—From a private letter of Thurloe's to Pell, of the same date as this official one, we learn that the persons consulted by Cromwell on the occasion were the Committee for the Piedmontese Collection (ante pp. 40-41), his Highness regarding the Piedmontese business and the Swiss business as radically identical, and desiring to prepare the public mind for exertions, if necessary, in behalf of Swiss Protestantism as extraordinary as those that had been made for the Piedmontese. The conferences on the subject were very earnest, with the result that his Highness instructed Pell to offer the Cantons of Zürich and Bern a subsidy of £20,000, at the rate of £5000 a month, on security for repayment—the first £5000, however, to be sent immediately, without waiting for such security.¹

(LXIX.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, Feb. 1655-6:¹—This letter also is very important, though less in itself than in its circumstances; and it requires introduction.—Charles X., or Charles Gustavus (Karl Gustav), the successor of Queen Christina on the Swedish throne, was proving himself a man of energy. Chancellor Oxenstiern, so long the leading statesman of Sweden, had died in Aug. 1654, just after the accession of Charles; and under the new King, with the younger Oxenstiern for his Chancellor, Sweden had entered on a career of war, which was to continue through his whole reign, and the aim of which was little less than the extension of Sweden into an Empire across the Baltic. He had begun with Poland, between which and Sweden there was an old feud, and the King of which then was John Casimir. Other powers, however, had been immediately stirred by the war. Denmark, Russia, and the German empire generally, were interested in saving Poland, and therefore tended to an alliance against Karl Gustav; while, on the other hand, the Great Elector of Brandenburg, Friedrich-Wilhelm, found it convenient for the present, in the interests of his Prussian possessions, to be on the side of Sweden. Cromwell had not been likely at first to interfere directly in such a complicated continental quarrel; and, indeed, as we have seen from a previous letter of his to the Swedish King (ante p. 166), his first feeling on hearing of the Swedish movements on the Continent had been that of regret at the disturbance of the Peace of Westphalia. Still Sweden was a power which commanded Cromwell's respect. Nor was Charles X., on his side, less anxious to retain the friendship of the great English Protector. On succeeding Christina he had accepted and ratified her Treaty with Cromwell—"Whitlocke's Treaty," as it may be called; he had sent a Mr. PETER COYET to be Swedish Resident in London; and, after he had begun his Polish war, there was nothing he desired more than some yet closer partnership between himself and Cromwell, that might unite Sweden and England in a common European policy. Accordingly, in July 1655, Charles X. being then in camp in Poland, there had arrived in London a splendid Swedish embassy extraordinary, consisting of COUNT CHRISTIERN BUNDT, and other noblemen and gentlemen, with attendants, to the number of two hundred persons in all, "generally proper handsome men and fair-haired." Whitlocke, who was naturally called in by the Protector on this occasion, describes with unusual gusto the reception of the Embassy. There was a magnificent torchlight procession of coaches, most of them with six horses, to convey the Ambassador and his suite from Tower Wharf, where they landed, to Sir Abraham Williams's house in Westminster; there were feastings and other entertainments, at the Lord Protector's charge, for three days; and at length on the third day Count Bundt had audience in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, in the midst of a great assembly, with ladies in the galleries. It was difficult to say whether in this audience the Ambassador or the Protector acquitted himself best. "The Ambassador's people," says Whitlocke, "were all admitted into the room, and made a lane within the rails in the midst of the room. At the upper end, upon a footpace and carpet, stood the Protector, with a chair of state behind him, and divers of his Council and servants about him. The Master of the Ceremonies [still Sir Oliver Fleming] went before the Ambassador on the left side; the Ambassador, in the middle, betwixt me and Strickland, went up in the open lane of the room. As soon as they [the Ambassador and his immediate suite] came within the room, at the lower end of the lane, they put off their hats, the Ambassador a little while after the rest; and, when he was uncovered, the Protector also put off his hat, and answered the Ambassador's three salutations in his coming up to him; and on the foot-pace they saluted each other as friends usually do; and, when the Protector put on his hat, the Ambassador put on his as soon as the other. After a little pause, the Ambassador put off his hat, and began to speak, and then put it on again; and, whensoever in his speech he named the King his master, or Sweden, or the Protector, or England, he moved his hat: especially if he mentioned anything of God, or the good of Christendom, he put off his hat very low; and the Protector still answered him in the like postures of civility." The speech, which was in Swedish, but immediately translated into Latin by the Ambassador's secretary, was to the effect that the King of Sweden desired to propound to His Highness some matters for additional treaty. Cromwell's reply, delivered in English, which the Ambassador understood, was to the effect that he was very willing to enter into "a nearer and more strict alliance" with the King of Sweden and would nominate some persons to hear Count Bundt's proposals.—All this had been in the last days of July 1655; but, though there had been subsequent audiences of the Ambassador, and banquets given to him and the other chief Swedes by the Protector himself at Hampton Court, August had passed, and September, and October, and November, and still the actual Treaty had been avoided. Other things engrossed the Protector—the Treaty with France, the West-India Expedition, the beginning of the War with Spain, &c. But in Count Bundt there had been sent to Cromwell perhaps the most high-tempered ambassador he had ever seen. Immediately after the first audience, Dorset House, in Fleet Street, taken and furnished at the Ambassador's own expense, had become the head-quarters of the Embassy; and here, as month after month had passed without approach to real business, his impatience had flashed into fierceness. It broke out in his talk to Whitlocke, who took every opportunity of being with him, the rather because other "grandees" held aloof. "No Commissioners being yet come to the Swedish Ambassador," writes Whitlocke, under date Dec. 1655, "he grew into some high expressions of his sense of the neglect to his master by this delay; which I did endeavour to excuse, and acquainted the Protector with it, who thereupon promised to have it mended." In truth, the warlike Swedish King had become by this time a man whose embassy compelled attention. "Letters of the success of the Swedes in Poland and Lithuania," "Letters of the Swedes' victory against the Muscovites," "The Swedes had good success in Poland and Moscovia," "An Agreement made between the King of Sweden and the Elector of Brandenburg:" such had been pieces of foreign news recently coming in. Accordingly, in January 1655-6, Whitlocke, Fiennes, Strickland, and Sir Gilbert Pickering, had been empowered, on the Protector's part, to treat with Count Bundt, and the Treaty had begun.—There were preliminary difficulties, however. Cromwell wanted a Treaty that should include the Dutch and the King of Denmark, and be, in fact, a League of the chief Protestant Powers of Europe in behalf of general Protestant interests; Count Bundt, on the other hand, pressed that special League between England and Sweden which he had come to propound, arguing that, while it would be more advantageous to both countries in the meantime, it might be extended afterwards. For a while there was danger of wreck on this preliminary difference; and Cromwell even talked of transferring the Treaty to Stockholm and sending Whitlocke thither for the second time as Ambassador-Plenipotentiary—greatly to Whitlocke's horror, who had no desire for another such journey, and a good deal to Count Bundt's displeasure, who thought himself and his mission slighted. At length, the Ambassador having signified that he had received new instructions from his master, which would enable him to meet Cromwell's views in some points, he was allowed to have his own way in the main; and in February 1655-6 the Treaty was on foot, both in the Council meetings at Whitehall, and in meetings of Whitlocke and the other English Commissioners with the Ambassador at Dorset House. "A long debate touching levies of soldiers and hiring of ships in one another's dominions;" "long debates touching contraband goods, in which list were inserted by the Council corn, hemp, pitch, tar, money, and other things:" such are Whitlocke's descriptions of the Dorset House meetings. The Treaty, in fact, was partly commercial and partly political, pointing to new advantages for England, but also to new responsibilities, all round the Baltic and throughout Germany. In the debates no one more resolute, no one more clear-headed, no one more contemptuous when he pleased, than Count Bundt; and he had, it appears, a very able second in his subordinate, the Swedish Resident in ordinary, Mr. Coyet.—In the midst of these laborious debates over the Treaty news had arrived of the birth at Stockholm of a son and heir to the Swedish King. The birth of this Prince, afterwards Charles XI. of Sweden, occasioned a grand display of loyalty at the Swedish Embassy in London. "Feb. 20," writes Whitlocke, "the Swedish Ambassador kept a solemnity this evening for the birth of the young Prince of Sweden. All the glass of the windows of his house, which were very large, being new-built, were taken off, and instead thereof painted papers were fitted to the places, with the arms of Sweden upon them, and inscriptions in great letters testifying the rejoicing for the birth of the young Prince: on the inside of the papers in the rooms were set close to them a very great number of lighted candles, glittering through the painted papers: the arms and colours and writings were plainly to be discerned, and showed glorious, in the street: the like was in the staircase, which had the form of a tower. In the balconies on each side of the house were trumpets, which sounded often seven or eight of them, together. The company at supper were the Dutch Ambassador, the Portugal and Brandenburg Residents, Mynheer Coyet, Resident for Sweden, the Earls of Bedford and Devon, the Lords St. John, Ossory, Bruce, Ogilvie, and two or three other young lords, the Count of Holac (a German), the Lord George Fleetwood, and a great many knights and gentlemen, besides the Ambassador's company. It was a very great feast, of seven courses. The Swedish Ambassador was very courteous to me; but the Dutch and others were reserved towards me, and I as much to them."—Milton's Letter to the Swedish King in Cromwell's name relates itself to this last incident. The King had written specially to Cromwell announcing the happy news of the birth of his son and heir; and Cromwell replies in this fashion:—"As it is universally understood that all concerns of friends, whether adverse or prosperous, ought to be of mutual and common interest among them, the performance by your Majesty of the most agreeable duty of friendship, by vouchsafing to impart to us your joy by express letters from yourself, cannot but be extremely gratifying to us, in regard that it is a sign of singular and truly kingly civility in you, indisposed as you are to live merely for yourself, so to be indisposed even to keep a joy to yourself, without feeling that your friends and allies participate in the same. We duly rejoice, therefore, in the birth of a Prince, to be the son of so excellent a King, and the heir, we hope, of his father's valour and glory; and we congratulate you on the same happy coincidence of domestic good fortune and success in the field with which of old that King of renowned fortitude, Philip of Macedon, was congratulated—the birth of whose son Alexander and his conquest of the powerful nation of the Illyrians are said to have been simultaneous. For we make no question but the wresting of the Kingdom of Poland by your arms from the Papal Empire, as it were a horn from the head of the Beast, and your Peace made with the Duke of Brandenburg, to the great satisfaction of all the pious, though with growls from your adversaries, will be of very great consequence for the peace and profit of the Church. May God grant an end worthy of such signal beginnings; may He grant you a son like his father in virtue, piety, and achievements! All which we truly expect and heartily pray of God Almighty, already so propitious to your affairs,"—It is clear that Cromwell desired to be all the more polite to the Swedish monarch because of the long delay of the Treaty with Count Bundt. That Treaty was going on slowly; and we shall hear more of Milton in connexion with it.²

(LXX.) To FREDERICK III., KING OF DENMARK, Feb. 1655-6(?)¹:—John Freeman, Philip Travis, and other London merchants, have represented to his Highness that a ship of theirs was seized and detained by the Danish authorities in March 1653 because the Captain tried to slip past Elsinore without paying the toll. He was a Dutchman and had done this dishonestly on his own account, that he might pocket the money. There had been negotiations on the subject with the Danish Ambassador when there had been one in London, and redress had been promised; but, though the merchants had since sent an agent to Copenhagen, the only effect had been to add expense to their loss. By the Danish law it is the master of a ship that is punishable for the offence of evading toll, and the ship may be condemned, but not the goods. The offender in this case is now dead, but left a confession; the sum evaded was small; the cargo detained was worth £3000; will his Majesty see that the goods are restored, with reparation?

(LXXI.) TO THE STATES GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, April 1, 1656:—A complaint in behalf of Thomas Bussel, Richard Beare, and other English merchants. A ship of theirs, called The Edmund and John, on her voyage from Brazil to Lisbon, was seized long ago by a privateer of Flushing, commanded by a Lambert Bartelson. The ship itself and the personal property of the sailors had been restored; but not the goods of the merchants. The Judges in Holland had not done justice in their case; and now, after long litigation, an appeal is made to the chief authority.

(LXXII.) To Louis XIV. OF FRANCE, April 9, 1656 (?): This is the Credential Letter of LOCKHART, going on his embassy to the French King. As Lockhart was by far the most eminent of the Protector's envoys, it may be translated entire: "WILLIAM LOCKHART, to whom We have given this letter to be carried to your Majesty, is a Scot by nation, of an honourable house, beloved by us, known for his very great fidelity, valour, and integrity of character. He, that he may reside in France, and be with you, so as to be able assiduously to signify to you my singular respect for your Majesty, and my desire not only for the preservation of peace between us but also for the perpetuation of friendship, has received from us the amplest instructions. We request, therefore, that you will receive him kindly, and give him gracious audience as often as there may be occasion, and place absolutely the same trust in whatsoever may be said and settled by him in our name as if the same things had been said and settled by Ourselves in person. We shall hold them all as ratified. Meanwhile we pray all peace and prosperity for your Majesty and your kingdom."

(LXXIII.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, April 9, 1656 (?):—A Letter accompanying the above, and introducing LOCKHART specially to the Cardinal. It is also worth translating entire: "Seeing the affairs of France most happily administered by your counsels, and daily increasing in prosperity to such a degree that your high popularity and high authority in government are justly increased and enlarged accordingly, I have thought it fit, when sending an ambassador to your King with letters and instructions, to recommend him also most expressly to your Eminence: to wit, WILLIAM LOCKHART, a man of honourable family, closely related to us, and respected by us besides for his singular trustworthiness. Wherefore your Eminence may receive as our own whatsoever shall be communicated by him in our name, and may also freely commit and entrust to him in my confidence whatever you shall think fit to communicate in return. From him too you will learn more at large, what I now again profess, as more than once already, how high is my feeling of your great services to France, and what a well-wisher I am to your reputation and dignity."¹

(LXXIV.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, April 17, 1656:—Another extremely polite letter of the Protector to his Swedish Majesty, marking a farther stage in the proceedings of the Swedish Treaty.—That Treaty had been going on at Dorset House, the Swedish Ambassador and the Swedish Resident, continuing their colloquies with Whitlocke. Fiennes, and Strickland, about pitch, tar, hemp, mutual privileges of trade between England and Sweden, trade also with Prussia, Poland, and Russia, and all the other items of the Treaty, and the Ambassador always pushing on the business and chafing at the slow progress made. Again and again he had taken serious offence at something. Once it was because, waiting on the Protector at Whitehall, he had been kept half-an-hour before the Protector appeared. It was with difficulty he was prevented from going away without seeing his Highness; "he durst not for his head," he said, "admit of such dishonour to his master"; he had to be pacified by an apology. Then, when he did see the Protector, he had fresh cause for dissatisfaction. The propositions of the Treaty, as agreed upon so far between the Commissioners and the Ambassador, having been reported to the Council, and there having been a discussion on them there, Thurloe taking a chief part, new hesitations and difficulties had arisen, so that, when Cromwell conversed with Count Bundt, the Count was amazed to find his Highness cooler about the Treaty altogether than he had expected, and again harping on Protestant interests and the necessity of including the Dutch. The Count seems then to have broken bounds in his talk about the Protector to Whitlocke and others. In his own country, Sweden, he said, "when a man professed sincerity, they understood it to be plain and clear dealing"; if a man meant Yea he said Yea, and if he meant No he said No; but in England it seemed to be different. The explanations and soft words of Whitlocke and the rest having calmed him down again, the Treaty proceeded.—One of the most important meetings at Dorset House, by Whitlocke's account, was on the 8th of April. Mr. Jessop, as one of the Clerks of the Council, was there by appointment, and read "the new Articles in English as they were drawn up according to the last resolves of the Council." A long debate on the Articles followed. The Ambassador begged "to be excused if he should mistake anything of the sense of them, they being in English, which he could not so well understand as if they had been in Latin, which they must be put into in conclusion; but he did observe," &c. In fact, he restated his objections to making pitch, tar, hemp, flax, and sails, contraband, as they were the staple produce of Sweden. Lord Fiennes, in reply, premised: "that the Articles were brought in English for the saving of time, and they should be put in Latin when his Excellency should desire," and then discussed the main subject. Whitlocke followed, and the Ambassador again, and Fiennes again, all in English; and "Mynheer Coyet then spake in Latin, that pitch, tar, and hemp were not in their own nature, nor by the law of nations, esteemed contraband goods," &c. Strickland said a few words in reply, and then Whitlocke made a longer and more lawyer-like answer to Mynheer Coyet,—also, as he takes care to tell us, speaking in Latin. The discussion, which was long protracted, and extended to other topics, was closed by the Ambassador; who said "he desired a copy of these Articles now debated, and, if they pleased, that he might have it in Latin, which he would consider of." This was promised.—The meeting so described was nearly the last in which the Swedish Resident, M. Coyet, took part. He was on the eve of his departure from England, leaving his principal, Count Bundt, to finish the Treaty; and the present brief letter of Milton for Cromwell to his Swedish Majesty has reference to that fact. "Peter Julius Coyet," it begins, "having performed his mission to us, and so performed it that he ought not to be dismissed by us without the distinction of justly earned praise, is on the point of returning to your Majesty"; and in three sentences more very handsome testimony is borne to Coyet's ability and fidelity in the discharge of his duty, and his Swedish Majesty is again assured of the Protector's high regard for himself. "A constant course of victories against all enemies of the Church" is the Protector's wish for him.—Evidently, again, Cromwell, whatever might be the issue of the Treaty, was anxious to stand well with the Scandinavian; in corroboration of which we have this special paragraph in Whitlocke under date May 3: "This day the Protector gave the honour of knighthood to MYNHEER COYET, the King of Sweden's Resident here, who was now SIR PETER COYET, and gave him a fair jewel, with his Highness's picture, and a rich gold chain: it cost about £400." Coyet, therefore, had remained in London a fortnight after the date of Milton's letter.¹ Indeed he remained a few days longer, assisting in the Treaty to the last.

(LXXV.) To Louis XIV. OF FRANCE, May 14, 1656:¹—John Dethicke, Merchant, at present Lord Mayor of the City of London, and another merchant, named William Wakefield, have represented to his Highness that, as long ago as October 1649, a ship of theirs, called The Jonas of London, was taken at the mouth of the Thames by one White of Barking, acting under a commission from the son of the late King, and taken into Dunkirk, then governed for the French King by M. L'Estrades. They had applied for satisfaction at the time, but had received a harsh answer from the governor. Perhaps his French Majesty, on receipt of this letter, will direct justice to be done.

(LXXVI.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, May 1656:—Also about a ship, but this time for the recovery of insurance on one. She was The Good Hope of London, belonging to John Brown, Nicholas Williams, and others; she had been insured in Amsterdam; she had been taken by a ship of the Dutch East India Company on her way to the East Indies; the insurers had refused to pay the sum insured for; and for six years the poor owners had been hopelessly fighting the case in the Dutch courts. It is a case of real hardship.

(LXXVII.) TO THE SAME, May 1656:—Three times before letters have been written to the States-General in the interest of Thomas and William Lower, who had been left property in Holland by their father's will, but have been unjustly kept out of the same by powerful persons there, and tossed from law-court to law-court. This fourth application, it is hoped, may be more successful.

These thirteen State Letters, were there nothing else, would prove that in and after the winter of 1655-6 Milton's services were again in request for ordinary office-work. But they do not represent the whole of his renewed industry in that employment.

The tremendous Swedish ambassador, Count Bundt, whose energy in his master's interests had swept through Whitehall like a storm, searching out flaws, waking up Thurloe and the Council, and obliging Cromwell himself to be more circumspect, had made his influence felt, it seems, even in the house of the blind Secretary-Extraordinary. It was on the 8th of April, 1656, as we have just learnt from Whitlocke, that the Ambassador, in one of his conferences with Whitlocke, Fiennes, and Strickland, in Dorset House, M. Coyet also being present, had rather objected to the fact that the new Articles of the Treaty, drafted for his consideration by the Council, and brought to the conference by Mr. Jessop, had been brought in English, and not in Latin, as would have been business-like. Latin or English, as the Commissioners knew, it would have been all the same to Count Bundt, inasmuch as it was the matter of the Articles that displeased him; but they had promised that he should have them in Latin, and Whitlocke had judiciously taken the opportunity of speaking in Latin, in reply to some of M. Coyet's observations in the same tongue, as if to show the Ambassador that Latin was by no means so scarce a commodity as he seemed to suppose about the Protector's Court. There had been delay, however, in furnishing the promised Latin translation; and Count Bundt, glad of that new occasion for fault-finding, did not let it escape him. "The Swedish Ambassador," relates Whitlocke under date May 6, 1656, "again complained of the delays in his business, and that, when he had desired to have the Articles of this Treaty put into Latin, according to the custom in Treaties, it was fourteen days they made him stay for that translation, and sent it to one MR. MILTON, a blind man, to put them into Latin, who, he said, must use an amanuensis to read it to him, and that amanuensis might publish the matter of the Articles as he pleased; and that it seemed strange to him there should be none but a blind man capable of putting a few Articles into Latin: that the Chancellor [the late Oxenstiern] with his own hand penned the Articles made at Upsal [in Whitlocke's Treaty], and so he heard the Ambassador Whitlocke did for those on his part. The employment of MR. MILTON was excused to him, because several other servants of the Council, fit for that employment, were then absent."¹ If this is exact, Count Bundt, having been promised the Latin translation on the 8th of April, did not receive it till about the 22nd, and he had been nursing his wrath on the subject for a fortnight more before it exploded. In the delay itself he had certainly good ground for complaint. There was reason also in the complaint that important secret documents had gone to a blind man, who must employ an amanuensis, unless the Commissioners could have replied that the Protector and the Council had thoroughly seen to that matter, and that Milton's amanuensis on such occasions was always a sworn clerk from the Whitehall office. On the whole, the Commissioners seem to have taken more easily than became their places, or than the Protector would have liked, the insinuation of the imperious Count that the Protector's official retinue must be a ragged and undisciplined rout, not to be compared with Karl Gustav's. May not Whitlocke himself, however, thinking at that moment of his own Latin sufficiency, have sharpened the point of the insinuation?²

The excuse of the Commissioners to Count Bundt for having sent the Articles to Milton for translation was that "several other servants of the Council, fit for that employment, were then absent." They mast have referred, in particular, to Mr. Philip Meadows, the Latin Secretary in Ordinary. He had, we find, taken some part in the negotiation in its earlier stage;¹ but, before it had proceeded far, he had been selected for a service which took him out of England. In December 1655 it had been resolved to send a special agent to Portugal; and on the 19th of February, 1655-6, at a Council meeting at which Cromwell himself was present, Meadows, thought of from the first, was formally nominated as the fit person. It was a great promotion for Meadows; for, whereas his salary hitherto in the Latin Secretaryship had been £200 a year, his allowance for the Portuguese agency was to be £800 a year or more. On the 21st of February he had £300 advanced to him for his outfit; on the 28th he was voted £100, being for two quarters of his Secretarial salary due to him, with £50 more for the quarter then current but not completed; and within a few days afterwards he was on his way to Lisbon.² His departure, I should say—preceded perhaps by a week or two of cessation from office duty in preparation for it—was the real cause of the re-employment of Milton at this time in such routine work as we have seen him engaged in. All or most of his former letters for the Protector, it may have been noticed, e.g. those on the Piedmontese business, had been on important occasions, such as might justify resort to the Latin Secretary Extraordinary; but in the batch written since Dec. 1655, when Meadows's Portuguese mission had been resolved on, the ordinary and the extraordinary come together, and Milton, in writing letters about ships, as well as in translating draft articles, does work that would have been done by Meadows. And this arrangement, we may add, was to continue henceforth. For, despite the sneers of Count Bundt as to the poverty of the Protector's official staff, the Protector and Council, we shall find, were in no hurry to fill up the place left vacant by Meadows, but were quite satisfied that Mr. Milton should go on doing his best alone, with Thurloe to instruct him, and with the help of such underlings in Latin as Thurloe could put at his disposal. My belief is that Milton was pleased at this trust in his renewed ability for ordinary business.

Among the matters that occupied the attention of the Protector's Government about this time was the state of Popular Literature.

It is a fact, easily explained by the laws of human nature, and capable of being proved statistically, that since the strong government of Cromwell had come in, and something like calm and leisure had become possible, there had been a return of people's fancies to the lighter Muses. Nothing strikes one more, in turning over the Registers of the old London Book-trade, than the steady increase through the Protectorate of the proportion of books of secular and general interest to those of controversy and theology. One feels oneself still in the age of Puritanism, it is true, but as if past the densest and most stringent years of Puritanism and coming once more into a freer and merrier air. Poems, romances, books of humour, ballads and songs, reprints of Elizabethan tragedies and comedies, reprints of such pieces as Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, collections of facetious extracts from the wits and poets of the reigns of James and Charles I., are now not uncommon. Humphrey Moseley, Milton's publisher of 1645, faithful to his old trade-instinct for poetry and the finer literature generally, was still at the head of the publishers in that line; but Henry Herringman, who had published Lord Broghill's Parthenissa, had begun to rival Moseley, and there were other caterers of amusing and humorous books. Publishers imply authors; and so in the London of the Protectorate, apart from stray survivors from among the wits of King Charles's reign, there were men of a younger sort, bred amid the more recent Puritan conditions, but with literary zests that were Bohemian rather than Puritan, Among these, as we have hinted, and as we may now state more distinctly, were Milton's nephews, Edward and John Phillips.¹

Such Popular Literature as we have described had been left perfectly free. Indeed Censorship or Licensing of books generally, as distinct from newspapers, had all but ceased. Since Bradshaw's Press-Act of 1649, it had been rather rare for an author or bookseller to take the trouble, in the case of a non-political book, to procure the imprimatur of any official licenser in addition to the ordinary trade-registration; and in this, as an established custom, Cromwell's Government had acquiesced. Only in one particular, apart from politics, was there any disposition to interfere with the liberty of printing. This was where popular wit, humour, or poetry might pass into the ribald, profane, or indecent. Vigilance against open immorality had from the first appeared to Cromwell one of the chief duties of his Government; and he seems to have been unusually attentive to this duty in 1655-6, when he had just put the country under the military police of his Major-Generals and their subordinates. Then it is that we hear most of the suppressing of horse-races and the like, and that we are least surprised at encountering such a piece of information as that "players were taken in Newcastle and whipped for rogues." Now, though by this time there had already, by previous care on the part of Government, been a considerable cleansing of the Popular Literature of London, yet something or other in the state of the book-world about 1655-6 seems to have occasioned new and more special interference. I believe it to have been the increased frequency of ballads, facetiæ, and reprints, of higher literary character than the coarse pamphlets that had been suppressed, but objectionable on the same moral grounds. At all events, all but simultaneously with the Order of the Protector and his Council, of Sept. 5, 1655, concentrating the whole newspaper press in the hands of Needham and Thurloe (see ante pp. 51-52), there had been a new general Ordinance "against Scandalous Books and Pamphlets and for the Regulation of Printing" (Aug. 18, 1655), and it was not long before this Ordinance was put in operation in one or two cases of the kind indicated. Here are some extracts from the Order Books of the Council in April and May 1656:—

Tuesday, April 1656:—"That it be referred to the Earl of Mulgrave, Colonel Jones, and Lord Strickland, or any two of them, to examine the business touching the book entitled Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment, and to send for the author and printer, and report the same to the Council."

Friday, April 25, 1656:—Present: the Lord President Lawrence, the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Lambert, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Colonel Sydenham, Colonel Jones, the Lord Deputy of Ireland (Fleetwood), Lord Viscount Lisle, Mr. Rous, Major-General Skippon, and Lord Strickland. "Colonel Jones reports from the Committee of the Council to whom was referred the consideration of a book entitled Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment, that the said book contains in it much scandalous, lascivious, scurrilous, and profane matter. Ordered by his Highness the Lord Protector, by and with the advice of the Council, That the Lord Mayor of the City of London and the rest of the Committee for the regulation of Printing do cause all such [copies] of the said book as are not already seized to be forthwith seized on, wherever they shall be found, and cause the same, together with those already seized, to be delivered to the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex, who are to cause the same to be forthwith publicly burnt.—He further reports that Nathaniel Brookes, Stationer, at the Angel in Cornhill, caused the said book to be printed; that the printers thereof were John Grismond, living in Ivy Lane, and James Cotterill, living in Lambeth Hill; and that JOHN PHILLIPS, of Westminster, was the author of the Epistle Dedicatory. Ordered, That it be referred to Sir John Barkstead, Knight, Lieutenant of the Tower [and Major-General for Westminster and Middlesex], to cause the fines to be levied on the said persons according to law: [also] that the said persons do attend the Council on Tuesday next."—Milton's younger nephew, therefore, had been the editor of the offending volume. Of the eleven members of Council present when this fact came out, six were among those friends of Milton whom he had specially mentioned in his Defensio Secunda: viz. Fleetwood, Lambert, Lawrence, Pickering, Sydenham, and Strickland.

Saturday, April 26, 1656:—His Highness the Lord Protector approves of a great many recent Orders of Council presented to him all at once by Mr. Scobell, the Clerk of the Council. Among them is the order "for burning the book called Sportive Wit."

Friday, May 9, 1656:—His Highness the Lord Protector present in person, with Lord President Lawrence, Lambert, Fleetwood, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Strickland, Sydenham, and Jones:—Ordered, &c. "That the Lord Mayor of the City of London and the rest of the Committee for regulating Printing do cause all the books entitled Choice Droliery, Songs and Sonnets (being stuffed with profane and obscene matter, tending to the corruption of manners), to be seized wherever the same shall be found, and cause the same to be delivered to the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex, who are required to give order that the same be burnt."

Copies of the second of the two books thus condemned by Cromwell and his Council have, I believe, survived the burning, The publisher was a John Sweeting, who had duly registered the book on the 9th of February 1655-6, shortly after which date it had appeared with this full title, Choice Drollery, Songs and Sonnets: being a Collection of Divers Eminent Pieces of Poetry of several Eminent Authors, never before printed. I have not seen any copy of the other book bearing the precise title Sportive Wit, or the Muses' Merriment; but there are surviving copies of what may be the same with an alternative title, viz. Wit and Drollery: Jovial Poems, never before printed, by Sir J.M., Jas. S., Sir W.D., J.D., and other admirable wits. It had been out in London since. Jan. 18, 1655-6, had been registered on the 30th of that month, and is a respectably printed little book of 160 pages, with the motto "Ut nectar ingenium" under the title, and with, the imprint London. Printed for Nath. Brook, at the Angel in Cornhill, 1656. It contains moreover a Dedication "To the truly noble Edward Pepes, Esq.," and an Epistle "To the Courteous Reader," both signed with the initials J.P. Either, therefore, this is the same book as the Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment which, figures in the Orders of the Council, or John Phillips had edited simultaneously for Nathaniel Brooke (who had been the publisher of his Satyr against Hypocrites in the preceding August) two books of the same general character. Even on the latter supposition, Wit and Drollery, in the absence of Sportive Wit, may serve as a representative of that production of the same editor and the same publisher. The substance of Phillips's Epistle to the Reader in Wit and Drollery is as follows:—

"Reader,—To give thee a broadside of plain dealing, this Wit I present thee with is such as can only be in fashion, invented purposely to keep off the violent assaults of melancholy, assisted by the additional engines and weapons of sack and good company... What hath not been extant of Sir J. M., of Ja. S., of Sir W. D., of J. D., and other miraculous muses of the times, are here at thy service; and, as Webster, at the end of his play called The White Devil, subscribes that the action of Perkins crowned the whole play, so, when thou viewest the title, and readest the sign of 'Ben Jonson's Head, in the backside of the Exchange, and the Angel in Cornhill,' where they are sold, enquire who could better furnish thee with such sparkling copies of wit."

Among the included pieces are the younger Alexander Gill's lampoon on Ben Jonson for his Magnetic Lady and Ben Jonson's reply to the same (ante Vol. I. pp. 528-529); there are also several pieces of Suckling; but, for the rest, as the title-page bears, the volume consists chiefly of specimens of "Sir J. M." (Sir John Mennes), "Jas. S." (James Smith), "Sir W. D" (Sir William Davenant), and "J. D." (Dr. Donne), professing not to have been before in print. Whether this was so, and whether the pieces were all authentically by these poets, need not here concern us. It is enough to say that many of the pieces are decidedly, and some very grossly, of the improper kind. The reader will not expect to have this proved by extract; but of the more innocent "drollery" the following stanzas from a poem entitled "Nonsense" may be a sample:—

At worst, the volume was but a catchpenny collection of pieces of a kind of which there was plenty already dispersed in print under the names of the same authors, or of others as classical; and, if this was the same book as the Sportive Wit, or at all like that book, it may have been some mere accident of the moment that brought Government censure upon Phillips's volume, while others, as had, escaped. But how annoying the whole occurrence to Milton!¹

Less unsatisfactory to Milton, must hare been the literary appearances about the same time of his elder nephew, Edward Phillips. On the same day on which the stationer Nathaniel Brooke had registered Wit and Drollery edited by John Phillips, i.e. on Jan. 30, 1655-6, he had registered two tales or small novels called "The Illustrious Shepherdess" and "The Imperious Brother" both "written originally in Spanish and now Englished by Edward Phillips, Gent."¹ The first of these translations, both from the Spanish of Juan Perez de Montalvan (1602-1638), is dedicated by Phillips to the Marchioness of Dorchester, in what Godwin calls "an extraordinary style of fustian and bombast."² With the exception, of such affectation in style, which Phillips afterwards threw off, there is nothing ill to report of these early performances of his; and two translations from the Spanish were a creditable proof of accomplishment. But still more interesting was another literary performance of Edward Phillips's of the same date. This was his edition of the Poems of Drummond of Hawthornden.

Drummond had died in 1649, leaving in manuscript, at Hawthornden or in Edinburgh, not only his History of Scotland from 1423 to 1542, or through the Reigns of the Five Jameses, but also various other prose-writings, and a good deal of verse in addition to what he had published in his life-time. Drummond's son and heir being under age, the care of the MSS. had devolved chiefly on Drummond's brother-in-law, Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, a well-known Scottish judge, antiquary, and eccentric. Hitherto the troubles in Scotland had prevented the publication by Sir John of these remains of his celebrated relative, the only real Scottish poet of his generation. With the other Scottish dignitaries and officials who had resisted the English invasion, Sir John himself had been turned out of his public posts, heavily fined, and remitted into private life (Vol. IV. p. 561). Gradually, however, as Scotland had become accustomed to her union with England, things had come round again for the old ex-Judge, as well as for others. There is reason to believe that he was in London for some time in 1654-5, soliciting the Protector and the Council for favour in the matter of his fine, if not for restoration to one of his former offices, the Director of the Scottish Chancery. The case of Scot of Scotstarvet, at all events, was then under discussion in the Council, with the result that his fine, which had been originally £1500, but had been reduced to £500, was first reduced farther to £300, and next, apparently by Cromwell's own interposition, altogether "discharged and taken off, in consideration of the pains he hath taken and the service he hath done to the Commonwealth."¹ If Scotstarvet himself, then seventy years of age, had come to London on the business, he must have brought Drummond's MSS., or copies of them, with him. On the 16th of January 1854-5 there had been registered at Stationers' Hall, as forthcoming, Drummond's History of Scotland through the Reigns of the Five Jameses, with a selection of other prose-writings of his, chiefly of a political kind; and the volume did appear immediately, as a handsome small folio, bearing date 1655, and "printed by Henry Hills for Rich. Tomlins and himself." As Henry Hills was one of the printers to his Highness and the Council, the appearance from his press of a volume so full of conservative doctrine, inculcating so strongly the duty of submission to kingly prerogative and to constituted authority, may not be without significance. Another interesting circumstance about it is that it had appeared under the charge of a London editor, "Mr. Hall of Gray's Inn,"—i.e., unless I am mistaken, that Mr. John Hall whom we saw brought in, at £100 a year, to do pieces of literary hackwork for the Council under Milton as long ago as May 1649, and who had been in some such employment for the Council, at least occasionally, ever since (ante p. 177). Accidental or not, the fact that the editor of Drummond's Prose Writings, selected by Scotstarvet or by the printer Hills, should have been a servant of the Council of State, and a kind of underling of Milton in that capacity, is at least curious. But it becomes more curious when taken in connexion, with the fact that the editor of the companion volume, containing the first professedly complete edition of Drummond's Poems, was Milton's elder nephew. This volume, though announced by Mr. Hall in his Introduction to the Prose Volume, did not appear till about a year afterwards, and then as an octavo of 224 pages, with this title, "Poems by that most famous Wit, William Drummond of Hawthornden ... London, Printed for Rickard Tomlins, at the Sun and Bible, neare Pye-Corner, 1656." The volume is dedicated to Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, and includes about sixty small pieces of Drummond never before published, which Sir John had supplied from the Hawthornden MSS. Apart from revision of the proofs, Phillips's editorship consisted in a prose preface, signed "E.P.," and a set of commendatory verses, signed in full "Edward Phillips."

Drummond's Poetry had long been known to Milton in the fragmentary state in which alone it had been till then accessible, i.e. in the successive instalments of it published by Drummond himself in Edinburgh between 1613 and 1638. There might be proof also that Drummond was one of Milton's favourites, and regarded by him as one of the sweetest and truest poets that there had been in Great Britain through that age of miscellaneous metrical effort, much of it miscalled Poetry, which included the whole of the laureateship of Ben Jonson and the beginning of that of Davenant. Accordingly, it is not difficult to suppose that phrases about Drummond from Milton's own mouth were worked by Phillips into his prose preface to the London edition of the Poems of Drummond. There is a little hyperbolism in that preface; but the opening definition of Drummond's genius is exact, and the fitness of some of the phrases quite admirable. Thus:—

"To say that these Poems are the effects of a genius the most polite and verdant that ever the Scottish nation produced, although it he a commendation not to be rejected (for it is well known that that country hath afforded many rare and admirable wits), yet it is not the highest that may be given him; for, should I affirm that neither Tasso, nor Guarini, nor any of the most neat and refined spirits of Italy, nor even the choicest of our English Poets, can challenge to themselves any advantage above him, it could not be judged any attribute superior to what he deserves ... And, though he hath not had the good fortune to be so generally famed abroad as many others, perhaps of less esteem, yet this is a consideration that cannot diminish, but rather advance, his credit; for, by breaking forth of obscurity, he will attract the higher admiration, and, like the sun emerging from a cloud, appear at length with so much the more forcible rays..."

Milton's interesting German friend, Henry Oldenburg, had recently removed from London to Oxford. "In the beginning of this year," says Wood in his Fasti for 1656, "studied in Oxon, in the condition of a sojourner, HENRY OLDENBURG, who wrote himself sometimes GRUBENDOL [anagram of OLDENBUBG]; and in the month of June he was entered a, student by the name of 'Henricus Oldenburg, Bremensis, Nobilis Saxo': at which time he was tutor to a young Irish nobleman, called Henry O'Bryen [son of Henry, Earl of Thomond], then also a student there."¹ As we construe the case, Oldenburg, having been for some years in England as agent for Bremen, had begun to see that he was likely to remain in England permanently; and he had gone to Oxford for the benefit of a year of study there with readings in the Bodleian, and the society more especially of Robert Boyle, Wilkins, Wallis, Petty, and the rest of the Oxford colony or offshoot from the Invisible College of London. Desirable on its own account, this migration to Oxford had been made easier to him financially, if it had not been, occasioned, by the arrangement that he should be tutor there to the young Irish nobleman whom Wood names. But this young nobleman was not to be Oldenburg's only pupil at Oxford. Though Wood does not mention the fact, there went with him thither, or there speedily followed him thither, to be also under his charge, another young Irish nobleman. This was no other than, our own Richard Jones, son of Viscount and Lady Ranelagh, the Benjamin among Milton's pupils. Whatever had been the nature of Milton's recent instructions of the youth, they had now ceased, and Oldenburg was to be thenceforward the youth's more regular tutor. It does not seem to have been intended that young Ranelagh should formally enter a college, so as to receive the usual education at the University, but only that he should obtain some acquaintance with Oxford and its ways, and be for a while in the society of his uncle Boyle, and of his two cousins, Viscount Dungarvan and Mr. Richard Boyle. If these two sons of the Earl of Cork were still under the tutorship of Dr. Peter Du Moulin, Oldenburg and Jones at Oxford must have come necessarily also into constant intercourse with that very secret admirer of Milton. Oxford, we do gather, was still Du Moulin's head-quarters; but he was so much on the wing thence that Oldenburg might expect to succeed him in the tutorship of at least one of the young Boyles. Oldenburg was then thirty years of age, and young Ranelagh about sixteen.

Among four letters to young Jones or Ranelagh included in Milton's Latin Familiar Epistles one is undated. It is put second of the four in the printed collection, but it ought to have been put first. It is Milton's first letter to the youth in his new position at Oxford under Henry Oldenburg's charge. The date may be in or about May 1636:—

"To the Noble Youth, RICHARD JONES.

"I received your letter much after its date,—not till it had lain, I think, fifteen days, put away somewhere, at your mother's. Most gladly at last I recognised in it your continued affection for me and sense of gratitude. In truth my goodwill to you, and readiness to give you the most faithful admonitions, have never but justified, I hope, both your excellent mother's opinion of me and confidence in me, and your own disposition. There is, indeed, as you write, plenty of amenity and salubrity in the place where you now are; there are books enough for the needs of a University: if only the amenity of the spot contributed as much to the genius of the inhabitants as it does to pleasant living, nothing would seem wanting to the happiness of the place. The Library there, too, is splendidly rich; but, unless the minds of the students are made more instructed by means of it in the best kinds of study, you might more properly call it a book-warehouse than a Library. Most justly you acknowledge that to all these helps there must be added a spirit for learning and habits of industry. Take care, and steady care, that I may never have occasion to find you in a different state of mind; and this you will most easily avoid if you diligently obey the weighty and friendly precepts of the highly accomplished Henry Oldenburg beside you. Farewell, my well-beloved Richard; and allow me to exhort and incite you to virtue and piety, like another Timothy, by the example of that most exemplary woman, your mother.

"Westminster."

In this letter one observes the rather strict tone of Mentorship assumed towards young Ranelagh, as if Milton was aware of something in the youth, that needed checking, or as if Lady Ranelagh, with her motherly knowledge, had given Milton a hint that the strict tone with him would be generally the best. The tendency to a depreciation of Oxford, which is also visible in the letter, is no surprise from Milton.

The Anti-Oxonian feeling, if that is not too strong a name for it after all, is even more apparent in Milton's next letter, addressed not to young Ranelagh, but to his tutor. Young Ranelagh, it appears, not long after the receipt of the foregoing, had run up to London on a brief visit to his mother, and had brought Milton a letter from Oldenburg. To this Milton replies as follows:—

"To HENRY OLDENBURG, Agent for Bremen with the English Government.

"Your letter, brought by young Ranelagh, has found me rather busy; and so I am forced to be briefer than I should wish. You have certainly kept your departing promise of writing to me, and that with a punctuality surpassed. I believe, by no one hitherto in the payment of a debt. I congratulate you on your present retirement, to my loss though it be, since it gives pleasure to you; I congratulate you also on that happy state of mind which enables you so easily to set aside at once the ambition and the ease of city-life, and to lift your thoughts to higher matters of contemplation. What advantage that retirement affords, however, besides plenty of books, I know not; and those persons you have found there as fit associates in your studies I should suppose to be such rather from their own natural constitution than from the discipline of the place,—unless perchance, from missing you here, I do less justice to the place for keeping you away. Meanwhile you yourself rightly remark that there are too many there whose occupation it is to spoil divine and human things alike by their frivolous quibblings, that they may not seem to be doing absolutely nothing for those many endowments by which they are supported so much to the public detriment. All this you will understand better for yourself. Those ancient annals of the Chinese from the Flood downwards which you say are promised by the Jesuit Martini¹ are doubtless very eagerly expected on account of the novelty of the thing; but I do not see what authority or confirmation they can add to the Mosaic books. Our Cyriack, whom you bade me salute, returns the salutation. Farewell.

"Westminster: June 25, 1656."

That Count Bundt's remonstrance on the employment of a blind man in the Protector's diplomatic business had had no effect will be proved by the following list of state-letters written by Milton immediately after that remonstrance. We bring the list down to Sept. 1656, the month in which the Second Parliament of the Protectorate met:

(LXXVIII.) To KINGS AND FOREIGN STATES GENERALLY, June 1656:¹—This is a Passport by the Protector in favour of PETER GEORGE ROMSWINCKEL, Doctor of Laws. He had been born and bred in the Roman Catholic Church, and had held high offices in that Church at Cologne, but had become an ardent Protestant, and had been for some time in England. He was now on his way back to Germany, to assume the post of Councillor to the widowed Duchess of Symmeren (?); and the Protector desires all English officers, consuls, agents, &c., and also all foreign Governments, to give him free passage and handsome treatment. The tone of the letter is even haughtily Protestant. On the ground that "most people think in Religion with easy acquiescence in exactly what they have received from their forefathers, and not what they themselves, after imploring divine help, have learnt to be true by their own perception and knowledge," the case of Romswinckel is represented as peculiarly interesting; and such phrases as "the Papal superstition" are not spared. The passport was probably expected to come only into Protestant hands.

(LXXIX.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, June 1656:¹—A special recommendation of the above Romswinckel to the Swedish King, in the same high Protestant tone.

(LXXX.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, July 1656:—The Portuguese merchants of the Brazil Company owe certain English merchants a considerable sum of money on shipping accounts since 1649 and 1650. The English merchants, understanding that, by recent orders of his Portuguese Majesty, they are likely to lose the principal of the debt, and be put off with the bare interest, have applied to the Protector. He thinks it a hard case, and begs the King to let the debt be paid in full, principal and five years of interest.

(LXXXI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, July 1656:—After more than two months of farther debating between Count Bundt and the English Commissioners, in the course of which there had been frequent new displays of the Count's high temper, the Treaty between the Protector and Charles Gustavus had at last been happily finished on the 17th of July. On that day, Whitlocke tells as, he and Lords Fiennes and Strickland had their long final meeting over the Treaty with the Ambassador, ending; in formal signing and sealing on both sides. The main difficulty had been got over thus: "Concerning the carrying of pitch, tar, &c. to Spain, during our war with them [the Spaniards], there was a single Article, that the King of Sweden should be moved to give order for the prohibiting of it, and a kind of undertaking that it should be done." On the whole, the Protector was satisfied; and, as he had contracted some admiration and liking for the Ambassador, precisely on account of his unusual spirit and stubbornness, he marked the conclusion of the Treaty by special compliments and favours. "The Swedish Ambassador," says Whitlocke under date July 25, "having taken his leave of the Protector, received great civilities and respects from him, and afterwards dined with him at Hampton Court, and hunted with him. The Protector bestowed the dignity of knighthood upon one of his [the Ambassador's] gentlemen, Sir Gustavus Duval, the mareschal." The present Latin letter by Milton, accordingly, was the letter of honourable dismissal which the Swede was to take back to his master. Perhaps the Swede knew that even this was written by the Protector's blind Latinist.—"Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, Ireland, &c., to the most Serene Prince, Charles Gustavus, King of the Swedes, Goths, and Vandals, &c." is the heading of the letter; which proceeds thus:—"Most Serene King,—As we have justly a very high regard for the friendship of so great a Prince as your Majesty, one so famous for his achievements, so necessarily should that most illustrious Lord, CHRISTIERN BUNDT, your Ambassador Extraordinary, by whose endeavours a Treaty of the closest alliance has just been ratified between us, have been to as, were it but on this pre-eminent account, an object of favour and good report. We have accordingly judged it fit that he should be sent back to you after his most praiseworthy performance of this Embassy: but not without the highest acknowledgment at the same time of his other excellent merits, to the end that one who has been heretofore in esteem and honour with you may now feel that he is indebted to this our commendation for yet more abundant fruits of his assiduity and prudence. As for the transactions that yet remain, we have resolved shortly to send to your Majesty a special Embassy for those; and meanwhile may God preserve your Majesty safe, to be a pillar in His Church's defence and in the affairs of Sweden!—From our Palace of Westminster,—July 1656. Your Majesty's most affectionate, OLIVER, Protector &c."—Count Bundt, we may add, remained in England a month more after all, receiving farther attentions and entertainments; and not till Aug. 23 did he finally depart, taking with him not only Milton's Letter, but also a present from the Protector of £1200 worth of "white cloth" and a magnificent jewel. It was because this jewel could not be got ready at once that he had staid on; and it was worth waiting for. "The jewel was his Highness's picture in a case of gold, about the bigness of a five-shillings piece of silver, set round the case with sixteen fair diamonds, each diamond valued at £60: in all worth about £1000." The Count wore the jewel tied with a blue ribbon to his breast so long as he was in sight, barging down the Thames.¹

(LXXXII.) To the King of Portugal, Aug. 1656:—Mr. Philip Meadows has been in Lisbon since March, busy in the duties of his mission, and sending letters and reports home. There was still danger, however, in being an agent for the English Commonwealth in a Roman Catholic country; and Meadows had nearly shared the fate of Dorislaus and Ascham. On the 11th of May, as he was returning at night to his lodgings in Lisbon, carried in a litter, he was attacked by two horsemen, who "discharged two pistols into the litter and shot him through the left hand."¹ The wound was not serious; but the King of Portugal was naturally in great concern. He offered a large reward for the discovery of the criminals; and, in a Latin letter to Cromwell, dated "Alcantara, May 26, N.S.," he professed his desire to have them punished, whether they were English refugees or native Portuguese.² The present Letter by Milton is the Protector's reply. Though there has been some interval since the receipt of his Majesty's letter, his Highness has not yet heard that the criminals have been apprehended; and he insists that there shall be a vigorous prosecution of the search and recommends that it should be put into the hands of "some persons of honesty and sincerity, well-wishers to both nations."

(LXXXIII.) To Louis XIV. of France, Aug. 1656:—Again about a ship, but this time in a peremptory strain.—Richard Baker and Co. of London have complained to the Protector that a ship of theirs, called The Endeavour, William Jopp master, laden at Teneriffe with 300 pipes of rich Canary wine, had, in November last, been seized by four French privateer vessels under command of a Giles de la Roche, who had carried ship, cargo, and most of the crew away to the East Indies, after landing fourteen of the crew on the Guinea coast. For this daring act he had pleaded no excuse, except that his own fleet wanted provisions and that he believed the owners of his fleet would make good the loss. The Protector now demands that £16,000 be paid to Messrs. Baker and Co., and also that Giles de la Roche be punished. It concerns his French Majesty's honour to see to this, after that recent League with the English Commonwealth to which his royal oath is pledged. Otherwise all faith in Leagues will be at an end.

(LXXXIV.) TO CARDINAL, MAZARIN, Aug. 1656:—On the same subject as the last. While writing to the King about such an outrage, the Protector cannot refrain from imparting the matter also to his Eminence, as "the sole and only person whose singular prudence governs the most important affairs of the French and the chief business of the kingdom, with equal fidelity, counsel, and vigilance."

(LXXXV.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, Aug. 1656. A Letter of some length, and very important. "We doubt not," It begins, "but all will bear us this testimony—that no considerations have ever been stronger with us in contracting foreign alliances than, the duty of defending the Truth of Religion, and that we have never accounted anything more sacred than the union and reconciliation of those who are either the friends and defenders of Protestants, or at least not their enemies." With what grief, then, does his Highness hear of new dissensions breaking out among Protestant powers, and especially of signs of a rupture between the United Provinces and Sweden! Should there be war between those two great Protestant powers, how the common enemy will rejoice! "To the Spaniard the prospect has already brought such an access of spirit and confidence that he has not hesitated, through his Ambassador residing with you, to obtrude most audaciously his counsels upon you, and that about the chief concerns of your Republic: daring even partly to terrify you by throwing in threats of a renewal of war, partly to solicit you by setting forth a false show of expediency, to the end that, abandoning by his advice your old and most faithful friends, the French, the English, and the Swedes, you would be pleased to form a close alliance with your former enemy and tyrant, pacified now forsooth, and, what is most to be feared, quite fawning." The Protector earnestly adjures their High Mightinesses the States to be on their guard. "We are not ignorant that you, in your wisdom, often revolve in your minds the question of the present state of Europe in general, and especially the condition of the Protestants: how the Cantons of the Swiss following the orthodox faith are kept in suspense by the expectation from day to day of new commotions to be stirred up by their countrymen following the faith of the Pope, and this while they have hardly emerged from that war which, plainly on account of Religion, was blown and kindled by the Spaniard, who gave their enemies leaders and supplied the money; how for the inhabitants of the Alpine Valleys the designs of the Spaniards are again contriving the same slaughter and destruction which they most cruelly inflicted on them last year; how the German Protestants are most grievously troubled under the rule of the Kaiser, and retain their paternal homes with difficulty; how the King of Sweden, whom God, as we hope, has raised up as a valiant champion of the Orthodox Religion, is carrying on with the whole strength of his kingdom a doubtful and most severe war with the most powerful enemies of the Reformed Faith; how your own Provinces are threatened by the ominous league lately struck up among your Papist neighbours, of whom a Spaniard is the Prince; how we here, finally, are engaged in a war declared against the Spanish King." What an aggravation of this condition of things if there should be an actual conflict between their High Mightinesses and Sweden! Will not their High Mightinesses lay all this to heart, and come to a friendly arrangement with Charles Gustavus? The Protector hardly understands the causes of the disagreement; but, if he can be of any use between the two powers, he will spare no exertion. He is about to send an embassy to the Swedish King, and will convey to him also the sentiments of this letter.—That the preparation of this Letter to the States-General had been very careful appears from the following minute relating to it in the Council Order-Books for Tuesday Aug. 19:—"Mr. Secretary [Thurloe] reports the draft of a letter to the States-General of the United Provinces; which was read, and committed to Sir Charles Wolseley, with the assistance of the Secretary, to amend the same, in pursuance of the present debate, and report it again to the Council." Cromwell was himself present at this meeting of the Council, with Lawrence, Lambert, Wolseley, Strickland, Rous, Jones, Skippon, and Pickering. The draft read was most probably the English that was to be turned into Latin by Milton: but this does not preclude the idea that the document itself was substantially Milton's. Thurloe can hardly have drafted such a document. He may have gone to Milton first.

(LXXXVI.) To The King of Portugal, Aug. 1656:—The Protector has received his Portuguese Majesty's Ratification of the Peace negotiated in London by his Extraordinary Ambassador Count Sa in 1654, and also of the secret and preliminary articles of the same; and he has received letters from Philip Meadows, his agent at Lisbon, informing him that the counterpart Ratification on the English side had been duly delivered to his Majesty. There being now therefore a firm and settled Peace between the two nations, dating formally from June 1656, the Protector salutes his Majesty with all cordiality. As to his Majesty's letters of June 24th, mentioning some clauses of the League a slight alteration of which would be convenient for Portugal, the Protector is willing to have these carefully considered, but suggests that the whole Treaty may be perilled by tampering with any part of it.

(LXXXVII.) To THE COUNT OF ODEMIRA, Aug. 1656:—This is a letter to the Prime Minister of Portugal, to accompany the foregoing to the King. The Protector acknowledges the Count's zeal and diligence in promoting the Peace now concluded, and takes the opportunity of pressing upon him, rather than again upon the King, relentless inquiry into the late attempt to assassinate Meadows.

(LXXXVIII.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, Aug. 1656:—A letter very much in the strain of that just sent to the States-General of the United Provinces. Although, knowing what a champion the Protestant Faith has in his Swedish Majesty, the Protector cannot but rejoice in the news of his successes, there is one drawback. It is the accompanying news of the misunderstanding between his Majesty and the Dutch, now come to such a pass, he hears, that open conflict is likely, especially in the Baltic. The Protector is in the dark as to the causes, but ventures to press on his Majesty the views he had been pressing, but a few days ago, upon the Dutch. Let him think of the perils of Protestantism; let him think of Piedmont, of Austria, of Switzerland! "Who is ignorant that the counsels of the Spaniards and of the Roman Pontiff have, for two years past, filled all those places with conflagrations, slaughters, and troubles to the orthodox? If to these evils, so many already, there shall be added an outbreak of bad feeling among Protestant brethren themselves, and especially between two powers in whose valour, resources, and constancy lies the greatest safeguard of the Reformed Churches, so far as human means avail, the Reformed Religion itself must be endangered and brought to an extreme crisis. On the other hand, were all of the Protestant name to cultivate perpetual peace with that brotherly unanimity which becomes them, there will be no reason at all to be very much afraid of inconvenience to us from all that the arts or force of our enemies can do." O that his Majesty may see his way to a pacific settlement of his differences with the Dutch! The Protector will gladly do anything to secure that result.

(LXXXIX.) TO THE STATES OF HOLLAND, Sept. 1856:—William Cooper, a London minister, has represented to the Protector that his father-in-law, John le Maire of Amsterdam, invented, about thirty-three years ago, a certain device by which much revenue was brought in to the States of Holland, without any burden to the people. It was the settling of a certain small seal or stamp to be used in the Provinces ("id autem erat parvi sigilli in Provinciis constitutio"). For the working this invention he had taken into partnership one John van den Brook; and the States of Holland had promised the partners 3000 guilders yearly, equal to about £300 English, for the use of the thing. Not a farthing, however, had they ever received, though the States had benefited so much; and now, as they are both tired out, they have transferred their right to William Cooper, who means to prosecute the claim. The States are prayed to look into the matter, and to pay Cooper the promised annual pension, with arrears.

(XC.) To LOUIS XIV. of FRANCE, Sept. 1656:—His Highness is sorry to trouble his Majesty so often; but the grievances of English subjects must be attended to. Now a London merchant, called Robert Brown, who had bought 4000 hides, part of the cargo of a Dieppe ship, legally taken before the League between France and Britain, had sold about 200 of them to a currier in Dieppe, but; instead of receiving the money, had found it attached and stopped in his factor's hands. He could have no redress from the French court of law to which the suit had been referred; and the Protector now desires his Majesty to bring the matter before his own Council. If acts done before the League are to be called in question, Leagues will be meaningless; and it would be well to make an example or two of persons causing trouble of this kind.

Six of these thirteen State-Letters, it ought to be observed, belong to the single month of August 1656. They form Milton's largest contribution of work of this kind in any one month since the very beginning of his Secretaryship, with the exception of his burst of letters on the news of the Piedmontese Massacre in May 1655. Nor ought it to escape notice that some of the letters of Aug. 1656 are particularly important, and that two of them are manifestos of that passionate Protestantism of the Protector which had prompted his bold stand in the matter of the Piedmontese Persecution, and which had matured itself politically since then into the scheme of an express League or Union of all the Protestant Powers of Europe. It cannot be by mere accident that, when Cromwell wanted letters written in the highest strain of his most characteristic passion, they should have always been supplied by Milton. Whatever might be done by the office people that Thurloe had about him, it must have been understood that, for things of this sort, there was always to be recourse to the Latin Secretary Extraordinary.

A little item of recent Council-business of which Milton may have heard with some interest appears as follows in the Council Order-Books under date Aug. 7, 1656:—"Upon consideration of the humble petition of Peter Du Moulin, the son, Doctor of Divinity, and a certificate thereunto subscribed, being presented to his Highness, and by his Highness referred to the Council, Ordered ... That the said Dr. Peter Du Moulin, the petitioner, be permitted to exercise his ministerial abilities, the late Proclamation [of Nov. 24, 1655: see ante pp. 61-62], or any orders or instructions given to the Major-Generals and Commissioners in the several counties, notwithstanding." And so even the author of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor was now an indulged man, and might look forward to being a Vicar or a Rector, or something higher still, in Cromwell's Established Church. Can his secret have possibly been then known? Can the Council have known that the man who petitioned the Protector for indulgence, and to whom they now advised the Protector to grant it, was the author of the most vehement and bitter book that had ever been written on the Royalist side, the man who had abused the Commonwealth men as "robbers, traitors, parricides" and "plebeian scoundrels," who had written of Cromwell "Verily an egg is not liker an egg than Cromwell is like Mahomet," and who had capped all his other politenesses about Milton by calling him "more vile than Cromwell, damned than Ravaillac"?¹

SECTION III: FROM SEPTEMBER 1656 TO JUNE 1657, OR THROUGH THE FIRST SESSION OF OLIVER'S SECOND PARLIAMENT.

ANOTHER LETTER FROM MILTON TO MR. RICHARD JONES: DEPARTURE OF LADY RANELAGH FOR IRELAND: LETTER FROM MILTON TO PETER HEIMBACH: MILTON'S SECOND MARRIAGE: HIS SECOND WIFE, KATHARINE WOODCOCK: LETTER TO EMERIC BIGOT: MILTON'S LIBRARY AND THE BYZANTINE HISTORIANS: M. STOUPE: TEN MORE STATE-LETTERS BY MILTON FOR THE PROTECTOR (NOS. XCI.-C.): MORLAND, MEADOWS, DURIE, LOCKHART, AND OTHER DIPLOMATISTS OF THE PROTECTOR, BACK IN LONDON: MORE EMBASSIES AND DISPATCHES OVER LAND AND SEA: MILTON STANDING AND WAITING: HIS THOUGHTS ABOUT THE PROTECTORATE GENERALLY.

Not much altogether is recoverable of Milton's life through that section of the Protectorate which coincides with the first Session of the Second Parliament (Sept. 17, 1656-June 26, 1657). What is recoverable will connect itself with (1) Three Private Epistles of his dated in these nine months, and (2) The series of his State-letters in the same period. To Richard Jones, alias young Ranelagh, still at Oxford with Oldenburg, Milton, four days after the meeting of the Parliament, addressed another letter in that tone of Mentorship which he seems to have thought most suitable for the youth:—

"To the Noble youth, RICHARD JONES.

"Preparing again and again to reply to your last letter, I was first prevented, as you know, by some sudden pieces of business, of such a kind as are apt to be mine; then I heard you were off on an excursion to some places in your neighbourhood; and now your most excellent mother, on her way to Ireland—whose departure ought to be a matter of no ordinary regret to both of us (for to me also she has stood in the place of all kith and kin: nam et mihi omnium, necessitudinum loco fuit)—carries you this letter herself. That you feel assured of my affection for you, right and well; and I would have you feel daily more and more assured of it, the more of good disposition and of good use of your advantages you give me to see in you. Which result, by God's grace, I see you not only engage for personally, but, as if I had provoked you by a wager on the subject, give solemn pledge and put in bail that you will accomplish,—not refusing, as it were, to abide judgment, and to pay the penalty of failure if judgment should be given against you. I am truly delighted with this so good hope you have of yourself; which you cannot now be wanting to, without appearing at the same time not only to have been faithless to your own promises but also to have run away from your bail. As to what you write to the effect that you do not dislike Oxford, you adduce nothing to make me believe that you have got any good there or been made any wiser: you will have to shew me that by very different proofs. Victories of Princes, which you extol with praises, and matters of that sort in which force is of most avail, I would not have you admire too much, now that you are listening to Philosophers [Robert Boyle and his set?]. For what should be the great wonder if in the native land of wethers there are born strong horns, able to ram down most powerfully cities and towns? [Quid enim magnopere mirandum est si vervecum, in patria valida nascantur cornua quæ urbes et oppida arietare valentissime possint? Besides the pun, there is some geographical allusion, or allusion of military history, which it is difficult to make out.] Learn you, already from your early age, to weigh and discern great characters not by force and animal strength, but by justice and temperance. Farewell; and please to give best salutations in my name to the highly accomplished Henry Oldenburg, your chamber-fellow.

"Westminster: Sept. 21, 1656."

If the date of this letter, as published by Milton himself, is correct, it was written on a Sunday. Yet there can have been no particular haste; for Lady Ranelagh, who was to carry the letter to her son at Oxford on her way to Ireland, did not leave London for at least another fortnight. The pass for "Lady Catharine, Viscountess of Ranelagh, and her two daughters," with their servants, eight horses, &c., to go into Ireland, was granted, I find, by the Protector's Council, Oct. 7, 1656, on the motion of Lord President Lawrence.¹ She was to be away in Ireland for some years, occupied with family business of various kinds; and Milton was thinking with regret of the blank in his life that would be caused by her absence. For she had been to him, he says, "in the place of all kith and kin." How much that phrase involves! Though we have no letters from Milton to Lady Ranelagh, or from Lady Ranelagh to Milton, and though the fact of their friendship has been left by Milton unrecorded in that poetical form, whether of sonnet or of idyll, which has preserved for us so finely other incidents and intimacies of his life, this one phrase, duly interpreted, ought to make up for all. Perhaps in no part of any eminent man's life, especially if he is bereft domestically, is there wanting this benefit of some supreme womanly interest wakened in his behalf. Twice in Milton's life, so unfortunate domestically hitherto, we have seen something of the kind. Twelve years ago, in the old Aldersgate days of his desertion by his wife, it seemed to be the Lady Margaret Ley that was paramount. More recently, through the Westminster years of blindness and widowerhood, the real ministering angel, if there had been any such, had been that Lady Ranelagh whom English History remembers at any rate as the incomparable sister of Lord Broghill and of Robert Boyle. Let there be restored to her henceforth the honour also of having been Milton's friend.

The next extant Epistle of Milton, written when the Second Parliament of the Protectorate had sat nearly two months, is also quite of a private nature. Of the German or Dutch youth to whom it is addressed, Peter Heimbach, I have ascertained only that he had been residing for some time in London, perhaps originally brought thither in the train of some embassy or agency, and that he had recently published in London a Latin letter of eulogy on Cromwell,¹ extremely enthusiastic and somewhat juvenile. Milton's letter suggests farther that he had been much about Milton, as amanuensis or what not, but was now on a visit to Holland.

"To the very accomplished youth, PETER HEIMBACH.

"Most amply, my Heimbach, have you fulfilled your promises and all the other expectations one would have of your goodness, with the exception, that I have still to long for your return. You promised that it would be within two months at farthest; and now, unless my desire to have you back makes me misreckon the time, you have been absent nearly three. In the matter of the Atlas you have abundantly performed all I requested of you; which was not that you should procure me one, but only that you would find out the lowest price of the book. You write that they ask 130 florins; it must be the Mauritanian mountain Atlas, I think, and not a book, that you tell me is to be bought at so huge a price. Such is now the luxury of Typographers in printing books that the furnishing of a library seems to have become as costly as the furnishing of a villa. Since to me at least, on account of my blindness, painted maps can hardly be of use, vainly surveying as I do with blind eyes the actual globe of the earth, I am afraid that the bigger the price at which I should buy that book the greater would seem to be my grief over my deprivation. Be good enough, pray, to take so much farther trouble for me as to be able to inform me, when you return, how many volumes there are in the complete work, and which of the two issues, that of Blaeu or that of Jansen, is the larger and more correct. This I hope to hear from yourself personally, on your speedy return, rather than by another letter. Meanwhile farewell, and come back to us as soon as you can.

"Westminster: Nov. 8, 1656."

One guesses from this letter that Heimbach was then in Amsterdam. It was there, at all events, that the two Atlases about which Milton enquired had been published or were in course of publication. That of John Jansen, called Novus Atlas, when completed in 1658, consisted of six folio volumes; the yet more magnificent Geographia Blaeviana, or Atlas of the geographer and printer John Blaeu, was not perfect till 1662, and then consisted of eleven volumes of very large folio. But various Atlases, or collections of maps in anticipation of the complete Atlas, had been on sale by Blaeu for ten or twelve years previously: e.g., from his own trade-catalogue in 1650, "Atlas, four volumes illuminated, bound after the best fashion, will cost 150 guldens," and "Belgia Foederata and Belgia Regia, two vols., white [uncoloured], 70 guldens, or illuminated 140 guldens." The gulden or Dutch florin was equal to 1s. 8d. English, so that the price of Blaeu's four volume Atlas of 1650 was £12 10s. To Milton in 1656 the price of the same, or of whatever other Atlas he had in view, was to be twenty florins less, i.e. about £11. It was much as if one were asked to give £38 for a book now; and no wonder that Milton hesitated.¹

Just four days after the date of the letter to Heimbach, i.e. on the 12th of November, 1656, there took place an event of no less consequence to the household in Petty France than Milton's second marriage, after four years of widowerhood. It was performed, as the Marriage Act then in force required, not by a clergyman, but by a justice of the peace, and is registered thus in the books of the parish of St. Mary Aldermanbury, London, under the year 1656: "The agreement and intention of marriage between JOHN MILTON, Esq., of the Parish of Margaret's in Westminster, and MRS. KATHARINE WOODCOCKE, of the Parish of Mary's in Aldermanbury, was published three several market-days in three several weeks, viz. on Wednesday the 22nd and Monday the 27th of October, and on Monday the 3rd of November; and, no exceptions being made against their intention, they were, according to the Act of Parliament, married the 12th of November by Sir John Dethicke, Knight and Alderman, one of the Justices of Peace for this City of London."¹ Of this KATHARINE WOODCOCK (the "Mrs." before whose name does not mean that she had been married before) we learn farther, from Phillips, that she was "the daughter of Captain Woodcock of Hackney"; and that is nearly all that we know of her family. A Captain John Woodcock, who is found giving a receipt for £13 8s. to the Treasurer-at-War on Oct. 6, 1653, on the disbanding of his troop, may possibly have been her father, as no other Captain Woodcock of the time has been discovered.² There is reason to believe that Milton had not been acquainted with the lady before his blindness, and so that, literally, he had never seen her. Not the less, for the brief space of her life allotted to their union, she was to be a light and blessing in his dark household.

The household better ordered; the three young orphan girls of the first marriage better tended; more of lightsomeness and cheerfulness for Milton himself among his books; continuance, under new management, of the little hospitalities to the learned foreigners who occasionally call, and to the habitual visitors: so, we are to imagine, pass away at home those winter months of 1656-7 during which the great topics of interest outside were the war with Spain, Sindercombe's plot against the Protector's life, the debates in Parliament over the case of James Nayler, and the proceedings there for amending the system of the Protectorate, whether by converting it into Kingship or otherwise. Not, however, till the last day of March 1656-7, or three months and a half after the marriage with Katharine Woodcock, have we another distinct glimpse of Milton in his private life. On that day he dictated, in Latin, the following letter:—

"To the most accomplished EMERIC BIGOT.

"That on your coming into England I had the honour of being thought by you more worth visiting and saluting than others was truly and naturally gratifying to me; and that now you renew your salutation by letter, even at such an interval, is somewhat more gratifying still. For in the first instance you might have come to me perhaps on the inducement of other people's opinion; but you could hardly return to me by letter save at the prompting of your own judgment, or, at least, good will. On this surely I have ground to congratulate myself. For many have made a figure by their published writings whose living voice and daily conversation have presented next to nothing that was not low and common: if, then, I can attain the distinction of seeming myself equal in mind and manners to any writings of mine that have been tolerably to the purpose, there will be the double effect that I shall so have added weight personally to my writings, and shall receive back by way of reflection from them credit, how small soever it may be, yet greater in proportion. For, in that case, whatever is right and laudable in them, that same I shall seem not more to have derived from authors of high excellence than to have fetched forth pure and sincere from the inmost feelings of my own mind and soul. I am glad, therefore, to know that you are assured of my tranquillity of spirit in this great affliction of loss of sight, and also of the pleasure I have in being civil and attentive in the reception of visitors from abroad. Why, in truth, should I not bear gently the deprivation of sight, when I may hope that it is not so much lost as revoked and retracted inwards, for the sharpening rather than the blunting of my mental edge? Whence it is that I neither think of books with anger, nor quite intermit the study of them, grievously though they have mulcted me,—were it only that I am instructed against such moroseness by the example of King Telephus of the Mysians, who refused not to be cured in the end by the weapon that had wounded him. As to that book you possess, On the Manner of Holding Parliaments, I have caused the marked passages of it to be either amended, or, if they were doubtful, confirmed, by reference to the MS. in the possession of the illustrious Lord Bradshaw, and also to the Cotton MS., as you will see from your little paper returned herewith. In compliance with your desire to know whether also the autograph of this book is extant in the Tower of London, I sent one to inquire of the Herald who has the custody of the Deeds, and with whom I am on familiar terms. His answer is that no copy of that book is extant among those records. For the help you offer me in return in procuring literary material I am very much obliged. I want, of the Byzantine Historians, Theophanis Chronographia (folio: Greek and Latin), Constantini Manassis Breviarium Historicum, with Codini Excerpta de Antiquitatibus Constantinopolitanis (folio: Greek and Latin), Anastasii Bibliothecarii Historia et Vitæ Romanorum Pontificum (folio); to which be so good as to add, from the same press, Michael Glycas, and Joannes Cinnamus, the continuator of Anna Comnena, if they are now out. I do not ask you to get them as cheap as you can, both because there is no need to put a very frugal man like yourself in mind of that, and because they tell me the price of these books is fixed and known to all. MR. STOUPE has undertaken the charge of the money for you in cash, and also to see about the most convenient mode of carriage. That you may have all you wish, and all you aspire after, is my sincere desire. Farewell.

"Westminster: March 24, 1656-7."

Of the French scholar to whom this letter was addressed there is an excellent notice in Bayle. "EMERIC BIGOT," says Bayle, "one of the most learned and most honest men of the seventeenth century, was a native of Rouen, and of a family very distinguished in the legal profession. He was born in 1626. The love of letters drew him aside from public employments; his only occupation was in books and the acquisition of knowledge; he augmented marvellously the library which had been left him by his father. Once every week there was a meeting at his house for talk on matters of erudition. He kept up literary intercourse with a great number of learned men; his advices and information were useful to many authors; and he laboured all he could for the good and advantage of the Republic of Letters. He published but one book [a Life of St. Chrysostom]; but apparently he would have published others had he lived to complete them. M. Ménage in France, and Nicolas Heinsius among foreigners, were his two most intimate friends. He had none of the faults that accompany learning: he was modest and an enemy to disputes. In general, one may say he was the best heart in the world. He died at Rouen Dec. 18, 1689, aged about sixty-four years." How exactly this description of Bigot for his whole life tallies with the notion we should have of him, at the age of thirty-two, from Milton's letter! He had been in England some time ago, it appears, and had there, like other foreigners, paid his respects to Milton. And now, either from Rouen, or more probably from Paris, he had reopened the communication, quite in the style of a man such as Bayle paints him. The immediate object of his letter seems to have been to ask Milton to have some doubtful passages in a book "On the Manner of Holding Parliaments" compared with MS. authorities in London; but he had taken occasion to express also his vivid recollection of Milton, his interest in Milton's present condition, and his desire to be of use to him in the quest or purchase of foreign books.

Milton, who had evidently performed very punctually Bigot's immediate commission,¹ did, it will be observed, send him a commission in return. It deserves a little explanation:—There was then in course of publication at Paris, under the auspices and at the expense of Louis XIV., the first splendid collective edition of the Byzantine Historians, i.e. of that series of Historians, Chroniclers, Antiquarians, and Memoir-writers of the Eastern or Greek Empire from the 6th century to the 15th in whose works lies imbedded all our information as to the History of the East through the Middle Ages. The publication, which was to attain to the vast size of thirty-six volumes folio, containing the Greek Texts with Latin Translations and Notes, was not to be completed till 1711; but it had been begun in 1645. Now, in Milton's library, it appears, the Byzantine Historians were already pretty well represented, either in the shape of the earlier volumes of this Parisian collection, or in that of separate prior editions of particular writers. There were some gaps, however, which he wanted to fill up. He wanted the Chronographia of Theophanes Isaacius, a chronicle of events from A.D. 277 to A.D. 811; also the Brevarium Historicum of Constantine Manasses, a metrical chronicle of the world from the Creation to A.D. 1081; also the book of Georgius Codinus, the compiler of the fifteenth century, entitled Excerpta de Originibus Constantinopolitanis; also that of Anastasius Bibliothecarius on the Lives of the Popes. The Parisian editions of these, or of the first three, were now out (all in 1655). At the same time there might be sent him the Parisian editions, if they had appeared, of the Annals of Michael Glycas, bringing the History of the World from the Creation to A.D. 1118, and the valuable Lives of John and Manuel Comnenus by Joannes Cinnamus, the imperial notary of the 12th century.—As the Parisian edition of Michael Glycas (by Labbe) did not appear till 1660, and that of Joannes Cinnamus (by Du Cange) not till 1670, Bigot can have forwarded to Milton only the first-mentioned Byzantine books. One may imagine the arrival of the parcel of learned folios in the neat new tenement which Milton inhabited in Petty France; and it gives one a stronger idea than we have yet had of Milton's passion for books, and of his indomitable perseverance and ingenuity in the use of them in his blind state, that he should have taken such pains, at our present date, to supply himself with copies of some of the rare Byzantine Historians. Connecting this purchase, through Bigot, with the recent inquiry, through Heimbach, about the price of Blaeu's great Atlas, may we not also discern some increased attention to the furnishing of the house occasioned by the second marriage?

The Herald in charge of the Records in the Tower, mentioned in Milton's letter as one of his acquaintances, was, I believe, WILLIAM RYLEY, Norroy King-at-arms. He had been Clerk of the Records, under the Master of the Rolls, for some years, and was to continue in the post till after the Restoration. A more interesting person was the "MR. STOUPE" who took charge of the cash to Bigot for the Byzantine volumes, and was to see to their conveyance to London.—He was no common character. A Grison by birth, he had settled in London as minister of the French Church in the Savoy; but he had left that post to be one of Thurloe's travelling-agents and political intelligencers or spies. For two years or more he had been employed in secret missions to France and Switzerland, chiefly for negotiation in the interests of the continental Protestants; and his success in this kind of employment, often at considerable personal risk, and his talent for collecting information in London itself by means of correspondence from abroad, had gradually recommended him to the Protector. Burnet, who knew him well in after life, when he was more a frantic Deist than either a Protestant or "Christian," had more anecdotes about Cromwell from him than from any other man. The anecdotes he liked best to tell were those in which his own intriguing ability figured. Thus it was Stoupe, according to his own account, that knew of Cromwell's design on the Spanish West Indies before all the rest of the world. One day, late in 1654, having been called into the Protector's room on business, he had noticed him very intent upon a map and measuring distances on it. Information being Stoupe's trade, he contrived to see that the map was one of the Bay of Mexico, and drew his inference. Accordingly, when the fleet of Penn and Venables was ready to sail, but nobody knew its destination, "Stoupe happened to say in a company he believed the design was on the West Indies. The Spanish Ambassador, hearing that, sent for him very privately, to ask him upon what ground he said it; and he offered to lay down £10,000 if he could make any discovery of that. Stoupe owned to me that he had a great mind to the money, and fancied he betrayed nothing if he did discover the grounds of these conjectures, since nothing had been trusted to him; but he expected greater matters from Cromwell, and said only that in a diversity of conjectures that seemed to him more probable than any others." Another of Stoupe's stories to Burnet was even more curious. Having learnt by a letter from Brussels that a certain refugee had come over to assassinate Cromwell, and was lodged in King Street, Westminster, he had hurried to Whitehall, and sent in a note to Cromwell, then in Council, saying he had something to communicate. Cromwell, supposing it might be one of Stoupe's ordinary pieces of intelligence, had sent out Thurloe to him. Though "troubled at this," Stoupe had no option but to show Thurloe the letter. To his surprise, Thurloe had made light of the matter, saying that they had rumours of that kind by the score, and it was not for a great man like the Protector to trouble himself about them. Stoupe, who had hoped his fortune would be made, went away "much cast down," to write to Brussels for surer evidence. He mentioned the matter, however, to Lord Lisle; and so, when Sexby's or Sindercombe's Plot was discovered a while afterwards, Lisle, talking of it with the Protector, and not doubting that the Protector knew all about Stoupe's previous revelation, said that must be the man Stoupe had spoken of. "Cromwell seemed amazed at this, and sent for Stoupe, and in great wrath reproached him for his ingratitude in concealing a matter of such consequence to him. Stoupe upon this shewed him the letters he had received, and put him in mind of the note he had sent in to him, which was immediately after he had the first letter, and that he had sent out Thurloe to him. At that Cromwell seemed yet more amazed, and sent for Thurloe, to whose face Stoupe affirmed the matter; nor did he deny any part of it, but only said that he had many such advertisements sent him, in which till this time he had never found any truth. Cromwell replied sternly that he ought to have acquainted him with it, and left him to judge of the importance of it. Thurloe desired to speak in private with Cromwell. So Stoupe was dismissed, and went away, not doubting but Thurloe would be disgraced." What was his surprise, however, to find not only that Thurloe was not disgraced, but that he himself was thenceforth less in favour? Thurloe, in justifying himself, had told Cromwell more about Stoupe than he previously knew, and "possessed Cromwell with such an ill opinion of him that after that he never treated him with any confidence."¹ If the story is true, Stoupe's loss of favour dates from Jan. 1656-7, or two months before Milton's letter to Bigot. It would seem, however, that he was still employed in some way as one of Thurloe's agents; and hence Milton's use of him to convey the cash to France.² That Milton knew Stoupe would have been certain without this evidence; but the evidence is interesting.³

Of the following State-Letters of Milton, all belonging to our present section of his life, five bear date before his second marriage, and five after. Those after the marriage come at longer intervals than those before:—

(XCI.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, Oct. 1656:—Peace with Portugal being happily ratified, the Protector is despatching THOMAS MAYNARD to be his consul in that country. This letter is to introduce him and bespeak access for him to his Majesty.

(XCII.) TO THE KING OF SWEDEN, Oct. 1656:—A soldierly knight, Sir William Vavasour, who has been in England, is now returning to his military duty under the Swedish King. The Protector need hardly recommend back to his Majesty a servant so distinguished, but ventures to do so, and to suggest that he should be paid his arrears.

(XCIII.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, Oct. 1656:—An English ship-master, called Thomas Evans, is going to Lisbon to prosecute his claim for £7000 against the Brazil Company, being damages sustained by the seizure of his ship, the Scipio, six years before, by the Portuguese Government, while he was in the Company's service. The Treaty provides for such claims; and, though the Protector has written before on the subject generally, he cannot but write specially in this case.

(XCIV.) TO THE SENATE OF HAMBURG, Oct. 16, 1656:—Long ago, in the time of King Charles, two brothers, James and Patrick Hays, being the lawful heirs of their brother Alexander, who had died intestate in Hamburg, had obtained a decree in their favour in the Hamburg Court, assigning them all the said Alexander's property, except dower for his widow. From that day to this, however, chiefly by the influence of Albert van Eizen, a man of consequence in Hamburg, they have been kept out of their rights. They are in extreme poverty and have applied to the Protector. As he considers it the first duty of his Protectorate to look after such cases, he writes this letter. It is to request the Hamburg Senate to see that the two brothers have the full benefit of the old decision of the Court. Further delay has been threatened, he hears, in the form of an appeal to the Chamber of Spires. That such an appeal is illegal will appear by the signed opinions of English lawyers which he forwards. "But, if entreaty is of no avail, it will be necessary, and that by the common right of nations, to resort to measures of retaliation." His Highness hopes this may be avoided by the prudence of the Senate.

(XCV.) TO LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, Nov. 1656:—No answer has yet been received to his Highness's former letter, of May 14, on the subject of the claim of Sir John Dethicke, then Lord Mayor of London, and his partner William Wakefield, on account of the capture of a ship of theirs in 1649 by a pirate acting for Charles Stuart, and the insolent detention of the same by M. L'Estrades, the French Governor of Dunkirk (see the Letter, ante p. 253). Perhaps the delay had arisen from the fact that M. L'Estrades was then away with the army in Flanders; but "now he is living in Paris itself, or rather fluttering about with impunity in city and court enriched with the spoils of our people." His Highness now imperatively demands immediate and strict attention to the matter. It is one of positive obligation by the Treaty; and the honour and good faith of His French Majesty are directly concerned.—It is a curious coincidence that within a day or two of the writing of this strong letter by Milton in behalf of Sir John Dethicke, that knight should have solemnised Milton's marriage with Katharine Woodcock. Nov. 12 was the date of the marriage; and, as Dethicke is spoken of in this letter as no longer in his Mayoralty, it must have been written after Lord Mayor's day, i.e. after Nov. 9, 1656.

(XCVI.) TO FREDERICK III., KING OF DENMARK, Dec. 1856:—This is another of Cromwell's fervid Protestant letters, very much in the strain of those four months before to the States-General of the United Provinces and Charles Gustavus of Sweden, and indeed, with identical expressions. First he acknowledges letters from his Danish Majesty, of date Feb. 16, received through the worthy Simon de Pitkum, his Majesty's agent. They have been so gratifying, and the matter of them is so important, that his Highness has been looking about for a suitable person to be sent as confidential minister to Copenhagen. Such a person he hopes to send soon: meanwhile a letter may convey some thoughts about the state of Europe that are much occupying his Highness. The dissensions among Protestant States are causing him profound grief. Especially he is grieved by the jealousies and misunderstandings that separate two such important Protestant States as Denmark and Sweden. Can they not be removed? Sweden and the United Provinces, with both of which his Highness had taken the liberty of remonstrating to the same effect, have been coming to a happy accommodation: why should Denmark keep aloof? Let his Danish Majesty lay this to heart. Let him think of the persecutions of Protestants in Piedmont, in Austria, and in Switzerland; and let him imagine the eternal machinations of the Spaniard behind all. These surely are inducements sufficient to a reconciliation with Sweden, if it can be brought about. The Protector's good offices towards that end shall not be wanting if required. He has the highest esteem for the King of Denmark, and would cultivate yet closer alliance with him.—Relating to this letter is a minute of Council of the date Tuesday, Dec. 2: "The draft of a letter from his Highness to the King of Denmark was this day read, and after read by parts; and the several clauses thereof, being put to the question, were, with some amendments, agreed; and, the whole being so passed, it was offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council that his Highness will please to send the same." The letter, therefore, was deemed important. Was the draft read in English or in Latin? On the first supposition it may still have come from Milton, though it had to go back to him.

(XCVII.) To WILLIAM, LANDGRAVE OF HESSE, March 1656-7:—After an apology to the Landgrave for not having sooner answered a letter of his received nearly twelve months ago, the Protector here also plunges into the subject of Union among Protestants. He is glad that the Landgrave appreciates the exertions in this behalf that have been made in Britain and elsewhere. "We have particularly desired the same peace for the Churches of all Germany, where dissension has been too sharp and of too long continuance; and through our DURIE, labouring at the same fruitlessly now for many years, we have heartily offered any possible service of ours that might contribute thereto. We remain still in the same mind; we desire to see the same brotherly love to each other among those Churches: but how hard a business this is of settling a peace among those sons of peace, as they pretend themselves, we understand, to our great grief, only too abundantly. For it is hardly to be hoped that those of the Reformed and those of the Augustan confession will ever coalesce into the communion of one Church; they cannot without force be prevented from severally, by word and writings, defending their own beliefs; and force cannot consist with ecclesiastical tranquillity. This, at least, however, they might allow one to entreat—that, as they do differ, they would differ more humanely and moderately, and love each other nevertheless." It is a great pleasure to the Protector to exchange sentiments on this subject with a Prince of such distinguished Protestant ancestry.

(XCVIII.) TO THE DUKE OF COURLAND, March 1657:—After thanking this potentate of the Baltic for his hospitality, some time ago, to an English agent passing through to Muscovy, the Protector brings to his notice the case of one John Jamesone, a Scotchman, master of one of the Duke's ships. The ship had been wrecked going into port, but not by Jamesone's fault. The pilot, to whom he had intrusted it, according to rule and custom, had been alone to blame. Jamesone has been a faithful servant of the Duke for seven years; he is in great distress; and his Highness hopes the Duke will not stop his pay.

(XCIX.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF DANTZIG, April 1657:—The Dantzigers, for whom the Protector has a great respect, have unfortunately sided with the Poles against the King of Sweden. Would that, for the sake of Religion, and in the spirit of their old commercial amity with England, they had chosen otherwise, or would yet change their views! That, however, is rather beyond the immediate business of this letter; which is to request them either to release the noble Swede, Count Konigsmarck, who has become their prisoner by treachery, or at least make his captivity easier.

(C.) TO THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA, April 1657:—On the throne of this vast, chaotic, semi-Asiatic Empire at this time was Alexis, the son and successor of Michael Romanoff, the founder of that new dynasty under which Russia was to enter on her era of greatness. He had come to the throne, as a young man, in 1645, and had since then, in the despotic Czarish way, continued his father's policy for the civilization of his subjects by cultivating commerce with the neighbouring European states, and bringing in foreigners for service in his armies or otherwise. On the execution of Charles I., however, he had broken utterly with the Regicide Island, and had ordered out of his dominions all English adherents of the Parliament. He alone of European Sovereigns had at once taken this high stand against the English Republic. But events, Russian interests, and communications from the Protector, had gradually brought him round. Since 1654, when a certain WILLIAM PRIDEAUX had been sent to Russia as agent for the Protector, the trade with Russia, through Archangel, had resumed its former dimensions, under rules permitting English merchants to sell and buy goods at Archangel, and have a factory there, but "not to go up in the country for Moscow or any other city in Russia."¹ The envoy himself, however, had visited Moscow; and his long letters thence, or from Archangel, had thrown much light on the internal condition of that strange outlandish Muscovy, as Russia was then generally called, about which there had been hitherto more of curiosity than knowledge. The immense wealth of the Emperor, his vast military forces, the barbaric splendours of his Court, the Oriental submissiveness of the people and their oddities of dress and manners, the peculiarities of the Greek Religion, the great resources of Russia, and the obstructions yet existing in the way of trade with her, had all become topics of English gossip. But, in fact, Alexis had become a considerable personage in general European politics. By wars with Poland, and other populations about him, he had greatly enlarged his territories, adopting new titles of sovereignty to signify the same; and in the general imbroglio of North-Eastern Europe, involving Sweden, Denmark, Poland, the United Provinces, and even Germany, he had come to be a power whose movements and embassies commanded attention. It had been resolved, therefore, by the Protector and his Council to send a more special envoy to "the Great Duke of Muscovia"; and, on the 12th of March 1656-7, RICHARD BRADSHAW, ESQ., so long Resident for the Commonwealth at Hamburg, was recommended by the Council to his Highness as the proper person.² The present letter of Milton, accordingly, is the Letter of Credence which Bradshaw was to take with him.—The Letter is addressed to his Russian Majesty, as punctually as possible, by all his chaos of titles, thus: "Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, Ireland, &c., to the Most Serene and most powerful Prince and Lord, the Emperor and Great Duke of all Russia, Lord of Volodomeria, Moscow, and Novgorod, King of Kazan, Astracan, and Siberia, Lord of Vobscow, Great Duke of Smolensk, Tuerscow, and other places, Lord and Great Duke of Novograda, and of the lower countries of Czernigow, Rezanscow, &c., Lord of all the Northern Clime, and also Lord of Everscow, Cartalinska, and many other lands."³ After referring to the old commercial intercourse between Russia and England, the Protector says he is moved to seek closer communication, with his most august Imperial Majesty by that extraordinary worth, far outshining that of all his ancestors, by which he has won himself so good an opinion among all neighbouring Princes, Then he introduces and highly recommends BRADSHAW, who will duly reveal his instructions.

The mission of BRADSHAW to Russia was not the only incident in the Protector's diplomatic service about this time in which Milton, as Foreign Secretary Extraordinary, may have felt an interest. MORLAND, after having been in Switzerland for about a year and a half on the business that had grown out of his original Piedmontese mission, had been at length recalled, leaving the Swiss agency, as before, in the hands of PELL by himself. He had been back in London since Dec. 1656, had attended the Council several times to give full and formal report of his proceedings, and had also appeared before the great Committee for the Collection for the Piedmontese Protestants, and presented his accounts of the moneys received and expended. All that he had done met with high approbation; and, by way of reward in kind, it was voted by the Council, May 5, 1657, that he should have £700 for 'the charge of paper, printing, and cutting of the maps, for 2000 copies of his History,' and the whole of the profits of that book. Morland's History of the Evangelical Churches of Piemont, which appeared in the following year, was therefore a State publication the copyright of which was made over to the author. More munificent still was the reward of the services of MEADOWS in Portugal. His special mission having been successfully accomplished, and ordinary consular duty in Lisbon having been put into good hands, he too had returned to London, but only to be designated at once (Feb. 24, 1656-7) for another mission of importance. This was that mission to the King of Denmark which Cromwell had promised in his letter to the King of Dec. 1656, but for which a suitable person had not then been found. To Meadows, fresh from Portugal, the appointment to Denmark was in itself a high compliment; but there were very substantial accompaniments. His allowance in his new mission was to be £1000 a year; a special sum of £400 was voted for the expense of his journey; and it was ordered that, for his able discharge of his Portuguese mission, £100 a year should be settled on him and his for ninety-nine years—a vote partly commuted a few days afterwards (March 19) into a present money-payment of £1000. For DURIE, who was also now back in England, and indeed close to Milton in Westminster, after another of his roving missions, first through Switzerland, and then in other parts, there was to be no employment so distinguished as that found for Meadows. It was enough that he should be at hand for any farther service of propagandism in behalf of his life-long idea of a Pan-Protestant Union. Of two new diplomatic appointments that were soon to be made, both above Durie's mark, we shall hear in time. The most splendid diplomatic appointment of all in the Protector's service had, as we already know (ante p. 114), just received an increase of dignity. The Scottish COLONEL WILLIAM LOCKHART, the husband of Cromwell's niece, and his Ambassador at the Court of France since April 1656, had been back on a visit in the end of the year to attend Parliament and to consult with Cromwell; and now, knighted by Cromwell, he had returned to France as SIR WILLIAM LOCKHART, with his great allowance of £100 a week, or £5200 a year.¹

At no time, indeed, since the beginning of the Protectorate, had there been such activity in that foreign and diplomatic department of the Protector's service to which Milton belonged. Cromwell's alliance offensive and defensive with France against Spain (March 23, 1656-7), leading immediately to the transport of an English auxiliary army under General Reynolds to co-operate with the French in Flanders (ante pp. 140-141), would in itself have caused an increase of such activity; but, in addition to this, and inextricably involved with this in Cromwell's general Anti-Spanish policy, was that idea of a League or Union of the Protestant States of Europe which had first perhaps been roused in his mind by the Piedmontese massacre of 1655, but had gradually, as so many of Milton's subsequent State-Letters prove, assumed firmer form and wider dimensions. The Dutch, the Protestant Swiss, the Protestant German princes and cities, the Danes, the Swedes, the Protestants of Transylvania and other eastern parts, perhaps even the Russians, all, so far as Cromwell's influence could go, were to be brought to a common understanding for the promotion of Protestant interests throughout the world and the defiance of all to the contrary. It was Durie's old dream of Pan-Protestantism redreamt by a man whose state was kingly, and who had the means of turning his dreams into realities. Now, consequently, in the service of that dream, as in his service generally,

While so many were thus coming and going, at £800 a year, £1000 a year, or £5000 a year, blind Milton, with his £200 a year, could only "stand and wait," the stationary Latin drudge. The return of his old assistant Meadows from Portugal may again have relieved him of somewhat of the drudgery; for, though Meadows was designated for the new mission to Denmark Feb. 24, 1656-7, he did not actually set out for Denmark till the following August, and there is something like proof that in the interval, envoy though he now was, he resumed secretarial duty at Whitehall under Thurloe. His renewed presence in London may account for the comparative rarity of Milton's State-Letters from Dec. 1656 to April 1657, and also for the fact that then there follows a total blank of four months in the series, bringing us precisely to August, when Meadows was preparing to go away again. What passed during these months we already know. The great question of Kingship or continued Protectorship, which had been in suspense during those months of March and April in which Milton had written his last four letters, had been brought to a close May 8, when Cromwell at last decisively refused the Crown; and the First Session of his Second Parliament had accordingly ended, June 26, not in his coronation, as had been expected, but in his inauguration in that Second Protectorship the constitution of which had been framed by the Parliament in their so-called Petition and Advice.—What may have been Milton's thoughts on the Kingship question we can pretty easily conjecture. Almost to a certainty, he was one of the private "Contrariants," one of those Oliverians who, with Lambert, Fleetwood, and most of the Army-men, objected theoretically to a return to Kingship, feared it would be fatal, and were glad therefore when Cromwell declined it and accepted the constitutionalized Protectorship instead. But, indeed, by this time, it is possible that Milton, though still Oliverian in the main, still a believer in Cromwell's greatness and goodness, was not so devotedly an Oliverian as he had been when he had written his panegyric on the Protector and the Protectorate in his Defensio Secunda. Even then he had made his reserves, and had ventured to express them in advices and cautions to Cromwell himself. He can hardly have professed that in those virtues of the avoidance of arbitrariness and self-will, the avoidance of over-legislation and over-restriction, which he had especially recommended to Cromwell, the rule of the Protector through the last three years had quite satisfied his ideal. Many of the so-called "arbitrary" measures, and even the temporary device of the Major-Generalships, he may have excused, as Cromwell himself did, on the plea of absolute necessity; all the measures distinctly for repression of Royalist risings and conspiracies must have had his thorough approbation; and, in the great matter of liberty of speculation and speech, Cromwell had certainly shown more sympathy with the spirit of Milton's Areopagitica than most of his Councillors or either of his Parliaments. Nor, as we have sufficiently seen, did Milton's notions of Public Liberty, any more than Cromwell's, formulate themselves in mere ordinary constitutionalism, or the doctrine of the rightful supremacy of Parliaments elected by a wide or universal suffrage, and a demand that such should be sitting always. He had more faith perhaps, as Cromwell had, in a good, broad, and pretty permanent Council, acting on liberal principles, and led by some single mind. But there had been disappointments. What, for example, of the frequent questionings and arrests of Bradshaw, Vane, and other high-minded Republicans whom Milton admired, and what especially of the prolonged disgrace and imprisonment of his dear friend Overton? Or, even if the plea of necessity or supposed necessity should cover such cases too (for Cromwell's informations through Thurloe might reach farther than the public knew, and the good Overton, at all events, had gone into devious and dangerous courses), what about the Protector's grand infatuation on the subject of an Established Church? He had preserved the abomination of a State-paid ministry; he had made that institution the very pride of his Protectorate; he was actually fattening up over again a miscellaneous State-clergy, in place of the old Anglicans, by studied encouragements and augmentations of stipend. So Milton thought, and very much in that language; and here, above all, must have been his dissatisfaction with Cromwell's Government. But what could be done? What other Government could there be? What would the Commonwealth have been without Cromwell, and in what condition would it be if he were removed? On the whole, what could a blind private thinker do but, in his occasional interviews with the great Protector on business, or his rarer presences perhaps in a retired place at one of the Protector's musical entertainments at Whitehall, keep all such thoughts to himself, reserving frank expression of them for his intimates, and meanwhile behaving as a loyal Oliverian and performing his duty? In such a state of mind, as I believe, did Milton pass from the First Protectorate into the Second.

BOOK II.

JUNE 1657-SEPTEMBER 1658.

HISTORY:—OLIVER'S SECOND PROTECTORATE.

BIOGRAPHY:-MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE SECOND PROTECTORATE.

CHAPTER I.

OLIVER'S SECOND PROTECTORATE: JUNE 26, 1657—SEPT. 3, 1658.

REGAL FORMS AND CEREMONIAL OF THE SECOND PROTECTORATE: THE PROTECTOR'S FAMILY: THE PRIVY COUNCIL: RETIREMENT OF LAMBERT: DEATH OF ADMIRAL BLAKE: THE FRENCH ALLIANCE AND SUCCESSES IN FLANDERS: SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF MARDIKE: OTHER FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE PROTECTORATE: SPECIAL ENVOYS TO DENMARK, SWEDEN, AND THE UNITED PROVINCES: AIMS OF CROMWELL'S DIPLOMACY IN NORTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPE: PROGRESS OF HIS ENGLISH CHURCH-ESTABLISHMENT: CONTROVERSY BETWEEN JOHN GOODWIN AND MARCHAMONT NEEDHAM: THE PROTECTOR AND THE QUAKERS: DEATH OF JOHN LILBURNE: DEATH OF SEXBY: MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM TO MARY FAIRFAX: MARRIAGES OF CROMWELL'S TWO YOUNGEST DAUGHTERS: PREPARATIONS FOR ANOTHER SESSION OF THE PARLIAMENT: WRITS FOR THE OTHER HOUSE: LIST OF CROMWELL'S PEERS.—REASSEMBLING OF THE PARLIAMENT, JAN. 20, 1657-8: CROMWELL'S OPENING SPEECH, WITH THE SUPPLEMENT BY FIENNES: ANTI-OLIVERIAN SPIRIT OF THE COMMONS: THEIR OPPOSITION TO THE OTHER HOUSE: CROMWELL'S SPEECH OF REMONSTRANCE: PERSEVERANCE OF THE COMMONS IN THEIR OPPOSITION: CROMWELL'S LAST SPEECH AND DISSOLUTION OF THE PARLIAMENT, FEB. 4, 1657-8.—STATE OF THE GOVERNMENT AFTER THE DISSOLUTION: THE DANGERS, AND CROMWELL'S DEALINGS WITH THEM: HIS LIGHT DEALINGS WITH THE DISAFFECTED COMMONWEALTH'S MEN: THREATENED SPANISH INVASION FROM FLANDERS, AND RAMIFICATIONS OF THE ROYALIST CONSPIRACY AT HOME: ARRESTS OF ROYALISTS. AND EXECUTION OF SLINGSBY AND HEWIT: THE CONSPIRACY CRUSHED: DEATH OF ROBERT RICH: THE EARL OF WARWICK'S LETTER TO CROMWELL, AND HIS DEATH: MORE SUCCESSES IN FLANDERS: SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF DUNKIRK: SPLENDID EXCHANGES OF COMPLIMENTS BETWEEN CROMWELL AND LOUIS XIV.: NEW INTERFERENCE IN BEHALF OF THE PIEDMONTESE PROTESTANTS, AND PROJECT OF A PROTESTANT COUNCIL DE PROPAGANDA FIDE; PROSPECTS OF THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT: DESIRE OF THE INDEPENDENTS FOR A CONFESSION OF FAITH: ATTENDANT DIFFICULTIES: CROMWELL'S POLICY IN THE AFFAIRS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK: HIS DESIGN FOR THE EVANGELIZATION AND CIVILIZATION OF THE HIGHLANDS: HIS GRANTS TO THE UNIVERSITIES OF EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW; HIS COUNCIL IN SCOTLAND: MONK AT DALKEITH: CROMWELL'S INTENTIONS IN THE CASES OF BIDDLE AND JAMES NAYLER; PROPOSED NEW ACT FOR RESTRICTION OF THE PRESS: FIRMNESS AND GRANDEUR OF THE PROTECTORATE IN JULY 1658: CROMWELL'S BARONETCIES AND KNIGHTHOODS: WILLINGNESS TO CALL ANOTHER PARLIAMENT: DEATH OF LADY CLAYPOLE: CROMWELL'S ILLNESS AND LAST DAYS, WITH THE LAST ACTS AND INCIDENTS OF HIS PROTECTORSHIP.

Whether Cromwell's Second and Constitutionalized Protectorship was as agreeable to himself as his First had been may be doubted. He had accepted it, however, and meant to try it in all good faith. If, on the one hand, it was more limited, on the other it was attended with more of grandeur and dignity. Inasmuch as the actual Kingship had been offered him, and the new constitution was exactly that which would have gone with the Kingship, his Protectorship now, in the eyes of all the world, was equivalent to Kingship. When inducted into his First Protectorship, stately though the ceremonial had been, he had worn but a black velvet suit, with a gold band round his hat, and the chief symbol of his investiture had been the removal of his own military sword and substitution of the civil sword presented to him by Lambert. He had come into this Second Protectorship robed in purple, and holding a sceptre of massy gold. In heraldry, as well as in reality, he had taken his place among the Sovereigns of Europe.

Round about Cromwell, even through the First Protectorate, there had been, as we have abundantly seen, much of the splendour and equipage of sovereignty. The phrases "His Highness's Court" and "His Highness's Household" had become quite familiar. On all public occasions he was attended and addressed most ceremoniously; when he rode out in state it was with life-guards about him, outriders in front, and coaches following; and the Order-Books of the Council prove that his relations to the Council were regulated by careful etiquette, and that his personal attendance at any of their meetings was regarded as a distinction. One observes also, as with Cromwell's approval, and in evidence of the conservatism that had been growing upon himself, a retention or even multiplication of aristocratic forms in his court and government. He had conferred knighthoods less sparingly than at first, though still rather sparingly;¹ in mentions of any of the old nobility, whether those that had become Oliverian and were to be seen at Whitehall, or those who lived in retirement, their old titles were scrupulously preserved,—e.g. "The Marquis of Hertford," "The Earl of Warwick," "The Earl of Mulgrave," "The Lord Viscount Lisle," "The Right Honourable the Lord Broghill"; and not only were official or courtesy titles still recognised, as by calling Fleetwood "My Lord Deputy," Whitlocke "Lord Commissioner Whitelocke," Fiennes "Lord Commissioner Fiennes," and Lawrence "Lord President Lawrence," but there had been a curious extension of usage in this last particular. The Protector's sons had become respectively "The Lord Richard Cromwell" and "The Lord Henry Cromwell" in the newspapers and in public correspondence; and, for some reason or other, probably on account of places held in his Highness's Household or Ministry apart from the Council, at least two of the Councillors had of late received similar courtesy-promotion. From the beginning of 1655 Lambert had ceased to be called "Major-General Lambert," and had become "Lord Lambert," and from the beginning of 1656 "Mr. Strickland" had passed into "Lord Strickland." They are so named both in the Council Order-Books and in the Journals of the First Session of the Second Parliament.

If there had been so much of sovereign and aristocratic form in the First Protectorate, there was a natural increase of such in the Second. In the first place, the family of the Protector now lived in the reflection of that dignity of the purple which had been formally thrown round himself. The Protector's very aged Mother having died in honour and peace at Whitehall, Nov. 16, 1654, blessing him with her last words¹, the family, in the Second Protectorate, was as follows:—

HIS HIGHNESS, OLIVER, LORD PROTECTOR: ætat. 58.

HER HIGHNESS, ELIZABETH, LADY PROTECTRESS.

Children and Children-in-Law.

1. THE LADY BRIDGET: ætat. 33: Ireton's widow, married to Fleetwood since 1652. FLEETWOOD, though he had been recalled from Ireland in the middle of 1655, and had been in London since then, retained his nominal Lord-Deputyship till Nov. 1657.

2. THE LORD RICHARD CROMWELL: ætat. 31: married since 1649 to DOROTHY MAYOR, daughter of Richard Mayor, Esq., of Hursley, Hants, who had been member for Hants in the Long Parliament, a fellow-Colonel with Cromwell in the Civil War, and afterwards in some of the Councils of the Commonwealth, in the Little Parliament, and in the Council of the Protectorate.—Though Lord Richard's tastes were all for a quiet country-life, with "hawking, hunting, and horse-racing," he had been in both the Parliaments of the Protectorate, and had taken some little part in the Second. His father now brought him more forward. On the 3rd of July, 1657, when the Second Protectorate was but a week old, the Lord Protector resigned his Chancellorship of the University of Oxford; and on the 18th Lord Richard was elected in his stead. He was installed at Whitehall, July 29. He was also made a Colonel, and at length he was brought into the Council. The fact is thus minuted in the Council's Books under date Dec. 31, 1657:—"The Lord Richard Cromwell did this day take the oath of a Councillor, the same being administered unto him by the Earl of Mulgrave and General Desborough, in virtue of his Highness's Commission under the Great Seal." He was immediately put on all Committees of the Council; and generally after that, when he did attend, his name was put next after the President's in the sederunt.

3. THE LORD HENRY CROMWELL: ætat. 29: in the Army since his boyhood; Colonel since 1649; Major-General and chief Commander in Ireland since the middle of 1655. At the beginning of the Second Protectorate he was still in the Government of Ireland with his military title only; but on the 24th of November 1657 he was sworn into the full Lord Deputyship in succession to Fleetwood. He had been married since 1653 to a daughter of Sir Francis Russell, of Chippenham, Cambridgeshire.

4. THE LADY ELIZABETH: ætat. 28: married in her seventeenth year to JOHN CLAYPOLE, ESQ., of a Northamptonshire family. He had been made the Lord Protector's "Master of Horse," and had therefore been known for some time by the courtesy-title of "Lord Claypole." He had been in the Second Parliament of the Protectorate; and, as Master of Horse, had figured prominently in the ceremonial of the late Installation. Lord and Lady Claypole were established in the household of the Lord Protector, at Whitehall, or at Hampton Court; and Lady Claypole was a very favourite daughter.

5. THE LADY MARY: ætat. 21. She was unmarried when the Second Protectorate began, though Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper is said to have sought her hand, and to have turned against the Protector on being refused it; but on the 18th of November 1657 she became the second wife of THOMAS BELLASIS, VISCOUNT FALCONBRIBGE, one of the old nobility. He was about thirty years of age, had been abroad, had been sounded by Lockhart in Paris as to his inclinations to the Protectorate, had given every satisfaction in that matter, and had been certified by Lockhart to the Protector as "a person of extraordinary parts." On his own account, and also because he was of an old Royalist family, his marriage with Lady Mary was thought an excellent match.

6. THE LADY FRANCES: ætat. 19. This, the youngest of Cromwell's children, was also unmarried at the beginning of the Second Protectorate. The fond dream of the wealthy old Gloucestershire squire, Mr. John Dutton, that his nephew and Cromwell's ward, Mr. William Dutton, Andrew Marvell's pupil at Eton with the Oxenbridges, might become the husband of the Lady Frances, as had been arranged between him and Cromwell (vol. IV. pp. 616-619), had not been fulfilled; and, the old squire himself being now dead, young Dutton was left to find another wife for himself in due time.¹ For the Lady Frances, his Highness's youngest daughter, there might well be greater destinies. There had been vague whispers, indeed, of a suggestion in certain quarters that Charles II. himself should propose for her and negotiate for a restoration, or a succession to Cromwell, accordingly; but for more than a year there had been more authentic talk of her marriage with Mr. ROBERT RICH, the only son of Lord Rich, and grandson and (after his father) heir-apparent of the Earl of Warwick. That this great and popular old Parliamentarian and Presbyterian Earl had been won round at last to the Protectorate, and that he had graced the late Installation conspicuonsly by his presence, were no unimportant facts; and the projected family-alliance was by no means indifferent to Cromwell. There were difficulties, not on the part of the young people; but at length, Nov. 11, 1657, just a week before the marriage of the elder sister to Lord Falconbridge, Lady Frances did become the wife of Mr. Rich. In the fourth month of the marriage, however. Feb. 16, 1657-8, the husband died, leaving the Lady Frances, not yet twenty years of age, a widow. She married again, and did not die till Jan. 1720-1.

OTHER RELATIVES

Worth noting among the Relatives of Cromwell alive in the Second Protectorate, were the following;—(1) The Protector's eldest surviving sister, ELIZABETH CROMWELL, ætat. 64, living at Ely, unmarried, and receiving occasional presents from her brother. She lived to 1672. (2) The Protector's sister CATHERINE, ætat. 61, first married to a Roger Whetstone, a Parliamentarian officer, and afterwards to COLONEL JOHN JONES, member of the Long Parliament for Monmouthshire, and one of the Regicides. He had been a member of the first and second Councils of the Commonwealth, had been for some time in Ireland as one of Fleetwood's Council, and was now a member of the Protector's Second Parliament. (3) The Protector's youngest sister ROBINA, formerly the wife of a Peter French, D.D., but now the wife of DR. JOHN WILKINS, Warden of Wadham College, Oxford. Wilkins held the Wardenship by dispensation from Cromwell, his marriage in the office being against Statute. The only child of Mrs. Wilkins, by her first marriage, became afterwards the wife of Archbishop Tillotson. (4) The Protector's niece, ROBINA, daughter of his deceased sister Mrs. Anna Sewster, and now wife of SIR WILLIAM LOCKHART. (5) The Protector's brother-in-law COLONEL VALENTINE WALTON, who had been member for Huntingdonshire in the Long Parliament, one of the Regicides, and a member of all the Councils of the Commonwealth; His first wife; Oliver's sister Margaret, being dead, he had married a second, and had for some time been less active politically and less Oliverian. (6) The Protector's brother-in-law JOHN DESBOROUGH, known as an officer of horse through the Civil Wars, and latterly as one of Cromwell's stoutest adherents through his Interim Dictatorship and Protectorate, a member of both his Parliaments, one of his Councillors, and one of his Major-Generals, though opposed to the Kingship. He was now a widower by the recent death of his wife, Cromwell's sister Jane. (7) The Protector's cousin, or father's sister's son, EDWARD WHALLEY, Colonel in the Civil Wars, one of the Regicides, and latterly member of both Parliaments of the Protectorate and one of the Major-Generals. (8) The Protector's aunt, or father's sister, Mrs. ELIZABETH HAMPDEN, mother of the famous Hampden, and now a very aged widow, living about Whitehall, with another son alive, besides grandchildren by her famous dead son, the eldest of whom, Richard Hampden, was a member of the present Parliament. (9) The Protector's cousin's son, COLONEL RICHARD INGOLDSBY, a Recruiter in the Long Parliament, one of the signers of Charles's death-warrant, and one of the members for Buckinghamshire in both Parliaments of the Protectorate. More distant kindred of the Protector were the DUNCHES of Berkshire, and the MASHAMS of Essex, the head of whom, Sir William Masham, Bart., had been member for that county in the Long Parliament, and a member of all the Councils of the Commonwealth and of the first Parliament of the Protectorate. The poet WALLER was connected with the Protector by his cousinship with the Hampdens.¹

The Protector's new Privy Council for his Second Protectorate was not constituted till Monday, July 13, 1657, more than a fortnight after his installation. Then, his Highness being present, there were sworn in, according to the new oath of fidelity provided by the Petition and Advice, Lord President Lawrence, General Desborough, Lord Commissioner Fiennes, the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Viscount Lisle, Mr. Rous, Lord Deputy Fleetwood, Lord Strickland, and Mr. Secretary Thurloe. This last took his seat at the board as full Councillor by special nomination of his Highness. In the course of the next few meetings there came in Colonel Sydenham, Major-General Skippon, Sir Gilbert Pickering, and Sir Charles Wolseley, raising the number to thirteen; which completed the Council for some time, though Colonel Philip Jones and Admiral Montague afterwards took their seats, and Lord Richard Cromwell, as we have seen, was added Dec. 31. On comparing the total list with that of the Council of the First Protectorate (Vol. IV. p. 545), it will be seen that Cromwell retained all that were alive of his former Council, except Lambert, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, and Mr. Richard Mayor. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper had been a deserter from the former Council as early as Dec. 1654, and had since then been so conspicuous in the opposition that he had been one of the ninety-three excluded from the House at the opening of the Second Parliament. Mr. Mayor, Richard Cromwell's father-in-law, though still nominally in the Council, seems to have been now in poor health and in retirement. The one extraordinary omission was that of Lambert. He had taken all but the chief part in the foundation of the First Protectorate; why was he absent from the Government of the Second? His Oliverianism, it appears, had evaporated in the late debates about the Kingship and the new constitution. Certain it is that he did not present himself at the first meeting of the new Council, and that, after an interview with Cromwell in consequence, he surrendered his two regimental colonelcies, his major-generalship, and £10 a day which he had for the last, and withdrew into private life. Still called "Lord Lambert," and with a pension of £2000 a year granted him by Cromwell, he retired to Wimbledon, where his chief amusement was the cultivation of tulips.¹

The new Council having been constituted, and having begun to hold its meetings twice or thrice a week, the administration of affairs, home and foreign, was free to go on, in his Highness's hands and the Council's, without farther Parliamentary interruption till Jan. 20, 1657-8. Foreign affairs may here have the precedence.

Blake's grand blow at the Spaniard in Santa Cruz Bay was still in all people's minds, and they were looking for the return of that hero, recalled as he had been, June 10, either for honourable repose in his battered and enfeebled state after three years at sea, or for further employment nearer home in connexion with the French-English alliance and the Flanders expedition. He was never, alas! to set foot in England. Off Plymouth, as his fleet was touching the shores, he died, utterly worn out with scurvy and dropsy, Aug. 7, 1657, aged fifty-eight. As the news spread, there was great sorrow; and on the 13th of August it was ordered by the Council, "That the Commissioners for the Admiralty and Navy do forthwith give order for the interment of General Blake in the Abbey Church at Westminster, and for all things requisite to be prepared for the funeral of General Blake in such sort as was done for the funeral of General Deane, and that they give direction for the preparing of Greenwich House for the reception of the body of General Blake, in order to his funeral." The body, having been embalmed, lay at Greenwich till Sept. 4, when it was brought up the Thames with all funereal pomp, mourning hangings on the barges and the wherries all the way, and so buried in Henry the Seventh's chapel, the Council, the great Army officers, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, and other dignitaries standing round, while a multitude thronged outside. It was observed that Lord Lambert had made a point of being present, as if to signify that the great sailor and he had always understood each other. How Blake would have farther comported himself had he lived no one really knows. At sea he had made it a principle to abstain from party-politics. "When news was brought him of a metamorphosis in the State at home, he would then encourage the seamen to be most vigilant abroad; for, said he, 'tis not our duty to mind State-affairs, but to keep foreigners from fooling us." The idea among the ultra-Republicans of using Blake's popularity to undermine Cromwell had long come to nothing.¹

Blake gone, the naval hope of England now was Admiral Montague. Since August 11 he had been cruising up and down the Channel with his fleet under general orders. The interest of the war with Spain now lay chiefly in Flanders, where the Protector's army of 6000 foot under General Reynolds was co-operating with the larger French army of Louis XIV. commanded by Turenne. Here Cromwell had, again to complain of Mazarin's wily policy. By the Treaty the great object of the expedition was to be the reduction of the coast-towns, Gravelines, Mardike, and Dunkirk; but these sieges had been postponed, and Turenne had been campaigning in the interior, the English troops obliged to attend him hither and thither, and complaining much of their bad accommodation and bad feeding. Mazarin, in fact, was studying French interests only, A peremptory communication from Cromwell through Ambassador Lockhart, Aug. 31, changed the state of matters. "I pray you tell the Cardinal from me," he said, "that I think, if France desires to maintain its ground, much more to get ground, upon the Spaniard, the performance., of his Treaty with us will better do it than anything appears yet to me of any design he hath." He offered 2000 more men from England, if necessary; but he added in a postscript, "If indeed the French be so false to us as that they would not have us have any footing on that side the water, then I desire ... that all things may be done in order to the giving us satisfaction, and to the drawing-off of our men. And truly, Sir, I desire you to take boldness and freedom to yourself in your dealing with the French on these accounts." The Cardinal at once succumbed, and the siege of Mardike by land and sea was begun Sept. 21. The place was taken in a few days, and, in terms of the Treaty, given into the possession of General Reynolds for the English. A little while afterwards, a large Spanish force under Don John of Austria, the Duke of York serving in it with four regiments of English and Irish refugees, attempted a recapture of the place; but, by the desperate fighting of the garrison and Montague's assisting fire from his ships, the attempt was foiled. The Protector had thus obtained at least one place of footing on the Continent; and, with English valour to assist the military genius of Turenne, there was prospect, late in 1657, of still more success in the Spanish Netherlands. Lockhart was again in London for consultation with Cromwell Oct. 15, and Montague was back Oct. 24, on which day he took his oath and place in the Council.¹

Various other matters of foreign concern occupied the Protector and his Council in the first months of the new Protectorate. There is an order in the Council Books, July 28, 1657, for the despatch of £1000 more to the Piedmontese Protestants, and for certain sums to be paid to Genevese and other ministers for trouble they had taken in that matter; and, as late as Nov. 25, there is an order for another despatch of £1500. There were, indeed, to be farther collections for the Piedmontese sufferers, and new interposition in their behalf with the Duke of Savoy. Nay, by this time, the generosity of his Highness in the Piedmontese business had led to applications from distressed Protestants in other parts of Europe. Thus, Nov. 4, his Highness being himself present in the Council, and having communicated "a petition from the pastors of several churches of the Reformed Religion in Higher Poland, Bohemia, &c., now scattered abroad through persecution in those parts, desiring some relief, and also a petition from Adam Samuel Hartmann and Paul Cyril, delegates from these exiles, together with a narrative of their condition and sufferings," it was ordered that the matter should be referred to the Committee for the Piedmontese Protestants and preparations made for another collection of money. All the while, of course, there had been the more usual and regular diplomatic business between the Protector and the various agencies of foreign powers in London. One hears especially of the arrival, Aug. 1657, of a new Ambassador-Extraordinary from Portugal, Don Francisco de Mello, of entertainments to him, and of audiences granted to him; also of much intercourse between his Highness and the Dutch Ambassador Lord Nieuport, now so long resident in England and so much regarded there. But the latter half of 1657 is also remarkable for the despatch by his Highness of three special Envoys of his own to the northern Protestant Powers. MR. PHILIP MEADOWS, appointed Envoy to Denmark as long ago as Feb. 24, 1656-7 (ante p. 294), but detained meanwhile in London, set out on his mission at last, Aug. 31; and at the same time MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM JEPHSON, distinguished for his services in Ireland, and returned as member for Cork and Youghal to both Parliaments of the Protectorate, set out as Envoy to his Swedish Majesty. He had been chosen for the important post Aug. 4. Finally, on the 18th of December, partly in consequence of the departure of the Dutch Ambassador Nieuport in the preceding month, for some temporary stay at home on private affairs, GEORGE DOWNING, ESQ. (ante pp. 43 and 191) was appointed to follow him in the capacity of Resident for his Highness in the United Provinces.¹

The general purport of these three missions of Cromwell in 1657 requires explanation. Not commercial interests merely, but also zeal for union among the Protestant Powers, had all along moved his diplomacy; and now the state of things in the north of Europe was so extraordinary that, on the one hand, the cause of Protestant union seemed in fatal peril, but, on the other hand, if it could be retrieved, it might be retrieved perhaps in a definite and magnificent form. The prime agency in bringing about this state of things had been the vast energy of the young Swedish King, Charles X. or Karl-Gustav. Cromwell had by this time contracted an especial admiration of this prince, and had begun to regard him as a kindred spirit and the armed champion of Continental Protestantism. To see him succeed to the last in his Polish enterprise, and then turn himself against Austria and her Roman Catholic clientage in the Empire, had come to be Cromwell's desire and the desire in Great Britain generally. For a time that had seemed probable. In the great Battle of Warsaw, fought July 28-30, 1656, Charles-Gustavus and his ally the Elector of Brandenburg routed the Poles disastrously; and, Ragotski, Prince of Transylvania, also abetting and assisting the Swede, "actum jam videbatur de Polonia" as an old annalist says: "it seemed then all over with Poland." But a medley of powers, for diverse reasons and interests, had been combining themselves for the salvation of Poland, or at least for driving back the Swede to his own side of the Baltic. Not merely the Austrians and the German Catholic princes were in this combination, but also the Muscovites or Russians, and, most unnatural of all, the Danes, with countenance even from the more distant Dutch. Nay, the prudent Elector of Brandenburg, hitherto the ally of the Swede, was drawn off from that alliance. This was done by a treaty, dated Nov. 10, 1656, by which the Polish King, John Casimir, yielded to the Elector the full sovereignty of Ducal Prussia or East Prussia, till then held by the Elector only by a tenure of homage to the Polish Crown. All being ready, the Danish King, Frederick III., gave the signal by declaring war against Sweden and invading part of the Swedish territories. When the news reached Cromwell, which it did Aug. 13, 1657, it affected him profoundly. He had previously been remonstrating, as we have seen, both with the Danes and the Dutch, by letters of Milton's composition (ante pp. 272-3 and 290), trying to avert such an unseemly Protestant intervention in arrest of the Swedish King's career. And now, having his two envoys, MEADOWS and JEPHSON, ready for the emergency, he despatched them at once to the scene of that new Swedish-Danish war in which what had hitherto been the Swedish-Polish war was to be at once engulphed. For Karl-Gustav had turned back out of Poland to deal directly with the Danes, and the interest was now concentrated on the struggle between these two powers—the Poles, the German Catholics, the Muscovites, the Elector of Brandenburg, the Dutch, and other powers, looking on more or less in sympathy with the Danes, and some of them ready to strike in. To end the war, if possible, by reconciling Charles X. and Frederick III, was Cromwell's first object; and, with that aim in view, Jephson was to attach himself more particularly to Charles X., whatever might be his war-track, and Meadows more particularly to Frederick III. But they might cross each other's routes, deal with other States along these routes, and work into each other's hands. RICHARD BRADSHAW, likewise, who had been sent as Envoy to the Czar of Muscovy in the beginning of the year (ante pp. 292-294), would be moving about usefully on the east of the Baltic. And, if a reconciliation between Sweden and Denmark should by any means be brought about, what then should be aimed at but a repair of the rupture between the Elector of Brandenburg and the Swedish King, so as to save the Elector from the threatened vengeance of the Swede, and then farther the aggregation of other Protestant German States, and of the Dutch, round this nucleus of a Swedish-Danish-Brandenburg alliance, for common action against Poland, Austria, and German Catholicism? Even the Muscovites, as of the Greek Church, might be brought in, or at least they might be rendered neutral. All this was in contemplation, as a tissue of ideal possibilities, when MEADOWS and JEPHSON were despatched in August, and the mission of DOWNING four months later to the United Provinces was partly in the same great interest. It may seem matter for wonder that a man of Cromwell's practical sagacity, already so deeply implicated on the Continent by his Flanders enterprise and his alliance with France, should have had such a passion for farther interference as thus to insert his hands into the apparently measureless entanglement in northern and eastern Europe. But, in the first place, his practical sagacity was not at fault. Precisely that it should not be an entanglement, but a marshalling of powers in two sets according to their true religions and political affinities, was the essence of his aspiration; there were deep tendencies towards that result; sagacity consisted in perceiving these, and practicality in promoting them. Cromwell's aspiration in connexion with the Swedish-Danish war was also, it could be proved, that of other thoughtful Protestants then contemplating the war and speculating on its chances. But, in the second place, the business of the French alliance and the Flanders enterprise was vitally inter-connected with the so-called entanglement in the north and east. The German Emperor Ferdinand III. had died in April 1657; the Empire was vacant; Mazarin had set his heart on obtaining that central European dignity for his young master, Louis XIV., and was intriguing with the Electors for the purpose; it was still uncertain whether, when the time came, a majority of the Electoral College would vote for Louis XIV. or would retain the Imperial dignity in the House of Austria by choosing the late Emperor's son Leopold. The future of Germany and of Protestantism in Germany was concerned deeply in that issue; and, whatever may have been Cromwell's feelings in the special prospect of the election of his ally Louis XIV. to the Empire, he was bound to prefer that to the election of another incarnation of Austrian Catholicism.¹

At home meanwhile things went on smoothly. Cromwell had by this time brought his Established Church into a condition highly satisfactory to himself. The machinery of the Ejectors and the Triers was still in full operation; and, on reports from the Trustees for the Maintenance of Ministers, his Highness and the Council still had the pleasure, from time to time, of ordering new augmentations of clerical stipends. The Voluntaryism which still existed in wide diffusion through the English mind had become comparatively silent; and indeed open reviling of the Established Church had been made punishable by Article X. of the Petition and Advice. Perhaps the plainest speaker now against the principle of an Established Church, or at least against the constitution of the present one, was the veteran John Goodwin of Coleman Street. "The Triers (or Tormentors) tried and cast by the Laws of God and Men" was the title of a pamphlet of Goodwin's, which had been out since May 1657, assailing the Commission of Triers. Goodwin was too eminent a Commonwealth's man, and too fair a controversialist, to be treated as a mere reviler; and it was left to the Protector's journalist, Marchamont Needham, to reply through the press. "The Great Accuser cast down, or a Public Trial of Mr. John Goodwin of Coleman Street, London, at the Bar of Religion and Right Reason," was a pamphlet by Needham, published July 31. It was dedicated "To His Most Serene Highness, Oliver, Lord Protector," &c., in such terms as these:—"Sir, It is a custom in all countries, when any man hath taken a strange creature, immediately to present it to the Prince: whereupon I, having taken one of the strangest that (I think) any part of your Highness's dominions hath these many years produced, do, with all submissiveness, make bold to present him, bound hand and foot with his own cords (as I ought to bring him), to your Highness. He need not be sent to the Tower for his mischievousness: there is no danger in him now, nor like to be henceforth, as I have handled him." In a prefixed Epistle to the Reader there is a good deal of scurrility against Goodwin. He is described as "worse than a common nuisance." He is taxed also with inconsistency, inasmuch as he had been one of those who, in Feb. 1651-2, had signed the famous Proposals of Certain Ministers to the Committee for the Propagation of the Gospel, in which the principle of an Established Church had been assumed and asserted (ante, IV. 392). In the body of the pamphlet Needham maintains that principle. "Christ left no such rules and directions," he says, "nor was it his intention to leave such, for propagating the Gospel, as exclude the Magistrate from using his wisdom and endeavours in order thereunto." He defends the Commission of Triers and the Commission of Ejectors, and more than once twits Goodwin with having taken up at last the extreme crotchets of Roger Williams the American. "A Letter of Address to the Protector occasioned by Mr. Needham's Reply to Mr. Goodwin's Book against Triers" appeared Aug. 25; but we need not follow the controversy farther. It had come to be Mr. John Goodwin's fate to be the severest public critic of Cromwell's Established Church; it had come to be Mr. Marchamont Needham's to be the most prominent defender of that institution.¹

More likely than such men as John Goodwin to be classed as open revilers of the Established Church were the Quakers. They were now very numerous, going about in England, Scotland, Ireland, and everywhere else, as before, and mingling denunciations of every form of the existing ministry with their softer and richer teachings. They were still liable, of course, to varieties of penal treatment, according to the degrees of their aggressiveness and the moods of the local authorities; but the disposition at head-quarters was decidedly towards gentleness with them. Hardly had the new Council of State been constituted when, Cromwell himself present, three of the most eminent London physicians, Dr. Wright, Dr. Cox, and Dr. Bates, were instructed "to visit James Nayler, prisoner in Bridewell, and to consider of his condition as to the state both of his mind and body in point of health"; and, from that date (July 16, 1657), his farther detention seems to have been merely for his cure. George Fox, whose circuits of preaching took him as far as Edinburgh and the Scottish Highlands, could never be in London without addressing a pious letter or two to Cromwell, or even going to see him; and another Quaker, Edward Burrough, was so drawn to Cromwell that he was continually penning letters to him and leaving them at Whitehall. During and after the Kingship question these letters were particularly frequent, the Quakers being all Contrariants on that point. "O Protector, who hast tasted of the power of God, which many generations before thee have not so much since the days of apostasy from the Apostles, take heed that thou lose not thy power; but keep Kingship off thy head, which the world would give to thee:" so had Fox written in one letter, ending, "O Oliver, take heed of undoing thyself by running into things that will fade, the things of this world that will change; be subject and obedient to the Lord God." There was something in all this that really reached Cromwell's heart, while it amused him; and, though he would begin by bantering Fox at an interview, sitting on a table and talking in "a light manner," as Fox himself tells us, he would end with some serious words. Both to Fox personally, and to the letters from him and other Quakers, his reply in substance uniformly was that they were good people, and that, for himself, "all persecution and cruelty was against his mind." Cromwell was only at the centre, however, and could not regulate the administration of the law everywhere.¹

John Lilburne once more, but now for the last time, and in a totally new guise! Committed to prison in 1653 by the government of the Barebones Parliament, acting avowedly not by law but simply "for the peace of this nation" (ante, IV. 508), he had been first in the Tower, then in a castle in Jersey, and then in Dover Castle. In this last confinement, which had been made tolerably easy, a Quaker had had access to him, with very marked effects. "Here, in Dover Castle," Lilburne had written to his wife, Oct. 4, 1655, "through the loving-kindness of God, I have met with a more clear, plain, and evident knowledge of God, and myself, and His gracious outgoings to my soul, than ever I had in all my lifetime, not excepting my glorying and rejoicing condition under the Bishops." Again, in a later letter: "I particularly can, and do hereby, witness that I am already dead or crucified to the very occasions and real grounds of outward wars, and carnal sword-fightings, and fleshly bustlings and contests, and that therefore confidently I now believe that I shall never hereafter be a user of the temporal sword more, nor a joiner with those that do. And this I do here solemnly declare, not in the least to avoid persecution, or for any politic ends of my own, or in the least for the satisfaction of the fleshly wills of any of my great adversaries, or for satisfying the carnal will of my poor weak afflicted wife, but by the special movings and compulsions of God now upon my soul ... and that thereby, if yet I must be an imprisoned sufferer, it may from this day forward be for the truth as it is in Jesus, which truth I witness to be truly professed and practised by the savouriest of people, called Quakers." This had not at once procured his release, for he remained in Dover Castle through at least part of 1656. At length, however, after some proposal to let him go abroad again, or to send him and his wife to the Plantations, security had been accepted for his good behaviour, and he had been allowed to live as he liked at Eltham in Kent. Here, and elsewhere, he sometimes preached, and was in much esteem among the Quakers; and here, on Saturday the 29th of August, 1657, he died. On the following Monday his corpse was removed to London and conveyed to the house called "The Bull and Mouth" at Aldersgate, the chief meeting-place of the London Quakers. "At this place, that afternoon, assembled a medley of people, among whom the Quakers were most eminent for number; and within the house a controversy Was whether the ceremony of a hearse-cloth should be cast over his coffin; but, the major part, being Quakers, not assenting, the coffin was about five o'clock in the evening brought forth into the street. At its coming out, there stood a man on purpose to cast a velvet hearse-cloth over the coffin, and he endeavoured to do it; but, the crowd of Quakers not permitting it and having gotten the body on their shoulders, they carried it away without further ceremony, and the whole company conducted it into Moorfields, and thence into the new churchyard adjoining to Bedlam, where it lieth interred." Lilburne at his death was but thirty-nine years of age. He was popular to the last with the Londoners, and there were notices of him, comic and serio-comic, long after his death. By order of Council, Nov. 4, his Highness himself present, payment of the arrears of an allowance he had of 40s. a week, with continuation of the same allowance thenceforward, was granted to his wife, Elizabeth.¹

When the subdued Lilburne thus went to his grave among the Quakers, his unsubdued successor in the trade of Anti-Cromwellian conspiracy, the Anabaptist ex-Colonel Sexby, was in the Tower, waiting his doom. He had been arrested, July 24, in a mean disguise and with a great over-grown beard, on board a ship that was to carry him back to Flanders after one of his visits to London on his desperate design of an assassination of Cromwell, to be followed by a Spanish-Stuartist invasion. What would have been his doom can be but guessed. He became insane in the Tower, and died there in that state Jan. 13, 1657-8. He had previously confessed to Barkstead, the Lieutenant of the Tower, that he had been the real mover of the Sindercombe Plot, that he had been in the pay of Spain, and also, apparently, that he was the author of Killing no Murder.¹

So quiet and even was the course of home-affairs through the first seven months of the new Protectorate that such glimpses and anecdotes of particular persons have to suggest the general history. Yet one more of the sort.

In the parish register of Bolton Percy in Yorkshire there is this entry: "George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and Mary, the daughter of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, Baron of Cameron, of Nunappleton within this Parish of Bolton Percy, were married the 15th day of September anno Dom. 1657." This was, in fact, the marriage of the great Fairfax's only child, Marvell's former pupil, now nineteen years of age, to the Royalist Duke of Buckingham, aged thirty. The poet Cowley, who had known the Duke since their Cambridge days together, acted as his best man at the wedding, which was celebrated with great festivities at Nunappleton, Cowley contributing a poem. But surely it was a most extraordinary marriage, and, though there had been rumours of such a possibility for several years, it was heard of with surprise. The only child and heiress of the great Parliamentarian General, one of the founders of the Commonwealth, married to this Royalist of Royalists, the handsome young insurgent in the Second Civil War of 1648, the boon-companion of Charles II. for some time abroad, his boon-companion and buffoon all through his dreary year of Kingship among the Scots, his fellow-fugitive from the field of Worcester, and ever since, though less in Charles's company than before, and serving as a volunteer in the French army, yet a main trump-card in Charles's lists! How had it happened? Easily enough. The great Fairfax, with ample wealth of his own, had made most honourable and chivalrous use of the accessions to that wealth that had come in the shape of Parliamentary grants to him out of the confiscated estates of Royalists. Now, one such grant, in lieu of a money pension of £4000 a year, had been a portion of the confiscated property of the young Duke of Buckingham, including an estate in Yorkshire and York House in the Strand. The young Duke, stripped of his revenues of £25,000 a year, had been living meanwhile on the proceeds of a great collection of pictures, Titians and what not, that had been made by his father, and which had been quietly conveyed abroad for sale. But Fairfax had not forgotten the splendid young man, and had every wish to retrieve his fortunes for him. There had probably been communications to that end, not only with Buckingham himself, but even with Charles II.; and the result had been the Duke's return to England and appearance in Yorkshire, early in 1657, to woo Mary Fairfax or to complete the wooing. Who could resist him? It might have been better for Mary Fairfax had she died in her girlhood, fresh from Marvell's teaching; but now she was Duchess of Buckingham. York House and the estate in Yorkshire had been restored to her husband by gift, and Nunappleton and other Fairfax estates were to be settled on him and her for their lives, and on their heirs should there be any.¹

Naturally, the Protector might have something to say to the arrangement. The great Fairfax was a man to whom anything in reason would be granted; and, though Cromwell had no reason to believe that Fairfax favoured his Protectorate, and there had been even reports from Thurloe's foreign agents of correspondence between Fairfax and Charles II.,¹ no one could challenge Fairfax's honour or doubt his passive allegiance. But a son-in-law like Buckingham about him altered the case. Little wonder, therefore, that the marriage at Nunappleton was discussed at the Council in London. On the 9th of October, his Highness and eight more being present, it was ordered that a warrant should issue for arresting, and confining in the Isle of Jersey, George, Duke of Buckingham, who had been "in this nation for divers months without licence or authority." This led, of course, to earnest representations from Fairfax. Accordingly, Nov. 17, "His Highness having communicated to the Council that the Lord Fairfax hath made addresses to him, with some desires on behalf of the Duke of Buckingham," it was ordered "That the Resolves and Act of Parliament in the case of the said Duke be communicated to the Lord Fairfax as the grounds of the Council's proceedings touching the said Duke, and that there be withal signified to the Lord Fairfax the Council's civil respects to his Lordship's own person." The message was to be conveyed by the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Deputy Fleetwood, and Lord Strickland. Fairfax and the young couple must have made farther appeal; for, Dec. 1, his Highness "delivered in to the Council a paper containing an offer of some reasons in reference to the Duke of Buckingham his liberty," whereupon it was minuted "That the Council do declare it as their opinion that it is not consistent with their duty to advise his Highness to grant the Duke of Buckingham his liberty as is desired, nor consistent with his Highness's trust to do the same." Lord Strickland and Sir Charles Wolseley were to communicate the minute to Fairfax. Probably Fairfax had come up to town on the business. The young couple would seem to have remained in the country; nor do I find that the order for the arrest of the Duke was yet actually enforced.²

What may have disposed Cromwell not to be too harsh about the marriage was the fact that he had just celebrated the marriages of his own two youngest daughters. Lady Frances, the youngest, became Mrs. Rich on the 11th of November, and Lady Mary became Viscountess Falconbridge on the 18th.

The drift of public interest was now towards the reassembling of the adjourned Parliament on the 20th of January 1657-8. Especially there was great curiosity as to the persons that would be called by his Highness to form the Second or Upper House. That was satisfied in the course of December by the issue of his Highness's writs under the great seal (quite in regal style, with the phrases "We," "ourself," "our great seal," &c.) to the following sixty-three persons, the asterisks to be explained presently:—

*Lord Richard Cromwell (Councillor, &c.). Lord Henry Cromwell (Lord Deputy of Ireland).

Of the Titular Nobility.

• The Earl of Warwick.
• The Earl of Manchester.
• The Earl of Mulgrave (Councillor).
• The Earl of Cassilis (Scotch).
• William, Viscount Say and Sele.
• *Thomas, Viscount Falconbridge (son-in-law).
• *Philip, Viscount Lisle (Peer's son and Councillor).
• *Charles, Viscount Howard (raised to this rank by Cromwell, July 20, 1657).
• Philip, Lord Wharton.
• *George, Lord Eure.
• *Roger, Lord Broghill (Peer's son).
• *John, Lord Claypole (son-in-law and "Master of our Horse").

Great Army and Navy Officers.

• *Lieutenant-General Charles Fleetwood (son-in-law and Councillor).
• *Admiral, or "General of our Fleet," John Desborough (brother-in-law and Councillor: made Admiral in suecession to Blake).
• *Admiral, or "General of our Fleet," Edward Montague (Councillor, and one of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury).
• *Commissary-General of Horse, Edward Whalley (cousin).
• Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, General George Monk.

Great State and Law Officers.

• *Nathaniel Fiennes (Councillor).
• Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal.
• *John Lisle, ditto.
• *Bulstrode Whitlocke, one of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury.
• *William Sydenham (Councillor), ditto.
• *Henry Lawrence (Lord President of the Council).
• Oliver St. John, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.
• *John Glynne, Lord Chief Justice of the Upper Bench.
• *William Lenthall, Master of the Rolls.
• William Steele, Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

Baronets.

• Sir Gilbert Gerrard.
• Sir Arthur Hasilrig.
• *Sir John Hobart.
• *Sir Gilbert Pickering (Councillor and Chamberlain to the Household).
• *Sir Francis Russell (Henry Cromwell's father-in-law).
• *Sir William Strickland.
• *Sir Charles Wolseley (Councillor).

Knights.

• *Sir John Barkstead (knighted by Cromwell Jan, 19, 1655-6).
• Sir George Fleetwood (knighted by Cromwell Sept. 15, 1656).
• *Sir John Hewson (Colonel, knighted by Cromwell Dec. 5, 1657).
• *Sir Thomas Honeywood.
• Sir Archibald Johnstone of Warriston (Scotch).
• Sir William Lockhart (Ambassador, knighted by Cromwell Dec. 10, 1656).
• *Sir Christopher Pack (Alderman, knighted by Cromwell Sept. 20, 1656).
• *Sir Richard Onslow.
• *Sir Thomas Pride (Colonel Pride, knighted by Cromwell Jan, 17, 1655-6).
• *Sir William Roberts.
• *Sir Robert Tichbourne (Alderman, knighted by Cromwell Dec. 10, 1656).
• Sir Matthew Tomlinson (Colonel, knighted in Dublin by Lord Henry Cromwell. Nov. 25, 1657).

Others.

• *James Berry (the Major-General).
• John Clerke (Colonel).
• *Thomas Cooper (Colonel).
• John Crewe.
• *John Fiennes.
• *William Goffe (the Major-General).
• *Richard Ingoldsby (Cousin's son and Colonel).
• *John Jones (brother-in-law and Colonel).
• *Philip Jones (Councillor and Colonel, and now "Comptroller of our Household").
• *Richard Hampden (son of the great Hampden).
• William Pierrepoint.
• Alexander Popham.
• *Francis Rous (Councillor and Provost of Eton).
• *Philip Skippon (Councillor and Major-General).
• *Walter Strickland (Councillor).
• *Edmund Thomas.¹

Such were "Oliver's Peers or Lords," remembered by that name now, and so called at the time, not because they were Peers or Lords in the old sense, but because they were to be members of that "Other House" which, by Article V. of the Petition and Advice, was to exercise some of the functions of the old House of Lords. The selection was various enough, and probably as good as could be made; but there must have been great doubts as to the result. Would those of the old English hereditary nobility whom it had been deemed politic to summon condescend to sit as fellow-peers with Hewson, once a shoemaker, Pride, once a brewer's drayman, and Berry, once a clerk in some iron works? What of Manchester, recollecting his deadly quarrel with Cromwell as long ago as 1644-5, and what of Say and Sele, who had remained sternly aloof from the Protectorate from the very first, the pronounced Oliverianism of two of his sons notwithstanding? Then would Anti-Oliverian Commoners like Hasilrig and Gerrard, hating the Protector with their whole hearts, take it as a compliment to be removed from the Commons, where they could have some power in opposition, to a so-called Upper House where they would be lost in a mass of Oliverians? Farther, of the Oliverians who would have willingly taken their seats and been useful, several of the most distinguished, such as Henry Cromwell, Monk, Lockhart, and Tomlinson, were at a distance, and could not appear immediately. Finally, if, after all these deductions, a sufficient House should be brought together, it would be at the expense of a considerable weakening of the Government party in the Commons by the withdrawal of leading members thence, and this at a time when such weakening was most dangerous. For, by the Petition and Advice, were not the Anti-Oliverians excluded from last session, to the number of ninety or more, to take their seats in the Commons now, without farther let or hindrance from the Protector?

Cromwell had, doubtless, foreseen that one of the difficulties of his Second Protectorate would be the transition from the system of a Single-House Parliament, now nine years in use, to a revived form of the method of Two Houses. The experiment, however, had been, of his own suggestion and was still to his liking, Could the Second House take root, it might aid him, on the one hand, in that steady and orderly domestic policy which, he desired in general, and it might increase his power, on the other hand, to stand firmly on his own broad notion of religious toleration. At all events, the time had now come when the difficulty must be faced.

On Wednesday. Jan. 20, 1657-8; the members of the two Senses, such of them at least as had appeared, were duly in their places. Those of the new House were assembled in what tad formerly been the House of Lords, Of the sixty-three that had been summoned forty-three had presented themselves and had been sworn in by the form of oath prescribed in the Petition and Advice, They were the forty-three whose names are marked by asterisks in the preceding list of those summoned. When it is considered that from seven to ten of those not asterisked there (e.g. Henry Cromwell, Monk, Steele, Lockhart, and Tomlinson) would certainly have taken their places but for necessary and distant absence, and might take them yet, the House mast be called, so far, a very successful one. It had failed most conspicuously, as had been expected, in one of its proposed ingredients. Of the old English Peers there had come in only Visconnt Falconbridge and Lord Eure; Warwick, Manchester, Say and Sele, Wharton, even Mulgrave, were absent. More ominous still was the absence of the Anti-Oliverian commoner Sir Arthur Hasilrig, He had not yet come to town, and there was much speculation what course he would take if he did come. Would he regard himself as still member for Leicester in the Commons House, though he had been excluded thence in September 1656, as he had before been driven from the same seat in the First Parliament of the Protectorate; and would he reclaim that seat now rather than go into the Upper House? Meanwhile for most of those who had been excluded in Sept. 1658 along with Hasilrig there was no such dilemma; and, accordingly, they had mustered, in pretty large number, to claim their seats in the Commons, The only formality with which they had to comply now was the prescribed oath of the Petition and Advice, by which they, as well as the members of the Upper House, were to swear, among other things, "to be true and faithful to the Lord Protector," &c., and not to "contrive, design, or attempt anything against his person or lawful authority." It is evident that Cromwell trusted a good deal to the effects of this oath; for he had taken care that there should be stately commissioners in the lobby of the Commons from a very early hour in the morning to swear the members as they came in. As many as 150 or 180 members in all, the formerly excluded and the old sitters together, seem to have been in the House, thus sworn, about the time when the forty-three were assembled in the adjacent Other House. The Commons had then resumed business, on their own account, as met after regular adjournment. They had appointed a Mr. John Smythe to be their Clerk, in lieu of Mr. Henry Scobell, now made general "Clerk of the Parliament" and transferred to the Other House, and they had fixed that day week as a day of prayer for divine assistance, when the Usher of the Black Rod appeared to summon them to meet his Highness in the Other House. Arranging that the Sergeant-at-Arms should carry the mace with him, and stand by the Speaker with the mace at his shoulder through the whole interview with his Highness, the House obeyed the summons.¹

Cromwell's speech to the two Houses (Speech XVI.) opened significantly with the words "My Lords, and Gentlemen of the House of Commons." It was a very quiet speech, somewhat slowly and heavily delivered, with "peace" for the key-word. He represented the nation as now in such a nourishing state, especially in the possession of a settled and efficient Public Ministry of the Gospel, and at the same time of ample religious liberty for all, that nothing more was needed than oblivion of past differences, and a hearty co-operation of the two Houses with each other, and with himself. Apologizing for being too ill to discourse more at length, he asked Lord Commissioner Fiennes to do so for him. The speech of Fiennes was essentially a continuation in the same strain, but with a gorgeousness and variety of metaphor, Biblical and poetical, in description of the new era of peace and its duties, utterly beyond the bounds of usual Parliamentary oratory even then, and to which Cromwell and the rest, with all their experience of metaphor from the pulpit, must have listened with astonishment. "Jacob, speaking to his son Joseph, said I had not thought to have seen thy face, and lo! God hath showed me thy seed, also: meaning his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. And may not many amongst us well say some years hence We had not thought to have seen a Chief Magistrate again among us, and lo! God hath shown us a Chief Magistrate in his Two Houses of Parliament? Now may the good God make them like Ephraim and Manasseh, that the Three Nations may be blessed in them, saying God made thee like these Two Houses of Parliament, which two, like Leah and Rachel, did build the House of God! May you do worthily in Ephrata, and be famous in Bethlehem!" There was more of the same kind, including a comparison of the new constitution of the Petition and Advice to the perfected eduction of the orderly universe out of chaos. It was the speech of a Puritan Jean Paul.¹

Which of the two Houses was Ephraim and which Manasseh in Fiennes's own fancy does not appear; but the Commons had already voted themselves to be Ephraim, and the Other House to be the questionable Manasseh. The Anti-Oliverians among them, now in the majority or nearly so, had resolved that their best policy, bound as they were by oath to the Protectorate and the new Constitution of the Petition and Advice generally, would be to question the powers of the new House as defined in the constituting document. The definition had been rather vague. The meaning had certainly been that the new House should be a legislative House, standing in very much the same relation to the Commons as the old House of Lords had done, and not merely a Judicial High Court for certain classes of cases, with general powers of advice to the Commons in the conduct of weighty affairs. This, however, was what the Anti-Oliverians in the Commons contended; and on this contention, if possible, they were to break down the Other House and so make a gap in the new Constitution. They had made a beginning even in the small matter of the relative claims of Mr. Smythe, their own new Clerk, and Mr. Scobell, as general "Clerk of the Parliament," to the possession of certain documents; but they found a better opportunity when, at their third sitting (Jan. 22, afternoon), they were informed that "some gentlemen were at the door with a message from the Lords." The message was merely a request that the Commons would join the Lords in an address to his Highness asking him to appoint a day of humiliation throughout the three nations; but, purporting to be from "the Lords," it cut very deep. By a majority of seventy-five to fifty-one it was resolved "That this House will send an answer by messengers of their own," i.e. that they would take time to consider the subject. Two more days passed, the House transacting some miscellaneous business, but nursing its resolution for a split; and, on Monday the 25th, lo! Sir Arthur Hasilrig among them, standing up prominently and insisting on being sworn and admitted to his seat. He had disdained the summons to the Other House, and his proper place was here! With some hesitation, he was duly sworn, and so was added to the group of Anti-Oliverian leaders already in the House. He, Thomas Scott, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, John Weaver, Sergeant Maynard, and one or two others, were thenceforth to head the opposition within doors. Outside there were in process of signature certain great petitions to the Commons House intended to widen the difference between it and the Protector.¹

At this point the Protector interposed. On the afternoon of the same day on which Hasilrig had taken his seat (Jan. 25) the Commons were summoned to the Banqueting House in Whitehall, to listen to another speech from his Highness (Speech XVII.), addressed to them and the Other House together. It opened with the phrase "My Lords and Gentlemen of thee Two Houses of Parliament," to obviate any objections there might be to the form of opening in the speech of five days before; and it was conceived in the same spirit of respectfulness to both Houses and anxiety for their support. But it expounded, more strongly and at more length than the former speech, the pressing reasons for unanimity now. It surveyed, first, the state of Europe generally, dwelling on the ominous combination of Roman Catholic interests everywhere, and the perils to the Protestant Cause from the disputes among the Protestant Powers, and especially from the hostility of the Danes and the Dutch to the heroic King of Sweden, who had "adventured his all against the Popish Interest In Poland." It declared the vital concern of Great Britain in all this, if only because an invasion of Great Britain in behalf of the Stuarts was a settled part of the Anti-Protestant programme. "You have accounted yourselves happy in being environed with a great Ditch from all the world beside. Truly, you will not be able to keep your Ditch, nor your shipping, unless you turn your ships and shipping into troops of horse and companies of foot, and fight to defend yourselves on terra firma." Then, turning to the state of affairs at home, he insisted on the necessity of a general union in defence of the existing settlement. One Civil War more, he said, would throw the nation into a universal confusion, with or without a restoration of the Stuarts, and, if with such a restoration, then with consequences to some that they did not now contemplate. He made no express reference to the proceedings in the Commons of the last few days, but implored both Houses to abstain from dissensions, stand on the basis to which he and they had sworn, and join with him in real work.¹

The appeal to the Commons was in vain. After three or four more meetings, they resumed, Jan. 29, the subject of the answer to be returned to the message of the 22nd from the Other House. By a vote of eighty-four to seventy-eight they resolved to go into Grand Committee on the subject. This having been done, they resolved, Jan. 30, "That the first thing to be debated shall be the Appellation to be given to the persons to whom the answer shall be made." On this one point there was a protracted debate of four days, the oppositionists insisting that the appellation should be simply "The Other House," as in the Petition and Advice, and the Oliverians contending that that was no name at all, that it had been employed in the Petition and Advice only as a blank to be afterwards filled up, and that the proper name would be "The House of Lords." In one of two divisions on Feb. 3 the votes were eighty-seven against eighty-six; in the other they were ninety-three against eighty-seven. These divisions, however, were merely incidental, and the debate was still going on fiercely on Thursday, Feb. 4. Scott had spoken and was trying to speak again in defiance of rule, with Hasilrig backing him, when "Mr. Speaker informed the House that the Usher of the Black Rod was at the door with a message from his Highness." Hasilrig seems to have been still on his feet when the Black Rod, having been admitted, delivered his message: "Mr. Speaker, His Highness is in the Lords House, and desires to speak with you." Thither they adjourned, and there his Highness briefly addressed the two Houses once again (Speech XVIII.). Or rather he addressed both Houses only through about half of his speech; for, at a particular point, he turned deliberately to the Commons and proceeded thus: "I do not speak to these Gentlemen, or Lords, or whatsoever you will call them; I speak not this to them, but to you. You advised me to come into this place [the Second Protectorship], to be in a capacity by your advice. Yet, instead of owning a thing, some must have I know not what; and you have not only disjointed yourselves but the whole Nation, which is in likelihood of running into more confusion in these fifteen or sixteen days that you have sat than it hath been from the rising of the last session to this day. Through the intention of devising a Commonwealth again, that some people might be the men that might rule all! And they are endeavouring to engage the Army to carry that thing. And hath that man been true to this Nation, whosoever he be, especially that hath taken an oath, thus to prevaricate? These designs have been made among the Army, to break and divide us. I speak this in the presence of some of the Army: that these things have not been according to God, nor according to truth, pretend what you will. These things tend to nothing else but the playing of the King of Scots' game (if I may so call him); and I think myself bound before God to do what I can to prevent it. That which I told you in the Banqueting House was true: that there are preparations of force to invade us, God is my witness, it hath been confirmed to me since, not a day ago, that the King of Scots hath an Army at the water's side, ready to be shipped for England. I have it from those who have been eyewitnesses of it. And, while it is doing, there are endeavours from some who are not far from this place to stir up the people of this town into a tumulting—what if I said into a rebellion? And I hope I shall make it appear to be no better, if God assist me. It hath been not only your endeavour to pervert the Army while you have been sitting, and to draw them to state the question about a Commonwealth; but some of you have been listing of persons, by commission of Charles Stuart, to join with any insurrection that may be made. And what is like to come upon this, the enemy being ready to invade us, but even present blood and confusion? And, if this be so, I do assign it to this cause: your not assenting to what you did invite me to by your Petition and Advice, as that which might prove the Settlement of the Nation. And, if this be the end of your sitting, and this be your carriage, I think it high time that an end be put to your sitting. And I DO DISSOLVE THIS PARLIAMENT. And let God be judge between you and me!"¹

Thus, after a second session of only sixteen days, the Second Parliament of the Protectorate was at an end. Cromwell's explanation of his reasons for dissolving it is perfectly accurate. Through the first session the Parliament, as a Single House Parliament, had, by the exclusion of about ninety of those returned to it, been a thoroughly Oliverian body, and its chief work had been a reconstitution of the Protectorate on a definite basis; but through the second session this Parliament, though nominally the same, had been split into two Houses, the House of Lords wholly Oliverian, but the House of Commons, by the loss of a number of its former members and the readmission of the excluded, turned into an Anti-Oliverian conclave. Fourteen folio pages of the Commons Journals are the only remaining formal records of the short and unfortunate Session. Oliver's Lords can have had little more to do than meet and look at each other.

There was to be no Parliament more while Cromwell lived. For seven months onwards from Feb. 4, 1657-8, he was to govern, one may say, more alone than ever, more as a sovereign, and with all his energies in performance of the sovereignty more tremendously on the strain.

There was still, of course, the Council, now essentially a Privy Council, meeting twice or thrice a week, or sometimes on special summons, and with this novelty in the public style and title of the councillors, that those of them who had been in the Upper House of the late Parliament retained the name of "Lords." Lord President Lawrence, Lord Richard Cromwell, Lord Fleetwood, Lord Montague, Lord Commissioner Fiennes, Lord Desborough, Lord Viscount Lisle, the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Rous, Lord Skippon, Lord Pickering (alias "The Lord Chamberlain"), Lord Strickland, Lord Wolseley, Lord Sydenham, Lord Jones (alias "Mr. Comptroller"), and Mr. Secretary Thurloe: such would have been the minute of a complete sederunt of the Council when, it resumed duty after the dissolution of the Parliament. There never was such a complete sederunt: ten out of the sixteen was the average attendance, rising sometimes to twelve. Occasionally Cromwell came to one of their meetings; but generally they transacted business among themselves to his order, and communicated with him privately. A few of the Councillors were more closely in his confidence than the rest; Whitlocke, though not of the Council, was often consulted about special affairs; and the man-of-all-work, closeted with his Highness daily, was Mr. Secretary Thurloe. His Highness had, moreover, a private secretary, Mr. William Malyn, who had been with him already for several years.¹

As Cromwell had intimated in his Dissolution Speech, his first labour after the dissolution was to attack that vast complication of dangers of which he had already sure knowledge, and which he declared to have been caused, or brought to a head, by the wretched conduct of the Commons through their sixteen days of session, and by the positive treason of some of their number. He had described the dangers as gathering from two quarters, though they were already interrelated and would run together at last. There was "the King of Scots' game," or the plot of a Royalist commotion in conjunction with a threatened invasion of the Spanish-Stuartist Army; and there was the design of a great insurrection of Old Commonwealth's men for a subversion of the Protectorate and a return to the pure Single-House Republic. Of the first danger he had said, "I think myself bound before God to do what I can to prevent it"; the second he had denounced as rebellion, saying, "I hope I shall make it appear to be no better, if God assist me." For three or four months he was to be engaged in making good these words; but he had begun already. On February 6, at a great meeting of the Army-officers in the Banqueting House, he had discoursed to them impressively for two hours, abashing two or three that had been tampered with, and receiving from the rest assurances of their eternal fidelity. Ludlow says that, for several nights successively, before or after this meeting, Cromwell himself took the inspection of the watch among the soldiers at Whitehall.¹

As always, Cromwell's tenderness towards the Republicans or Old Commonwealth's men appeared now in his dealings with the new commotion on that side. Colonel Packer and Captain Gladman, two disaffected officers in his own regiment of horse, appear to have been merely dismissed from their commands; and one hears besides of but a few arrests, with no farther consequences than examination before the Council and temporary imprisonment. Harrison was again arrested, the Fifth-Monarchy men having, of course, lent themselves to the agitation, and Harrison having this time, Whitlocke says, been certainly "deep in it." Among the others arrested were Mr. John Carew, the Regicide and Councillor under the Commonwealth, John Portman, who had been secretary to Blake in the Fleet, a Hugh Courtney, and John Rogers, a preacher. There seems to have been no thought of any proceedings against Hasilrig, Scott, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, and the other Anti-Cromwellian leaders in the late Parliament. This, however, is less remarkable than that, with information in Cromwell's possession that some of the members of the Parliament, nominally Commonwealth's men, had actually commissions from Charles II. and were enlisting persons under such commissions for any possible insurrection whatever, he had contented himself with announcing the fact in his Dissolution Speech and so merely signifying to the culprits that their lives were in his hands.¹

The Royalist project and its ramifications were really very formidable. A Spanish Army of about 8000 men, with Charles II. and his refugees among them, was gathered about Bruges, Brussels, and Ostend, with vessels of transport provided; and the burst of a great Royalist Insurrection at home, in Sussex, London, and elsewhere, was to coincide with the invasion from abroad. The Duke of Ormond himself had come to London in disguise, to observe matters and make preparations. He was in London for three weeks, living in the house of a Roman Catholic surgeon in Drury Lane, till Cromwell, who knew the fact, generously sent Lord Broghill to him with a hint to be gone. This was early in March, some days after a proclamation "commanding all Papists and other persons who have been of the late King's party or his son's to depart out of the cities of London and Westminster," and another proclamation forbidding such persons living in the country to stir more than five miles from their fixed places of abode. On the 12th of that month the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of London met his Highness and the Army-officers by appointment at Whitehall, where his Highness explained to them at length the nature of the crisis, informed them particularly of the strength of the Flanders army of invasion, Ormond's visit, &c., and solemnly committed to them the safety of the City. The response of the City authorities was extremely loyal.¹

On the principle that the country could not afford for ever this periodical trouble of a Royalist Conspiracy, and that some examples of severity might make the present upheaving the last of the kind, Cromwell had resolved on a few such examples. His information, through Thurloe and otherwise, was unerring. He knew, and had known for some time, who were the members of the so-called "Sealed Knot," i.e. that secret association of select Royalists resident in England who were in closest correspondence with Hyde and the other Councillors of Charles abroad, and were chiefly trusted by them for the management of the cause at home, Indeed, Sir Richard Willis, one of the chiefs of the "Sealed Knot," had for some time been in understanding with Cromwell, pledged to him by a peculiar compact, and revealing to him all that passed among the Royalists. Hence, before the end of April, some of the members of the "Sealed Knot," and a number of leading Royalists besides, had been lodged in the Tower. Among them were Colonel John Russell (brother of the Earl of Bedford), Colonel John White, Sir William Compton, Sir William Clayton, Sir Henry Slingsby (a prisoner in Hull since the Royalist rising of 1654-5, but negotiating there desperately of late to secure the officers and the town itself for Charles), Sir Humphrey Bennett, Mr. John Mordaunt (brother of the Earl of Peterborough), Dr. John Hewit (a London Episcopal clergyman), Mr. Thomas Woodcock, and a Henry Mallory. It was part of the understanding with Willis that several of the prisoners, Willis's particular friends, should be ultimately released. For trial were selected Slingsby, Clayton, Bennett, Mordaunt, Woodcock, Mallory, and Dr. Hewit. The trials were in Westminster Hall, in May and June, before a great High Court of Justice, consisting of all the judges, some of the great state officers, and a hundred and thirty commissioners besides, all in conformity with an Act of the late Parliament prescribing the mode of trial for such prime offences. Five of the seven were either acquitted or spared: only Slingsby and Dr. Hewit were brought to the scaffold. They were beheaded on Tower Hill, June 8. Much influence was exerted in behalf of Hewit; but, besides that he had been deeply implicated, he had been contumacious in the Court, challenging its competency, and refusing to plead. Prynne had stood by him, and prepared his demurrer.—From the evidence collected in Dr. Hewit's case it appeared that he, if not Ormond, had been calculating on the co-operation of Fairfax, Lambent, Sir William Waller, and a great many other persons of name, up and down the country, not included among those whom Cromwell had seen fit to arrest. As Thurloe distinctly says, "It's certain Sir William Waller was fully engaged," the omission, of that veteran commander from the number must have been an act of grace. About Lambert the speculation seems to have been absurd; and, though Cromwell must have known that Fairfax was now inclining generally towards a Restoration, he cannot have believed anything stronger at present in his case. There was no public reference to such high personages; nor, with the exception of some friendly expostulation by the Protector with a young Mr. John Stapley of Sussex (son of Stapley the Regicide and Councillor of the Commonwealth), who had been lured into the business, was any account taken of the other miscellaneous persons in Hewit's list of reputable sympathisers. It was enough for Cromwell to know who had swerved so far, and to have made examples of Hewit himself and Slingsby.—These two would have been the only victims but for a wild sub-conspiracy in the City of London while the trials of Hewit and Slingsby were in progress. A few desperate cavaliers about town, the chief of whom were a Sir William Leighton, a Colonel Deane, and a Colonel Manley, holding commissions from Charles, had met several times at the Mermaid Tavern and elsewhere, and had arranged for a midnight tumult on Saturday the 15th of May. They were to attack the guard at St. Paul's, seize the Lord Mayor, raise a conflagration near the Tower, &c. The hour had come, and the conspirators were in the Mermaid Tavern for their final arrangements, when lo! the trainbands on the alert all round them and Barkstead riding through the streets with a train of five small cannon. A good many were arrested, thirty of them London prentices. Six of the principals were condemned July 2, of whom one was hanged, two were hanged, drawn, and quartered, and three were reprieved. For the prentices there was all clemency.¹

Though the prosecutions of the Royalist plotters were not concluded till the beginning of July, all real danger from the plot itself had been over in March or April, when Ormond was back in Bruges with the report that his mission had been abortive and that Cromwell was too strong. We must go back, therefore, for the other threads of our narrative.

The death of Mr. Robert Rich, Cromwell's son-in-law since the preceding November, had occurred Feb. 16, 1657-8, only twelve days after the dissolution of the Parliament. Cromwell, saddened by the event himself, had found time even then to write letters of condolence and comfort to the young man's grandfather, the Earl of Warwick. The Earl's reply, dated March 11, is extant. "My pen and my heart," it begins, "were ever your Lordship's servants; now they are become your debtors. This paper cannot enough confess my obligation, and much less discharge it, for your seasonable and sympathising letters, which, besides the value they deserve from so worthy a hand, express such faithful affections, and administer such Christian advice, as renders them beyond measure welcome and dear to me." Then, after pious expression at once of his grief and of his resignation, he concludes with words that have a historical value. "My Lord," he says, "all this is but a broken echo of your pious counsel, which gives such ease to my oppressed mind that I can scarce forbid my pen being tedious. Only it remembers your Lordship's many weighty and noble employments, which, together with your prudent, heroic, and honourable managery of them, I do here congratulate as well as my grief will give me leave. Others' goodness is their own; yours is a whole country's, yea three kingdoms'—for which you justly possess interest and renown with wise and good men: virtue is a thousand escutcheons. Go on, my Lord; go on happily, to love Religion, to exemplify it. May your Lordship long continue an instrument of use, a pattern of virtue, and a precedent of glory!" On the 19th of April 1658, or not six weeks after the letter was written, the old Earl himself died. By that time the louring appearances had rolled away, and Cromwell's "prudent, heroic, and honourable managery" had again been widely confessed.¹

Through all the turmoil of the proceedings against the plotters Cromwell had not abated his interest in his bold enterprise in Flanders, or in his alliance with the French generally. That alliance having been renewed for another year (March 28, 1658), reinforcements were sent to the English auxiliary army to fit it for farther work in the Netherlands. Sir John Reynolds, the first commander of that army, having been unfortunately drowned in returning to England on a short leave of absence (Dec. 5, 1657), the Governorship of Mardike had come into the hands of Major-General Morgan, while the command in the field had been assigned to Lockhart, hitherto the Protector's Ambassador only, though soldiering had been formerly his more familiar business. In conjunction with Turenne, Lockhart had been pushing on the war, and at length (May 1658) the two armies, and Montagu's fleet, were engaged in the exact service which Cromwell most desired, and Lockhart had been always urging. This was the siege of Dunkirk, with a view to the possession of that town, as well as Mardike, by the English. To be near the scene of such important operations, Louis XIV. and Cardinal Mazarin had taken up their quarters at Calais; and, not to miss the opportunity of such near approach of the French monarch to the shores of England, Cromwell despatched his son-in-law Viscount Falconbridge on a splendid embassy of compliment and congratulation. He landed at Calais on the 29th of May, was received by both King and Cardinal with such honours as they had never accorded to an ambassador before, and returned on the 3rd of June to make his report. The very next day there was a tremendous battle close to Dunkirk between the French-English forces under Turenne and Lockhart and a Spanish army which had come for the relief of the besieged town under Don John of Austria and the Prince of Condé, with the Dukes of York and Gloucester in their retinue. Mainly by the bravery of Lockhart's "immortal six thousand," the victory of the French and English was complete; and, though the Marquis of Leyda, the Spanish Governor of Dunkirk, maintained the defence valiantly, the town had to surrender on the 14th of June, two days after the Marquis had been mortally wounded in a sally. Next day, according to the Treaty with Cromwell, the town was at once delivered to Lockhart, Louis XIV. himself, who was on the spot, handing him the keys. Already, while that event was unknown, and merely to reciprocate the compliment of Falconbridge's embassy to Calais, there had been sent across the Channel, in the name of Louis XIV., the Duke de Crequi, first Gentleman of his Bedchamber, and M. Mancini, the nephew of Cardinal Mazarin, "accompanied by divers of the nobility of France and many gentlemen of quality." Met at Dover by Fleetwood and an escort, they arrived in London June 16, and remained there till the 21st, having audiences with his Highness, delivering to him letters from Louis and the Cardinal, and entertained by him with all possible magnificence. While they were there, a special envoy joined them, announcing the capture of Dunkirk; and so the joy was complete. There was nothing the French King would not do to show his regard for the great Protector; and, but for his Majesty's illness at that moment from small-pox, the Cardinal himself would have come over instead of sending his nephew. And why should there not be a renewal of the Treaty after the expiry of the present term, to secure another year or two of that co-operation of the English Army and Fleet with Turenne which had led already to such excellent results? What if Ostend, as well as Dunkirk and Mardike, were to be made over to the Protector? These were suggestions for the future, and meanwhile new successes were added to the capture of Dunkirk. Town after town in Flanders, including Gravelines at last, yielded to Turenne, or other generals, and received French garrisons, and through the summer autumn the Spaniards were so beset in Flanders that an expedition thence for the invasion of England in the interest of Charles Stuart, or in any other interest, was no longer even a possibility.¹

While thus turning to account the alliance with the only Catholic power with which there could be safe dealing, the Protector clung firmly to his idea of a League among the Protestant Powers themselves. If Burnet's information is correct, it was about this time that he contemplated the institution in London of "a Council for the Protestant Religion in opposition to the Congregation De Propaganda Fide at Rome." It was to sit at Chelsea College: there were to be seven Councillors, with a large yearly fund at their disposal; the world was to be mapped out into four great regions; and for each region there was to be a Secretary at £500 a year, maintaining a correspondence with that region, ascertaining the state of Religion in it, and any exigency requiring interference. That remained only a project; but meanwhile there was the agency of Jephson with the King of Sweden, of Meadows with the King of Denmark, of Downing with the United Provinces, and of other Envoys here and there, all working for peace among the Protestant States and joint action against the common enemy. In the Council Order Books for May 1658 one comes also upon new considerations of the old subject of the Protestants of the Piedmontese valleys, with a fresh remittance of £3000 for their relief, and an advance at the same time of £500 out of the Piedmontese Fund for the kindred purpose of relieving twenty distressed Bohemian families. Indeed in that month his Highness was again at white heat on the subject of his favourite Piedmontese. The Treaty of Pignerol, by which the persecuting Edict of 1655 had been recalled and liberty of worship again yielded to the poor Vaudois (ante pp. 43-44), had gradually been less and less regarded; there were new troubles to the Vaudois from the House of Savoy; there were even signs of a possible repetition in the valleys of all the former horrors. How to prevent that was a serious thought with Cromwell amid all his other affairs; and he made his most effective stroke by an immediate appeal to the French King. On the 26th of May there went to his Majesty one of Milton's Latin State Letters in the Protector's name, adjuring him, by his own honour and by the faith of their alliance, to save the poor Piedmontese and secure the Treaty which had been made in their behalf by former French intervention; and on the same day there went a letter to Lockhart urging him to his utmost diligence in the matter, and suggesting that the French King should incorporate the Piedmontese valleys with his own dominion, giving the Duke of Savoy some bit of territory with a Catholic population in exchange. Reaching Louis XIV. and Lockhart at the moment of the great success before Dunkirk, these letters accomplished their object. The will of France was signified at Turin, and the Protestants of the Valleys had another respite.¹

Were one asked what subject of home concern had the first place in Cromwell's attention through all the events and transactions that have hitherto been noticed, the answer must still be the same for this as for all the previous portions of his Protectorate. It was "The Propagation of the Gospel," with all that was then implied in that phrase as construed by himself.

As regarded England and Wales, the phrase meant, all but exclusively, the sustenance, extension, and consolidation of Cromwell's Church Establishment. The Trustees for the better Maintenance of Ministers, as well as the Triers and Ejectors, were still at work; and in the Council minutes of the summer of 1658, just as formerly, there are orders for augmentations of ministers' stipends, combinations of parishes and chapelries, and the like. Substantially, the Established Church had been brought into a condition nearly approaching Cromwell's ideal; but he had still notions of more to be done for it in one direction or another, and especially in the direction of wider theological comprehension. He did not despair of seeing his great principle of concurrent endowment yet more generally accepted among those who were really and evangelically Protestant. Much would depend on the nature of that Confession of Faith which Article XI. of the Petition and Advice had required or promised as a standard of what should be considered qualifying orthodoxy for the Church of the Protectorate. For such a purpose the Westminster Confession of Faith, even though its doctrinal portions might stand much as they were, could hardly suffice as a whole. That Confession was to be recast, or a new one framed. So the Petition and Advice had provided or suggested; but it may be doubted whether Cromwell was very anxious for any such formal definition of the creed of his Established Church. He preferred the broad general understanding which all men had, with himself, as to what constituted sound Evangelical Christianity, and he had more trust in administration in detail through his Triers and Ejectors than in the application of formulas of orthodoxy. Here, however, Owen and the other Independent divines most in his confidence appear to have differed from him. They felt the want of some such confession and agreement for Association and Discipline as might suit at least the Congregationalists of the Established Church, and be to them what the Westminster Confession was to the Presbyterians. "From the first, all or at least the generality of our churches," they said, "have been in a manner like so many ships, though holding forth the same general colours, yet launched singly, and sailing apart and alone on the vast ocean of these tumultuous times, and exposed to every wind of doctrine, under no other conduct than that of the word and spirit, and their particular elders and principal brethren, without association among themselves, or so much as holding out common lights to others to know where they were." A petition to this effect, though not in these terms, having been presented to his Highness, he reluctantly yielded. He allowed a preliminary meeting of representatives of the Congregational churches in and about London to be held on June 21, 1658, and circular letters to be sent out to all the Congregational churches in England and Wales convoking a Synod at the Savoy on the 29th of September. The Confession of Faith, if any, to be drawn up by this Synod was not, of course, to be the comprehensive State Confession foreshadowed in Article XI. of the Petition and Advice, but only the voluntary agreement of the Congregationalists or Independents for themselves. In fact, to all appearance, if the harmonious comprehension of moderate Anglicans, Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, within one and the same Church, was to be signified by written symbols as well as carried out practically, this could be done only by a plan of concurrent confessions justifying the concurrent endowments. Even for that, it would seem, Cromwell was now prepared. Yet he was a little dubious about the policy of the coming Synod, and certainly was as much resolved as ever that Synods and other ecclesiastical assemblies should be only a permitted machinery for the denominations severally, and that the Civil Magistrate should determine what denominations could be soldered together to make a suitable State-Church, and should supervise and make fast the junctions.¹

There is very striking evidence of Cromwell's attention at this time to the spiritual needs of Scotland in particular.—Early in 1657 we left Mr. James Sharp in London as agent for the Scottish Resolutioner clergy, and Principal Gillespie of Glasgow, Mr. James Guthrie, Mr. James Simpson, and Johnstone of Warriston, with the Marquis of Argyle in the background, opposing the clever Sharp, and soliciting his Highness's favour for the Scottish Protesters or Remonstrants (ante pp. 115-116). Both deputations had remained on in London perseveringly, Sharp making interest with the Protector through Broghill; Thurloe, and the London Presbyterian ministers, while Owen, Lockyer, and the rest of the Independent ministers, with Lambert and Fleetwood, took part rather with the agents of the Protesters. Wearied with listening to the dispute personally, Cromwell had referred it to a mixed committee of twelve English Presbyterians and Independents, and at length had told both parties to "go home and agree among themselves." Sharp, Simpson, and Guthrie had, accordingly, returned to Scotland before the autumn of 1657; and, though Gillespie, Warriston, and Argyle were left behind, it was difficult to say that either party had won the advantage. Baillie, indeed, writing from Glasgow after Sharp's return, could report that the Protesters had, on the whole, been foiled, and chiefly by the instrumentality of "that very worthy, pious, wise, and diligent young man, Mr. James Sharp." But, on the other hand, the Protesters had obtained some favours. As far as one can discern, Cromwell's judgment as between the two parties of Scottish Kirkmen had come to be that they were to be treated as a Tory majority and a pugnacious Whig minority, whose differences would do no harm if they were both kept under proper control, and that both together formed such a Presbyterian body as might suitably possess, and yet divide, the Church of Scotland. For, as has been remarked already, Cromwell, in his conservatism, had come, on the whole, to be of opinion that the national clergy of Scotland must be left massively Presbyterian, and that it would not do to weld into the Scottish Establishment, as into the English, Baptists, or even ordinary professing Independents, in any considerable number. This would be bad news for those Scottish Independents and Baptists who had naturally expected encouragement under Cromwell's rule, but had already been disappointed. It would be the common policy of the Resolutioners and Protesters to keep or drive such erratic spirits out of the Kirk.¹—Whether because the long stay of the Scottish deputations in London had turned much of Cromwell's thoughts towards Scotland, or simply because his own anxiety for the "Propagation, of the Gospel" everywhere in his dominions, had led his eyes at last to that portion of Great Britain, we have now to record one of Cromwell's designs for Scotland worthy of strong mark even in the total history of his Protectorate. On Thursday, April 15, 1658, there being present In the Council the Lord President Lawrence, Lord Richard Cromwell, the Earl of Mulgrave, and Lords Meetwood, Wolseley, Sydenham, Lisle, Strickland and Jones, the following draft was agreed to:—"Oliver, by the grace of God Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging, To our well-beloved Council in Scotland greeting: Whereas for about the space of one hundred years last past the Gospel, blessed be God! hath been plentifully preached in the Lowlands of the said nation, and competent maintenance provided for the ministers there, yet little or no care hath been taken for a very numerous people inhabiting in the Highlands by the establishing of a ministry or maintenance,—where the greatest part have scarce heard whether there be an Holy Ghost or not, though there be some in several parts, as We are informed, that hunger and thirst after the means of salvation,—and that there is a concealed maintenance detained in unrighteousness, and diverted from the right ends to the sole benefit of particular persons; And being also informed that there hath been much revenue for many years together in the late King's time and since concealed and detained from Us by such persons as have no right or title thereunto, and that some ministers that were acquainted with the Highland language have in a late summer season visited those parts and been courteously used by many professing there breathings after the Gospel: We do therefore, in consideration of their sad condition, the great honour and glory of God, and the good that may redound to the souls of many poor ignorant creatures, Will and Require you, with all care, industry and conveniency, to find out a way and means for the Planting of the Gospel in those parts, and that, in pursuance thereof and the better carrying on of so pious a work, our Barons of our Exchequer in Scotland do search and find out £600 per annum of concealed estates and revenues belonging to Us, or that may belong to Us and our Successors, and issue forth and pay the same unto such person or persons as by our said Council shall be nominated and appointed, out of such concealed rents or any other concealed revenues whatsoever, quarterly or half-yearly as there shall be cause, by and with their assent and approbation, to the only use and end aforesaid. For which so doing this shall be your and their warrant. Witness Ourself at our Palace at Westminster the —— day —— 1658." This does not seem to have sufficed for his Highness; for on Tuesday, May 4, the Council returned to the subject and prepared another draft, beginning, "Forasmuch as We, taking into consideration the sad condition of our People in Scotland living in the Highlands, for want of the Preaching of the Gospel and Schools of Learning for training up of youth in Learning and Civility, whereby the inhabitants of those places in their lives and whole demeanour are little different from the most savage heathens," and ending with instructions that £1200 a year, or double the sum formerly proposed, should be set apart out of still recoverable rents and revenues of alienated Chaplaincies, Deaneries, &c. of the old Popish and Episcopal Church of Scotland, and applied to the purposes of preaching and education in the Highlands. The sum, in the Scotland of that time, might go as far as £7000 or £8000 a year now, though in England it would have been worth only about £4200 of present value. Spent on an effective Gaelic mission of travelling pastors, and on a few well-planted schools, it might have accomplished a good deal.²—Since the beginning of the Protectorate there had been some care in finding new funds for the Scottish Universities as well as for the English. Principal Gillespie of Glasgow had procured a grant for the University of that city (Vol. IV. p. 565), and something had been done for University-reform in Aberdeen. Accordingly, that Edinburgh might not complain, it was now agreed, at a meeting of Council, July 15, 1658, his Highness himself present; to issue an order beginning, "Know ye that We, taking into our consideration the condition of the University of Edinburgh, and that (being but of late foundation, viz. since the Reformation of Religion in Scotland) the rents thereof are exceedingly small," and concluding by putting £200 a year at the disposal of the Town Council of Edinburgh, "being the founders and undoubted patrons of the said University," to be applied for University purposes with the advice and consent of the Masters and Regents. The gift, it appears, had been promised to Principal Leighton, when he had been in London, some time before, on one of his yearly journeys for his own bookish purposes, and certainly neither as Resolutioner nor Protester. "Mr. Leighton does nought to count of, but looks about him in his chamber," is Baillie's characteristic fancy-sketch of Leighton when he was back in Edinburgh and the £200 a year had become a certainty; but he adds that the saint had shown more temper than usual at finding that Mr. Sharp had contrived that £100 of the sum should go to Mr. Alexander Dickson (son of the Resolutioner David Dickson) who had been recently appointed to the Hebrew Professorship, and whom Leighton did not like. Indeed Baillie makes merry over the possibility that the poor £200 a year for Edinburgh might never be forthcoming, any more than the richer "flim-flams" Mr. Gillespie had obtained for Glasgow, though in them he confessed a more lively interest.³—Whether Scotland should ever actually handle the new endowments for her Universities, or the more important £1200 a year for the civilization of the Highlands, depended on the energy and ability of his Highness's Scottish Council in finding out ways and means. Broghill being still absent in England, but on the wing for Ireland, and Lockhart and others being also absent, the most active of the Councillors now left in Scotland, in association with Monk, seem to have been Lord Keeper Desborough, Swinton of Swinton, and Colonel Whetham. Since August 1656, by the Protector's orders, three had been a sufficient quorum of the Council. Monk, of course, was the real Vice-Protector. Scotland had become his home. He had lived for some years in the same house at Dalkeith, "pleasantly seated in the midst of a park," occupying all his spare time "with the pleasures of planting and husbandry"; he had buried his second son, an infant, in a chapel near; and to all appearance he might expect to spend the rest of his days where he was, a wealthy English soldier-farmer naturalized among the Scots, acquiring estates among them, and keeping them under quiet command.[4

Next to the Propagation of the Gospel by an Established Ministry everywhere, the fixed idea of Cromwell for his Home-Government, as we have had again and again to explain, was toleration of all varieties of religious opinion. Under this head little that is new presents itself in the part of his Protectorate with which we are now concerned. The Anti-Trinitarian Mr. John Biddle, who had been in custody in the Isle of Scilly since Oct. 1655 (ante p. 66), had moved for a writ of habeas corpus, and had been brought to London, apparently with an intention on Cromwell's part to set him at liberty. Nor had Cromwell lost sight of the poor demented Quaker, James Nayler. There is extant a long and confidential letter to his Highness from his private secretary Mr. William Malyn, giving an account of a visit Malyn had paid to Nayler in Bridewell expressly by his Highness's command. It is to the effect that he had found Nayler well enough in bodily health, but so mulishly obstinate or mad that he could not be coaxed in a long interview to speak even a single word, and that therefore, though Malyn did not like to "dissuade" his Highness from "a work of tenderness and mercy," he could hardly yet advise Nayler's release, but would carefully apply the money he had received from his Highness for Nayler's comfort. For the Quakers generally there was, we fear, no more specific protection than Cromwell's good-nature when a case of cruelty was distinctly brought within his cognisance. What shall we say, however, of one order or intention of Cromwell's Council in June 1658, which, if not against liberty of conscience in the general sense, was decidedly retrograde in respect of the specific liberty of the press? On the 22nd of that month, nine members being present, though not his Highness, it was agreed, on a report by Mr. Comptroller, i.e. by Lord Jones, from a Committee that had been appointed on the subject, to recommend to his Highness to issue a warrant with this preamble, "Whereas there are divers good laws, statutes, acts, and ordinances of Parliament in force, which were heretofore made and published against the printing of unlicensed, seditious, and scandalous books and pamphlets, and for the better regulating of printing, wherein several provisions are contained, sufficient to prevent the designs of persons disaffected to the State and Government of this Commonwealth, who have assumed to themselves and do continually take upon them a licentious boldness to write, print, publish, and disperse many dangerous, seditious, blasphemous, Popish, and scandalous pamphlets, books, and papers, to the high dishonour of God, the scorn and contempt of the Laws and of all good Order and Government; and forasmuch as it nearly concerns Us, in respect of the public peace and safety, to take care for a due execution of the said laws." What followed was a special charge to the Master and Wardens of the Stationers' Company, together with Henry Hills and John Field, his Highness's Printers, to see to the strict enforcement in future of the restrictions of certain cited Press Acts,—to wit, the ordinance of the Long Parliament of June 14, 1643 (that against which Milton had written his Areopagitica), the similar ordinance of the same Parliament of date Sept. 28, 1647, the Act of the Rump Parliament of Sept. 20, 1649 (Bradshaw's Press Act of the first year of the Commonwealth), and the renewal of the same Jan. 7, 1652-3. Had this been all, one might have inferred nothing more than one of those occasional panics about Press licentiousness from the recurrence of which even Milton's reasoning had never been able to free the Government with which he was connected. But at the same meeting it was referred to Lord Fleetwood, Lord Wolseley, Lord Pickering, Lord Jones, Lord Desborough, Lord Viscount Lisle, and Lord Strickland, or to any two of them, "to consider of fit persons to be added for licensing of books and to report the names of such persons to the Council." This was distinctly retrogressive; and the regret of Milton must have been none the less because four of the Committee that were to find the new licensers were men he had named in his Defensio Secunda as heroes of the Commonwealth, and because, as appears from a marginal jotting to the minute as it stands in the Council Order Books, the man thought of at once for one of the new licensers, or as the person fittest to be first consulted in the business, was Marchamont Needham. After all, it may have been, like some of the previous movements for press-regulation, only a push from Paternoster Row in defence of the legitimate book-trade, and the main intention of the Council itself may have been against pamphlets like Killing no Murder or publications of the indecent order.¹

O how stable and grand seemed the Protectorate in the month of July 1658! Rebellion at home in all its varieties quashed once more, and now, as it might seem, for ever; the threatened invasion of the Spaniards and Charles Stuart dissipated into ridicule; a footing acquired on the Continent, and 6000 Englishmen stationed there in arms; Foreign Powers, with Louis XIV. at their head, obeisant to the very ground whenever they turned their gaze towards the British Islands, and dreading the next bolt from the Protector's hands; those hands evidently toying with several new bolts and poising them towards the parts of Europe for which they were intended; great schemes, besides, for England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Colonies, in that inventive brain! All this, we say, in July 1658, by which time also it was known that the Protector, so far from fearing to face a new Parliament, was ready to call one and would take all the chances. His immediate necessity, of course, was money. His second Parliament, at the close of its first and loyal session in June 1657, had provided ordinary supplies for three years; but there had been no new revenue-arrangements in the short second session, and the current expenses for the Flanders expedition, the various Embassies, the Court, and the whole conduct of the Government, far outran the voted income. The pay of the armies in England, Scotland, and Ireland was greatly in arrears; on all hands there were straits for money; and, whatever might be done by expedients and ingenuity meanwhile, the effective extrication could only be by a Parliament. Not for subsidies only, however, was Cromwell willing to resort again to that agency, with all its perils. He believed that, in consequence of what had passed since the Dissolution in January, any Parliament that should now meet him would be in a different mood towards himself from that he had recently encountered. Then might there not be proposals, in which he and such a Parliament might agree, for constitutional changes in advance of the Articles of the Petition and Advice, though in the same direction of orderliness and settled and stately rule? Was there not wide regret among the civilians that he had not accepted the Kingship; had his refusal of it been really wise; might not that question be reopened? With that question might there not go the question of the succession, whether by nomination for one life only as was now fixed, or by perpetual nomination, or by a return to the hereditary and dynastic principle which the lawyers and the civilians thought the best? Nor could the Second House of Parliament remain the vague thing it had been so far fashioned. It must be amended in the points in which its weakness had been proved; and all the evidence hitherto was that it must be made truly and formally a House of Lords, if even with the reinstitution of a peerage as part and parcel of the legislative system. Whether such a peerage should be hereditary or for life only might be in doubt; but there were symptoms that, even if the Legislative Peerage should be only for life, Cromwell had convinced himself of the utility, for general purposes, of at least a Social Peerage with, hereditary rank and titles. In his First Protectorate he had made knights only; in his Second he created a few baronets. Nay, besides favouring the courtesy appellation of "lords," as applied to all who had sat in the late Upper House and to the great officers of State, he had added at least two peers of his own making to the hereditary peerage as it had come down from the late reign.¹

As early as April the new Parliament had been thought of, and since June there had been a select committee of nine, precognoscing the chances, considering the questions to be brought up, and feeling in every way the public pulse. The nine so employed were Lords Fleetwood, Fiennes, Desborough, Pickering, Philip Jones, Whalley, Cooper, and Goffe, and Mr, Secretary Thurloe. There are a few glimpses of their consultations in the Thurloe correspondence, where also there is a hint of some hope of the compliance at last even of such old Republicans as Vane and Ludlow. But July 1658 had come, and no one yet knew when the Parliament would meet. It could not be expected then before the end of the year.¹

Before that time Oliver Cromwell was to be out of the world. Though but in his sixtieth year, and with his prodigious powers of will, intellect, heart, and humour, unimpaired visibly in the least atom, his frame had for some time been giving way under the pressure of his ceaseless burden. For a year or two his handwriting, though statelier and more deliberate than at first, had been singularly tremulous, and to those closest about him there had been other signs of physical breaking-up. Not till late in July, however, or early in August, was there any serious cause for alarm, and then in consequence of the terrible effects upon his Highness of his close attendance on the death-bed of his second daughter, the much-loved Lady Claypole. She had been lingeringly ill for some time, of a most painful internal disease, aggravated by the death of her youngest boy, Oliver. Hampton Court had received her as a dying invalid, tortured by "frequent and long convulsion-fits"; and here, through a great part of July, the fond father had been hanging about her, broken-hearted and unfit for business. For his convenience the Council had transferred its meetings from Whitehall to Hampton Court; but, though he was present at one there on July 15, he avoided one on July 20, another on July 22, and a third on July 27. On the 29th, which was the fifth meeting at Hampton Court, he did look in again and take his place. Next day Lord and Lady Falconbridge arrived at Hampton Court, where already, besides the Protestor and the Lady Protectress, there were Lord Richard Cromwell, the widowed Lady Frances, and others of the family, all round the dying sufferer. After that meeting of the Council of July 29 which he had managed to attend, and an intervening meeting at Whitehall without him, the Council was again at Hampton Court on Thursday the 5th of August. At this meeting one of the resolutions was "That Mr. Secretary be desired to make a collection of such injuries received by the English from the Dutch as have come to his cognisance, and to offer the same to the Council on this day seven-night." This was a very important resolution, significant of a dissatisfaction with the conduct of the Dutch, and a desire to call them to account again, which had for some time been growing in Cromwell's mind; and there can be no doubt that he had suggested the subject to the Council. But his Highness did not appear in the meeting himself, and next day Lady Claypole lay dead. Before her death his grief had passed into an indefinite illness, described as "of the gout and other distempers"; and, though he was able to come to London on the 10th of August, on which night Lady Claypole's remains were interred in a little vault that had been prepared for them in Henry VIIth's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, he returned to Hampton Court greatly the worse. But, after four or five days of confinement, attended by his physicians—on one of which days (the 13th) Attorney General Prideaux and Solicitor General Ellis were made baronets—he was out again for an hour on the 17th; and thence till Friday the 20th he seemed so much better that Thurloe and others thought the danger past. From the public at large the fact of his illness had been hitherto concealed as much as possible; and hence it may have been that on two or three of those days of convalescence he showed himself as usual, riding with his life-guards in Hampton Court Park. It was on one of them, most probably Friday the 20th, that George Fox had that final meeting with him which he describes in his Journal. The good but obtrusive Quaker had been writing letters of condolence and mystical religious advice to Lady Claypole in her illness, and had recently sent one of mixed condolence and rebuke to Cromwell himself; and now, not knowing of Cromwell's own illness, he had come to have a talk with him about the sufferings of the Friends. "Before I came to him, as he rode at the head of his life-guard," says Fox, "I saw and felt a waft of death go forth, against him; and, when I came to him, he looked like a dead man." Fox, nevertheless, had his conversation with the Protector, who told him to come again, but does not seem to have mentioned the inquiry he had been making, through his secretary Mr. Malyn, about the state of Fox's fellow-Quaker, poor James Nayler. Next day, Saturday, Aug. 21, when Fox went to Hampton Court Palace to keep his appointment, he could not be admitted. Harvey, the groom of the bedchamber, told him that his Highness was very ill, with his physicians about him, and must be kept quiet. That morning his distemper had developed itself distinctly into "an ague"; which ague proved, within the next few days, to be of the kind called by the physicians "a bastard tertian," i.e. an ague with the cold and hot shivering fits recurring most violently every third day, but with the intervals also troublesome. Yet it was on this first day of his ague that he signed a warrant for a patent to make Bulstrode Whitlocke a Viscount. Whitlocke himself, though he afterwards declined the honour as inconvenient, is precise as to the date. The physicians thinking the London air better for the malady than that of Hampton Court, his Highness was removed to Whitehall on Tuesday the 24th. That was one of the intervals of his fever, and he seems to have come up easily enough in his coach, and to have been quite able to take an interest in what he found going on at Whitehall. Six days before (Aug. 18) the Duke of Buckingham, who had been for some time in London undisturbed, living in his mansion of York House with his recently wedded wife, and with Lord and Lady Fairfax in their society, had been apprehended on the high-road some miles from Canterbury; and, whether on the old grounds, or from new suspicions, the Council, by a warrant issued on the 19th, doubtless with Cromwell's sanction intimated from Hampton Court, had committed him to the Tower. On the very day of Cromwell's return to Whitehall this business of the Duke was again before the Council, in consequence of a petition from the young Duchess that he might be permitted to remain at York House on sufficient security. Fairfax himself had gone to Whitehall to urge his daughter's request and to tender the security, and Cromwell, though unable to be in the Council-room, gave him a private interview. According to the story in the Fairfax family, it must have been an unpleasant one. Cromwell could be stern on such a subject even at such a time and to his old commander, and so Fairfax "turned abruptly from him in the gallery at Whitehall, cocking his hat, and throwing his cloak under his arm, as he used to do when he was angry." Nor was this the last piece of public business of which the Protector, though never more in the Council-room, must have been directly cognisant. Whitlocke says he visited him and was kept to dine with him on the 26th, and that he was then able to discourse on business; but, as Whitlocke makes Hampton Court the place, there must be an error as to the day. The last baronetcy he conferred was made good on Saturday the 28th, four days after the interview with Fairfax; and even after that, between his fever-fits, he kept some grasp of affairs, and received and sent messages. But that Saturday of the last baronetcy was a day of marked crisis. The ague had then changed into a "double tertian," with two fits in the twenty-four hours, both extremely weakening. So Sunday passed, with prayers in all the churches; and then came that extraordinary Monday (Aug. 30, 1658) which lovers of coincidence have taken care to remember as the day of most tremendous hurricane that ever blew over London and England. From morning to night the wind raged and howled, emptying the streets, unroofing houses, tearing up trees in the parks, foundering ships at sea, and taking even Flanders and the coasts of France within its angry whirl. The storm was felt, within England, as far as Lincolnshire, where, in the vicinity of an old manor-house, a boy of fifteen years of age, named Isaac Newton, was turning it to account, as he afterwards remembered, by jumping first with the wind, and then against it, and computing its force by the difference of the distances. Through all this storm, as it shuddered round Whitehall, shaking the doors and windows, the sovereign patient had lain on, passing from fit to fit, but talking in the intervals with the Lady Protectress or with his physicians, while Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Sterry, or some other of the preachers that were in attendance, went and came between the chamber and an adjoining room. A certain belief that he would recover, which he had several times before expressed to the Lady Protectress and others, had not yet left him, and had communicated itself to the preachers as an assurance that their prayers were heard. Writing to Henry Cromwell at nine o'clock that night, Thurloe could say, "The doctors are yet hopeful that he may struggle through it, though their hopes are mingled with much fear." Even the next day, Tuesday, Aug. 31, Cromwell was still himself, still consciously the Lord Protector. Through the storm of the preceding day Ludlow had made a journey to London from Essex on family-business, beaten back in the morning by a wind against which two horses could not make way, but contriving late at night to push on as far as Epping. "By this means," he says, "I arrived not at Westminster till Tuesday about noon, when, passing by Whitehall, notice was immediately given to Cromwell that I was come to town. Whereupon he sent for Lieutenant General Fleet wood, and ordered him to enquire concerning the reasons of my coming at such haste and at such a time." If Cromwell could attend to such a matter that day, he must have been able also to prompt the resolution of his Council in Whitehall the same day in the case of the Duke of Buckingham. It was that the Duke, on account of his health, might be removed from the Tower to Windsor Castle, but must continue in confinement. At the end of the day, Fleetwood, writing to Henry Cromwell, reported, "The Lord is pleased to give some little reviving this evening: after few slumbering sleeps, his pulse is better." As near as can be guessed, it was that same night that Cromwell himself uttered the well-known short prayer, the words of which, or as nearly as possible the very words, were preserved by the pious care of his chamber-attendant Harvey. It is to the same authority that we owe the most authentic record of the religious demeanour of the Protector from the beginning of his illness. Very beautifully and simply Harvey tells us of his "holy expressions," his fervid references to Scripture texts, and his repetitions of some texts in particular, such repetitions "usually being very weighty and with great vehemency of spirit." One of them was "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Three times he repeated this; but the texts of promise and of Christian triumph had all along been more frequently on his lips. All in all, his single short prayer, which Harvey places "two or three days before his end," may be read as the summary of all that we need to know now of the dying Puritan in these eternal respects. "Lord," he muttered, "though I am a miserable and wretched creature, I am in covenant with Thee through grace, and I may, I will, come to Thee. For Thy people, Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good, and Thee service; and many of them have set too high a value upon me, though others wish and would be glad of my death. But, Lord, however Thou dost dispose of me, continue and go on to do good for them. Give them consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love; and go on to deliver them, and with the work of reformation; and make the name of Christ glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much upon Thy instruments to depend more upon Thyself; pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too; and pardon the folly of this short prayer, even for Jesus Christ's sake; and give us a good night, if it be Thy pleasure." Wednesday, Sept. 1, passes unmarked, unless it may be for the delivery to the Lady Protectress, in her watch over Cromwell, of a letter, dated that day, and addressed to her and her children, from the Quaker Edward Burrough. It was long and wordy, but substantially an assurance that the Lord had sent this affliction upon the Protector's house on account of the unjust sufferings of the Quakers. "Will not their sufferings lie upon you? For many hundreds have suffered cruel and great things, and some the loss of life (though not by, yet in the name of, the Protector); and about a hundred at this present day lie in holes, and dungeons, and prisons, up and down the nation." The letter, we may suppose, was not read to Cromwell, and the Wednesday went by. On Thursday, Sept. 2, there was an unusually full Council-meeting close to his chamber, at which order was given for the removal of Lords Lauderdale and Sinclair from Windsor Castle to Warwick Castle, to make more room at Windsor for the Duke of Buckingham. That night Harvey sat up with his Highness and again noted some of his sayings. One was "Truly, God is good; indeed He is; He will not—" He did not complete the sentence. "His speech failed him," says Harvey; "but, as I apprehended, it was 'He will not leave me.' This saying, that God was good, he frequently used all along, and would speak it with much cheerfulness and fervour of spirit in the midst of his pain. Again he said, 'I would be willing to live to be farther serviceable to God and His people; but my work is done.' He was very restless most part of the night, speaking often to himself. And, there being something to drink offered him, he was desired to take the same, and endeavour to sleep; unto which he answered, 'It is not my design to drink or to sleep, but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.' Afterwards, towards morning, using divers holy expressions, implying much inward consolation and peace, among the rest he spake some exceeding self-debasing words, annihilating and judging himself." This is the last. The next day, Friday, was his twice victorious Third of September, the anniversary of Dunbar and Worcester. That morning he was speechless; and, though the prayers in Whitehall, and in all London and the suburbs, did not cease for him, people in the houses and passers in the streets knew that hope was over and Oliver at the point of death. For several days there had been cautious approaches to him on the subject of the nomination of his successor, and either on the stormy Monday or later that matter had been settled somehow.¹

CHAPTER II.

MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE SECOND PROTECTORATE.

MILTON STILL IN OFFICE: LETTER TO MR. HENRY DE BRASS, WITH MILTON'S OPINION OF SALLUST: LETTERS TO YOUNG RANELAGH AND HENRY OLDENBURG AT SAUMUR: MORUS IN NEW CIRCUMSTANCES: ELEVEN MOBE STATE-LETTERS OF MILTON FOR THE PROTECTOR (NOS. CI.-CXI.): ANDREW MARVELL BROUGHT IN AS ASSISTANT FOREIGN SECRETARY AT LAST (SEPT. 1657): JOHN DRYDEN NOW ALSO IN THE PROTECTOR'S EMPLOYMENT: BIRTH OF MILTON'S DAUGHTER BY HIS SECOND WIFE: SIX MORE STATE-LETTERS OF MILTON (NOS. CXII.-CXIII.): ANOTHER LETTER TO MR. HENRY DE BRASS, AND ANOTHER TO PETER HEIMBACH: COMMENT ON THE LATTER: DEATHS OF MILTON'S SECOND WIFE AND HER CHILD: HIS TWO NEPHEWS, EDWARD AND JOHN PHILLIPS, AT THIS DATE: MILTON'S LAST SIXTEEN STATE-LETTERS FOR OLIVER CROMWELL (NOS. CXVIII.-CXXXIII.), INCLUDING TWO TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS OF SWEDEN. TWO ON A NEW ALARM OF A PERSECUTION OF THE PIEDMONTESE PROTESTANTS, AND SEVERAL TO LOUIS XIV. AND CARDINAL MAZARIN: IMPORTANCE OF THIS LAST GROUP OF THE STATE-LETTERS, AND REVIEW OF THE WHOLE SERIES OF MILTON'S PERFORMANCES FOR CROMWELL: LAST DIPLOMATIC INCIDENTS OF THE PROTECTORATE, AND ANDREW MARVELL IN CONNEXION WITH THEM: INCIDENTS OF MILTON'S LITERARY LIFE IN THIS PERIOD: YOUNG GUNTZER'S DISSERTATIO AND YOUNG KECK'S PHALAECIANS: MILTON'S EDITION OF RALEIGH'S CABINET COUNCIL: RESUMPTION OF THE OLD DESIGN OF PARADISE LOST AND ACTUAL COMMENCEMENT OF THE POEM: CHANGE FROM THE DRAMATIC POEM TO THE EPIC: SONNET IN MEMORY OF HIS DECEASED WIFE.

Through the Second Protectorate Milton remained in office just as before. He was not, however, as had been customary before at the commencement of each new period of his Secretaryship, sworn in afresh. Thurloe was sworn in, both as General Secretary and as full Councillor, and Scobell and Jessop were sworn in as Clerks;¹ but we hear of no such ceremony in the case of Milton. His Latin Secretaryship, we infer, was now regarded as an excrescence from the Whitehall establishment, rather than an integral part of it. An oath may have been administered to him privately, or his old general engagement may have sufficed.

Our first trace of Milton after the new inauguration of Cromwell is in one of his Latin Familiar Epistles, addressed to some young foreigner in London, of whom I know nothing more than may be learnt from the letter itself:—

"To the Very Distinguished MR. HENRY DE BRASS.

"I see, Sir, that you, unlike most of our modern youth in their surveys of foreign lands, travel rightly and wisely, after the fashion of the old philosophers, not for ordinary youthful quests, but with a view to the acquisition of fuller erudition from every quarter. Yet, as often as I look at what you write, you appear to me to be one who has come among strangers not so much to receive knowledge as to impart it to others, to barter good merchandise rather than to buy it. I wish indeed it were as easy for me to assist and promote in every way those excellent studies of yours as it is pleasant and gratifying to have such help asked by a person of your uncommon talents.

"As for the resolution you say you have taken to write to me and request my answers towards solving those difficulties about which for many ages writers of Histories seem to have been in the dark, I have never assumed anything of the kind as within my powers, nor should I dare now to do so. In the matter of Sallust, which you refer to me, I will say freely, since you wish me to tell plainly what I do think, that I prefer Sallust to any other Latin historian; which also was the almost uniform opinion of the Ancients. Your favourite Tacitus has his merits; but the greatest of them, in my judgment, is that he imitated Sallust with all his might. As far as I can gather from what you write, it appears that the result of my discourse with you personally on this subject has been that you are now nearly of the same mind with me respecting that most admirable writer; and hence it is that you ask me, with reference to what he has said, in the introduction to his Catilinarian War—as to the extreme difficulty of writing History, from the obligation that the expressions should be proportional to the deeds—by what method I think a writer of History might attain that perfection. This, then, is my view: that he who would write of worthy deeds worthily must write with mental endowments and experience of affairs not less than were in the doer of the same, so as to be able with equal mind to comprehend and measure even the greatest of them, and, when he has comprehended them, to relate them distinctly and gravely in pure and chaste speech. That he should do so in ornate style, I do not much care about; for I want a Historian, not an Orator. Nor yet would I have frequent maxims, or criticisms on the transactions, prolixly thrown in, lest, by interrupting the thread of events, the Historian should invade the office of the Political Writer: for, if the Historian, in explicating counsels and narrating facts, follows truth most of all, and not his own fancy or conjecture, he fulfils his proper duty. I would add also that characteristic of Sallust, in respect of which he himself chiefly praised Cato,—to be able to throw off a great deal in few words: a thing which I think no one can do without the sharpest judgment and a certain temperance at the same time. There are many in whom you will not miss either elegance of style or abundance of information; but for conjunction of brevity with abundance, i.e. for the despatch of much in few words, the chief of the Latins, in my judgment, is Sallust. Such are the qualities that I think should be in the Historian that would hope to make his expressions proportional to the facts he records.

"But why all this to you, who are sufficient, with the talent you have, to make it all out, and who, if you persevere in the road you have entered, will soon be able to consult no one more learned than yourself. That you do persevere, though you require no one's advice for that, yet, that I may not seem to have altogether failed in replying correspondingly with the value you are pleased to put upon my authority with you, is my earnest exhortation and suggestion. Farewell; and all success to your real worth, and your zeal for acquiring wisdom.

"Westminster: July 15, 1657."

Henry Oldenburg, and his pupil Richard Jones, alias young Ranelagh, had left Oxford in April or May 1657, after about a year's stay there, and had gone abroad on a tour which was to extend over more than four years. It was an arrangement for the farther education of young Ranelagh in the way most satisfactory to his mother, Lady Ranelagh, and perhaps also to his uncle, Robert Boyle, neither of whom seems to have cared much for the ordinary University routine; and particulars had been settled by correspondence between Oldenburg at Oxford and Lady Ranelagh in Ireland.¹ Young Ranelagh, I find, took with him as his servant a David Whitelaw, who had been servant to Durie in his foreign travels: "my man, David Whitelaw," as Durie calls him.² The ever-convenient Hartlib was to manage the conveyance of letters to the travellers, wherever they might be.³

They went, pretty directly, to Saumur in the west of France, a pleasant little town, with a college, a library, &c., which they had selected for their first place of residence, rather than Paris. An Italian master was procured to teach young Jones "something of practical geometry and fortification"; and, for the rest, Oldenburg himself continued to superintend his studies, directing them a good deal in that line of physical and economical observation which might be supposed congenial to a nephew of Boyle, and which had become interesting to himself. "As for us here," wrote Oldenburg to Boyle from Saumur, Sept. 8, 1657, "we are, through the goodness of God, in perfect health; and, your nephew having spent these two or three months we have been here very well and in more than ordinary diligence, I cannot but give him some relaxation in taking a view of this province of Anjou during this time of vintage; which, though it be a very tempting one to a young appetite, yet shall, I hope, by a careful watchfulness, prove unprejudicial to his health."¹ A good while before Oldenburg wrote this letter to Boyle both he and his pupil had written to Milton, and Milton's replies had already been received. They are dated on the same day, but we shall put that to young Ranelagh first. It will be seen that Oldenburg must have had a sight of it from his pupil before he wrote the above to Boyle:—

"To the noble youth, RICHARD JONES.

"That you made out so long a journey without inconvenience, and that, spurning the allurements of Paris, you have so quickly reached your present place of residence, where you can enjoy literary leisure and the society of learned persons, I am both heartily glad, and set down to the credit of your disposition. There, so far as you keep yourself in bounds, you will be in harbour; elsewhere you would have to beware the Syrtes, the Rocks, and the songs of the Sirens. All the same I would not have you thirst too much after the Saumur vintage, with which you think to delight yourself, unless it be also your intention to dilute that juice of Bacchus, more than a fifth part, with the freer cup of the Muses. But to such a course, even if I were silent, you have a first-rate adviser; by listening to whom you will indeed consult best for your own good, and cause great joy to your most excellent mother, and a daily growth of her love for you. Which that you may accomplish you ought every day to petition Almighty God, Farewell; and see that you return to us as good as possible, and as cultured as possible in good arts. That will be to me, beyond others, a most delightful result.

"Westminster: Aug. 1, 1657."

The letter to Oldenburg contains matter of more interest:—

"To HENRY OLDENBURG.

"I am glad you have arrived safe at Saumur, the goal of your travel, as I believe. You are not mistaken in thinking the news would be very agreeable to me in particular, who both love you for your own merit, and know the cause of your undertaking the journey to be so honourable and praiseworthy.

"As to the news you have heard, that so infamous a priest has been called to instruct so illustrious a church, I had rather any one else had heard it in Charon's boat than you in that of Charenton; for it is mightily to be feared that whoever thinks to get to heaven under the auspices of so foul a guide will be a whole world awry in his calculations. Woe to that church (only God avert the omen!) where such ministers please, mainly by tickling the ears,—ministers whom the Church, if she would truly be called Reformed, would more fitly cast out than desire to bring in.

"In not having given copies of my writings to any one that does not ask for them, you have done well and discreetly, not in my opinion alone, but also in that of Horace:—

"A learned man, a friend of mine, spent last summer at Saumur. He wrote to me that the book was in demand in those parts; I sent only one copy; he wrote back that some of the learned to whom he had lent it had been pleased with it hugely. Had I not thought I should be doing a thing agreeable to them, I should have spared you trouble and myself expense. But,

"If chance my load of paper galls your back,

Off with, it now, rather than in the end

Dash down the panniers cursing.

"To our Lawrence, as you bade me, I have given greetings in your name. For the rest, there is nothing I should wish you to do or care for more than see that yourself and your pupil get on in good health, and that you return to us as soon as possible with all your wishes fulfilled.

"Westminster: Aug. 1, 1657."

The books mentioned in the third paragraph as having been sent by Milton to Saumur in Oldenburg's charge must have been copies of the Defensio Secunda and of the Pro Se Defensio. The person mentioned with such loathing in the second paragraph was the hero of those performances, Morus. The paragraph requires explanation. For Morus, uncomfortable at Amsterdam, and every day under some fresh discredit there, a splendid escape had at length presented itself. He had received an invitation to be one of the ministers of the Protestant church of Charenton, close to Paris. This church of Charenton was indeed the main Protestant church of Paris itself and the most flourishing representative of French Protestantism generally. For the French law then obliged Protestants to have their places of worship at some distance from the cities and towns in which they resided, and the village of Charenton was the ecclesiastical rendezvous of the chief Protestant nobility and professional men of the capital, some of whom, in the capacity of lay-elders, were associated in the consistory of the church with the ministers or pastors. Of these, in the beginning of 1657, there had been five, all men of celebrity in the French Protestant world—viz. Mestrezat, Faucheur, Drelincourt, Daillé, and Gaches; but the deaths of the two first in April and May of that year had occasioned vacancies, and it was to fill up one of these vacancies that Morus had been invited from Amsterdam. Oldenburg, as we understand, had heard this piece of news, when passing through Paris on his way to Saumur, probably in June. He had heard it, seemingly, on board the Charenton boat—i.e. as we guess, on board the boat plying on the Marne between Paris and Charenton. Hence the punning phraseology of Milton's reply. He would rather that such a piece of news had been heard by anybody on board Charon's/ boat than by Oldenburg on board the Charenton wherry. Altogether the idea that Morus should be admitted as one of the pastors of the most important Protestant church in France was, we can see, horrible to him; and he hoped the calamity might yet be averted.—For the time it seemed likely that it would be. There had been ample enough knowledge in Paris of the coil of scandals about the character of Morus; and copies of Milton's two Anti-Morus pamphlets had been in circulation there long before Oldenburg took with him into France his new bundle of them for distribution. Accordingly, though there was a strong party for Morus, disbelieving the scandals, and anxious to have him for the Charenton church on account of his celebrity as a preacher, there were dissentients among the congregation and even in the consistory itself. One hears of Sieur Papillon and Sieur Beauchamp, Parisian advocates, and elders in the church, as heading the opposition to the call. The business of the translation of Morus from Amsterdam was, therefore, no easy one. In any case it would have brought those Protestant church courts of France that had to sanction the admission of Morus at Charenton into communication about him with those courts of the Walloon Church in Holland from whose jurisdiction he was to be removed; and one can imagine the peculiar complications that would arise in a case so extraordinary and involving so much inquiry and discussion. In fact, for more than two years, the business of the translation of Morus from Amsterdam to Paris was to hang notoriously between the Dutch Walloon Synods, who in the main wanted to disgrace and depose him before they had done with him, and the French Provincial Synods, now roused in his behalf, and willing in the main to receive him back into his native country as a man not without his faults, but more sinned against than sinning.¹—And so for the present (Aug. 1657) Morus was still in his Amsterdam professorship, longing to be in France, but uncertain whether his call thither would hold. How the case ended we shall see in time. Meanwhile it is quite apparent that Milton was not only willing, but anxious, that his influence should be imported into the affair, to turn the scale, if possible, against the man he detested. As he had not heard of the call of Morus to Charenton till the receipt of Oldenburg's letter, his motives originally for despatching a bundle of his Anti-Morus pamphlets into France with Oldenburg can have been only general; but one gathers from his reply to Oldenburg that he thought the pamphlets might now be of use specifically in the business of the proposed translation. Indeed, one can discern a tone of disappointment in Milton's letter with Oldenburg's report of what he had been able to do with the pamphlets hitherto. He might have spared himself the expense, he says, and Oldenburg the trouble. Oldenburg, as we know (Vol. IV. pp. 626-627), had never been very enthusiastic over Milton's onslaughts on Morus, The distribution of the Anti-Morus publications, therefore, may not have been to his taste. Milton seems to hint as much.

In August 1657 Milton, after three months of total rest, so far as the records show, from the business of writing foreign Letters for the Protector, resumed that business. We have attributed his release from it for so long to the fact that his old assistant MEADOWS was again in town, and available in the Whitehall office, in the interval between his return from Portugal and his departure on his new mission to Denmark; and the coincidence of Milton's resumption of this kind of duty with the precise time of Meadows's preparations for his new absence is at least curious. Though it had been intended that he should set out for Denmark immediately after his appointment to the mission in February, he had been detained for various reasons; and now in August, the great war between Denmark and Sweden having just begun, he was to set out in company with another envoy: viz. MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM JEPHSON, whom Cromwell had selected as a suitable person for a contemporary mission, to the King of Sweden (ante p. 312). It will be observed that eight of the following ten Letters of Milton, all written in August or September 1657, and forming his first contribution of letters for the Second Protectorate, relate to the missions of Jephson and Meadows:—

(CI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, August 1657:—His Highness has heard with no ordinary concern that war has broken out between Sweden and Denmark. [He had received the news August 13: see ante p. 313.] He anticipates great evils to the Protestant cause in consequence. He sends, therefore, the most Honourable WILLIAM JEPHSON, General, and member of his Parliament, as Envoy-extraordinary to his Majesty for negotiation in this and in other matters. He begs a favourable reception for Jephson.

(CII.) TO THE COUNT OF OLDENBURG, August 1657:—On his way to the King of Sweden, then in camp near Lubeck, JEPHSON would have to pass through several of the German states, and first of all through the territories of this old and assured friend of the English Commonwealth and of the Protector (see Vol. IV. pp. 424, 480-1, 527, 635-6). Cromwell, therefore, introduces JEPHSON, and requests all furtherance for him.

(CIII.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF BREMEN, August 1657:—Also to introduce and recommend JEPHSON; who, on his route from Oldenburg eastwards, would pass through Bremen.

(CIV.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF HAMBURG, August 1657:—Still requesting attention to JEPHSON on his transit.

(CV.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF LUBECK, August 1657:—Still recommending JEPHSON; who, at Lubeck, would be near his destination, the camp of Charles Gustavus.

(CVI.) TO FREDERICK-WILLIAM, MARQUIS OF BRANDENBURG, August 1657:—At first this Prince, better known now as "The Great Elector, Friedrich-Wilhelm of Prussia," had been on the side of Sweden against Poland; and, in conjunction with Charles Gustavus, he had fought that great Battle of Warsaw (July 1656) which had nearly ruined the Polish King, John Casimir. Having been detached from his alliance with Sweden, however, in a manner already explained (ante p. 313), he had now a very difficult part to play in the Swedish-Polish-German-Danish entanglement.—As Jephson had instructions to treat with this important German Prince, as well as with the King of Sweden, Cromwell begs leave to introduce him formally. "The singular worth of your Highness both in peace and in war, and the greatness and constancy of your spirit, being already so famed over the whole world that almost all neighbouring Princes are eager for your friendship, and no one could desire for himself a more faithful and constant friend and ally, in order that you may understand that we also are in the number of those that have the highest and strongest opinion of your remarkable services to the Christian Commonweal, we have sent to you the most Honourable WILLIAM Jephson," &c.: so the note opens; and the rest is a mere request that the Elector will hear what Jephson has to say.—The relations between the Elector and the Protector had hitherto been rather indefinite, if not cool; and hence perhaps the highly complimentary strain of this letter.

(CVII.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF HAMBURG, August 1657:—All the foregoing, for Jephson, must have been written between August 13, when the news of the proclamation of war between Sweden and Denmark reached London, and August 29, when Jephson set out on his mission. MEADOWS left London, on his distinct mission, two days afterwards.¹ His route was not to be quite the same as Jephson's; but he also was to pass through Hamburg. He is therefore recommended separately, by this note, to the authorities of that city. His letters of credence to the King of Denmark had, doubtless, already been made out,—possibly by himself. They are not among Milton's State-letters.

(CVIII.) To M. DE BORDEAUX, AMBASSADOR EXTRAORDINARY FOR THE FRENCH KING, August 1657:—There has been presented to the Lord Protector a petition from Samuel Dawson, John Campsie, and John Niven, merchants of Londonderry, stating that, shortly after the Treaty with France in 1655, a ship of theirs called The Speedwell ("name of better omen than the event proved"), the master of which was John Ker, had been seized, on her return voyage from Bordeaux to Derry, by two armed vessels of Brest, taken into Brest harbour, and sold there with her cargo. The damages altogether are valued at £2,500. The petitioners have not been able to obtain redress in France. The matter has been referred by the Protector to his Council. They find that the petitioners have a just right either to the restitution of their ship and cargo or to compensation in money. "I therefore request of your Excellency, and even request it in the name of the most Serene Lord Protector, that you will endeavour your utmost, and join also the authority of your office to your endeavours, that as soon as possible one or other be done." The wording shows that the letter was not signed by the Protector himself, but only by Lawrence as President of the Council. It was probably not in rule for the Protector personally to write to an Ambassador in such a case.

(CIX.) TO THE GRAND-DUKE OF TUSCANY, Sept. 1657:—A letter of rather peculiar tenor. A William Ellis, master of a ship called The Little Lewis, had been hired at Alexandria by the Pasha of Memphis, to carry rice, sugar, and coffee, either to Constantinople or Smyrna, for the use of the Sultan himself; instead of which the rascal, giving the Turkish fleet the slip, had gone into Leghorn, where he was living on his booty. "The act is one of very dangerous example, inasmuch as it throws discredit on the Christian name and exposes to the risk of robbery the fortunes of merchants living under the Turk." The Grand-Duke is therefore requested to be so good as to arrest Ellis, keep him in custody, and see to the safety of the ship and cargo till they are restored to the Sultan.

(CX.) TO THE DUKE OF SAVOY (undated)¹:—This letter to the prince on whom the Piedmontese massacre has conferred such dark celebrity is on very innocent and ordinary business. The owners of a London ship, called The Welcome, Henry Martin master, have Informed his Highness that, on her way to Genoa and Leghorn, she was seized by a French vessel of forty-six guns having letters of marque from the Duke, and carried into his port of Villafranca. The cargo is estimated at £25,000. Will the Duke see that ship and cargo are restored to the owners, with damages? He may expect like justice in any similar case in which he may have to apply to his Highness.

(CXI.) TO THE MARQUIS OF BRANDENBURG, Sept. 1657:—This is an important letter. "By our last letter to your Highness," it begins, "either already delivered or soon to be delivered by our agent WILLIAM JEPHSON, we have made you aware of the legation intrusted to him; and we could not but there make some mention of your high qualities and signification of our goodwill towards you. Lest, however, we should seem only cursorily to have touched on your superlative services in the Protestant cause, celebrated so highly in universal discourse, we have thought it fit to resume that subject, and to offer you our respects, not indeed more willingly or with greater devotion, but yet somewhat more at large. And justly so, when news is brought to our ears every day that your faith and constancy, though tempted by all kinds of intrigues, solicited by all contrivances, yet cannot by any means be shaken, or diverted from the friendship of the brave King your ally,—and that too when the affairs of the Swedes are in such a posture that, in preserving their alliance, it is manifest your Highness is led rather by regard to the common cause of the Reformed Religion than by your own interests; when we know too that, though surrounded on all sides, and all but besieged, either by hidden or nearly imminent enemies, you yet, with your valiant but far from large forces, stand out with such firmness and strength of mind, such counsel and prowess of generalship, that the sum and weight of the whole business seems to rest, and the issue of this war to depend, mainly on your will." The Protector goes on to say that, in such circumstances, he would consider it unworthy of himself not to testify in a special manner his sympathy with the Elector and regard for him. He apologizes for delay hitherto in treating with the Elector's agent in London, JOHN FREDERICK SCHLEZER, on the matters about which he had been sent; and he closes with fervent good wishes.—Evidently, the recognition of the importance of the Elector, and anxiety as to the part he might take in the war now involving Sweden, Denmark, Poland, and part of Germany, had been growing stronger in Cromwell's mind within the last few weeks. From the language of the letter one would infer either that Cromwell did not yet fully know of that treaty of Nov. 1656 by which the Polish King had bought off the Elector from the Swedish alliance by ceding to him the full sovereignty of East Prussia, or else that since then the Elector had been oscillating back to the alliance.—SCHLEZER had been in London since 1655, and had lodged at Hartlib's house in the end of that year.¹

Ten Latin State-letters nearly all at once, implying as they do consultations with Thurloe, if not also interviews with the Protector and the Council, argue a pretty considerable demand upon Milton at this date for help again in the Foreign Secretaryship.

It would seem, however, that it had occurred to the Protector and the Council that they were again troubling Mr. Milton too much or left too dependent on him, and that, with the increase of foreign business now in prospect in consequence of the Swedo-Danish war and its complications, it would be well to have an assistant to him, such as Meadows had been. Accordingly, at a meeting of the Council on Tuesday Sept. 8, 1657, Cromwell himself present, with Lawrence, Fleetwood, Lord Lisle, Strickland, Pickering, Sydenham, Wolseley, and Thurloe, there was this minute: "Ordered by his Highness the Lord Protector, by and with the advice of the Council, that MR. STERRY do, in the absence of Mr. Philip Meadows, officiate in the employment of Mr. Meadows under Mr. Secretary [Thurloe], and that a salary of 200 merks per annum be allowed him for the same."¹ Whether this Mr. Sterry was the preacher Mr. Peter Sterry, already employed and salaried as one of the Chaplains to the Council, or only a relative of his, I have not ascertained; but it is of the less consequence because the appointment did not take effect. The person actually appointed was MR. ANDREW MARVELL at last. We say "at last," for had he not been recommended for the precise post by Milton four years and a half before under the Rump Government? Milton may have helped now to bring him in, or it may have been done by Oliver himself in recognition of Marvell's merits in his tutorship of young Dutton and of his Latin and English Oliverian verses. There seems to be no record of Marvell's appointment in the Order Books; but he tells us himself it was in the year 1657. "As to myself," he wrote in 1672, "I never had any, not the remotest, relation to public matters, nor correspondence with the persons then predominant, until the year 1657, when indeed I entered into an employment for which I was not altogether improper." When Marvell wrote this, he was oblivious of some particulars; for, though it is true that he was in no public employment under the Protectorate till 1657, it can hardly be said that he had not "the remotest relation" till then to public matters, nor any "correspondence with the persons then predominant." Enough for us that, from the year he specifies, and precisely from September in that year, he was Milton's colleague in the Foreign or Latin Secretaryship. "Colleague" we may call him, for his salary was to be £200 a year (not 200 merks, as had been proposed for Sterry), the same as Milton's was, and the same as Meadows's had been; and yet not quite "colleague," inasmuch as Milton's £200 a year was a life-pension, and also inasmuch as, in stepping into Meadows's place, Marvell became one of Thurloe's subordinates in the office, while something of the original honorary independence of the Foreign Secretaryship still encircled Milton.—Just as Marvell had for some time been wistful after a place in the Council Office, suitable for a scholar and Latinist, so there was another person now in the same condition of outside waiting and occasional looking-in. "Received then of the Right honble. Mr. Secretary Thurloe the sume of fifty pounds: £50: by mee, JOHN DRIDEN" is a receipt, of date "19 October 1657," among Thurloe's papers in the Record Office—the words "by mee, JOHN DRIDEN" in a neat slant hand, different from the body of the receipt. The poet Dryden, it may be remembered, was the cousin and client of Sir Gilbert Pickering, one of the most important men in the Council and one of the most strongly Oliverian. The poet left Cambridge, his biographers tell us, without his M.A. degree, "about the middle of 1657," and it was a taunt against him afterwards that he had begun his London life as "clerk" to Sir Gilbert. As he cannot have got the £50 from Thurloe for nothing, the probability is that he had been employed, through Sir Gilbert, to do some clerkly or literary work for the Council. No harm, at all events, in remembering the ages at this date of the three men of letters thus linked to the Protectorate at its centre. Milton was in his forty-ninth year, Marvell in his thirty-eighth, Dryden in his twenty-seventh.²

On the day on which Dryden received his fifty pounds from Thurloe there was this entry in the birth-registers of the parish of St. Margaret's, Westminster: "October 19, 1657, Katherin Milton, d. to John, Esq., by Katherin." The entry may be still read in the book, with these words appended in an old hand some time afterwards: "This is Milton, Oliver's Secretary." It is the record of the birth of a daughter to Milton by his second wife, Katharine Woodcock, in the twelfth month of their marriage. The little incident reminds us at this point of the domestic life in Petty France; but it need not delay us. We proceed with the Secretaryship.

Whatever share of the regular work of the Foreign Department may have been now allotted to Marvell, an occasional letter was still required from Milton. The following Latin dispatches were written by him between September 1657 and Jan. 1657-8, when the Protector's Second Parliament reassembled for its second session, as a Parliament of two Houses:—

(CXII.) TO M. DE BORDEAUX, THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR, Oct. 1657:—This is not in the Protector's name, but in that of the President of the Council. It is about the case of a Luke Lucy (Lucas Lucius) a London merchant. A ship of his, called The Mary, bound from Ireland to Bayonne, had been driven by tempest into the port of St. Jean de Luz, seized there at the suit of one Martin de Lazon, and only discharged on security given to abide a trial at law of this person's claim. Now, his claim was preposterous. It was founded on an alleged loss of money as far back as 1642 by the seizure by the English Parliament of goods on board a ship called The Santa Clara. He was not the owner of the goods, but only agent, with a partner of his, called Antonio Fernandez, for the real owners; there had been a quarrel between the partners; and the Parliament had stopped the goods till it should be decided by law who ought to have them. Fernandez was willing to try the action in the English Courts; but De Lauzon had made no appearance there. And now De Lauzon had hit on the extraordinary expedient of seizing Lucy's ship and dragging the totally innocent Lucy into an action in the French Courts. All which having been represented to the Protector by Lucy's petition, it is begged that De Lauzon may be told he must go another way to work.

(CXIII.) TO THE DOGE AND SENATE OF VENICE, Oct. 1657:—A rather long letter, and not uninteresting. First the Protector congratulates the Venetians on their many victories over the Turks, not only because of the advantage thence to the Venetian State, but also because of the tendency of such successes to "the liberation of all Christians under Turkish servitude." But, under cover of this congratulation, he calls to their attention again the case of a certain brave ship-captain, Thomas Galilei (Thomam Galileum). He had, some five years ago, done gallant service for the Venetians in his ship called The Relief, fighting alone with a whole fleet of Turkish galleys and making great havoc among them, till, his own ship having caught fire, he had been taken and carried away as a slave. For five years he had been in most miserable captivity, unable to ransom himself because he had no property in the world besides what might be owing to him for his ship and services by the Venetian Government. He had an old father still alive, "full of grief and tears which have moved Us exceedingly"; and this old man begs, and His Highness begs, that the Doge and Senate will arrange for the immediate release of the captive. They must have taken many Turkish prisoners in their late victories, and it is understood that those who detain the captive are willing to exchange him for any Turk of equal value. Also his Highness hopes the Doge and Senate will pay at once to the old man whatever may be due to his captive son. This, his Highness believes, had been arranged for after his former application on the subject; but probably, in the multiplicity of business, the matter had been overlooked. May the Republic of Venice long flourish, and God grant them victories over the Turks to the very end!

(CXIV.) TO THE HIGH AND MIGHTY LORDS, THE STATES GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, Nov. 1657:—This is a letter of commendation of the Dutch Ambassador William Nieuport on his temporary return home on private affairs (see ante p. 312). Through the "several years" of His Highness's acquaintance with him, he had found him of "such fidelity, vigilance, prudence, and justice, in the discharge of his office" that he could not desire a better Ambassador, or believe their High Mightinesses could find a better one. He cannot take leave of him, though but for a short time, without saying as much. Throughout his embassy, his aim had been, "without deceit or dissimulation," to preserve the peace and friendship that had been established; and, so long as he should be Dutch Ambassador in London, his Highness did not see "what occasion of offence or scruple could rankle or sprout up" between the two States. At the present juncture he should regret his departure the more if he were not assured that no man would better represent to their High Mightinesses the Protector's goodwill to them and the condition of things generally. "May God, for His own glory and the defence of the Orthodox Church, grant prosperity to your affairs and perpetuity to our friendship!"—In writing this letter, Milton must have remembered Nieuport's interference in behalf of Morus, for the suppression at the last moment, if possible, of the Defensio Secunda. He had not quite relished that interference, or the manner of it. See Vol. IV, pp. 631-633, and ante p. 202-203.

(CXV.) TO THEIR HIGH MIGHTINESSES THE STATES GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, Dec. 1657:—A fit sequel to the foregoing, for it is the Letter Credential to GEORGE DOWNING, just selected to be his Highness's Resident at the Hague, and so the counterpart of Nieuport (ante p. 312). "GEORGE DOWNING," it begins, "a gentleman of rank, has been for a long time now, by experience of him in many and various transactions, recognised and known by Us as of the highest fidelity, probity, and ability." He is, accordingly, recommended in the usual manner; and there is intimation, though not in language so strong as that of Lockhart's credentials to France, that "communications" with him will be the same as with his Highness personally. "Communications" only this case, Downing not being a plenipotentiary like Lockhart.¹

(CXVI.) TO THE PROVINCIAL STATES OF HOLLAND, Dec. 1657:—While recommending DOWNING to the States General, his Highness cannot refrain from recommending him also specially to the States of Holland, self-governed as they are internally, and "so important a part of the United Provinces" besides.

(CXVII.) TO FERDINAND, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY, Dec. 1657:—The Protector's last letter to the Grand Duke (ante 372) had produced immediate effect. The rascally Englishman Ellis, who, to the discredit of English and Christian good faith, had run off with the cargo of rice, sugar, and coffee, belonging to the Sultan of Turkey, had been arrested in Leghorn. So the Grand Duke had informed Cromwell in a letter dated Nov. 10. The present is a reply to that letter, and is very characteristic. "We give you thanks for this good office; and now we make this farther request,—that, as soon as the merchants have undertaken that satisfaction shall be made to the, Turks, the said Master be liberated from custody, and the ship and her lading be forthwith let off, lest perchance we should seem to have made more account of the Turks than of our own citizens. Meanwhile we relish so agreeably your Highness's singular, conspicuous, and most acceptable good-will towards us that we should not refuse the brand of ingratitude if we did not eagerly desire a speedy opportunity of gratifying you in return by the like promptitude, by means of which we might prove to you in very deed our readiness also in returning good offices. Your Highness's most affectionate OLIVER."

To the same month as the last three of these Latin State-Letters belong two more of Milton's Latin Familiar Epistles. The persons to whom they are addressed are already known to us:

"To the very distinguished MR. HENRY DE BRASS.

"Having been hindered these days past by some occupations, illustrious Sir, I reply later than I meant. For I meant to do so all the more speedily because I saw that your present letter, full of learning as it is, did not so much leave me room for suggesting anything to you (a thing which you ask of me, I believe, out of compliment to me, not for your own need) as for simple congratulation. I congratulate myself especially on my good fortune in having, as it appears, so suitably explained Sallust's meaning, and you on your so careful perusal of that most wise author with so much benefit from the same. Respecting him I would venture to make the same assertion to you as Quintilian made respecting Cicero,—that a man may know himself no mean proficient in the business of History who enjoys his Sallust. As for that precept of Aristotle's in the Third Book of his Rhetoric [Chap. XVII] which you would like explained—'Use is to be made of maxims both in the narrative of a case and in the pleading, for it has a moral effect'—I see not what it has in it that much needs explanation: only that the narration and the pleading (which last is usually also called the proof) are here understood to be such as the Orator uses, not the Historian; for the parts of the Orator and the Historian are different whether they narrate or prove, just as the Arts themselves are different. What is suitable for the Historian you will have learnt more correctly from the ancient authors, Polybius, the Halicarnassian, Diodorus, Cicero, Lucian, and many others, who have handed down certain stray precepts concerning that subject. For me, I wish you heartily all happiness in your studies and travels, and success worthy of the spirit and diligence which I see you employ on everything of high excellence. Farewell.

"Westminster: December 16, 1657."

"To the highly accomplished PETER HEIMBACH.

"I have received your letter dated the Hague. Dec. 18 [foreign reckoning: the English would be Dec. 8], which, as I see it concerns your interests, I have thought I ought to answer on the very day it has reached me. After thanking me for I know not what favours of mine,—which, as one who desires everything good for you, I would were really of any consideration at all,—you ask me to recommend you, through Lord Lawrence, to our Minister appointed for Holland [DOWNING, whose credential letters Milton had drawn up only a day or two before]. I really regret that this is not in my power, both because of my very few intimacies with the men of influence, almost shut up at home as I am, and as I prefer to be (propter paucissimas familiaritates meas cum gratiosis, qui domi fere, idque libenter, me contineo), and also because I believe the gentleman is now embarking and on his way, and has with him in his company the person he wishes to be his Secretary—the very office about him you seek. But the post is this instant going, Farewell.

"Westminster: December 18, 1657."

Too much is not to be made of certain phrases in this note. Milton was declining, in as civil terms as possible, a request which might perhaps have been troublesome even if the Secretaryship to Mr. Downing had been vacant; and, though it would have been enough, as far as Heimbach's present application was concerned, to tell him that Mr. Downing was already provided, the other reason may have been thrown in by way of discouragement of such applications in future. We have had proof that Milton liked Heimbach; but we do not know what estimate he had formed of Heimbach's abilities. Still, any words used by Milton about himself are always to be taken as in correspondence with fact; and hence we are to suppose that, at the time he wrote, he did keep himself as much aloof as possible from the magnates of the Council, performing the pieces of work required of him in his own house, rather than making them occasions for visits and colloquies. His old and intimate friend Fleetwood, and his friend Lord President Lawrence, with Desborough, Pickering, Strickland, Montague, and Sydenham, all of whom had been mentioned by him with more or less of personal regard in the Defensio Secunda in 1654, were still Councillors, and formed indeed more than half the Council; but his intercourse with some of these individually may have been less since his blindness. Then, of the rest, Thurloe was the real man of influence, the real gratiosus who could carry or set aside a request like Heimbach's; and, though Milton's communications with Thurloe must necessarily have been more frequent than with any other person of the Council, one has an indefinable impression that Thurloe had never taken cordially to Milton or Milton to Thurloe. At the date of Milton's note to Heimbach, too, gratiosi were becoming plentiful all round the Council. Cromwell's sixty-three writs for the new Upper House had gone out, or were going out, and in a week or two many more "lords" were to be seen walking in couples in any street in Westminster. Milton, in his quiet retreat there, may have had something of all this in his mind when he wrote to young Mr. Heimbach.

The short second session of the Parliament, with its difficult experiment of the two Houses once more, and the angry dispute of the Commons whether the name of "Lords" should be allowed to the Other House, had come and gone (Jan. 20—Feb. 4, 1657-8), and of Milton or his thoughts and doings through that crisis we have no trace whatever. Our next glimpse of him is just after the moment of the abrupt dissolution of the Parliament, when Cromwell was addressing himself again, single-handed, to the task of grappling with the double danger of anarchy within and a threatened invasion from without. The glimpse is a very sad one.

"Feb. 10, 1657-8, Mrs. Katherin Milton," and again "March, 20, 1657-8, Mrs. Katherin Milton," are two entries, within six weeks of each other, in the burial registers of St, Margaret's, Westminster. They are the records of the deaths of Milton's second wife and the little girl she had borne him only in October last. Which entry designates the mother and which, the child we should not know from the entries themselves; but a sentence in Phillips's memoir of his uncle settles the point. "By his second wife; Katharine, the daughter of Captain Woodcock of Hackney," says Phillips, "he had only one daughter, of which the mother, the first year after her marriage, died in childbed, and the child also within a month after." The first entry, therefore, is for the mother, and the second for the child. The mother died exactly at the time of the dissolution of the Parliament, and not in child-birth itself, but nearly four months after child-birth; and the little orphan, outliving the mother a short while, died at the age of five months. And so Milton was again left a widower, with his three daughters by the first marriage, the eldest in her twelfth year. His private life, for eighteen years now, had certainly not been a happy one; but this death of his second wife seems to have been remembered by him ever afterwards with deep and peculiar sorrow. She had been to him during the short fifteen months of their union, all that he had thought saintlike and womanly, very sympathetic with himself, and maintaining such peace and order in his household as had not been there till she entered it. And now once more it was a dark void, in which he must grope on, and in which things must happen as they would.

Small comfort at this time can Milton have had from either of his nephews. Not that they had openly separated themselves from him, or even ceased to be deferential to him and proud of the relationship, but that they had more and more gone into those courses of literary Bohemianism those habits of mere facetious hack-work and balderdash, which he must have noted of late as an increasing and very ominous form of protest among the clever young Londoners against Puritanism and its belongings. The Satyr against Hypocrites by his younger nephew in 1655 had been, in reality, an Anti-Puritan and Anti-Miltonic production; and, since the censure of that younger nephew by the Council in 1656 for his share in The Sportive Wit or Muses' Merriment, he had naturally stumbled farther and farther in the same direction. By the year 1658, I should say, John Phillips had entirely given up his uncle's political principles, and was known among his tavern-comrades as an Anti-Oliverian. We have no express publications in his name of this date, but he seems to have been scribbling anonymously. Of the literary industry of his more sedate and likeable elder brother, Edward, there is authentic evidence. A New World of Words, or a General Dictionary, containing the Terms, Etymologies, Definitions, and Perfect Interpretations, of the proper Significations of hard English words throughout the Arts and Sciences: such is the title of a folio volume published by him in 1657, and for the purposes of which he was afterwards accused of having plagiarized largely from the Glossographia of one Thomas Blount, published in the preceding year. In this piece of labour, which was doubtless a bookseller's commission, he must have had, the question of plagiarism apart, his uncle's thorough good-will; but it cannot have been the same with his Mysteries of Love and Eloquence: or the Arts of Wooing and Complimenting, as they are managed in the Spring Garden, Hide Park, the New Exchange, and other eminent Places. That performance, which appeared in August 1658, with a Preface "To the Youthful Gentry," and which must have been in progress at our present date, was much more in the vein of his brother John, and indeed was done to the order of Nathaniel Brooke, the bookseller who had published John's Satyr against Hypocrites, and also the more questionable Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment. "The book," says Godwin, "is put together with conspicuous ingenuity and profligacy, and is entitled to no insignificant rank among the multifarious productions which were at that time issued from the press to debauch the manners of the nation and bring back the King. It consists of imaginary conversations and forms of address for conversation, poems, models of letters, questions and answers, an Art of Logic with examples from the poets, and various instructions and helps to the lover for the composition of his verses; and, if we could overlook the gross provocations to libertinism and vice which everywhere occur in the book, it might be mentioned as no unentertaining illustration of the manners of the men of wit and gallantry in the time when it was published." To Godwin's description we may add that the book includes a Rhyming Dictionary, "useful for that pleasing pastime called Crambo," also a collection of parlour-games, and a number of other clever things. The poems and songs interspersed with the prose were mostly old ones reprinted, some of them chosen with fine taste; but one or two were Phillips's own. Of the model phrases or set expressions which form one of the prose parts of the volume, by way of instruction in the language of gallantry and courtship, specimens are these,—"With your ambrosiac kisses bathe my lips;" "You are a white enchantress, lady, and can enchain me with a smile;" "Midnight would blush at this;" "You walk in artificial clouds and bathe your silken limbs in wanton dalliance." What could Milton do, so far as such a production came within his knowledge, but shake his head and mingle smiles with a frown? Clearly the elder nephew too had slipped the Miltonic restraints. He had not lapsed, however, so decidedly as his brother; and we may partly retract in his case the statement that Milton could have little comfort from him. He still went and came about Milton, very attentively.¹

During the month immediately preceding his wife's death, and the two months following it, there is a break in the series of Milton's State-Letters for Cromwell. But he resumed the familiar occupation on the 30th of March, 1658; and thenceforward to the end of the Protectorate the series is again pretty continuous. Indeed, of this period of Milton's life we know little more than may be inferred from, or associated with, the following morsels of his continued Secretaryship:—

(CXVIII.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, March 30, 1658:—The occasion of this letter was the receipt of news at last of the climax of the Swedish-Danish war in a great triumph of the Swedes. "In January 1658 Karl Gustav marches his army, horse, foot, and artillery, to the amount of twenty thousand, across the Baltic ice, and takes an island without shipping,—Island of Fünen, across the Little Belt; three miles of ice; and a part of the sea open, which has to be crossed on planks. Nay, forward from Fünen, when he is once there, he achieves ten whole miles more of ice; and takes Zealand itself—to the wonder of mankind." Such, in Mr. Carlyle's summary (History of Frederick the Great, i. 223, edit. 1869), was the feat of the Swedish warrior against his Danish enemy. It was followed almost immediately by a Peace between the two Powers, called The Peace of Roeskilde, by which Sweden acquired certain territories from Denmark, but very generous terms on the whole were granted to the Danes. Of all this there had been news to Cromwell, not only from his own correspondents, but also in an express letter from Charles Gustavus; and it is to this letter that Milton now replies in Cromwell's name:—"Most serene and potent King, most invincible Friend and Ally,—The Letter of your Majesty, dated from the Camp in Zealand, Feb. 21, has brought Us all at once many reasons why, both privately on our own account, and on account of the whole Christian Commonwealth, we should be affected by no ordinary joy. In the first place, because the King of Denmark (made your enemy, I believe, not by his own will or interests, but by the arts of the common foes) has been, by your sudden advent into the heart of his kingdom, and without much bloodshed, reduced to such a pass that he has at length, as was really the fact, judged peace more advantageous to him than the war undertaken against you. Next, because, when he thought he could in no way sooner obtain such a peace than by using Our help long ago offered him for a conciliation, your Majesty, on the prayer merely of the letters of our Envoy, deigned to show, by such an easy grant of peace, how much value you attached to Our friendship and interposed good-will, and chose that it should be My office in particular, in this pious transaction, to be myself nearly the sole adviser and author of a Peace which is speedily to be, as I hope, so salutary to Protestant interests. For, whereas the enemies of Religion despaired of being able to break your combined strength otherwise than by engaging you against each other, they will now have cause, as I hope, thoroughly to fear that this unlooked-for conjunction of your arms and hearts will turn into destruction for themselves, the kindlers of this war. Do you, meanwhile, most brave King, go on and prosper in your conspicuous valour, and bring it to pass that, such good fortune as the enemies of the Church have lately admired in your exploits and course of victories against the King now your ally, the same they may feel once more, with God's help, in their own crushing overthrow."¹ From this letter it will be seen that the missions of Meadows and Jephson, but especially that of Meadows, had been of use. The immediate object of the missions, a reconciliation of Sweden and Denmark, had been accomplished; and what remained farther was, as Cromwell hints, the association of the other Continental Protestant powers with these two Scandinavian kingdoms in a league against Austria and Spain. How exactly this idea accorded with reflective Protestant sentiment everywhere appears from a few sentences in one of Baillie's letters, commenting on the very occurrences that occasioned Cromwell's present despatch. "I am glad," writes Baillie, "that by a Peace, however extorted, the Swedes are free to take course with other enemies. I wish Brandenburg may return to his old posture, and not draw on himself next the Swedish armies; which the Lord forbid! for, after Sweden, we love Brandenburg next best.... Our wish is that the Muscoviter, for reforming of his churches, civilizing of his people, and doing some good upon the Turks and Tartars, were more straitly allied with Sweden, Brandenburg, the Transylvanian, and other Protestant princes. We should rejoice if, on this too good a quarrel against the Austrians ... he [Charles Gustavus] would turn his victorious army upon them and their associates, with the assistance of France and a good Dutch league. It seems no hard matter to get the Imperial Crown and turn the Ecclesiastic Princes into Secular Protestants."² Very much in the direction of Baillie's hopes were Cromwell's envoys, Meadows, Jephson, Bradshaw, and Downing, to labour for the next few months. Of their journeys hither and thither, their expectations and disappointments, there are glimpses in successive letters in Thurloe; from which also it appears that Meadows and Downing gave most satisfaction, and that, after a while, Jephson was relieved of the main business of the Swedish mission, and that mission was conjoined with the Danish in the hands of Meadows (Thurloe, VII. 63-64).

(CXIX.) TO THE GRAND-DUKE OF TUSCANY, April 7, 1658:—A John Hosier, master of a ship called The Lady, had been swindled in April 1656 by an Italian named Guiseppe Armani, who has moreover possessed himself fraudulently of 6000 pieces of eight belonging to one Thomas Clutterbuck. There is a suit against Armani at Leghorn; but Hosier, after going to great expenses, is deterred from appearing there by threats of personal violence. "We therefore request your Highness both to relieve this oppressed man, and also to restrain the insolence of his adversary, according to your accustomed justice."

(CXX.) TO LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, May 26, 1658:¹—This is a very momentous letter. It is Cromwell's appeal to the French King in behalf once more of the poor Piedmontese Protestants:—"Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,—Your Majesty may remember that, at the time when there was treaty between us for the renewing of our League [April 1655]—the highly auspicious nature of which transaction is now testified by many resulting advantages to both nations and much damage to the common enemy—there fell out that miserable massacre of the People of the Valleys, whose cause, forsaken on all hands and sorely beset, we commended, with all ardour of heart and commiseration, to your pity and protection. Nor do we think that your Majesty, of yourself, was wanting in a duty so pious, nay so human, in as far as, by your authority or by the respect due to your person, you could prevail with the Duke of Savoy. We, certainly, and many other Princes and States, were not wanting, in the matter of embassies, letters, interposed entreaties, on the subject. After a most bloody slaughter of both sexes and of every age, Peace was at last granted, or rather a kind of more guarded hostility clothed with the name of Peace: the conditions of the Peace were settled in your town of Pignerol—hard conditions indeed, but in which wretched and poor people that had suffered all that was dreadful and brutal might easily acquiesce, if only, hard and unjust as they are, they were to be stood to. They are not stood to; for the promise of each and all of them is eluded and violated by false interpretation and various asides: many are thrown out of their ancient abodes; many are interdicted from their native religion; new tributes are exacted; a new citadel is hung over their heads, whence soldiers frequently break forth, plundering or murdering all they meet: in addition to all which, new forces of late are secretly being got ready against them, and those among them who profess the Roman Religion have warning orders to remove for a time, so that all things now again seem to point to an exterminating onslaught on those most miserable creatures who were left over from that last butchery. That you will not allow this to be done I beseech and conjure you, Most Christian King, by that right hand of yours which sealed alliance and friendship with Us, by that most sacred ornament of the title of Most Christian; that you will not permit such a license of furious raging, I do not say to any prince (for such furious raging cannot possibly come upon any prince, much less upon the tender age of that Prince, or into the womanly mind of his Mother), but to those most holy assassins, who, while they profess themselves the servants and imitators of our Saviour Christ, Him who came into this world to save sinners, abuse His most meek name and institutes for savage slaughters of innocents. Snatch, thou who art able, and who in such a towering station art worthy to be able, so many suppliants of yours from the hands of homicides, who, drunk with gore recently, thirst for blood again, and consider it most advisable for themselves to lay at the doors of princes the odium of their own cruelty. Do not thou, while thou reignest, suffer thy titles or the territories of thy realm, or the most merciful Gospel of Christ, to be defiled by that scandal. Remember that these very Vaudois submitted themselves to your grandfather Henry, that great favourer of Protestants, when the victorious Lesdiguières, through those parts where there is even yet the most convenient passage into Italy, pursued the yielding Savoyard across the Alps. The instrument of that Surrender is yet extant among the Public Acts of your Kingdom; in which, among other things, it is expressly provided and precautioned that the Vaudois should thenceforth be handed over to no one unless with those same conditions on which, by that instrument, your most invincible grandfather received them into his protection. This protection the suppliants now implore; as pledged by the grandfather, they demand it from you, the grandson. They would prefer and desire to be your subjects rather than his to whom they now belong, even by some exchange, if that could be managed; but, if that cannot be managed, to be yours at least in as far as your patronage, pity, and shelter can make them so. There are even reasons of state which might exhort you not to drive back Vaudois fleeing to you for refuge; but I would not, such a great King as you are, think of you as moved to the defence of those lying under calamity by other considerations than the promise of your ancestors, piety, and kingly benignity and greatness of soul. So the praise and glory of a most beautiful deed will be yours unalloyed and entire, and through all your life you will find the Father of Mercy, and His Son, King Christ, whose name and doctrine you will have vindicated from a wicked atrocity, more favouring and propitious to yourself. May God Almighty, for His own glory, the safeguard of so many innocent Christian human beings, and your true honour, dispose your Majesty to this resolution!" The letter was sent to Ambassador Lockhart, then commanding the English auxiliaries at Dunkirk, with very precise instructions to deliver it to his French Majesty, and to follow it up energetically by his own counsels.² It may have been delivered to Louis XIV. at or near Calais. It had, as we have seen, full effect. All in all, it is one of the most eloquent of the Milton series; and Milton must have exerted himself in the composition.

(CXXI.) TO THE EVANGELICAL SWISS CANTONS, May 26, 1658:¹—On the same great business as the last.—"Illustrious and most honourable Lords, most dear Friends:—Concerning the Vaudois, your most afflicted neighbours, what grievous and intolerable things they have suffered from their Prince for Religion's sake, besides that the mind almost shrinks from remembering them because of the very atrocity of the facts, we have thought it superfluous to write to you what must be much better known to yourselves. We have also seen copies of the letters which your Envoys, who a good while since were the advisers and witnesses of the Peace of Pignerol, have written to the Duke of Savoy and the President of his Council in Turin; in which they show and prove in detail that all the conditions of the Peace have been broken, and have been rather a snare for those miserable people than a security. Which violation of the conditions, continued from the very date of the Peace even to this day, and every day growing more grievous, unless they endure patiently, unless they prostrate themselves and lie down to be trampled on and pushed into mud, their Religion itself forsworn, there impends over them the same calamity, the same havoc, which harassed and desolated them, with their wives and children, in so miserable a manner three years ago, and which, if it is to be undergone again, will wholly extirpate them. What can the poor people do? They have no respite, no breathing-time, as yet no certain refuge. They have to deal with wild beasts or with furies, to whom the recollection of the former slaughters has brought no remorse, no pity for their fellow-countrymen, no sense of humanity or satiety in shedding blood. These things are clearly not to be borne, whether we have regard to our Vaudois brethren, cherishers of the Orthodox Religion from of old, or to the safety of that Religion itself. We, for our part, removed though we are by too great an interval of space, have heartily performed all we could in the way of help, and shall not cease to do the like. Do you, who are close not only to the torments and almost to the cries of your brethren, but also to the fury of the same enemies, consider prospectively, in the name of Immortal God, and that betimes, what is now your duty; on the question of what assistance, what protection, you can and ought to give to your neighbours and brothers, otherwise speedily to perish, consult your own prudence and piety, but your valour also. It is identity of Religion, be sure, that is the cause why the same enemies would see you likewise destroyed, nay why they would, at the same time, in the same by-past year, have seen you destroyed by an intestine war against you by members of your Confederacy. Next to the Divine aid it seems simply to be with you to prevent the very oldest branch of the purer Religion from being cut down in that remnant of the primitive faithful: and, if you neglect their safety, now brought to the extreme crisis of peril, see that the next turn do not, a little while after, visit yourselves. While we advise thus fraternally and freely, we are meanwhile not idle on our own part: what alone it is allowed to us at such a distance to do, whether for securing the safety of those who are endangered, or for succouring the poverty of those who are in need, we have taken all pains in our power to do, and shall yet take all pains, God grant to us both such tranquillity and peace at home, such a settled condition of things and times, that we may be able to turn all our resources and strength, all our anxiety, to the defence of His Church against the fury and madness of His enemies!"

(CXXII.-CXXV.) TO LOUIS XIV. AND CARDINAL MAZARIN: end of May 1658:¹—This is a group of four letters, two to the King and two to the Cardinal, all appertaining to the splendid embassy of compliment on which Cromwell despatched his son-in-law, Viscount Falconbridge, in the end of May 1658, when he heard that the French Court had come so near England as Calais (ante pp. 340-341):—(1.) TO LOUIS XIV. "Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,—Thomas, Viscount Falconbridge, my son-in-law, being on the point of setting out for France, and desiring to come into your presence, to kiss your royal hand and testify his veneration and the respect which he cherishes for your Majesty, though, on account of the great pleasantness of his society, I am unwilling to part with him, yet, as I do not doubt but, from the Court of so great a King, in which so many most prudent and valiant men have their resort, he will shortly return to us much more accomplished for all honourable occupations, and in a sense finished, I have not thought it right to oppose his mind and wish. And, though he is one, if I mistake not, who may seem to bring his own sufficient recommendations with him wherever he goes, yet, if he should feel himself somewhat more acceptable to your Majesty on my account, I shall likewise consider myself honoured and obliged by that same kindness. May God keep your Majesty safe, and long preserve our fast friendship for the common good of the Christian world."—(2.) TO CARDINAL MAZARIN. As his son-in-law Lord Falconbridge is going into France, recommended by a letter to the French King, Cromwell cannot but inform his Eminence of the fact, and give Lord Falconbridge an introduction to his Eminence also. "Whatever benefit he may receive from his stay amongst you (and he hopes it will not be small) he is sure to owe most of it to your favour and kindness, whose mind and vigilance almost singly sustain and guard such great affairs in that kingdom." (3.) To LOUIS XIV. "Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,—As soon as news had arrived that your Majesty was come into camp, and was besieging with so great forces that infamous town and asylum of pirates, Dunkirk, I conceived a great joy, and also a sure hope that now in a short time, by God's good assistance, the sea will be less infested with robbers and more safely navigable, and that your Majesty will soon by your warlike prowess avenge those frauds of the Spaniard,—one commander corrupted by gold to betray Hesden, another treacherously taken at Ostend. I therefore send to you the most noble Thomas, Viscount Falconbridge, my son-in-law, both to congratulate your arrival in a camp so close to us, and also to explain personally with what affection we follow your Majesty's achievements, not only by the junction of our forces, but with all wishes besides that God Almighty may keep your Majesty's self safe and long preserve our fast friendship for the common good of the Christian world." (4.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN. As he is sending his son-in-law Viscount Falconbridge to congratulate the arrival of his French Majesty in the camp near Dunkirk, he has commanded him to convey also salutations and thanks to his Eminence, "by whose fidelity, prudence, and vigilance, above all, it has been brought about that French business is so prosperously managed against the common enemy in so many different parts, and especially in neighbouring Flanders." It is clear that all these letters cannot have been sent, but only two of them. The closing words of the two letters to the King, for example, are identical to an extent incompatible with the idea that they were both delivered. It may be guessed by the suspicious that at first the intention was that Lord Falconbridge should seem to be visiting France for his own curiosity or pleasure, the Protector only taking advantage of his whim, and that letters 1 and 2 were then drafted, but that afterwards it was thought better to send Lord Falconbridge on an avowed embassy of congratulation in Cromwell's own name, and letters 3 and 4 were then substituted. Perhaps, however, there was no duplicity in the affair at all, and the idea of the embassy did actually originate in a whim of Lord Falconbridge. Anyhow all the notes were written by Milton, and he kept copies of those not used.

(CXXVI.) To THE GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY, May 1658:—This is in a very different tone from recent letters of the Protector to the same Italian Prince (ante p. 372 and p. 378).—His Highness has been informed of various acts of discourtesy of late to his Fleet off Leghorn, utterly inconsistent with the terms of friendship on which he had supposed himself to stand with the Grand Duke. Accommodation to the ships has been refused, out of deference to Spain; restrictions have been put on their supplies of fresh water; English merchants resident in Leghorn, and even the English Consul, have not been permitted to go on board; shots have actually been fired; &c. If these things had been done by the Governor of the Town without orders, let him be punished; but, if otherwise, "let your Highness consider that, as we have always very highly valued your good-will, so we have learnt to distinguish open injuries from-good-will."

(CXXVII.-CXXX.) To LOUIS XIV. AND CARDINAL MAZARIN. June 1658:—On the 16th of June there had arrived in London, in rapid return for the embassy of Viscount Falconbridge to Calais, the splendid counter-embassy to Cromwell of the Duke de Crequi and M. Mancini, the Cardinal's nephew (ante pp. 340-341). That in itself would have been an incident calling for some special acknowledgment from the Protector; but hardly had the embassy arrived when there came news of the great event which both Louis XIV. and Cromwell had for some time been intently expecting—the capture of Dunkirk. On the 15th of June the keys of the captured town had been handsomely delivered to Sir William Lockhart by Louis XIV. himself, so that the Treaty with Cromwell had been fully kept in that particular. Louis had sent a special Envoy with letters to announce the event to Cromwell formally; and this Envoy shared in the magnificent hospitalities which Cromwell showered upon the Duke de Crequi, M. Mancini, and their retinue. The four following letters all relate to this glorious occasion, and date themselves between June 16, when the French ambassadors arrived in London, and June 21, when they took their departure. (1.) To Louis XIV. "Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,—That your Majesty has so speedily, by the illustrious embassy you have sent, repaid my mission of respect with interest, besides that it is a proof of your singular graciousness and magnanimity, comes as a manifestation also of the degree of your regard for my honour and dignity, not to myself only, but to the whole English People; on which account, in their name, I duly return your Majesty my most cordial thanks. Over the most happy victory which God gave to our conjoint forces against the enemy [in the Battle near Dunkirk on June 3, ten days before the surrender of the town: ante p. 340], I rejoice along with you; and it is very gratifying to me that in that battle our men were not wanting either to their duty to you, or to the warlike glory of their ancestors, or to their own valour. As for Dunkirk, your Majesty's hopes for the near surrender of which are expressed in your letter, I have the additional joy of being able so soon to write back that the surrender has now actually taken place; and my hopes are that the Spaniard will presently pay for his double treachery by the loss not of one city only,—the effecting of which result by the capture of the other town [Bergen, near Dunkirk, now also besieged] I would that your Majesty may have it in your power to report as quickly. As to your Majesty's farther promise that my interests shall be your care, in that matter I have no mistrust, the promise coming from a King of such worth and friendliness, and having the confirmation of the word of his Ambassador, the most excellent and accomplished Duke de Crequi. That Almighty God may be propitious to your Majesty and to the French State, at home and in war, is my sincere wish." (2.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN. As we have already seen in Cromwell's correspondence with France, letters to the King and the Cardinal then almost always went in pairs, for Louis XIV. was but beginning his long career of Grand Monarque at the age of twenty, while the Cardinal, at the age of fifty-six, still retained that ministerial ascendancy which he had exercised all through the minority of Louis, and indeed since the death of Richelieu in 1642. This letter of Cromwell's to the Cardinal is even more interesting than that to the King, and may be given in full:—"Most Eminent Lord,—While I am thanking by letter your most Serene King, who has sent such a splendid embassy to return respects and congratulations and to communicate to me his joy over the recent most noble victory, I should be ungrateful if I did not at the same time pay by letter the thanks due also to your Eminence, who, to testify your good-will towards me, and your regard for my honour in all possible ways, have sent with the embassy your most worthy and highly accomplished young nephew, and even write that, if you had any one nearer akin to you or dearer, you would have sent that person in preference,—adding a reason which, coming from the judgment of so great a man, I consider no mean tribute of praise and distinction: to wit, your desire that those nearest to you in blood should imitate your Eminence in honouring and respecting me. Well, they will perhaps, at least, in your love for me, have had no stinted example of politeness, candour, and friendliness: of worth and prudence at their highest there are other far more brilliant examples in you, by which they may learn how to administer kingdoms and the greatest affairs with glory. With which that your Eminence may long and prosperously conduct affairs, for the common good of the French kingdom, yea of the whole Christian Republic, a distinction properly yours, I promise that my wishes shall not be wanting." (3.) To LOUIS XIV.¹ A more formal letter than the last, acknowledging the French King's own intimation that Dunkirk had been taken, and given into the possession of Lockhart. "That Dunkirk had surrendered to your Majesty, and that it had been by your orders immediately put in our possession, we had already heard by report; but with what a willing and glad mind your Majesty did it, to testify your good-will towards me in this matter, I have been especially informed by your royal letter, and have had abundantly confirmed by the gentleman in whom, from the tenor of that letter, I have all confidence,—the master in ordinary of your Palace. In addition to this testimony, though it needs no farther weight with me, our Ambassador with you [Lockhart], in discharge of his duty, writes to the same effect, and there is nothing that he does not ascribe to your most firm steadiness in my favour. Let your Majesty be assured in turn that there shall be no want of either care or integrity on our part in performing all that remains of our agreement with the same faith and diligence as hitherto. For the rest, I congratulate your Majesty on your successes and on the very near approach of the capture of Bergen; and may God Almighty grant that there may be as frequent exchanges as possible of such congratulations between us." (4.) TO CARDINAL MAZARIN². This is on the same occasion and in the same strain. One sentence will suffice. "With what faith and expression of the highest good-will all was performed by you, though your Eminence's own assurance fully satisfied me, yet, that I should have nothing more to desiderate, our Ambassador, in carefully writing to me the details, had omitted nothing that could either serve for my information or answer your opinion of him."—It is curious, after these two last letters, to turn to those letters of Lockhart's to which Cromwell refers. They quite confirm his words, though they contain expressions, about both the King and the Cardinal, of which Cromwell would not perhaps have sent them literal copies. Thus, in a letter to Thurloe, of June 14, the day before the delivery of Dunkirk to the English, but when all the arrangements for the delivery had been made, Lockhart, speaking of the difficulties he anticipated in so arduous and delicate a post as the Governorship of Dunkirk, especially with his small supplies and great lack of money, adds,—"Nevertheless I must say I find him [the Cardinal] willing to hear reason; and, though the generality of Court and Army are even mad to see themselves part with what they call un si bon morceau, so delicate a bit, yet he is still constant to his promises, and seems to be as glad in the general, notwithstanding our differences in little particulars, to give this place to his Highness as I can be to receive it: the King is also exceeding obliging and civil, and hath more true worth in him than I could have imagined." Next day Lockhart wrote a brief note to Thurloe announcing himself as actually in possession, "blessed be God for this great mercy, and the Lord continue his protection to his Highness"; and there were subsequent longer letters both to Thurloe and to Cromwell himself³. Dunkirk was called "The Key of Spanish Flanders"; and the conquest of this place for the Protectorate was, it is to be remembered, among the last of Cromwell's great acts.

(CXXXI.) TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, June 1658:—Since Cromwell's last letter by Milton to this heroic Scandinavian (March 30), congratulating him on his generous Peace with Denmark, and urging the policy of a League of all the northern Protestant Powers for conjoint action against Austria, Poland, and Catholicism universally, the movements of the Swede had been most perplexing. Now he had been turning against the Poles and Austrians; but again Denmark, or even the Dutch, seemed to be the object of his resentment, while there was very quarrelsome negotiation between him and the Elector Marquis of Brandenburg, and every appearance that the Elector might have to bear the next full burst of his wrath. All this did not seem favourable to the prospects of a Protestant League, and Cromwell's envoys, Meadows, Jephson, Bradshaw, and Downing, had been going to and fro with their wits on the stretch. Such, in general, was the condition of affairs when Milton for Cromwell wrote as follows:—"Most serene and potent King, most dear Friend and Ally,—As often as we look upon the ceaseless plots and various artifices of the common enemies of Religion, so often our thought with ourselves is how necessary it is for the Christian world, and how salutary it would be, for the easier frustration of the attempts of these adversaries, that the Potentates of Protestantism should be conjoined in the strictest league among themselves, and principally your Majesty with our Commonwealth. How much, and with what zeal, that has been furthered by Us, and how agreeable latterly it would have been to us if the affairs of Sweden and our own had been in such a condition and position that the League could have been ratified heartily by us both, and with all fit aid the one to the other, We have testified to your agents from the time when they first treated of the matter with Us. Nor, truly, were they wanting to their duty; but, as was their custom in other things, in this matter also they displayed prudence and diligence. But we have been so exercised at home by the perfidy of wicked citizens, who, though several times received back into trust, do not yet cease to form new conspiracies, and to repeat their already often shattered and routed plots with the exiles, and even with the Spanish enemy, that, occupied in beating off our own dangers, we have not hitherto been able, as was our wish, to turn our whole attention and entire strength to the guardianship of the common cause of Religion. What was possible, however, to the full extent of our power, we have already studiously performed; and, whatever for the future in this direction shall seem to conduce to your Majesty's interests, we shall not desist not only to desire, but also to co-operate with you with all our strength in accomplishing where they may be opportunity. Meanwhile we congratulate, and heartily rejoice in, your Majesty's most prudent and most valiant actions, and desire with assiduous prayers that God may will, for the glory of his own Deity, that the same course of prosperity and victory may be a very long one."—So far as Milton's state-letters show, this is the last of the relations between Oliver Cromwell and Karl-Gustav of Sweden. But, in Thurloe and elsewhere, there are farther traces of the great Swede in connexion with Cromwell, and of the interest which the two kindred souls felt in each other. Passing over some weeks of still uncertain movement of the Swede hither and thither in his complications with Austria, Poland, Denmark, Muscovy, Brandenburg, and the Dutch, we may note the sudden surprise of all Europe when, early in August, he tore up his brief Peace with Denmark, re-invaded Zealand, and marched straight upon Copenhagen. His reasons for this extraordinary act he thought it right to explain to Cromwell in a long letter dated from his quarters near Copenhagen, August 18, 1658. The letter can have reached Cromwell only on his death-bed; and, on the whole, Cromwell had to leave the world with the consciousness that the League of Protestant Powers for which he had prayed and struggled was apparently as far off as ever. The election to the vacant Emperorship had already taken place at last, July 8, 1658, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and it was the Austrian Leopold, King of Hungary, and not the French Louis XIV., after all, that had been proclaimed and saluted Imperator Romanorum.¹

(CXXXII.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, August 1658:—A John Buffield, merchant of London, has been wronged by the detention of property of his by a Portuguese mercantile firm, and has been tossed about in Portuguese law-courts. The Protector requests his Portuguese Majesty to look into the matter and see justice done.

So ends the series of Milton's Letters for Oliver. As there had been eighty-eight such in all (XLV.-CXXXII.) during the four years and nine months of the Protectorate, whereas there had been but forty-four (I.-XLIV.) similar letters during the preceding four years and ten months of the Commonwealth proper and Interim Dictatorship, it will be seen that Milton's industry in this particular form of his Secretaryship had been just twice as great for Oliver as for the Governments before the Protectorate.¹ That fact in itself is rather remarkable, when we remember that Milton came into the Protector's service totally blind. Of course, whoever had been in the post would have had more to do in the way of letter-writing for the Protector than had been required by the preceding Councils of State in their comparatively thin relations with foreign powers; but that a blind man in the post should have been so satisfactory for the increased requirements says something for the employer as well as for the blind man. Thurloe and others had relieved Milton of much of the secretarial work; there had also been many breaks in Milton's secretaryship even in the letter-writing department, occasioned by ill-health, family-troubles, or occupation with literary tasks which were really public commissions and were credited to him as such; and at such times the dependence had been on Meadows or some one else for the Latin letters necessary. Always, however, when the occasion was very important, as when there had to be the burst of circular letters about the Piedmontese massacre, the blind man had to be sent to, or sent for. And what is worthy of notice now is that this had continued to be the case to the last. At no time in the Secretaryship had there been a series of more important letters from Milton's pen than those just inventoried, written for the Protector in the last five months of his life, and mostly in the months of May and June, 1658. Two or three of them are about ships or other small matters, showing that, even with Marvfell now; at hand for such drudgery, Milton did not wholly escape it; but the rest are on the topics of highest interest to Cromwell and closest to his heart. The poor Piedmontese Protestants are again in danger. Who must again sound the alarm? Milton. Cromwell's son-in-law, the gallant Falconbridge, starts on his embassy to Calais. Who must write the letters that are to introduce him to King Louis and the Cardinal? Milton. The gorgeous return embassy of the Duke de Crequi and M. Mancini has to be acknowledged, and the bells rung for the fall of Dunkirk; and with the congratulations to be conveyed across the Channel on that event there have to be interwoven Cromwell's thanks to the King and the Cardinal for having so punctually kept their faith with him by the delivery of the town to Lockhart. Who shall express the complex message? None but Milton. Finally, Cromwell would stretch his hand eastward across the seas to grasp that of the Swedish Charles Gustavus struggling with his peculiar difficulties, to give him brotherly cheer in the midst of them, brotherly hope also that they two, whoever else in a generation of hucksters, may yet live to lead in a glorious Protestant League for the overthrow of Babylon and the woman blazing in scarlet. Who interprets between hero and hero? Always and only the blind Milton. Positively, in reading Milton's despatches for Cromwell on such subjects as the persecutions of the Vaudois and the scheme of a Protestant European League, one hardly knows which is speaking, the secretary or the ruler. Cromwell melts into Milton, and Milton is Cromwell eloquent and Latinizing.²

The last letters to Louis XIV., Mazarin, and Charles Gustavus of Sweden, bring us to within about two months of Cromwell's death, and the last one of all, that to the King of Portugal, to within less than a single month of the same. We have yet a farther trace of the diplomacies proper to Milton's office round the dying Protector. Here, however, it is not Milton that comes into view, but his colleague or assistant, Andrew Marvell.

The Dutch Lord-Ambassador Nieuport, after having been absent in Holland since November 1657, had been sent back by their High Mightinesses, the States-General, to resume his post. The complication of affairs in northern Europe by the movements of Charles Gustavus, and the menacing attitude of that King not only pretty generally all round the Baltic, but also towards the Dutch themselves, had rendered Nieuport's renewed presence in London very necessary. Newly commissioned and instructed, he made his voyage, and was in the Thames on the night of the 23rd of July, though too late to reach Gravesend that night. The arrival of an ambassador being then an affair of much punctilio, he sent his son up the river in a shallop, to inform Mr. Secretary Thurloe and Sir Oliver Fleming, the master of the ceremonies, and to deliver to Thurloe a letter requesting that the pomp of a public reception might be waived and he might be permitted to take up his quarters quietly in the Dutch Embassy, still furnished and ready, just as he had left it. Young Mynheer Nieuport, coming to London on this errand, found things there in unexpected confusion,—the Lord Protector at Hampton Court, attending the death-bed of his daughter Lady Claypole, and leaving business to itself, and Secretary Thurloe also out of town. Fortunately, Thurloe was not then at Hampton Court, but only at his own country-house two miles off. Thither young Nieuport rode at once. He met Thurloe coming in his coach to Whitehall; whereupon Thurloe, after all proper salutations, informed him that his Highness had already heard of his father's arrival and had given orders for his suitable reception. Meanwhile, would young Mr. Nieuport come into the coach, so that they might drive back to Whitehall together? Arrived at Whitehall, Thurloe immediately gave orders for the preparation of one of his Highness's barges to be sent down to Gravesend, "with a gentleman called Marvell, who is employed in the despatches for the Latin tongue." Apparently this gentleman was on the spot, and was at once introduced by Thurloe to young Nieuport. Then young Nieuport went down the river by himself, rejoining his father at Gravesend, and bringing him a letter from Thurloe, to the effect that his Highness was very anxious that his reception should be in all points such as became the respect due to himself and his office, but that Mr. Marvell would come expressly to discuss and arrange particulars and that whatever Lord Nieuport should finally judge fitting should also be satisfactory to his Highness. That was on the night of Saturday, the 24th. Next day, Sunday the 25th, Marvell was duly down at Gravesend in the barge, actually before morning-sermon, as the Ambassador himself informs us, bidding the Ambassador formally welcome in the Lord Protector's name, and sketching out for him "a public reception, with barges and coaches, and also an entertainment, such as is usually given to the chiefest Ambassadors." Lord Nieuport still preferring less bustle on his own account, and thinking also that a great public reception would be unseemly at a time when "the Lord Protector and the whole Court were in great sadness for the mortal distemper of the Lady Claypole," Marvell remained in waiting on him at Gravesend that day, and in the night brought him up to town in his barge incognito. It was thought that his Highness might possibly be able to come from Hampton Court to Whitehall the next day or the next; but, that chance having passed, it was arranged that the Ambassador should himself go to Hampton Court, and have an audience with the Protector at three o'clock in the afternoon of Thursday the 29th. Accordingly, at eleven o'clock on that day the master of the ceremonies was at the Dutch Embassy, with three six-horse coaches; and, having been driven to Hampton Court, the Ambassador was received by Thurloe "at the second gate of the first court," and taken to his Highness's room. After interchange of compliments, his Highness expressed his regret "that his own indisposition, and other domestic inconveniencies, had hindered him from coming to London"; and then, the general company having been dismissed, and only Lord President Lawrence, Lord Strickland, and Thurloe, remaining in the room, there was some talk on business. Various matters were mentioned, but only generally, Nieuport not thinking it fit to trouble his Highness with "a large discourse," and his Highness indeed intimating that he did not find himself well enough to talk much. But all was very amicable, and at the end of the interview Cromwell, saying he hoped to be in London next week, insisted on conducting the Ambassador to the door of the antechamber, leaving Lawrence, Strickland, and Thurloe, to do the rest by attending him through the galleries back to the coaches. On that same day there had been a Council-meeting at Hampton Court, the last at which Cromwell was present. Possibly Dutch business was discussed there, and also at the next meeting of Council, which was at Whitehall on the 3rd of August, and without Cromwell. On the 5th, at all events, when the Council again met at Hampton Court, Cromwell not present, there was, as we have seen (ante, p. 355), a minute on Dutch business of a very ominous character. Cromwell's heart was now with the magnanimous Swede rather than with the merchandizing Dutch; and, in all probability, had he lived longer, Ambassador Nieuport would have had to send home news that might not have been pleasant to their High Mightinesses. But the next day (August 6) Lady Claypole was dead; and from that day, through the remaining four weeks of Cromwell's life, the concerns of the foreign world grew dimmer and dimmer in his regards. Perhaps to the last moment of his consciousness what did most interest him in that foreign world was the great new commotion round the Baltic in which his Swedish brother was the central figure, and in which both the Dutch and the Brandenburg Elector were playing anti-Swedish parts, the Elector avowedly, the Dutch more warily, "The King of Sweden hath again invaded the Dane, and very probably hath Copenhagen by this time," wrote Thurloe from Whitehall to Henry Cromwell at two o'clock in the morning of August 27. Cromwell, therefore, had learnt that fact before his death, and it must have mingled with his thoughts in his dying hours. In these very hours, we find, not only was Ambassador Nieuport close at hand again, for Dutch negotiations in which the fact would naturally be of high moment, but Herr. Schlezer also, the London agent of the Brandenburg Elector, was at the doors of the Council office, with express letters from the Elector, which he was anxious to deliver to Thurloe himself, in case even at such a time some answer might be elicited. Thurloe choosing to be inaccessible, he had left the letters with Mr. Marvell. Thus, twice in the last weeks of Oliver's Protectorate we have a distinct sight of Marvell in his capacity of substitute for Milton. He barges down the Thames very early on a Sunday morning to salute an Ambassador in the name of the Protector and bring him up to town in a proper manner; and he receives in the Whitehall office a troublesome diplomatic agent, who has come with important despatches.¹

Thirty-three Latin State-Letters and five Latin Familiar Epistles are the productions of Milton's pen we have hitherto registered as belonging to the Second Protectorate of Oliver. Two or three incidents, appertaining more properly to his Literary Biography, have yet to be noticed before we leave the period.

Here is the title of a little foreign tract of which I have seen a solitary, and perhaps unique, copy:-"Dissertationis ad quoedam loca Miltoni Pars Posterior; quam, adspirante Deo, Præsids Dn. Jacobo Schallero, S.S, Theol. Doct, et Philos. Pract. Prof., ad. h.t. Facult. Phil. Decano, solenniter defendet die[17] mens. Septemb. Christophorus Güntzer, Argentorat. Argentorati, Typis Friderici Spoor, 1657" ("Second Part of a Dissertation, on certain Passages of Milton; which, with God's favour, and tinder the presidency of James Schaller, Doctor of Divinity and Professor of Practical Philosophy, acting as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy for the occasion, Christopher Güntzer of Strasburg will solemnly defend on the 17th of September. Strasburg, Printed by Frederic Spoor, 1657"). Of the Schaller here mentioned we have heard before in connexion with a publication of his in 1653, also entitled Dissertatio ad loca quædam Miltoni, and appended then to certain Exercitationes concerning the English Regicide by the Leipsic jurist Caspar Ziegler (Vol. IV. pp. 534-535). He seems to have retained an interest in the subject, and to have kept it up among those about him; for here, four years after his own Dissertation, he is to preside at the academic defence of another on the same subject by a Christopher Güntzer, who was probably one of his pupils. Young Güntzer, it seems, had been trying his hand on the subject already; for this is but the "second part" of his performance. The "first part" I have not seen, though it seems to have been published. The "second part" is a thin quarto, paged 45-92, as if to be bound with the first. It is in a juvenile and dry style of quotation and academic reasoning, modelled after Schaller's older Dissertation, and not worth an abstract. More interesting than itself are eleven pieces of congratulatory Latin verse prefixed to it by college friends of the disputant. In more than one of these Milton is mentioned; but the liveliest mention of him is in a set of Phalæcians signed "Christianus Keck." Phalæcians are not to be attempted in English; but, as the semi-absurd relish of the thing would be lost in prose, the first few lines may run into a kind of equivalent doggrel:—

Young Keck then goes on to assure his fellow-students that, if their eminent Professor Schaller's Dissertation of 1653 in reply to Milton had been duly read and pondered in Great Britain, it would have been of far more use towards a restoration of the Stuarts than camps and cannon; and he ends by congratulating the world on the fact that now young Güntzer, the accomplished young Güntzer, has placed himself by the side of the learned Professor, to wave the same inextinguishable torch of truth.¹—In all probability, Milton never heard of such a trifle. It illustrates, however, the kind of rumour of himself and his writings that was circling, in the year 1657, in holes and corners of German Universities. Strasburg, with Elsatz generally, was then within the dominions of Austria; and it was naturally less in Austrian Germany than in other parts of the Continent that there was that especial admiration of Milton which had been growing since the publication of his Defensio Prima, but which, as Aubrey tells us, had reached its height under the Protectorate. "He was mightily importuned," says Aubrey, "to go into France and Italy. Foreigners came much to see him, and much admired him, and offered to him great preferments to come over to them; and the only inducement of several foreigners that came over into England was chiefly to see O. Protector and Mr. J. Milton; and [they] would see the house and chamber where he was born. He was much more admired abroad than at home." This corresponds with all our own evidence hitherto, though we have heard nothing of those invitations and offers of foreign preferment of which Aubrey speaks.

In May 1658, three or four months before Cromwell's death, there was published in London a little volume of about 200 pages, with this title-page: "The Cabinet Council; Containing the chief Arts of Empire, and Mysteries of State; Discabineted in Political and Polemical Aphorisms, grounded, on Authority, and Experience; And illustrated with the choicest Examples and Historical Observations. By the Ever-renowned Knight, Sir Walter Raleigh, published by John Milton Esq.-Quis Martem tunicâ tectum Adamantinâ digne scripserit?-London, Printed by Tho. Newcomb for Tho. Johnson at the sign of the Key in St. Pauls Churchyard, near the West-end, 1658." Prefixed to the body of the volume, which is divided into twenty-six chapters, is a note "To the Reader," as follows: "Having had the manuscript of this Treatise, written by Sir Walter Raleigh, many years in my hands, and finding it lately by chance among other books and papers, upon reading thereof I thought it a kind of injury to withhold longer the work of so eminent an author from the public: it being both answerable in style to other works of his already extant, as far as the subject would permit, and given me for a true copy by a learned man at his death, who had collected several such pieces.-JOHN MILTON."¹

By far the most interesting fact, however, in Milton's literary life under the Second Protectorate is that he had certainly, before its close, resumed his design of a great English poem, to be called Paradise Lost. Phillips's words might even imply that he had resumed this design before the end of the First Protectorate. For, after having mentioned that, in the comparative leisure in which he was left by the conclusion of his controversy with Morus (Aug. 1655), he resumed those two favourite hack-occupations on which he always fell back when he had nothing else to do,—his History of England and his compilations for a Latin Dictionary,—Phillips adds, "But the highth of his noble fancy and invention began now to be seriously and mainly employed in a subject worthy of such a muse: viz. a Heroic Poem, entitled Paradise Lost, the noblest," &c. In this passage, however, Phillips is throwing together, in 1694, all his recollections of the four years of his uncle's life between Aug. 1655 and Aug. 1659; and Aubrey's earlier information (1680), originally derived from Phillips himself, is that Paradise Lost was begun "about two years before the King came in," i.e. about May 1658. This would fix the date somewhere in the two or three months immediately following the death-of Milton's second wife. In such a matter exact certainty is unattainable; and it is enough to know for certain that the resumption of Paradise Lost was an event of the latter part of Cromwell's Second Protectorate, and that some portion of the poem was actually written in the house in Petty France, Westminster, while Milton was in communication with Cromwell and writing letters for him. In the rooms of that house, or in the garden that stretched from the house into St. James's Park across part of what is now the ground of Wellington Barracks, the subject of the epic first took distinct shape in Milton's mind, and here he began the great dictation.

Eighteen years had elapsed since Milton, just settled in London after his return from Italy, had first fastened on the subject, preferred it by a sure instinct to all the others that occurred in competition with it, and sketched four plans for its treatment in the form of a sacred tragedy, one with the precise title Paradise Lost, and another with the title Adam Unparadised (Vol. II. pp. 106-108, and 115-119). Through all the distractions of those eighteen years the grand subject had not ceased to haunt him, nor the longing to return to it and to his poetic vocation. Nay there had hung in his memory all this while certain lines he had actually written and destined for the opening of the intended tragedy. They were the ten lines that now form lines 32-41 of the fourth book of our present Paradise Lost. He had imagined, for the opening of his tragedy, Satan already arrived within our Universe out of Hell, and alighted on our central Earth near Eden, and gazing up to Heaven and the Sun blazing there in meridian splendour. He had imagined Satan, in this pause of his first advent into the Universe he was to ruin, thus addressing the Sun as its chief visible representative:—

And now, after eighteen years, the poem having been resumed, but with the resolution, made natural by Milton's literary observations and experiences in the interval, that the dramatic form should be abandoned and the epic substituted, these ten lines, written originally for the opening of the Drama, were to be the nucleus of the Epic.¹ With our present Paradise Lost before us, we can see the very process of the gradual reinvention. In the epic Satan must not appear, as had been proposed in the drama, at once on our earth or within our universe. He must be fetched from the transcendental regions, the vast extra-mundane spaces, of his own prior existence and history. And so, round our fair universe, newly-created and wheeling softly on its axle, conscious as yet of no evil, conscious only of the happy earth and sweet human life in the midst, and of the steady diurnal change from day and light-blue sunshine into spangled and deep-blue night, Milton was figuring and mapping out those other infinitudes which outlay and encircled his conception of all this mere Mundane Creation. Deep down beneath this MUNDANE CREATION, and far separated from it, he was seeing the HELL from which was to come its woe; all round the Mundane Creation, and surging everywhere against its outmost firmament, was the dark and turbid CHAOS out of which its orderly and orbicular immensity had been cut; and high over all, radiant above Chaos, but with the Mundane Universe pendent from it at one gleaming point, was the great EMPYREAN or HEAVEN of HEAVENS, the abode of Angels and of Eternal Godhead. Not to the mere Earth of Man or the Mundane Universe about that Earth was Milton's adventurous song now to be confined, representing only dramatically by means of speeches and choruses those transactions in the three extramundane Infinitudes that might bear on the terrestrial story. It must dare also into those infinitudes themselves, pursue among them the vaster and more general story of Satan's rebellion and fall, and yet make all converge, through Satan's scheme in Hell and his advent at last into our World, upon that one catastrophe of the ruin of infant Mankind which the title of the poem proclaimed as the particular theme.

Such might be the simple invocation at the outset; but, knowing now all that the epic was really to involve, and how far it was to carry him in flight above the Aonian Mount, little wonder that he could already promise in it

It may have been in one of the nights following a day of such meditation of the great subject he had resumed, and some considerable instalment of the actual verse of the poem as we now have it may have been already on paper, or in Milton's memory for repetition to himself, when he dreamt a memorable dream. The house is all still, the voices and the pattering feet of the children hushed in sleep, and Milton too asleep, but with his waking thoughts pursuing him into sleep and stirring the mimic fancy. Not this night, however, is it of Heaven, or Hell, or Chaos, or the Universe of Man with its luminaries, or any other of the objects of his poetic contemplation by day, that dreaming images come. Nor yet is it the recollection of any business, Piedmontese, Swedish, or French, last employing him officially, that now passes into his involuntary visions. His mind is wholly back on himself, his hard fate of blindness, and his again vacant and desolate household. But lo! as he dreams, that seems somehow all a mistake, and the household is not desolate. A radiant figure, clothed in white, approaches him and bends over him. He knows it to be his wife, whom he had thought dead, but who is not dead. Her face is veiled, and he cannot see that; but then he had never seen that, and it was not so he could distinguish her. It was by the radiant, saintlike, sweetness of her general presence. That is again beside him and bending over him, the same as ever; and it was certainly she! So for the few happy moments while the dream lasts; but he awakes, and the spell is broken. So dear has been that dream, however, that he will keep it as a sacred memory for himself in the last of all his Sonnets:—

BOOK III.

SEPTEMBER 1660—MAY 1660.

HISTORY:—THE PROTECTORATE OF RICHARD CROMWELL, THE ANARCHY, MONK'S MARCH AND DICTATORSHIP, AND THE RESTORATION.

RICHARD'S PROTECTORATE: SEPT. 3, 1658—MAY 25, 1659.

THE ANARCHY:—

STAGE I.:—THE RESTORED RUMP: MAY 25, 1659—OCT. 13, 1659.

STAGE II.:—THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: OCT. 13, 1659—DEC. 26, 1659.

STAGE III.:—SECOND RESTORATION OF THE RUMP, WITH MONK'S MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: DEC. 26, 1659—FEB. 21, 1659-60.

MONK'S DICTATORSHIP, THE RESTORED LONG PARLIAMENT, AND THE RESTORATION.

BIOGRAPHY:—MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH RICHARD'S PROTECTORATE, THE ANARCHY, AND MONK'S DICTATORSHIP.

CHAPTER I.

First Section.

THE PROTECTORATE OF RICHARD CROMWELL: SEPT. 3, 1658—MAY 25, 1659.

PROCLAMATION OF RICHARD: HEARTY RESPONSE FROM THE COUNTRY AND FROM FOREIGN POWERS: FUNERAL OF THE LATE PROTECTOR: RESOLUTION FOR A NEW PARLIAMENT.—DIFFICULTIES IN PROSPECT: LIST OF THE MOST CONSPICUOUS PROPS AND ASSESSORS OF THE NEW PROTECTORATE: MONK'S ADVICES TO RICHARD: UNION OF THE CROMWELLIANS AGAINST CHARLES STUART: THEIR SPLIT AMONG THEMSELVES INTO THE COURT OR DYNASTIC PARTY AND THE ARMY OR WALLINGFORD-HOUSE PARTY: CHIEFS OF THE TWO PARTIES: RICHARD'S PREFERENCE FOR THE COURT PARTY, AND HIS SPEECH TO THE ARMY OFFICERS: BACKING OF THE ARMY PARTY TOWARDS REPUBLICANISM OR ANTI-OLIVERIANISM: HENRY CROMWELL'S LETTER OF REBUKE TO FLEETWOOD: DIFFERENCES OF THE TWO PARTIES AS TO FOREIGN POLICY: THE FRENCH ALLIANCE AND THE WAR WITH SPAIN: RELATIONS TO THE KING OF SWEDEN.—MEETING OF RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT (JAN. 27, 1658-9): THE TWO HOUSES: EMINENT MEMBERS OF THE COMMONS: RICHARD'S OPENING SPEECH: THURLOE THE LEADER FOR GOVERNMENT IN THE COMMONS: RECOGNITION OF THE PROTECTORSHIP AND OF THE OTHER HOUSE, AND GENERAL TRIUMPH OF THE GOVERNMENT PARTY: MISCELLANEOUS PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARLIAMENT.—DISSATISFACTION OF THE ARMY PARTY: THEIR CLOSER CONNEXION WITH THE REPUBLICANS: NEW CONVENTION OF OFFICERS AT WALLINGFORD-HOUSE: DESBOROUGH'S SPEECH: THE CONTENTION FORBIDDEN BY THE PARLIAMENT AND DISSOLVED BY RICHARD: WHITEHALL SURROUNDED BY THE ARMY, AND RICHARD COMPELLED TO DISSOLVE THE PARLIAMENT.—RESPONSIBLE POSITION OF FLEETWOOD, DESBOROUGH, LAMBERT, AND THE OTHER ARMY CHIEFS: BANKRUPT STATE OF THE FINANCES: NECESSITY FOR SOME KIND OF PARLIAMENT: PHRENZY FOR "THE GOOD OLD CAUSE" AND DEMAND FOR THE RESTORATION OF THE RUMP: ACQUIESCENCE OF THE ARMY CHIEFS: LENTHALL'S OBJECTIONS: FIRST FORTNIGHT OF THE RESTORED RUMP; LINGERING OF RICHARD IN WHITEHALL: HIS ENFORCED ABDICATION.

OLIVER was dead, and Richard was Protector. He had been nominated, in some indistinct way, by his father on his death-bed; and, though there was missing a certain sealed nomination paper, of much earlier date, in which it was believed that Fleetwood was the man, it was the interest of all parties about Whitehall at the moment, Fleetwood himself included, to accept the death-bed nomination. That having been settled through the night following Oliver's death, Richard was proclaimed in various places in London and Westminster on the morning of September 4, amid great concourses, with firing of cannon, and acclamations of "God save His Highness Richard Lord Protector!" It was at once intimated that the Government was to proceed without interruption, and that all holding his late Highness's commissions, civil or military, were to continue in their appointments.

Over the country generally, and through the Continent, the news of Oliver's death and the news that Richard had succeeded him ran simultaneously. For some time there was much anxiety at Whitehall as to the response. From all quarters, however, it was reassuring. Addresses of loyal adhesion to the new Protector poured in from towns, counties, regiments, and churches of all denominations; the proclamations in London and Westminster were repeated in Edinburgh, Dublin, and everywhere else; the Armies in England, Scotland, and Ireland were alike satisfied; the Navy was cordial; from Lockhart, as Governor of Dunkirk, and from the English Army in Flanders, there were votes of confidence; and, in return for the formal intimation made to all foreign diplomatists in London of the death of the late Protector and the accession of his son, there came mingled condolences on the one event and congratulations on the other from all the friendly powers. Richard himself, hitherto regarded as a mere country-gentleman of simple and jolly tastes, seemed to suit his new position better than had been expected. In audiences with deputations and with foreign ambassadors he acquitted himself modestly and respectably; and, as he had his father's Council still about him, with Thurloe keeping all business in hand in spite of an inopportune illness, affairs went on apparently in a satisfactory course.—A matter which interested the public for some time was the funeral of the late Protector. His body had been embalmed, and conveyed to Somerset House, there to lie in open state, amid banners, escutcheons, black velvet draperies and all the sombre gorgeousness that could be devised from a study of the greatest royal funerals on record, including a superb effigy of his Highness, robed in purple, ermined, sceptred, and diademed, to represent the life; and not till the 23rd of November was there an end to these ghastly splendours by a great procession from Somerset House to Westminster Abbey to deposit the effigy in the chapel of Henry VII., where the body itself had already been privately interred.—A week after this disappearance of the last remains of Oliver (Nov. 29, 1658) it was resolved in Council to call a Parliament. This, in fact, was but carrying out the intention formed in the late Protectorate; but, while the cause that had mainly made another Parliament desirable to Oliver was still excruciatingly in force,—to wit, the exhaustion of funds,—it was considered fitting moreover that Richard's accession should as soon as possible pass the ordeal of Parliamentary approval. Thursday, Jan. 27, 1658-9, was the day fixed for the meeting of the Parliament. Through the intervening weeks, while all the constituencies were busy with the canvassing and the elections, the procedure of Richard and his Council at Whitehall seemed still regular and judicious. There was due correspondence with foreign powers, and there was no interruption of the home-administration. The Protector kept court as his father had done, and conferred knighthoods and other honours, which were thankfully accepted. Sermons were dedicated to him as "the thrice illustrious Richard, Lord Protector." In short, nearly five months of his Protectorship passed away without any tumult or manifest opposition.¹

Appearances, however, were very deceptive. The death of Cromwell had, of course, agitated the whole world of exiled Royalism, raising sunk hopes, and stimulating Charles himself, the Queen-Mother, Hyde, Ormond, Colepepper, and the other refugees over the Continent, to doubled activity of intrigue and correspondence. And, though that immediate excitement had passed, and had even been succeeded by a kind of wondering disappointment among the exiles at the perfect calm attending Richard's accession, it was evident that the chances of Charles were immensely greater under Richard than they had been while Oliver lived. For one thing, would the relations of Louis XIV. and Mazarin to Richard's Government remain the same as they had been to Oliver's? There was no disturbance of these relations as yet. The English auxiliaries in Flanders were still shoulder to shoulder with Turenne and his Frenchmen, sharing with them such new successes as the capture of Ypres, accomplished mainly by the valour of the brave Morgan. But who knew what might be passing in the mind of the crafty Cardinal? Then what of the Dutch? In the streets of Amsterdam the populace, on receipt of the news of Cromwell's death, had gone about shouting "The Devil is dead"; the alliance between the English Commonwealth and the United Provinces had recently been on strain almost to snapping; what if, on the new opportunity, the policy of the States-General should veer openly towards the Stuart interest? All this was in the calculations of Hyde and his fellow-exiles, and it was their main disappointment that the quiet acceptance and seeming stability of the new Protectorate at home prevented the spring against it of such foreign possibilities. "I hope this young man will not inherit his father's fortune," wrote Hyde in the fifth month after Richard's accession, "but that some confusion will fall out which must make open a door for us." The speculation was more likely than even Hyde then knew. Underneath the great apparent calm at home the beginnings of a confusion at the very centre were already at work.¹

It will be well at this point to have before us a list of the most conspicuous props and assessors of the new Protectorate. The name Oliverians being out of date now, they may be called The Cromwellians. We shall arrange them in groups:—

I. THE COUNCIL.

• Lord President Lawrence.
• Lord Lieutenant-General Fleetwood (his Highness's brother-in-law).
• Lord Major-General Desborough (his Highness's uncle-in-law).
• Lord Sydenham (Colonel).
• Lord Pickering (Chamberlain of the Household).
• Lord Strickland.
• Lord Skippon.
• Lord Fiennes (one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal).
• Lord Viscount Lisle.
• Lord Admiral Montague.
• Lord Wolseley.
• Lord Philip Jones (Comptroller of the Household).
• Mr. Secretary Thurloe.¹

II. NEAR ADVISERS, NOT OF THE COUNCIL.

• Lord Viscount Falconbridge (his Highness's brother-in-law).
• Lord Viscount Howard (Colonel).
• Lord Richard Ingoldsby (Colonel).
• Lord Whitlocke (still a much respected Cromwellian, and conjoined with Fiennes and Lisle in the Commission of the Great Seal, Jan. 22, 1658-9).
• Lord Commissioner John Lisle.
• Lord Chief Justice Glynne.
• Lord Chief Justice St. John.
• William Pierrepoint.
• Sir Edmund Prideaux (Attorney General).
• Sir William Bills (Solicitor General).
• Sir Oliver Fleming (Master of the Ceremonies).
• Sir Richard Chiverton (Lord Mayor of London).
• Dr. John Wilkins (his Highness's uncle-in-law).
• Dr. John Owen.
• Dr. Thomas Goodwin.

III. CHIEF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ARMY IN OR NEAR LONDON:—Fleetwood and Desborough, besides being Councillors, were the real heads of the Army; and Skippon, Sydenham, and Montague, though of the Council too, with Viscount Howard and Ingoldsby, among the near advisers out of the Council, might also rank as Army-chiefs. But, in addition to these, there were many distinguished officers, tied to the Cromwellian dynasty, as it might seem, by their antecedents. Among these were Edward Whalley, William Goffe, Robert Lilburne, Sir John Barkstead, James Berry, Thomas Kelsay, William Butler, Tobias Bridges, Sir Thomas Pride, Sir John Hewson, Thomas Cooper, John Jones, and John Clerk. These were now usually designated, in their military capacity, as merely Colonels; but the first eight had been among Cromwell's "Major-Generals," three of the thirteen had their knighthoods from him, and nine of the thirteen (Whalley, Goffe, Barkstead. Berry, Pride, Hewson, Cooper, Jones, and Clerk) had been among his Parliamentary "Lords."—We have mentioned but the chiefs of the Army, called "the Army Grandees;" but, since Richard's accession, and by his consent or summons, Army-officers of all grades had flocked to London to form a kind of military Parliament round Fleetwood and Desborough, and to assist in launching the new Protectorate. They held weekly meetings, sometimes to the number of 200 or more, in Fleetwood's residence of WALLINGFORD HOUSE, close to Whitehall Palace; and, as at these meetings, as well as at the smaller meetings of "the Army Grandees" in the same place, all matters were discussed, WALLINGFORD HOUSE was, for the time, a more important seat of deliberation than the Council-Room itself. There were also more secret meetings in Desborongh's house.

IV. WEIGHTY CROMWELLIANS AWAY FROM LONDON. (1) GENERAL GEORGE MONK, Commander-in-Chief in Scotland; with whom may be associated such members of the Scottish Council as Samuel Desborough, Colonel Adrian Scroope, Colonel Nathaniel Whetham, and Swinton of Swinton. (2) LORD HENRY CROMWELL, Lord Deputy of Ireland hitherto, but now, by his brother's commission, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (Sept. 1658); with whom may be associated such of the Irish Council or military staff as Chancellor Steele, Chief Justice Pepys, Colonel Sir Hardress Waller, Colonel Sir Matthew Tomlinson, Colonel William Purefoy, Colonel Jerome Zanchy, and Sir Francis Russell. Also in Ireland at this time, and nominally in retirement, but a Cromwellian of the highest magnitude, was LORD BROGHILL. (3) Abroad the most important Cromwellian by far was SIR WILLIAM LOCKHART, Lord Ambassador to France, General, and Governor of Dunkirk; with whom may be remembered George Downing, Resident in the United Provinces, and Meadows and Jephson, Envoys to the Scandinavian powers. Lockhart managed to be in England on a brief visit in December 1658.

These fifty or sixty persons, one may say, were the men on whom it mainly depended, in the first months of Richard's Protectorate, whether that Protectorate should succeed or should founder. It has been customary, in general retrospects of the time, to represent some of them as already tired of the Commonwealth in any possible form, and scheming afar off for the restoration of the Stuarts. This, however, is quite a misconstruction.—Monk, who is chiefly suspected, and who did now, from his separate station in the north, watch events in an independent manner, had certainly as yet no thought of the kind imagined. He had sent Richard a paper of advices showing a real desire to assist him at the outset. He advised him, substantially, to persevere in the later or very conservative policy of his father, but with certain differences or additions, which would be now easy. He ought, said Monk, at once to secure the affections of the great Presbyterian body, by attaching to himself privately some of the most eminent Presbyterian divines, and by publicly calling an Assembly of Divines, in which Moderate Presbyterians and Moderate Independents together might agree on a standard of orthodoxy, and so stop the blasphemy and profaneness "too frequent in many places by the great extent of Toleration." Then, when a Parliament should meet, he ought to bring a number of the most prudent and trustworthy of the old nobility and the wealthy country gentry into the House of Lords. For retrenchment of expense the chief means would be a reduction of the Armies in England, Scotland, and Ireland, by throwing two regiments everywhere into one, and so getting rid of unnecessary officers; nor let his Highness think this advice too bold, for Monk could assure him "There is not an officer in the Army, upon any discontent, that has interest enough to draw two men after him, if he be out of place." On the other hand, the Navy ought to be strengthened, and many of the ships re-officered¹—Such were Monk's advices; and, whatever may be thought of their value, they were certainly given in good faith. And so with those others to whom, from their subsequent conduct, similar suspicions have been attached. At our present date there was no ground for these suspicions. To some in the list, either ranking among the actual Regicides or otherwise deeply involved in the transactions of the late reign and their immediate consequences, the idea of a Restoration of the Stuarts may have been more horrible, on personal grounds, than it need have been to others, conscious only of later participation and lighter responsibility; but not a man in the list yet dreamt of going over to the Royalist cause. The dissensions were as to the manner and extent of their adhesion to Richard, and the policy to be recommended to him or forced upon him.

Cromwell's death having removed the one vast personal ascendency that had so long kept all in obedience, jealousies and selfish interests had sprung up, and were wrangling round his successor. From certain mysterious letters in cipher from Falconbridge to Henry Cromwell it appears that the wrangle had begun even round Cromwell's death-bed, "Z. [Cromwell] is now beyond all possibility of recovery" Falconbridge had written on Tuesday, Aug. 31: "I long to hear from A. [Henry Cromwell] what his intentions are. If I may know, I'll make the game here as fair as may be; and, if I may have commission from A., I can make sure of Lord Lockhart and those with him." One might imagine from this that Falconbridge would have liked to secure the succession for Henry; but it rather appears that what he wanted was to counteract a cabal against the interests of the family generally, which he had reported as then going on among the officers. Certain it is that, after Richard had been proclaimed and Henry had most loyally and affectionately put all his services at the disposal of his elder brother, Falconbridge continued in cipher letters to inform Henry of the proceedings of the same cabal. Gradually, in these letters and in other documents, we come to a clear view of the main fact. It was that the wrangle of jealousies and personal interests round the new Protector had taken shape in a distinct division of his adherents and supporters into two parties. First there was what may be called the Court Party or Dynastic Party, represented by Falconbridge himself, and by Admiral Montague, Fiennes, Philip Jones, Thurloe, and others in the Council, with Howard, Whitlocke, and Ingoldsby, out of the Council, and with the assured backing of Henry Cromwell, Broghill, and Lockhart, if not also of Monk. What they desired was to make Richard's Protectorate an avowed continuation of his father's, with the same forms, the same powers, and the permanence of the Petition and Advice as the instrument of the Protectoral Constitution in every particular. In opposition to this party was the Army Party, or Wallingford-House Party, led by Fleetwood and Desborough, with a following of others in the Council and of the Army-officers almost in mass. While maintaining the Protectorate in name, they were for such modifications of the Protectoral Constitution as might consist with the fact that the chief magistrate was now no longer Oliver, but the feeble and unmilitary Richard. In especial, they were for limiting the Protectorship by taking from Richard the control of the Army, and re-assuming it for the Army itself in the name of the Commonwealth. It was their proposal, more precisely, that Fleetwood should be Commander-in-chief independently, and so a kind of military co-ordinate with the Protector.¹

For nearly five months there had been this tug of parties at Whitehall round poor Richard. Naturally, all his own sympathies were with the Dynastic Party; and he had made this apparent. He had proposed to bring Falconbridge and Broghill, perhaps also Whitlocke, into the Council; and, when he found that the Army party would not consent, he had declined to bring in Whalley, Goffe, Berry, and Cooper, proposed by that party in preference. In the matter of the limitation of his Protectorship by the surrender of his headship of the Army he had been even more firm. The matter having come before him formally by petition from the Council of Officers, after having been pressed upon him again and again by Fleetwood and Desborough in private, he had, in a conference with all the officers then in town (Oct, 14). Fleetwood at their head, explained his sentiments fully. The speech was written for him by Thurloe. After some gentle preliminaries, with dutiful references to his father, it came to the main subject. "I am sure it may be said of me," said Richard, "that not for my wisdom, my parts, my experience, my holiness, hath God chosen me before others: there are many here amongst you who excel me in all these things: but God hath done herein as it pleased Him, and the nation, by His providence, hath put things this way. Being then thus trusted, I shall make a conscience, I hope, in the execution of this trust; which I see not how I should do if I should part with any part of the trust which is committed to me unto any others, though they may be better men than myself." He then instanced the two things which he understood to be demanded of him by the Army. "For instance," he said, "if I should trust it to any one person or more to fill up the vacancies of the Army otherwise than it is in the Petition and Advice—which directs that the commanders-in-chief of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the other field-officers, should be from time to time supplied by me, with the consent of the Council, leaving all other commissioned officers only to my disposal—I should therein break my trust and do otherwise than the Parliament intended. It may as well be asked of me that I would commit it to some other persons to supply the vacancies in the Council, in the Lords' House, and all other magistracies. I leave it to any reasonable man to imagine whether this be a thing in my power to do.... There hath also been some discourse about a Commander-in-chief. You know how that stands in the Petition and Advice, which I must make my rule in my government, and shall through the blessing of God stick close to that. I am not obliged to make any Commander-in-chief: that is left to my own liberty, as it was in my father's; only, if I will make any, it must be done by the consent of the Council. And by the Commander-in-chief can be meant no other than the person who under me commands the whole Army, call him what you will—'Field-Marshal,' 'Commander-in-chief,' 'Major-General,' or 'Lieutenant-General.' ... Commander-in-chief is the genus; the others are the species. And, though I am not obliged to have any such person besides myself to command all the forces, yet I have made one: that is, I have made my brother Fleetwood Lieutenant-General of all the Army, and so by consequence commander-in-chief [under me]; and I am sure I can do nothing that will give him more influence in the Army than that title will give him, unless I should make him General [instead of me]; and I have told you the reasons why I cannot do that." Altogether, the speech, and the modesty with which it was delivered, produced very considerable effect for the moment upon the officers. Whalley, Goffe, Berry, and others are understood to have shown more sympathy with Richard in consequence; there was respect for his firmness among people generally when it came to be known; and, though the meetings at Wallingford House and Desborough's house were continued, action was deferred. One effect, however, had been to rouse the dormant Anti-Cromwellianism of the Army-men, and to bring out, more than Fleetwood and Desborough intended, that leaven of pure Republicanism, or affection for the "good old cause" of 1648-1653, which had not ceased, through all the submission to the Protectorate, to lurk in the regiments in combination with Anabaptistry, Fifth-Monarchism, and other extreme forms of religious Independency. In the meetings round Fleetwood and Desborough there had been reflections on the late Protector's memory far from respectful. Henry Cromwell in Ireland had heard of this; and among many interesting letters of his to various correspondents on the difficulties of his brother's opening Protectorate, all showing a proud and fine sensitiveness, with some flash of his father's intellect, there is one (Oct. 20) of rebuke to his brother-in-law Fleetwood on account of his conjunction with the malcontents, "Pray give me leave to expostulate with you. How came those 200 or 300 officers together? ... If they were called, was it with his Highness's privity? If they met without leave in so great a number, were they told their error? I shall not meddle with the matter of their petition, though some things in it do unhandsomely reflect not only on this present, but his late, Highness, I wish with all my heart you were Commander-in-chief of all the forces in the three nations; but I had rather have it done by his Highness's especial grace and mere motion than put upon you in a tumultuary soldierly way. But, dear brother, I must tell you (and I cannot do it without tears) I hear that dirt was thrown upon his late Highness at that great meeting. They were exhorted to stand up for that 'good old cause which had long lain asleep,' &c. I thought my dear father had pursued it to the last. He died like a servant of God, and prayed for those that desired to trample upon his dust, for they also were God's people. O dear brother! ... whither do these things tend? Surely God hath a controversy with us. What a hurly-burly is there made! A hundred Independent ministers called together" [the Savoy Synod of the Congregationalists, with Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Nye, Caryl, and others, at their head, convoked Sept. 29, 1658, for framing a Confession of Faith, by permission from the late Protector: see ante p. 844]. "a Council, as you call it, of 200 or 300 officers of a judgment! Remember what has always befallen imposing spirits. Will not the loins of an imposing Independent or Anabaptist be as heavy as the loins of an imposing Prelate or Presbyter? And is it a dangerous error that dominion is founded on grace when it is held by the Church of Rome, and a sound principle when it is held by the Fifth Monarchy? ... O dear brother, my spirit is sorely oppressed with the consideration of the miserable estate of the innocent people of these three poor nations. What have these sheep done that their blood should be the price of our lust and ambition? Let me beg of you to remember how his late Highness loved you, how he honoured you with the highest trust in the world by leaving the sword in your hand which must defend or destroy us; and his declaring his Highness his successor shows that he left it there to preserve him and his reputation. O brother, use it to curb extravagant spirits and busybodies; but let not the nations be governed by it. Let us take heed of arbitrary power. Let us be governed by the known laws of the land, and let all things be kept in their proper channels; and let the Army be so governed that the world may never hear of them unless there be occasion to fight. And truly, brother, you must pardon me if I say God and man may require this duty at your hand, and lay all miscarriages in the Army, in point of discipline, at your door." Fleetwood could answer this (Nov. 9) but very lamely: "I do wonder what I have done to deserve such a severe letter from you," &c. Fleetwood was really a good-hearted gentleman, meaning no desperate harm to Richard or his Protectorate, though desiring the Commandership-in-chief for himself, and perhaps (who knows domestic secrets?) a co-equality of public status for his wife, Lady Bridget, with the Lady-Protectress Dorothy. In fact, however, Lieutenant-General Fleetwood and Major-General Desborough between them had let loose forces that were to defy their own management. Meanwhile, the phenomenon observable in the weeks preceding the meeting of the Parliament which Richard had called was that of a violent division already among the councillors and assessors of the Protectorate. There was the Court Party or Dynastic Party, taking their stand on the Petition and Advice, and advocating a strictly conservative and constitutional procedure, in the terms of that document, on the lines laid down by Oliver. There was also the Army Party or Wallingford-House Party, led by Fleetwood and Desborough, with an immediate retinue of Cromwellian ex-Major-Generals and Colonels purposely in London, and a more shadowy tail of majors, captains, and inferior officers, coiled away among the regiments.¹

More than questions of home-administration was involved in this division of parties. It involved also the future foreign policy of the Protectorate. The desire of Richard himself and of the Court Party was to prosecute the foreign policy which Oliver had so strenuously begun. Now, the great bequests from the late Protectorate in the matter of foreign policy had been two: (1)The War with Spain, in alliance with France. The Treaty Offensive and Defensive with France against Spain, originally formed by Cromwell March 23, 1656-7, and renewed March 28, 1658, was to expire on March 28, 1659. Was it to be then again renewed? If not, how was the war with Spain to be farther conducted, and what was to become of Dunkirk, Mardike, and other English conquests and interests in Flanders? Mazarin was really anxious on this topic. The alliance with England had been immensely advantageous for France; and could it not be continued? In frequent letters, since Cromwell's death, to M. de Bordeaux, the French Ambassador in London, Mazarin had pressed for information on this point. The substance of the Ambassador's replies had been that the new Protector and his Council, especially Mr. Secretary Thurloe, were too much engrossed with home-difficulties to be very explicit with him, but that he had reason to believe a loan from France of £50,000 would aid the natural inclinations of the Court-party to continue the alliance. This was more than Mazarin would risk on the chance, though he was willing to act on the suggestion of the ambassador that a present of Barbary horses should be sent to Lord Falconbridge, or a jewel to Lady Falconbridge, to keep them in good-humour. There can be no doubt that Falconbridge, Thurloe, Lockhart, and the Court Party generally, did hope to preserve the close friendship with France and the hold acquired by England on Flanders. Lockhart particularly had at heart the hard, half-starved condition of his poor Dunkirk garrison and the other forces in Flanders. On the other hand, there were signs that public feeling might desert the Court Party in their desire to carry on Oliver's joint-enterprise with France against the Spaniards. Dunkirk and Mardike were precious possessions; but might it not be better for trade to make peace with Spain, even if Jamaica should have to be given back and there should have to be other sacrifices? This idea had diffused itself, it appears, pretty widely among the pure Commonwealth's men, and was in favour with some of the Wallingford-House party. Why be always at war with Spain? True, she was Roman Catholic, and the more the pity; but what did that concern England? Was there not enough to do at home?¹ (2) Assistance to the King of Sweden. A great surprise to all Europe just before Cromwell's death had been, as we know, the sudden rupture of the Peace of Roeskilde between Sweden and Denmark, with the reinvasion of Zealand by Charles Gustavus, and his march on Copenhagen (ante p. 396). Had Cromwell lived, there is no doubt that, with whatever regret at the new rupture, he would have stood by his heroic brother of Sweden. For was not the Swedish King still, as before, the one real man of mark in the whole world of the Baltic, the hope of that league of Protestant championship on the Continent which Cromwell had laboured for; and was he not now standing at bay against a most ugly and unnatural combination of enemies? Not only were John Casimir and his Roman Catholic Poles, and the Emperor Leopold and his Roman Catholic Austrians, and Protestant Brandenburg and some other German States, all in eager alliance with the Danes for the opportunity of another rush against him; the Dutch too were abetting the Danes for their own commercial interests? Actually this was the state of things which Richard's Government had to consider. Charles Gustavus was still besieging Copenhagen; a Dutch fleet, under Admiral Opdam, had gone to the Baltic to relieve the Danes (Oct. 1658): was Cromwell's grand alliance with the Swede, were the prospects of the Protestant League, were English interests in the Baltic, to be of no account? Applications for help had been made by the Swedish King; Mazarin, through the French ambassador, had been urging assistance to Sweden; the inclinations of Richard, Thurloe, and the rest, were all that way. Here again, however, the perplexity of home-affairs, the want of money, the refusal of Mazarin himself to lend even £50,000, were pleaded in excuse. All that could be done at first was to further the despatch to the Baltic of Sir George Ayscough, an able English Admiral who had for some years been too much in the background, but of whom the Swedish Count Bundt had conceived a high opinion during his embassy to England in 1655-6, and who had consequently been invited by the Swedish King to enter his service, bringing with him as many English officers and seamen as he could. This volunteer expedition of Ayscough Richard and his Council did at once countenance. Nay, when news came (Nov. 8) of a great defeat of Opdam's Dutch fleet by the Swedish Admiral Wrangel, the disposition to help the Swede became stronger. On the 13th of that month a special envoy from the Swedish King, who had been in London for some weeks, took his departure with some satisfaction; and within a few days Vice-Admiral Lawson and his fleet of some twenty or twenty-one ships in the Downs had orders to sail for the Sound, for mediation at least, but for the support of Charles Gustavus if necessary. The fleet did put to sea, but with hesitations to the last and the report that it was "wind-bound."²

"Wind-bound" was the exact description of the state of Richard's Government itself. All depended on what should blow from the Parliament that had been called. In the writs for the elections to the Commons there had been a very remarkable retrogression from the practice of Oliver for his two Parliaments. For those two Parliaments there had been adopted the reformed electoral system agreed upon by the Long Parliament, reducing the total number of members for England and Wales to about 400, instead of the 500 or more of the ancient system, and allocating the 400 among constituencies rearranged so as to give a vast proportion of the representation to the counties, while reducing that of the burghs generally and disfranchising many small old burghs altogether. The Petition and Advice having left this matter of the number of seats and their distribution open for farther consideration, Richard and his Council had been advised by the lawyers that it would be more "according to law" and therefore more safe and more agreeable to the spirit and letter of the Petition and Advice, to abandon the late temporary method, though sanctioned by the Long Parliament, and revert to the ancient use and wont. Writs had been issued, therefore, for the return of over 500 members from England and Wales by the old time-honoured constituencies, besides additions from Scotland and Ireland. Thus, whereas, for the last two Protectoral Parliaments, some of the larger English counties had returned as many as six, eight, nine, or twelve members each, all were now reduced alike to two, the large number of seats so set free, together with the extra hundred, going back among the burghs, and reincluding those that had been disfranchised. London also was reduced from six seats to four. It seems amazing now that this vast retrogression should have been so quietly accepted. It seems even to have been popular; and, at all events, it roused no commotion. It had been recommended by the lawyers, and it was expected to turn out favourable to the Government.¹

On Thursday, Jan. 27, 1658-9, the two Houses assembled in Westminster. In the Upper House, where Lord Commissioner Fiennes occupied the woolsack, were as many of Cromwell's sixty-three "Lords" (ante pp. 323-324) as had chosen to come. All the Council, except Thurloe, being in this House, and the others having been, for the most part, carefully selected Cromwellians, it might have been expected that Government would be strong in the House. As it included, however, Fleetwood, Desborough, and all the chief Colonels of the Wallingford-House party, it is believed that in such attendances as there were (never more than forty perhaps) that party may have been stronger than the Court party. But it was the composition of the Commons House that was really of consequence, and here appearances promised well for Richard. The total number of the members, by the returns, was 558, of whom 482 were from English counties and burghs, 25 from Wales, 30 from Ireland, and only 21 from Scotland. Some fifty of the total number were resolute pure Republicans, among whom may be noted Bradshaw (Cheshire), Vane (Whitchurch in Hants), Scott (Wycombe), Hasilrig (Leicester), Ludlow (Hindon), Henry Neville (Reading), Okey (Bedfordshire), and Weaver (Stamford); and there was a considerable sprinkling of Anti-Cromwellians of other colours besides, including Lord Fairfax (Yorkshire), Lambert (Pontefract), Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper (Wilts), and Major-General Browne (London). But Thurloe was there to represent the Government in chief (returned by Cambridge University, but by several other places also); and he could count about a hundred sure English adherents on the benches; among whom were Sir Edmund Prideaux (Saltash), Sir William Ellis (Grantham), together with his own subordinate in the Council-office, William Jessop (Stafford), and Milton's assistant in the Foreign Secretaryship, Andrew Marvell (Hull). There were not a few Army-officers of the Wallingford-House party; but, on the whole, this element did not seem to be particularly strong in the House. Among the members for Scottish constituencies were the Marquis of Argyle (Aberdeenshire), Samuel Desborough (Midlothian), the Earl of Tweeddale (East Lothian), Colonel Adrian Scroope (Linlithgow group of Burghs), Swinton of Swinton (Haddingtonshire), Colonel Whetham (St. Andrews, &c.), and Monk's brother-in-law, Dr. Thomas Clarges (Aberdeen, Banff, and Cullen). Ireland had returned, among her thirty, Sir Hardress Waller (Kerry, &c.), Sir Jerome Zanchy (Tipperary and Waterford), Sir Charles Coote (Galway and Mayo), and two Ingoldsbys. The Scottish and Irish representatives were, almost to a man, Government nominees. Altogether, Thurloe's anxiety must have been about the yet unknown mass of 300 or so, some scores of them lawyers, others country-gentlemen, and many of them young, that formed the neutral stuff to be yet operated upon. Among these, in spite of the oath of fidelity to the Lord Protector, there were indubitably not a few who were Stuartists at heart; but most wavered between Republicanism and the Protectorate, and it was hopeful for Thurloe in this respect that so much of the mass was Presbyterian. Ludlow, who did not at first take his seat, tells us that he at last contrived to do so furtively without being sworn, and seems to hint that Vane did the same. There was negligence on the part of the doorkeepers, or they were confused by the multitude of strange faces; for a stray London madman, named King, sat in the House for some time, in the belief that, as one of that name had been elected for some place, he might possibly be the person.¹

Richard's opening speech was in a good strain. It assumed loyalty to the memory of his father and to the Petition and Advice, and recommended immediate attention to the arrears of the Army and to other money-exigencies, with zealous prosecution of the war with Spain, and consideration of what might be done for the King of Sweden, the cause of European Protestantism, and English interests in the Baltic. The speech was delivered in the Lords, only a few of the Commons attending. They were busy with swearing in their members, and with the election of a Speaker. Mr. Chaloner Chute, a lawyer, one of the members for Middlesex, was unanimously chosen; but, short as the session was to be, the House was to have three Speakers in succession. Mr. Chute acted till March 9, when his health broke down, and Sir Lislebone Long, one of the members for Wells, was appointed his substitute. Sir Lislebone died only seven days afterwards (March 16), and Mr. Thomas Bampfield, one, of the members for Exeter, succeeded him. Chute having died also, Bampfield became full Speaker. April 15, 1659.¹

A day or two having been spent in preliminary business, and the House presenting the spectacle, long unknown in Westminster, of no fewer than between 300 and 400 members in daily attendance, Thurloe, on the 1st of February, boldly threw down the gage by bringing in a bill for recognising Richard's right and title to be Lord Protector. Hasilrig and the Republicans were taken by surprise, and could only protest that the motion was unseasonable and that other matters ought to have precedence. The bill having been read the first time that day, Thurloe consented that the second reading should be deferred to the 7th. On that day, accordingly, there began a debate which lasted for seven successive days, and was a full trial of strength between the Government and the Republicans. Hasilrig, Neville, Scott, Vane, Ludlow, and others, exerted themselves to the utmost, Hasilrig leading, and making one speech three hours long. It was evident, however, that the Republicans knew themselves to be but a minority, and used the debate only for re-opening the question of a Republic. They did not attack the direct proposal of the Bill; on the contrary they vied with the Cromwellians in language of respect for Richard. "I confess I do love the person of the Lord Protector; I never saw nor heard either fraud or guile in him." said Hasilrig. "I would not hazard a hair of his present Highness's head," said Scott; "if you think of a Single Person, I would have him sooner than any man alive." They did not want, they said, to pull down the Protectorate; they only objected to Thurloe's high-handed method for committing the House to a foregone conclusion. But Thurloe beat. On Monday the 14th, the question having been finally put "that it be part of this Bill to recognise and declare his Highness Richard, Lord Protector, to be the undoubted Lord Protector and Chief Magistrate," it was carried by 191 votes to 168 to retain the words "recognise and," and so to accept Richard's accession as valid already. On a proposal to leave out the word "undoubted" Thurloe did not think a division worth while, but made the concession. He did oppose a resolution, suddenly brought forward, to the effect that the vote just passed should not be binding until the House should have settled the clauses farther defining the powers of the Lord Protector; but that resolution, having caught the fancy of the House, passed with his single dissent. On the whole, he had succeeded in his first great battle with the Republicans.—Nor was he less successful in the second. The Protectorship having been voted, it was Thurloe's policy to push next the question of the recognition of the Other House, whereas the Republicans desired to avoid that question as long as possible, so as to keep the Other House a mere nonentity, while the Commons proceeded, as the substantial and sovereign House, to define the powers of the Protector. On the 18th of February, the Republicans, having challenged a settlement of this difference by moving that the question of the negative voice of the Protector in passing laws should have precedence of the question of the Other House, were beaten overwhelmingly by 217 votes to 86; and then for more than a month the question of the Other House was the all-engrossing one. It involved other questions, some of them apparently independent. Thus, on the 8th of March, the debate took a curiously significant turn. Indignant at the very notion that there should be anything in England calling itself "The House of Lords," the Republican speakers had played on this supposed horror with every variety of sarcasm, sneering at the existing "Other House," with its shabby equipment of old colonels and other originally mean persons. If there was to be a House of Lords, Hasilrig and others now said imprudently, why should it not be a real one, why should not the old nobility, so many of them honourable men, resume their places? "Why not?" was the instant retort from some independent members, with the instant applause of many in the House. Hasilrig saw his mistake, of which Thurloe did not fail to take advantage. "The old Peers," said Thurloe, "are not excluded by the Petition and Advice: divers are called,—others may be"; and the occasion was taken to pass a resolution expressly reserving for such of the old peers as had been faithful the privilege of being summoned to the Other House, should the issue of the debate be in favour of the existence of that institution. The divisions on this incidental resolution were the largest recorded in the Journals of the House—the previous question for putting the resolution being carried by 203 to 184, and the resolution itself by 195 to 188. Though the majority was but small, the gain to the Court Party was precious, because on an unexpected point. But the Republicans had done themselves no good by their style in the main discussion, A miscellaneous assembly always resents the ungenerous, and the sneers at the existing composition of the Other House had seemed ungenerous. "They have gone through wet and dry, hot and cold, fire and water; they are the best officers of the best army in the world; their swords are made of what Hercules's club was made of": such were the terms in which one speaker defended the military veterans of the Other House; and they were received with cheers. Nor did the next step of the Republicans improve their position. Having observed what a considerable proportion of Thurloe's majorities consisted of the members from Scotland and Ireland, Cromwellians nearly to a man, they tried to sweep these from the House in anticipation of future votes. First, they raised the question about the Scottish members, contending that their presence in an English Parliament was unconstitutional, that the de facto incorporation of Scotland with the Commonwealth had never been legally consummated, &c. On this subject, the House having first negatived the proposal that the Scottish members should withdraw during the debate, it was decided, March 21, by a majority of 211 (Thurloe one of the tellers) to 120 (Vane one of the tellers), "That the members returned for Scotland shall continue to sit as members during this present Parliament," A like vote, March 23, retained the Irish members. The Republicans had again lost character by this piece of tactics. Not only was it offensive to Scotland and Ireland; but to many disinterested English members it seemed a mean attempt to depreciate, for a mere party purpose, those great achievements of recent years which had made the British Islands, as if by miracle, one body-politic at last. On the 28th of March the principal debate came to an end in this two-claused Resolution: "That this House will transact with the persons now sitting in the Other House, as an House of Parliament, during the present Parliament; and that it is not hereby intended to exclude such Peers as have been faithful to the Parliament from their privilege of being duly summoned to be members of that House." The final division was 198 to 125; but there had been a preceding division on the question whether the words "when they shall be approved by this House" should be inserted after the word "Parliament" in the first clause. This very ingenious amendment of the Anti-Cromwellians had been rejected by 183 votes to 146, the tellers for the Cromwellian majority being the Marquis of Argyle and Thurloe, and for the minority Lord Fairfax and Lord Lambert.—Thus, at the end of the second month of the Parliament, the victory was clearly with Thurloe and the Government. The Protectorship had been recognised; and the Other House also had been recognised, rather grudgingly indeed, and not by the desired name of "The House of Lords," but with a proviso that seemed to put that and more within reach. It had also been ascertained in general that, in a House of Commons larger than had been seen in Westminster for many years, Richard's Government was stronger, on vital questions, than the Republicans and all other Anti-Cromwellians together. For there had been discussions affecting the foreign policy of the Protectorate, and in these the Republicans and Anti-Cromwellians had been equally beaten. It had been, carried, for example, on Thurloe's representation, to persevere in the despatch of a strong fleet to the Baltic in the interest of the Swedish King; and such a fleet, now under Admiral Montague's command, had actually sailed before the end of March. It was in the Sound early in April.¹

In minor matters the House had shown some independence. On the 23rd of February they had ordered the release of the Duke of Buckingham from the imprisonment to which he had been committed by Oliver, accepting the Duke's own word of honour, and Fairfax's bail of £20,000, that he would not abet the enemies of the Commonwealth. So, on the 16th of March, they had released Milton's friend, the Republican Major-General Overton, from his four years' imprisonment, declaring Cromwell's mere warrant for the same to have been insufficient and illegal. This was a most popular act, and the liberated Overton was received in London with enthusiastic ovations. Other political prisoners of the late Protectorate were similarly released, and, on the whole, the majority of the House, though with all reverence for Oliver's memory, were ready to take any occasion for signifying that his more "arbitrary" acts must be debited to himself only. There were also distinct evidences of a disposition in the House, due to the massive representation of the Presbyterians in it, to question the late Protector's liking for unlimited religions toleration. They approved heartily, it appears, of his Established Church, and even of its breadth as including Presbyterians and Independents; but, like preceding Parliaments, they were for a more rigorous care for Church-orthodoxy, and more severe dealings with "heresies and blasphemies." Quakers, Anti-Trinitarians, and Jews were especially threatened. Here, indeed, the House meant rather to indicate its good-will to the Protectorate than the reverse; for, though. Richard and Henry Cromwell inherited their father's religious liberality, and others of the Cromwellians agreed with them, not a few were disposed, like Monk, to make a compact with the Presbyterians for heresy-hunting part of the very programme of Richard's Protectorate. The Toleration tenet, indeed, was perhaps more peculiarly a tenet of the Republicans than of any other political party, and not without strong reasons of a personal kind, people said, on the part of some of them. Had not Mr. Henry Neville, for example, been heard to say that he was more affected by some parts of Cicero than by anything in the Bible? If heathenism like that infected the Republican opposition, what could any plain honest Christian do but support the Protectorate?¹

April 1659 was the third month of the Parliament. About a hundred of the members hitherto in attendance had then withdrawn, and the attendances had sunk to between 150 and 270. This was the more ominous because the struggle had now ceased to be one between the Protector's Government and the Opposition, and had become one between the Court Party and the Army or Wallingford-House Party for the farther use of Thurloe's victories.

The Republicans, foiled in their own measures, had entered into relations with the Wallingford-House magnates. True, these were not, for the nonce, Republicans. On the contrary, they were still one wing of the declared supporters of Richard's Protectorship, and their chiefs all but composed that Other House the rights of which Thurloe had vindicated so manfully against the Republicans, and which was now therefore a working part of the Legislature. But might there not be ways and means of breaking down the allegiance of the Wallingford-House men to the Protectorate, their present implication with it notwithstanding? They were primarily Army-chiefs, and only secondarily politicians for the Protectorate; behind them was the Army itself, charged with Republican sentiments from of old, and with not a few important officers in it who were Republicans re-avowed; and, besides, they were politicians for the Protectorate in an interest of their own which quite separated them from the Court Party. Might not these differences between the Court Party and the Wallingford-House Party be so operated upon as to force the Court Party into open antagonism to the Army, and so leave the Wallingford-House men no option but to fall back upon Army Republicanism and make the Army an agent, in spite of themselves, for the "good Old Cause"? How well-founded was this calculation will appear if we remember one or two facts. Cessation of Army-domination in politics, and reliance on massive public feeling and on constitutional methods, were now fixed principles of the Court Party. Monk had expressed them when he advised Richard to reduce the Army and get rid of superfluous officers, assuring him that the most disaffected officer, once discharged, would be a very harmless animal. Henry Cromwell had expressed the same in that letter to Fleetwood in which he sighed for the happy time when the Army would never be heard of except when it was fighting. Thurloe, Broghill, Falconbridge, and the rest, were of the same general opinion; and parts of the Army itself, they believed, had been schooled into docility. Monk could answer for the troops and officers in Scotland, Henry Cromwell for those in Ireland, and Lockhart for those in Flanders. But then there was the great body of soldiers and officers in England, with London for their rendezvous. To them abnegation of direct influence in politics was death. It was not only their arrears that they saw endangered, but that Army privilege of debating and theorizing which had been asserted by Cromwell in the Civil War, and which Cromwell afterwards, while regulating and checking it, had never abolished. Were they to meet no more, agitate no more? Was the great Army of the Commonwealth to be degraded, for the benefit of this new Protector, into a mere collection of men paid for bestriding horses and handling pikes and ramrods? So reasoned the rank and file and the subalterns; but the chiefs, while sharing the general feeling, had additional alarms of their own. They had left actions behind them, done in their major-generalcies or other commands for Cromwell, for which they might be called to account under a civilian Protectorate, or other merely constitutional Government. There had actually been signs in the present Parliament of a tendency to the re-investigation of cases of military oppression and the impeachment of selected culprits. Were the Army-men to consent, in such circumstances, to give up their powers of self-defence and corporate action? No! Oliver's son might deserve consideration; but Oliver's Army had prior claims.

Hitherto, Fleetwood, Desborough, and the rest of the Wallingford-House Party, had been content with private remonstrances with Richard on Army grievances in general, or particular grievances occasioned by his own exercise of Army-patronage. A saying of Richard's in one of these conferences had been widely reported and had given great offence. In reply to a suggestion that he was doing wrong in appointing any but "godly" officers, he had said, "Here is Dick Ingoldsby, who can neither pray nor preach, and yet I will trust him before ye all." As nothing was to be made of Richard in this private way, the Army party had resolved on another great convention of officers in London, nominally for the consideration of Army affairs, but really to constrain both Richard and the Parliament. Ludlow, who had hitherto been the medium of communication between the Republicans and the Wallingford-House men, was informed of this proposal; and he and the other Republicans looked on with the keenest interest. Would Richard, with his recent experience, allow the officers to reassemble in general council? To the horror of Broghill, Falconbridge, Thurloe, and the rest of the Court party, it was found that, in a moment of weakness, cajoled privately by Fleetwood and Desborough, he had given the permission, without even consulting his Council. Nothing could be done but let the convention meet, taking care that as many officers as possible of the Court party should be present in it. Accordingly, on the 5th of April 1659, there were about 500 officers of all ranks at Wallingford House, Fleetwood and Desborough at the head of one Protectoral party, and Broghill, Viscount Howard, Falconbridge, with Whalley and Goffe, representing the other, while among the general body there were no one knew how many pure Republicans. The meeting having been solemnly opened with prayer by Dr. Owen, there was a vehement speech from Desborough. The essence of the speech was that "several sons of Belial" had crept into the Army, corrupting its former integrity, and that therefore he would propose that every officer should be cashiered that would not "swear that he did believe in his conscience that the putting to death of the late King, Charles Stuart, was lawful and just." Amid the cheers that followed, Lords Howard and Falconbridge (two of the denounced "sons of Belial"?) left in disgust; but Broghill remained and opposed bravely. He disliked all tests; but, if there was to be a test, he would propose that it should be simply an oath "to defend the Government as it is now established under the Protector and Parliament." If the present meeting insisted on a test, and did not adopt that one, he would see that it should be moved in Parliament. This, supported by Whalley and Goffe, calmed the meeting somewhat; and, after much more speaking, in which the necessity of a separation of the military power from the civil was a prominent topic, the result was "A Humble Representation and Petition of the Officers of the Armies of England, Scotland, and Ireland," expressed in general and not unrespectful terms, but conveying sufficiently the Army's demands. Presented to Richard in Whitehall on the 6th of April, this petition was forwarded by him to the Commons on the 8th, with a letter to the Speaker. For more than a week no notice was taken by the House; but, the petition having been circulated in print, with other petitions and documents more fierce for "the good old cause," and the general council of officers still continuing the meetings at Wallingford House, with the excitement of sermons and prayers added to that of their debates, the House was driven at last into that attitude of direct antagonism to the Army in the name of the Protectorate on which both Royalists and Republicans had calculated. Thurloe would fain have avoided this, and had almost longed for some Cavalier outbreak to occupy the two conflicting Protectoral parties and reunite them. But the numerous Cavaliers in London had been well instructed and lay provokingly still; and the management of the crisis for Richard had passed from Thurloe to the House itself. On Monday the 18th of April, in a House of 250, with shut doors to prevent any from leaving, it was resolved, by 163 votes to 87, "That, during the sitting of the Parliament there shall be no general council or meeting of the officers of the Army without the direction, leave, and authority of his Highness the Lord Protector and both Houses of Parliament"; and it was also resolved, "That no person shall have or continue any command or trust in any of the Armies or Navies of England, Scotland, or Ireland, or any of the Dominions or Territories thereto belonging, who shall refuse to subscribe, That he will not disturb nor interrupt the free meetings in Parliament of any of the members of either House of Parliament, or their freedom in their debates and counsels." The concurrence of the Other House was desired in these votes; and the Commons, who had noted with surprise that Hasilrig, Ludlow, Scott, and Vane, rather took part with the Army in the debate, proceeded to the serious consideration of the arrears of pay due to the officers and soldiers, and of other real military grievances, in order to reconcile the Army, if possible, to their strong Resolutions.¹

That was not possible. Richard, urged by Broghill and others, and strengthened by the votes of the Commons, summoned up courage to go to the council of officers at Wallingford House next day, and, after listening to their debates for a while, declare their meetings dissolved. The only effect was that they dispersed themselves then, to meet from day to day just as before, Dr. Owen and other preachers still among them. Meanwhile, the concurrence of the Other House with the Resolutions having been purposely delayed and all but refused, the Commons adopted what farther measures they could for securing Richard's control of the militia. Richard was advised by those around him to empower them to seize Fleetwood and Desborough, and also Lambert, whose conjunction with the Wallingford-House party was now notorious. He hesitated. He had never done harm to anybody, he said, and he would not have a drop of blood shed on his poor account. The question now was between a forced dissolution of the Wallingford-House council of officers and a dissolution of the Parliament itself. That, in spite of Richard's objection to violence, seemed on the eve of being decided by a murderous battle in the streets of London. Fleetwood, summoned to Whitehall to see the Protector, neglected the summons; and through the night between Wednesday the 20th and Thursday the 21st of April there was a rendezvous in and round St. James's, by Fleetwood's order, of all the regiments in town. A counter-rendezvous, in Richard's name, was attempted at Whitehall; but Whalley, Goffe, and Ingoldsby, who would have commanded here and done their best, found that they had no soldiers to command, the bulk of their own regiments, with some of Richard's guards, having preferred the other rendezvous. What then happened is told by Ludlow in a single sentence. "About noon," says the sturdy democrat, "Colonel Desborough went to Mr. Richard Cromwell at Whitehall, and told him that, if he would dissolve his Parliament, the officers would take care of him, but that, if he refused to do so, they would do it without him, and leave him to shift for himself." There was some consultation, in which Broghill, Fiennes, Thurloe, Wolseley, and Whitlocke, took part. Whitlocke, as he tells us, was against a dissolution even in that extremity; but most of the others thought it inevitable. Richard, therefore, reluctantly yielded; but, as he declined to dissolve the Parliament in person, a commission for the purpose, directed to Lord Commissioner Fiennes, the Speaker of the Upper House, was drawn up by Thurloe, and delivered in the night to Fleetwood and Desborough. Next day, Friday the 22nd, when the message came to the Commons by the Black Rod to attend in the House of Lords, there was the utmost possible confusion. Some members who had gone out were recalled; all were ordered to remain in their places; there was a wild hubbub of motions and speeches, Fairfax conspicuous for his indignation; and, at length, the House, without paying attention to the summons of the Black Rod, adjourned itself to Monday morning at eight o'clock. The Dissolution, therefore, had to be effected by published proclamation, and by padlocking and guarding the doors of the House.¹

A week before the Dissolution the Parliament had estimated the public debt, as it would stand at the end of the year then current, at a total of £2,222,090, besides what might be due to the forces in Flanders. Of this sum £1,747,584 was existing debt in arrears, £393,883 was debt of the Navy running on for the year, and £80,623 was the calculated deficit for the year by the excess of the ordinary expenditure in England, Scotland, and Ireland over the revenues from these countries. It is interesting to note the particulars of this last item. The annual income from England was £1,517,275, and the annual expenses in England £1,547,788, leaving a deficit for England of £30,513; the annual income from Scotland was £143,652, but the outlay £307,271 (more than double the income), leaving a deficit for Scotland of £163,619; the annual income from Ireland was £207,790, and the outlay £346,480, leaving a deficit for Ireland of £138,690. This would have made the total deficit, for the ordinary administration, civil and military, of the three nations, £332,823; but, as £252,200 of this sum would be met by special taxes on England for the support of the Armies in Scotland and Ireland, the real deficit was £80,623, as above. How to meet that, and the £393,883 running on for the Navy, and the arrears of £1,747,584 besides, and the unknown amount that might be due to the Army in Flanders, was the financial problem to be solved. Two millions and a half, it may be said roughly, were required to set the Commonwealth clear.¹

The late Parliament having stated the problem, but having had no time to attempt the solution, the responsibility had descended to those who had turned them out. It was but one form of the enormous and most complex responsibility they had undertaken; but it was the particular form of responsibility that had most to do in determining their immediate proceedings. Had it been merely the administration that had come into their hands, with the defence of the Commonwealth against the renewed danger of a Royalist outburst at home and inburst from abroad to take advantage of the political crash, the Wallingford-House chiefs would probably have thought it sufficient to constitute themselves into a military Oligarchy for maintaining and carrying on Richard's Protectorate. Fleetwood, Desborough, and Lambert would have been a Triumvirate in Richard's name, and the only deliberative apparatus would have been the general council of officers continued, or a more select Council of their number associated with a few chosen civilians. The Triumvirs might have given such a form to the constitution as, while securing the real power for themselves, and not abolishing Richard, would have satisfied or beguiled for the moment the so-called Republicanism now again rampant among the inferior Army-men. But there was no money; Government in any form was at a deadlock until money could be raised; and how was that to be effected? The Wallingford-House magnates did meditate for an instant whether they should not try to raise money by their own authority, but concluded that the experiment would be too desperate, and that, for this reason, if for no other, some kind of Parliament must be at once set up.—But what Parliament? Here they had not far to seek. For the last month or more, placards on all the walls of London, the very cries of news-boys in the streets, had been telling them what Parliament. We have several times quoted the phrase "The Good Old Cause," as coming gradually into use after Oliver's death, and passing to and fro in documents and speeches. But no one can describe now the force and frequency of that phrase in London and throughout England in April 1659 and for months afterwards. If two men passed you in the street, you heard the words "the good old cause" from one of them; every second or third pamphlet in the booksellers' shops had "The Good Old Cause" on its title-page or running through its text; veterans rolled out the phrase sonorously in their nightly prayers, or went to sleep mumbling it. One notes constantly in the history of any country this phenomenon of the expression of a great wave of feeling in some single popular phrase, generally worn out in a few months; but the present is a peculiarly remarkable instance. The phrase, in itself, was ambiguous. One might have supposed "the good old cause" to be the cause of Royalty and the Stuarts. This was an ironical advantage; for the phrase was a Republican, and even a Regicide, invention. It meant, as we have passingly explained, the pure Republican constitution which had been founded on the Regicide and which lasted till Cromwell's dissolution of the Rump on the 20th of April, 1653. It proclaimed that Cromwell's Interim Dictatorship and Protectorate had been an interruption of the natural course of things, dexterously leaving it an open question whether that interruption had been necessary or justifiable, but calling on all men, now that Oliver was dead and his greatness gone with him, to regard his rule as exceptional and extraordinary, and to revert to the old Commonwealth. It involved, therefore, a very exact answer to the question which the Wallingford-House magnates were now pondering. A Parliament was wanted: what other Parliament could it be than the Rump restored? Let that very Assembly which Cromwell had dissolved on the 20th of April, 1653, resume their places now, treat the six years of interval as a dream, and carry on the Government.—With this course prescribed to them by the very clamours that were in the air, and pressed upon them by Ludlow, Vane, Hasilrig, and the more strenuously Republican men of the Army-Council itself, Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other magnates still faltered. They hardly liked to descend from their own elevation; such Republicanism as they had learnt of late to profess was not the old Republicanism of Ludlow and Vane, but one admitting the supreme magistracy of a Single Person; and they had obligations of honour, moreover, to the present Richard. They pleaded that it was impossible to restore the Rump, inasmuch as there were not survivors enough from that body to make a House. Hereupon Dr. Owen, who seems to have been extremely active in this crisis, produced in Wallingford House a list, which he had obtained from Ludlow, of about 160 persons who had been duly qualified (i.e. non-secluded) members of the Rump between 1648 and 1653, and were believed to be still alive. There were then meetings for consultation at Sir Henry Vane's house, with farther differences over some demands of the Army-magnates. They demanded the payment of Richard's debts, ample provision for his subsistence and dignity, and some recognition of his Protectorship; and they also demanded that, besides the Representative House, there should be a Select Senate or Other House. To these demands for a continuation of the Protectorate in a limited form the Republicans could not yield, though Ludlow, to remove obstructions, was willing to concede a temporary Senate for definite purposes. The differences had not been adjusted when the Wallingford-House men intimated that they were prepared for the main step and would join with the Republicans in restoring the Rump. This was finally arranged on the 6th of May, when there was drawn up for the purpose "A Declaration of the Officers of the Army," signed by the Army Secretary "by the direction of the Lord Fleetwood and the Council of Officers," and when two deputations, one of Army-chiefs with the Declaration in their hands, and the other of independent Republicans, waited on old Speaker Lenthall at his house in Covent Garden. It was for Lenthall, as the Speaker of the Rump at its dissolution, to convoke the surviving members.¹

Ludlow becomes even humorous in describing the difficulties they had with old Lenthall. To the deputation of Republicans, which arrived first, "he began to make many trifling excuses, pleading his age, sickness, inability to sit long," the fact being, as Ludlow says, that he had been one of Oliver's and Richard's courtiers, and was now thinking of his Oliverian peerage, which would be lost if the Protectorate lapsed into a Republic. When the military deputation arrived, and Lambert opened the subject fully, Lenthall was still very uneasy. "He was not fully satisfied that the death of the late King had not put an end to the Parliament." That objection having been scouted, and the request pressed upon him that he would at once issue invitations to such of the old members as were in town to meet him next morning and form a House, "he replied that he could by no means do as we desired, having appointed a business of far greater importance to himself, which he would not omit on any account, because it concerned the salvation of his own soul. We then pressed him to inform us what it might be: to which he answered that he was preparing himself to participate of the Lord's supper, which he was resolved to take on the next Lord's day. Upon this it was replied that mercy is more acceptable to God than sacrifice, and that he could not better prepare himself for the aforesaid duty than by contributing to the public good." As he was still obdurate, the deputations told him they would do without him. The list of members was divided among such clerks as were at hand, and the circulars were duly sent out.¹

Next morning, Saturday May 7, 1659, about thirty of the members of the old Rump were shaking hands with each other in the House of Lords, waiting anxiously till as many more should drop in as would make the necessary quorum of forty, before marching into the Commons. Army officers and other spectators were in the lobbies, equally anxious. Time passed, and a few more did drop in, including Henry Marten, luckily remembered as in jail for debt near at hand, and fetched thence in triumph. At length, about thirty-seven having mustered, old Lenthall, who had spies on the spot, thought it best to come in; and, about twelve o'clock, he led a procession of exactly forty-two persons into the Commons House, the officers and other spectators attending them to the doors with congratulations. The House, having been constituted, entered at once on business, framing a Declaration for the public suitable for the occasion, and appointing several committees. They set apart next day, Sunday the 8th, for special religious services, with a re-inauguration sermon by Dr. Owen.¹

On Monday, May 9, the small new House had to re-encounter a difficulty which had troubled them somewhat at their first meeting on Saturday. On that day, besides the forty-two members of the Rump who had answered the summons, there had come to the lobbies fourteen persons who had been members of the Long Parliament before it became the Rump, i.e. before that famous Pride's Purge of Dec. 6-7, 1648, which excluded 143 of the Presbyterians and other Royalists from their seats, and so converted the Long Parliament into the more compact body wanted for the King's Trial and the formation of the Republic (Vol. III. pp. 696-698). The fourteen, among whom were the Presbyterians Sir George Booth and William Prynne, had insisted on being admitted, but had been kept out by the officers after some altercation. But now, on Monday, several of them were back, to see the issue of a protest that had been meanwhile sent to the Speaker on behalf of 213 members of the Long Parliament who were in the same general predicament of "Secluded Members"—to wit, the 143 excluded by Pride's Purge and seventy more who had been excluded at various times before for Royalist contumacy. Finding the doors open, three of these unwelcome visitors went in, of whom two came out again and were not re-admitted, but one remained. That one was William Prynne. He sat like a ghoul among the Rumpers. No persuasion on earth could induce him to leave. Hasilrig stormed at him, and Vane coaxed him; but there he sat, and there he would sit! He was a member of the Long Parliament, and no other Parliament was or could be rightfully in existence but that; if they turned him out, it should only be by carrying him out by his feet and shoulders! Unwilling to resort to that method, those present got rid of the intruder by postponing their meeting to a later hour, and taking care that, when Prynne reappeared, he should be turned back. The House that day passed an order that none should sit in it but genuine Rumpers, appointing a committee to ascertain who these were and to report on dubious cases; and the order was affixed to the doors outside. For a day or two Prynne and others still haunted the lobbies; but at length they desisted, Prynne taking his revenge by at once printing The Republicans' and Others' spurious Old Cause briefly and truly anatomized, and then One Sheet, or, if you will, a Winding Sheet, for the Good Old Cause.¹

For eighteen days after the resuscitation of the Rump, and notwithstanding their distinct announcement in their public declaration that they were to "endeavour the settlement" of the Commonwealth "without a Single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers," Richard still lingered in Whitehall and his Protectorship remained nominally in existence. But the Republicans made what haste they could to put an end to that anomaly. Their difficulty lay in their yet unadjusted differences with the Army-officers conjoined with them in the Restoration of the Rump. Towards the removal of these differences something was done on the 13th of May, when the House appointed Fleetwood "Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-chief of the land-forces in England and Scotland" (Ireland reserved), and associated with him Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Ludlow, Hasilrig, and Vane, in a commission of seven empowered to nominate, for approval by the Parliament, the commissioned officers of the whole Army. Even with, this arrangement, however, the Army-magnates were not satisfied; and it left other differences over, which were restated that very day in a petition and address from the whole Council of Officers. This Petition and Address, presented to the House by a deputation of eighteen chief officers, headed by Lambert and Desborough, consisted of fifteen Articles, the last three of which contained the points of most vital debate with the pure Republicans. In Article XIII. it was petitioned that, for the Legislative, there should be, in addition to the Popular or Representative House, "a select Senate, co-ordinate in power." Article XIV. required also, for the Executive; a separate Council of State. Article XV. concerned the Cromwell family. It did not demand a continuation of the Protectorate, but It demanded the payment by the State of all debts contracted by Oliver or Richard in their Protectorates, the settlement of £10,000 a year on Richard and his heirs for ever, the settlement of a farther £10,000 a year on Richard for his life, and the settlement of £8,000 a year for life on "his honourable mother," the Protectress-dowager,—all this to the end that there might remain to posterity "a mark of the high esteem this nation hath of the good service done by his father, our ever-renowned General." The House was not then prepared to answer the demands of Articles XIII. and XV., but only that of Article XIV. after a certain fashion. It was agreed that day that there should be an executive Council of State, to consist of thirty-one persons, ten of them not members of Parliament, the Council to hold office till Dec. 1 next ensuing; and at that meeting and the two next the thirty-one Councillors were duly chosen. Then, on the 21st of May, various addresses of confidence in the new Government having by this time come in from London and other parts, the Republicans felt themselves strong enough to discuss the petition of the officers, article by article, accepting most of them, but postponing the three last and another. Without saying what they meant to do for the Cromwell family, they had In the Interim (May 16) appointed a committee to "take into consideration the present condition of the eldest son of the late Lord-General Cromwell, and to inform themselves what his estate is, and what his debts are, and how they have been contracted, and how far he doth acquiesce in the government of this Commonwealth." There were interviews with Richard in Whitehall accordingly, with the result that there was brought to the House on the 25th of May a paper signed by him, together with a schedule of his means and debts. The paper was, in fact, an abdication, In these terms: "Having, I hope, in some degree, learnt rather to reverence and submit to the hand of God than to be unquiet under it, and, as to the late providences that have fallen out amongst us, however, in respect of the particular engagements that lay upon me, I could not be active in making a change in the government of these nations, yet, through the goodness of God, I can freely acquiesce in it, being made." He promised, in conclusion, to live peaceably under the new government, and to do all in his power to induce those with whom he had any interest to do the same. From the accompanying schedule it appeared that his debts, incurred by his father or himself in the Protectorship, amounted to £29,640, and that his own clear revenue, after deduction of annuities to his mother and others of the family, was but £1299 a year, and that encumbered by a private debt of £3000. The House accepted the abdication, undertook the discharge of the debts as stated, voted £2000 at once to Mr. Richard, referred it to a committee to consider what more could be, done towards his "comfortable and honourable subsistence," and, for the rest, requested him to retire from Whitehall, and "dispose of himself as his private occasions shall require." He lingered still a little, fearing arrest by his creditors, but did at length retire to Hampton Court, and thence into deeper and deeper privacy, to live fifty-three years more and become very venerable, though the more rude of the country-people would persist in calling him "Tumble-Down Dick." In the week of his abdication there was on the London book-stalls a rigmarole poem on the subject, called The World in a Maze, or Oliver's Ghost. It opened with this dialogue between father and son:—

Oliver P.: Richard.!. Richard! Richard!

Richard: Who calls "Richard"? 'Tis a hollow voice;
And yet perhaps it may be mine own thoughts.

Oliver: No: 'tis thy father risen from the grave;
Nor—would I have thee fooled, nor yet turn knave.

Richard: I could not help it, father.¹

CHAPTER I.

Second Section.

THE ANARCHY, STAGE I.: OR THE RESTORED BUMP:

MAY 25, 1859-OCT. 13, 1659.

NUMBER OF THE RESTORED RUMPERS AND LIST OF THEM: COUNCIL OP STATE OF THE RESTORED RUMP: ANOMALOUS CHARACTER AND POSITION OP THE NEW GOVERNMENT: MOMENTARY CHANCE OF A CIVIL WAR BETWEEN THE CROMWELLIANS AND THE RUMPERS: CHANCE AVERTED BY THE ACQUIESCENCE OF THE LEADING CROMWELLIANS: BEHAVIOUR OF RICHARD CROMWELL, MONK, HENRY CROMWELL, LOCKHART, AND THURLOE, INDIVIDUALLY: BAULKED CROMWELLIANISM BECOMES POTENTIAL ROYALISM: ENERGETIC PROCEEDINGS OF THE RESTORED RUMP: THEIR ECCLESIASTICAL POLICY AND THEIR FOREIGN POLICY: TREATY BETWEEN FRANCE AND SPAIN: LOCKHART AT THE SCENE OF THE NEGOTIATIONS AS AMBASSADOR FOR THE RUMP: REMODELLING AND RE-OFFICERING OF THE ARMY, NAVY, AND MILITIA: CONFEDERACY OF OLD AND NEW ROYALISTS FOR A SIMULTANEOUS RISING: ACTUAL RISING UNDER SIR GEORGE BOOTH IN CHESHIRE: LAMBERT SENT TO QUELL THE INSURRECTION: PECULIAR INTRIGUES ROUND MONK AT DALKEITH: SIR GEORGE BOOTH'S INSURRECTION CRUSHED: EXULTATION OF THE RUMP AND ACTION TAKEN AGAINST THE CHIEF INSURGENTS AND THEIR ASSOCIATES: QUESTION OF THE FUTURE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH: CHAOS OF OPINIONS AND PROPOSALS: JAMES HARRINGTON AND HIS POLITICAL THEORIES: THE HARRINGTON OR ROTA CLUB: DISCONTENTS IN THE ARMY: PETITION AND PROPOSALS OF THE OFFICERS OF LAMBERT'S BRIGADE: SEVERE NOTICE OF THE SAME BY THE RUMP: PETITION AND PROPOSALS OF THE GENERAL COUNCIL OF OFFICERS: RESOLUTE ANSWERS OF THE RUMP: LAMBERT, DESBOROUGH, AND SEVEN OTHER OFFICERS, CASHIERED: LAMBERT'S RETALIATION AND STOPPAGE OF THE PARLIAMENT.

The Restored Rump, which had met on the 7th of May, 1659, only forty-two strong, had very sensibly increased its numbers by the 25th, the day of Richard's abdication. In obedience to a summons sent out to Rumpers in the country, between forty and fifty more had by that time come in, raising the number in attendance to nearly ninety. In subsequent months still others and others dropped in, till the House could reckon about 122 altogether as belonging to it. The following is the most complete list I have been able to draw out for the whole of our present term of the existence of the Restored House. Marks are added to each name, to signify the political course or resting-place of its owner from his first connexion with the Long Parliament to his present reappearance:—

The asterisk prefixed to a name denotes a Regicide, i.e. an actual signer of the Death-Warrant of Charles I. (Vol. III. 720). The contraction Rec. prefixed signifies that the person was not an original member of the Long Parliament when it met in Nov. 1640, but one of the Recruiters who came in at various times afterwards to supply vacancies. Most of these came in between Aug. 1645 and the end of 1646 (Vol. III. 401-402); but there were stray Recruiters through 1647 and 1648; nay, about eight persons were added by the Rump to itself by new writs issued after the institution of the Commonwealth. R added to a name signifies a member of the Barebones Parliament of 1653; O¹ a member of Oliver's First Parliament of Sept. 1654-Jan. 1654-5; O² a member of Oliver's Second Parliament of Sept. 1656-Feb. 1657-8. The addition † in the last case denotes that the person was one of the Anti-Oliverians secluded at the beginning of the first Session, but restored at the beginning of the second. R denotes a member of the Commons in Richard's late Parliament, just dissolved; and L denotes that the person had been one of Oliver's and Richard's Lords. Other marks might have indicated the distinction of having belonged to one, or more, or all of the Councils of State of the Commonwealth, or to the Council of the Protectorate; but in most cases there will be sufficient recollection of this distinction by the reader, and references to the lists of the Councils already given will be easy where particulars are wanted. Aristocratic courtesy-designations of Oliverian origin are now stripped off, so as to present the names in the form thought correct by the restored Republic.

• Speaker: William Lenthall (ætat. 68), O¹, O², L
• Rec. Andrews, Robert R
• Rec. Anlaby, John B, R
• Rec. Ash, James O¹, O², R
• Rec. Atkins, Alderman
• Rec. Baker, James R
• Barker, Col. John
• Rec. Bennett, Col. Robert B, O¹, R
• Rec. Bingham, Col. John B, 0¹, O², R
• Rec. Birch, Col. John O¹, O²†, R
• *Rec. Blagrave, Daniel O², R
• Rec. Boone, Thomas O¹, R
• *Rec. Bourchier, Sir John
• Brereton, Sir Wm., Bart.
• Rec. Brewster, Robert O¹, O², R
• * Carew, John B
• * Cawley, William R
• *Rec. Challoner, Thomas R
• Rec. Corbet, John
• Rec. Crompton, Thomas O¹, O², R
• Rec. Darley, Henry O²†
• Rec. Darley, Richard O²†
• *Rec. Dixwell, Col. John O¹, O², R
• Rec. Dormer, John
• Rec. Dove, John
• *Rec. Downes, Col. John
• Dunch, Edmund O¹, O²
• Rec. Earle, Serjeant Erasmus
• Ellis, Sir William O¹, O², R
• Rec. Eyre, Col. William R
• Rec. Fagg, John O¹, O², R
• Rec. Fielder, Col. John R
• Rec. Fleetwood, Lieut.-Gen, Charles
• O¹, O², L
• *Rec. Garland, Augustine O¹
• Rec. Gold, Nicholas R
• Goodwin, Robert R
• Goodwyn, John O¹, O²†, R
• Rec. Gurdon, Brampton
• Gurdon, John O¹
• Hallows, Nathaniel
• Harby, Edward
• Rec. Harrington, Sir James O¹
• Rec. Harvey, Col. Edward O¹, O²†
• Hasilrig, Sir Arthur, Bart. O¹, O ²†, R, L
• Rec. Hay, William O¹, O², R
• Heveningham, William
• Rec. Hill, Roger R
• Holland, Cornelius O¹
• *Rec. Hutchinson, Col. John
• *Rec. Jones, Col. John (Cromwell's brother-in-law) O²†, L
• Rec. Jones, Col. Philip B, O¹, O², L
• Rec. Leman, William
• Rec. Lechmere, Nicholas O¹, O², R
• Rec. Lenthall, Sir John R
• Lisle, Lord Commissioner O¹, O², L
• Lisle, Viscount Philip B, L
• Rec. Lister, Thomas O¹, O²†
• *Rec. Livesey, Sir Michael
• Rec. Love, Nicholas R
• Lowry, John R
• Rec. Lucy, Sir Richard, Bart., B, O¹, O²†, R
• Rec. Ludlow, Lieut.-Gen. Edmund R
• * Marten, Henry
• Rec. Martin, Christopher B, R
• *Rec. Mayne. Simon
• Mildmay, Sir Henry O¹, O²†, R
• *Rec. Millington, Gilbert
• Monson, Viscount (Irish Peer)
• Morley, Col. Herbert O¹, O², R
• Rec. Nelthorpe, James
• Rec. Neville, Henry R
• Nicholas, Robert
• Nutt, John
• Oldworth, Michael
• Palmer, Dr. John
• Pembroke, the Earl of (Earl since 1650)
• Pennington, Alderman Isaac
• Pickering, Sir Gilbert, Bart. B, O¹, O²
• Rec. Pigott, Gervase
• Prideaux, Sir Edmund O¹, O², R
• * Purefoy, Col. William O¹, O², R
• Pury, Thomas, Senr. O¹, O²
• Rec. Pury, Thomas, Junr.
• Pyne, Col. John B
• Rec. Raleigh, Carew (son of the great Raleigh) R
• Reynolds, Robert R
• Rec. Rich, Col. Charles R
• Rec. Robinson, Luke O¹, O²
• St. John, Chief Justice L
• Rec. Salisbury, the Earl of O¹, O²†
• Salway, Major Richard B
• *Rec. Say, William
• *Rec. Scott, Thomas O¹, O ²†, R
• Rec. Skinner, Capt. Augustine O¹
• Rec. Skippon, Major-Gen. O¹, O², L
• Rec. Sidney, Col. Algernon
• Rec. Smith, Philip
• *Rec. Smyth, Henry
• Rec. Strickland, Walter B, O¹, O², L
• Strickland, Sir William O¹, O², L
• Rec. Sydenham, Col. Wm. B, O¹, O², L
• *Rec. Temple, James
• *Rec. Temple, Peter
• Rec. Thompson, Col. George R
• Rec. Thorpe, Serjeant Francis O¹, O²†
• Trenchard, John O¹, O², R
• Trevor, Sir John O¹, O², R
• Vane, Sir Henry R
• Rec. Wallop, Robert O¹, O², R
• Walsingham, Sir Thomas
• * Walton, Col. Valentine (Cromwell's brother-in-law)
• *Rec. Wayte, Col. Thomas
• Rec. Weaver, Edmund
• Rec. Wentworth, Sir Peter
• Rec. West, Edmund
• Rec. Weston. Benjamin R
• Rec. White, Col. William
• Whitlocke, Lord Commissioner O¹, O ², L
• Widdrington, Sir Thomas O¹, O²
• *Rec. Wogan, Thomas
• Rec. Wroth, Sir Thomas O², R
• Wylde, Chief Baron R¹

From this list it will be seen, in the first place, that, if Ludlow was correct in his estimate that there were 160 old Rumpers still alive, a good many of them did not now reappear in that capacity at Westminster. It will be seen, farther, that nearly two-thirds of those who did re-appear were not original members of the Long Parliament, but Recruiters. But this is not all. While about one-third of the total number that re-appeared, including fifteen out of the twenty-three Regicides on the list, had been in retirement during the intervening governments from 1653 to 1659, about two-thirds had not kept themselves so immaculate in that interval, but had served in the Barebones Parliament or in the Parliaments of the Protectorate. A good many of these, indeed—e.g. Birch, John Goodwyn, Harvey, Hasilrig, Lister, Lucy, Mildmay, Scott, and Thorpe had done so avowedly with Republican motives; but, on the other hand, some—e.g. Colonel Philip Jones, Pickering, Prideaux, St. John, Skippon, the two Stricklands, Sydenham, and Whitlocke—had merged their Republicanism in Oliverianism, had been courtiers of Cromwell, and had taken honours from him. The Restored Rump could be described as unanimously a Republican body, therefore, only in the sense that many in it had never swerved from pure Republican principles, and that the rest were willing now to go back to such. Be it observed, finally, that the number 122 represents the hypothetical strength of the Restored House rather than its real strength. In the only division in the House before the day of Richard's abdication the Journals show but forty-four as present and voting; nor do the records of divisions through the whole duration of the House ever show more than seventy six as thus effectively present at any one sitting. Only five or six times are as many as sixty noted as present and voting. One infers that many of the members, after having begun attending, ceased to do so, from indifference, or from dislike to what was going on.¹

A very considerable proportion of the effective attendance in the House must have been furnished by the presence in it of those members who were members also of the Council of State. This body, appointed by the House, May 13-16, to be an executive for the restored Rump Government, consisted of twenty-one Parliamentary and ten non-Parliamentary members. They were as follows, the asterisks again denoting Regicides:—

Parliamentary Members
(In the order of the number of votes they obtained in the ballot).

• *Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Bart.
• Sir Henry Vane Colonel
• *Lieut.-General Ludlow
• Lieut.-General Fleetwood
• Major Richard Salway
• Colonel Herbert Morley
• *Thomas Scott Colonel
• Robert Wallop
• Sir James Harrington
• *Colonel Valentine Walton
• *Colonel John Jones
• Colonel William Sydenham
• Algernon Sidney
• Henry Neville
• *Thomas Challoner
• *Colonel John Downes
• Lord Chief Justice St. John
• George Thompson
• Lord Commissioner Whitlocke
• *Colonel John Dixwell
• Robert Reynolds
• Non-Parliamentary Members.

Seven appointed without ballot.

• Thomas, Lord Fairfax O¹, R
• Major-General Lambert O¹, O¹, R
• Colonel John Desborough O¹, O², L
• Colonel James Berry O², L
• *John Bradshaw O¹, O²†, R
• Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart. B, O¹, O¹†, R
• Sir Horatio Townshend R

Three chosen, by ballot.

• Josiah Berners O¹
• Sir Archibald Johnstone, of Warriston L
• Sir Robert Honeywood R

Fairfax was put among the non-Parliamentary ten because, though he had been a member of the Rump (a very late Recruiter, elected Feb. 1648-9), he had retired from it before its dissolution. His nomination now to a seat in the Council was but a compliment, for he withdrew into Yorkshire. An exceptional appointment was that of the Scottish Sir Archibald Johnstone of Warriston. The Restored Rump was avowedly an English Parliament only, treating the union with Scotland as a business yet to be consummated. The election of a single Scotchman among the non-Parliamentary members of the Council was like a pledge that Scottish interests should not meanwhile be neglected. His election was by the recommendation of his friend Vane, who probably knew that Johnstone was by this time a bonâ fide Republican. More questionable appointments, from the Republican point of view, were those of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper and Sir Horatio Townshend. The second, a cousin of Fairfax, and one of the wealthiest men in Norfolk, was in secret communication with Charles II., and had express permission from him to accept the present appointment.¹

There was one fatal absurdity in the position of the Restored Rump Government. It came together in the name of "the good old cause," or a pure and absolute Republic; and yet it stood there itself in glaring contradiction to what is usually regarded, and to what itself put forth, as the very root-principle of a pure Republic—to wit, the Sovereignty of the People. Richard's House of Commons had been as freely elected as any House of Commons since that of the Long Parliament, and, as far as England and Wales were concerned, by the same constituencies; it represented no past mood of the community, but precisely their mood in January 1658-9; and the attendances in the House, when it did meet, were unusually numerous. Well, in a series of debates and votes, in which there was no concussion, this Parliament had declared, in the main, for a continuation of the Protectorate and the Protectoral Constitution as settled by Oliver's Second Parliament. Hardly had this been done when, by a combination in London between the disappointed Republicans and the Army malcontents, the Parliament was abruptly dissolved. What then stepped in to take its place? A small body, effectively about eighty strong at the utmost, having no pretence of representing the community at that time, or of being anything else than the casual surviving rag of a Parliament of 500, the members of which had been elected at various times, and irregularly, between 1640 and 1649. Nay, it was not even the surviving rag of that Parliament itself, but the rag of a stump to which that Parliament had been already reduced in 1649 by prior military hacking and carving. What pinch of representative virtue, for the England, Scotland, and Ireland of May 1659, or even for the non-Royalist portions of their populations, was there in the Restored Rump? Many of them had not been in contact with their original constituencies for ten years or more; those who had gone back to their original constituencies, or to others, for election to the Protectorate Parliaments, or to any of them, had by that fact treated the rights of the Long Parliament, in its integrity or in its last stump, as lapsed and defunct, and had appealed to the community afresh. When that appeal had gone against them, when the last and fullest Parliament had represented it as the will of the people that the Protectoral system should be continued, was it not odd that about forty of the defeated minority of that Parliament, without consulting their constituencies, should associate themselves with a number of others, then quite astray from any constituencies, and with no other title than that of being Old Rumpers too, and this for the purpose of instituting the very form of Government just ascertained to be unpopular? It was odd theoretically; for, though there were then Republicans—Milton for one—who had adopted the principle (essentially Cromwell's too) that the government of States cannot and ought not to go by mere multitudinous suffrage, but may be dictated and compelled by the proper few, the Rumpers did not profess to be Republicans of this sort. The supremacy of the People through a Single Representative House was the deepest theoretical tenet of most of the men who had now met to oppose the will of the People as declared in the fullest Representative House within memory. But, though odd theoretically, the contradiction is of a kind common enough in History. The ultra-Republicans of the Restored Rump, whose very definition of the right Republican system was that there ought to be nothing in it a priori whatever, were yet believers in the indefeasible and a priori authority of that Republican system itself. In other words, so important was it that there should be no government except by the people themselves through a Representative House that, if the people would not govern themselves by a Representative House in a certain particular manner, they must not be allowed to govern themselves by a Representative House, but must be governed by a non-representative House till they came to their senses!

These remarks are not made speculatively, but because they express the sentiments common throughout the British Islands at the time, and explain what followed.

The first expectation after the usurpation of the Restored Rump had been that there would be a civil war between the Protectoratists and the Rumpers. For, though Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other Army-officers at the centre, had been the agents in Richard's downfall and had joined with the Republicans in restoring the Rump, the chances of the Protectorate were by no means exhausted by their defection. While Richard lingered at Whitehall, his Protectorship could not be said to be extinct, and whatever of Cromwellianism survived anywhere apart from the central English Army might be rallied for the rescue. There was Henry Cromwell and the Army in Ireland; there was Monk and the Army in Scotland; there was Lockhart and the Army in Flanders; there was the fleet under Admiral Montague, a man marked even among Cromwellians for the ardour of his devotion to Cromwell and his family; and there were other Cromwellians of influence, dispersed from London by the recent events, and carrying their resentment with them wherever they went. Broghill and Coote were back in Ireland; Ingoldsby was on a visit to Ireland to consult with Henry Cromwell; Falconbridge was in country-seclusion; and the Marquis of Argyle (a Londoner and client of the Protectorate for some years) was back furtively in Scotland, to avoid arrest for his debts, and try new scheming. Then, if there could be a combination of such elements, what masses of diffused material on which to work! There was the great body of the English Presbyterians, reconciled to Oliver's rule completely before his death, and desiring nothing better now than a continuation of the Protectoral system; there were the orderly and conservative classes generally, including many Anglicans who had ceased to be Royalists; and there were one knows not how many scattered Cromwellians, whether in civil life or in the Army, whose Cromwellianism was, like Montague's, less a political creed than a passionate private hero-worship. Nor was this all. Louis XIV, and Mazarin were Cromwellians too for the nonce, faithful to the memory of the great man whose alliance they had courted, and ready to lend the armed aid of France, if necessary, to the support of his dynasty. No one had been watching the course of events in England more coolly than M. de Bordeaux, the French Ambassador in London; and through. May and part of June 1659 his letters to Mazarin show amply the nature of his communications with Richard and Thurloe. "I have frequently renewed my offers of the King's assistance," he wrote to the Cardinal on the 16th of May, nine days after the first meeting of the Restored Rump and eleven days before Richard's abdication; and again, more distinctly, on the 19th, "Having yesterday contrived to get an interview with him [Thurloe] in the country, I assured him that the King would spare neither money nor troops in order to re-establish the Protector, if there were any likelihood of success," The Ambassador, it is true, had conceived the bold private idea that Louis XIV, and the Cardinal might do better by using such a fine opportunity for an invasion and conquest of England by France on her own account; and he had hinted as much to the Cardinal. The idea was not encouraged; and so the position of M. de Bordeaux in London remained that of a secret partisan of the Cromwellians, offering them all help from France if they should engage in a civil war with the Rumpers.¹

Before the middle of June it was evident that such a Civil War was not to be feared. Richard himself had been quite inert in Whitehall, and his abdication was a signal to all his partisans to give up the cause. Even after that there were efforts or protests in his behalf here and there, but they died away.—Monk, about whose conduct in the crisis there had been great anxiety among the Rumpers, and who had sulkily wanted to know at first what this "Good Old Cause" was that they were so enthusiastic about in London, had already sounded the Army in Scotland sufficiently to find that they would not oppose their English brethren. A letter of adhesion to the Restored Commonwealth by Monk and the Scottish Army had, accordingly, been received May 18, and read in the House with great joy; and, though there were still signs that Monk would stand a good deal on his independence, his adhesion on any terms was an immense gain.—Lockhart also, looking about him in Flanders, and considering what would be best for English interests altogether, had given up all thoughts of a revolt from the Rump by the Continental forces, and had returned to England, early in June, to render his accounts. The Council of the Rump, on their side, considering what was best in the circumstances, with Dunkirk and the other results of Cromwell's Flanders enterprise still on their hands, were glad to retain Lockhart's services in the post of Ambassador to Louis XIV. and sent him back, after a week or two, with re-credentials in that post from the new Government.—There had been more uncertainty about Henry Cromwell in Ireland. His great popularity and the conditions of the country itself made a Cromwellian revolt there more likely than anywhere else. But there was to be no such thing. Left by his inert brother without direct communications, and receiving intelligence, as he says, "only from common fame," Henry had very bravely held out to the last, ascertaining the temper of his officers and the Army. Not till the 15th of June was he clear as to his duty; but on that day, having fully made up his mind, he addressed to the Speaker of the Rump a letter worthy of himself and of the occasion. "All this while," he wrote, "I expected directions from his Highness, by whose authority I was placed here, still having an eye to the common peace, by preventing all making of parties and divisions either among the people or Army. But, hearing nothing expressly from him, and yet having credible notice of his acquiescing in what Providence had brought forth as to the future government of these nations, I now think it time, lest a longer suspense should beget prejudicial apprehensions in the minds of any, to give you this account: viz, that I acquiesce in the present way of government, although I cannot promise so much, affection, to the late changes as others very honestly may. For my own part, I can say that I believe God was present in many of your administrations before you were last interrupted [i.e. before his Father's dissolution of them in April 1653], and may be so again; to which end I hope that those worthy persons who have lately acknowledged such their interrupting you in the year 1653 to have been their fault will by that sense of their impatience be henceforth engaged to do so no more, but be the instruments of your defence whilst you quietly search out the ways of peace. .... Yet I must not deny but that the free submission which many worthy, wise, and conscientious persons yielded to the late Government under a Single Person, by several ways as well real as verbal, satisfied me also in that frame. And, whereas my Father (whom I hope you yet look upon as no inconsiderable instrument of these Nations' freedom and happiness), and since him my Brother, were constituted chief in those administrations, and that the returning to another form hath been looked upon as an indignity to those my nearest relations, I cannot but acknowledge my own weakness as to the sudden digesting thereof, and my own unfitness to serve you in the carrying on your further superstructures upon that basis. And, as I cannot promote anything which infers the diminution of my late Father's honour and merit, so I thank the Lord for that He hath kept me safe in the great temptation wherewith I have been assaulted to withdraw my affection from that Cause wherein he lived and died." Thus beautifully and honourably did the real head of the Cromwells then living draw down the family flag. He was in London on the 4th of July, to attend the pleasure of the House; on which day they ordered that it should be referred to the Council to hear his report on Irish affairs, and then that "Colonel Henry Cromwell have liberty to retire himself into the country, whither he shall think fit, on his own occasions." The same day there was an arrangement for paying the mourning expenses of Cromwell's funeral; and on the 16th the subject of a retiring provision for Richard Cromwell was resumed. His debts, as by former assurance, were to be discharged for him; he was to have a protection from trouble from his creditors meanwhile; and farther inquiry was directed into the state of his resources, with the understanding that his income should receive such an increase as should raise it to £10,000 a year in all.—Monk, Lockhart, and the Cromwells themselves, having adhered to the new Government, there could be no separate action by Montague even if he could have won the Baltic Fleet to his will. Nor, of course, could Louis XIV. and Mazarin do otherwise now than treat the Protectoratist cause as extinct, and re-instruct M. de Bordeaux accordingly. He received credentials as Ambassador from France to the new Government.¹

The Cromwellians or Protectoratists being thus no longer a party militant, the struggle was to be a direct one between the Bumpers and the cause of Charles II. Here, however, one has to note a most extraordinary phenomenon. The cause of Charles II., by no exertion on its own part, but by the mere whirl of events between May and July, had received an enormous accession of strength. Baulked of their own. natural purpose of a preserved Protectorate constitutionally defined and guaranteed afresh, and resenting the outrage done to their latest suffrages for that end, what could many of the Cromwellians do but cease to call themselves by that now inoperative name and melt into the ranks of the Stuartists? For the veteran Cromwellians, implicated in the Regicide and its close accompaniments, this was, of course, impossible. To the last breath they must strive to keep out the King; and, as they could do so no longer as Protectoratists, they must fall in with the pure Republicans or Restored Rumpers, But for the great body of the Cromwellians, not burdened by overwhelming recollections of personal responsibility, there was no such compulsion. What mattered it to the Presbyterians, or to that younger part of the entire population which had grown into manhood since the death of Charles I., whether Kingship, which they would willingly enough have seen Oliver assume, should now come back to them with the old dynasty?

All this Charles and Hyde had been observing. From May 1659 it had been their policy to enter into communications with the more eminent of the disappointed or baulked Cromwellians, and to assure them not only of indemnity for the past, but of rewards and honours to any extent, if they would now become Royalists. Monk, Montague, Howard, Falconbridge, Broghill, and Lockhart, had all been thought of. Applications had been made even to the two Cromwells themselves, and particularly to Henry Cromwell. There seems to be a reference to that fact in the close of his fine letter to the Rump Parliament. He thanked God that he had been able to resist temptation to a course which in him, at all events, would have been infamous; and, though, he could not serve the Republican Parliament in their "further superstructures," he could wish them well on the whole, and so feel that he was remaining as true as he could be, in such perplexed circumstances, to the cause wherein his father had lived and died. Monk, without any such reservation, had already adhered to the Parliament, and Charles's letter, when it did reach him, was not even to remain in his own pocket till he should see his way more clearly. Falconbridge and Howard, those two "sons of Belial" in Desborongh's esteem, had meanwhile, I believe, let it be known that they might be reckoned on by Charles, Montague and Broghill tended that way, but were in no such haste. Lockhart had deemed it best to enter the service of the Restored Rump, and would act honourably for them while he remained their servant. Thurloe also, though not yet safe from prosecution by the new Government, thought it only fair to assist them with advices and information.¹

Meanwhile the new Government had been stoutly at work. The spirit of the "good old cause" was strong in the two or three scores of members most regularly in attendance, among whom were Vane, Marten, Ludlow, Hasilrig, Scott, Salway, Weaver, Neville, Raleigh, Lister, Walton, Say, Downes, Morley, and John Jones. Remembering the great days of the Commonwealth between 1649 and 1653, and not inquiring how much of the greatness of those days had been owing to the fact that the politicians at the centre had then a Cromwell marching over the map for them, and winning them the victories that gave them great work to do, they set themselves, with all their industry, courage, and ability, to prove to the world that those great days might be renewed without a Cromwell. The Council generally held its meetings early in the morning, so that the Council-business might not interfere with their attendance in the House. Johnstone of Warriston, though a non-Parliamentary member of the Council, at once acquired high influence in it. He, Vane, and Whitlocke, were most frequently in the chair.

A new great seal; new Commissioners for the same (Bradshaw, Tyrrell, and Fountain); new Judges; state of the public debts; orders for the sale of Hampton Court and Somerset House; suspension of the sale of Hampton Court; votes for pay of the Army and Navy; an Act of Indemnity and Oblivion; a Bill for settling the Union with Scotland; re-declarations of a Free Commonwealth, without Single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers; Irish affairs; a Vote for ending the present Parliament on the 7th of May ensuing: these mere headings will indicate much of the miscellaneous activity of the Council, or of the House, or of committees of the House, as far as to the end of July. One may glance more closely at their proceedings and intentions in two departments: (1) Church and Religion, On the 27th of June, In reply to a petition from "many thousands of the free-born people of this Commonwealth" for the abolition of Tithes, the House voted that "the payment of Tithes shall continue as now they are, unless this Parliament shall find out some other and more equal and comfortable maintenance." Evidently, therefore, the Restored Rumpers were not yet prepared to interfere materially with the Church-Establishment as it had been left by Oliver. The petition, however, which drew from them this declaration, is itself significant. In the opinion of many over the country absolute Voluntaryism in Religion was part and parcel of "the good old cause," and ought to be re-proclaimed as such, at once. Nor, though the Rumpers now refused to admit that, was sympathy with the demand wanting within their own body. The majority of the Parliament and of its Council were, indeed, orthodox Independents or Semi-Presbyterians, approving of Cromwell's Church policy, and anxious to support the existing public ministry. But Vane and some other leading Rumpers were men of mystic and extreme theological lights, pointing in the direction of Fifth-Monarchyism, Quakerism, and all other varieties of that fervency for Religion itself which would destroy mere state-paid machinery in its behalf, while a few, on the other hand, such as Neville, were cool freethinkers, contemptuous of Church and Clergy as but an apparatus for the prevalent superstition. For the present, it had been thought impolitic perhaps to divide counsels in that matter, or to give offence to the sober majority of the people by reviving the question, so much agitated between 1649 and 1653, whether pure Republicanism in politics did not necessarily involve absolute Voluntaryism in Religion; but the probability is that the question was only adjourned. In the connected question of Religious Toleration the new Government was more free at once to give effect to strong views; and, though it was not formally announced that unlimited Toleration was to be the rule of the Restored Republic, this was substantially the understanding. On the whole, Cromwell's policy in Church-matters was merely continued. (2) Relations with Foreign Powers. In this matter the rule of the new Government was a very simple one. It was to withdraw, as speedily as possible, from all foreign entanglements. No longer now could Charles Gustavus of Sweden calculate on help from England. Montague's Fleet, indeed, was still in the Baltic; Meadows was re-commissioned as envoy-in-ordinary to the Kings of Denmark and Sweden; envoys from Sweden had audiences in London; and at length, early in July, the importance of the Baltic business was fully recognised by the despatch of Algernon Sidney and Sir Robert Honeywood, two of the members of the Council of State, and Mr. Boone, a member of the House, to act as plenipotentiaries with Montague for the settlement of the differences between Sweden and Denmark and between Sweden and the Dutch. The instructions, however, were to compel the Swedish King to a pacification, and to co-operate with the Dutch and the Danes in that interest. As regarded the Dutch themselves, among whom Downing was grudgingly continued as Resident, there was the most studious care for a friendly intercourse. There was no revival now of that imperious project of the old Commonwealth Government for a union of the two Republics which had alarmed the Dutch and led to the great naval war with them. It was enough that the English should mind their own affairs, and the Dutch theirs. But the determination to have no more of Cromwell's "spirited foreign policy" was most signally manifested in the business of the French alliance and the war with Spain. That peace should be made with Spain was a foregone conclusion, and circumstances were favourable. The Spaniards, crippled by their losses in Flanders, had for some time been making overtures of peace to the French Court; these had been received the more willingly at last because of the uncertainties in which Louis XIV. and Mazarin were left by Cromwell's death; negotiations had been cleverly on foot since the beginning of the year for a treaty between the two Catholic Powers, to include the marriage of Louis XIV. with the Spanish Infanta, Maria Theresa; and, though the treaty had not been concluded, preliminaries had been so far arranged that, since May 1659, there had been a cessation of hostilities. Thus relieved already from the trouble of carrying on military operations in Flanders, the Restored Rumpers took steps to get themselves included in the Treaty in progress between the two Kings, or, if they should fail in that, to secure peace with Spain independently. This was the main business on which Lockhart had been re-commissioned as ambassador to the French Court, From Paris he went to St. Jean de Luz, at the foot of the Pyrenees, where Mazarin and the Spanish Prime Minister Don Luis de Haro were then holding their consultations. He arrived there on the 1st of August, in such ambassadorial pomp as he thought likely to credit his difficult mission. The business of that mission, was to undo the work he had done for Cromwell. Such was the will of his new masters. Dunkirk and the rest of Cromwell's acquisitions on the Continent were only a trouble; and, if any decent arrangement could be made for selling them either to France or back to Spain, why not be satisfied? War with Continental Papacy and championship of Continental Protestantism were but expensive moonshine.¹

In nothing was the Republican energy of the new Rumpers more conspicuous than in their determination to subject all forms of the public service to direct Parliamentary control. They would have all rigorously in the grasp of the little Restored House itself, until the power should be handed over to a duly constituted successor. Hence their precaution, while nominating Fleetwood Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-chief of the Forces in England and Scotland, of not giving him supreme power in appointing his officers, but making him only one of a Commission of Seven for recommending officers to the House (May 13). Persevering in this policy, and becoming even more stringent in it, notwithstanding the complaints of the Army-magnates that it showed want of confidence in their integrity, the House proceeded, May 28, to a vast remodelling of the entire Armies of England. Scotland, and Ireland. Fleetwood was confirmed in the Commandership-in-Chief for England and Scotland by a special Bill, passed June 7; and by another Bill, passed June 8, reconstituting the Commissioners for nominations of officers, it was secured not only that such nominations should require Parliamentary approval, but also that each commission to an officer should be signed by the Speaker in the name of the Parliament, and delivered, if possible, to the officer personally from the Speaker's own hands. Accordingly, on the 9th of June, Fleetwood himself was solemnly presented with a signed transcript of the Act appointing him Commander-in-Chief in England and Scotland; and from that day, on through the rest of June, the whole of July, and even into August and September, much of the business of the House consisted in passing commissions to the officers recommended, sometimes with a rejection or substitution, and in seeing the officers come up in batches to the Speaker to receive their commissions one by one, each with a lecture on his duty. As each foot-regiment, consisting of ten companies, had its colonel, its lieutenant-colonel, its major, and its quartermaster, with seven captains besides, and twenty subalterns, and as each horse-regiment, consisting of six troops, had its colonel, its major, four captains besides, six lieutenants, six cornets, and six quartermasters, one may guess the tediousness of this process of approving nominations and delivering commissions. About 1200 persons had to be approved and commissioned, or, if we throw in chaplains, surgeons, &c., about 1400 in all. Nevertheless, with certain arrangements for delivering commissions to officers at a distance, the process was carried so far that one can make out from the Journals of the House not only the general plan of the Remodelling, but even the names of a large proportion of the actually appointed officers. The essence of the scheme was, of course, that all very pronounced Cromwellians,—e.g. Falconbridge, Howard, Ingoldsby, Whalley, Barkstead, Goffe, and Pride,—should be thrown out of their commands, and men of the right stamp substituted. It is to be noticed also, however, that there were to be now properly but two Generals, and that the highest officers under these, whatever had been their previous designations, were all, with a certain courtesy exception in favour of Lambert and Monk, to rank on one level as merely Colonels. As far as to these Colonels, the result was as follows:

I. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

Commander-in-Chief: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL, CHARLES FLEETWOOD.

I. FOR, SERVICE IN ENGLAND AND WALES: 1. Colonels of Horse Regiments: John Lambert (with Richard Creed for his Major), John Desborough, James Berry (with Unton Crooke for his Major), Robert Lilburne, Francis Hacker, John Okey, William Packer (with John Gladman for his Major), Nathaniel Rich, Thomas Saunders, and Herbert Morley. 2. Colonels of Foot-Regiments: Lieutenant-General Fleetwood, Lambert, Robert Overton, Matthew Alured, John Hewson (with John Duckinfield for his Lieutenant-Colonel), John Biscoe, William Sydenham, Edward Salmon, Richard Mosse, Richard Ashfield, Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Thomas Kelsay, John Clerk, Robert Gibbon, Robert Barrow.—One finds, besides, certain Colonels appointed to garrison commands: e.g. Colonel Thomas Fitch to be Governor of the Tower, Colonel Nathaniel Whetham to be Governor of Portsmouth, Colonel Mark Grimes to be Governor of Cardiff Overton was Governor of Hall as well as Colonel of a Foot-Regiment; and Alured had charge of the Life-Guard of the House and the Council at Westminster,—All these appointments were actually made; other colonelcies probably stood over for consideration.—In the Journals Lambert is styled "Major-General Lambert," but that was only by courtesy. He had no commission with that title; and Ludlow makes a point of marking this by always calling him "Colonel Lambert" only. His distinction was in holding two colonelcies together, one of Foot and one of Horse.

II. FOR SERVICE IN SCOTLAND:—Here, probably because of Monk's passive resistance, the reorganization was less completely carried out; but the intention seems to have been that Monk, though in courtesy he might still be called "General Monk," should have only, by actual commission, the same distinction of double colonelcy that Lambert had in England. He had a Regiment of Foot and also one of Horse; and among the other Colonels were, or were to be, Thomas Talbot (at Edinburgh), Timothy Wilkes (at Leith), Ralph Cobbet (at Glasgow), Roger Sawrey (at Ayr), Charles Fairfax (at Aberdeen), Thomas Read (at Stirling, with John Clobery for his Lieutenant-Colonel), Henry Smith (at Inverness), John Pierson (at Perth), the veteran Thomas Morgan of Flanders celebrity (a Dragoon Regiment), and Philip Twistleton (a Horse Regiment). One or two of these were substitutions for officers whom Monk preferred.

II. IRELAND.

Commander-in-Chief: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL EDMUND LUDLOW.

Ludlow, after having been commissioned to an English Colonelcy of Foot, was removed to this higher post, in succession to Henry Cromwell, July 4, not with the title of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, but with the military title of "Lieutenant-General of Horse." For the Civil Government of Ireland there were associated with him, under the title of Commissioners, Colonel John Jones, William Steele, Robert Goodwyn, Colonel Matthew Tomlinson, and Miles Corbet. Ludlow did not go to Ireland till late in July or early in August; and he had stipulated, in accepting the Irish command-in-chief, that he should be at liberty to return to England on occasion.

Probably because Ludlow's recommendations from Ireland were waited for, fewer commissions were actually issued for Ireland than for England and Scotland. Ludlow himself, with Lambert and Monk, had the distinction of a Colonelcy of Horse and one of Foot together; and other Colonels appointed were Thomas Cooper, Richard Lawrence, Alexander Brayfield, Thomas Sadler, and Henry Markham, for Foot-Regiments, and Jerome Zanchy, Peter Wallis, and Daniel Axtell, for Horse-Regiments. Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, Theophilus Jones, and others to be heard of in Ludlow's memoirs, were still on duty in their old Colonelcies when he arrived in Ireland.

In exactly the same way was the Navy to be brought within Parliamentary grasp. John Lawson, an assured Commonwealth's man, having been appointed Vice-Admiral and Commander-in-Chief in the narrow seas (to counterbalance the Cromwellian Montague), received his commission from the Speaker's hands on the 8th of June; such captains and other officers for Lawson's Fleet as were at hand received their commissions in the same manner; and commissions signed by the Speaker were sent out to the flag-officers, captains, and lieutenants in Montague's Baltic Fleet.—More a matter of wonder still was the re-organization of the Militia of the Cities and Counties of all England and Wales. The regular Army could not but remark the extreme attention of the Parliament to the recruiting and re-officering of this vast civilian soldiery. A Bill for settling the Militia, brought in on the 2nd of July, passed on the 26th; and from that time there was a stream of Militia officers from the counties, just as of the Regulars, to receive their commissions from the Speaker. Old Skippon was re-appointed in his natural position as Major-General of the Militia for the City of London (July 27) and Commander-In-Chief of all the Forces within, the Weekly Bills (Aug. 2); and Lord Mayor John Ireton was one of the City Colonels.¹

The energetic little Rump and its Council were in the midst of all this re-organizing and re-officering of the Forces of the Commonwealth when a demand suddenly burst upon them for the actual service of a portion of those forces, such as they were.

After a long period of judicious quiet, Hyde and the other Councillors of Charles abroad, in advice with the Royalists at home, had resolved on testing the King's improved chances by a general insurrection. The arrangements had been made chiefly by Mr. John Mordaunt (see ante p. 337), Sir John Greenville, Sir Thomas Peyton, Mr. Arthur Annesley, and Mr. William Legge. These five had been the authorized commissioners for the King in England since March last in place of the former secret commissioners of the Sealed Knot; and Mordaunt had been in Brussels to consult with Charles. In idea at least the arrangements had been most formidable. The conspiracy had its network through all England and Wales, and included not only the old Royalists, but also the more numerous Presbyterians and other baulked Cromwellians, now known collectively as "new Royalists." Mordaunt himself, with other friends, had undertaken Surrey; Sir George Booth was to lead in Lancashire and Cheshire, where his influence with the Presbyterians was boundless; old Sir Thomas Middleton was to head the rising in Shrepshire and Flintshire; the Earl of Stamford that in Leicestershire; Lord Willoughby of Parham that in Suffolk; Colonel Egerton that in Staffordshire; Colonel Rossiter that in Lincolnshire; Lord Herbert and Major-General Massey were to rouse Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and the Welsh border; and there were commissions from Charles to known persons in other counties, with blank commissions besides. The Duke of Buckingham, the Earls of Manchester, Derby, Northampton, and Oxford, Lord Fairfax, Lord Bruce, Lord Falkland, Lord Falconbridge, Sir William Waller, Colonel Popham, Colonel Ingoldsby, Mr. Edmund Dunch, and many others, were all implicated, or reported as implicated. Major-General Browne had been sounded, with a view to a rising of the London Presbyterians. Moreover, there had been communications from Charles himself to Admiral Montague in the Baltic, begging him to declare for the cause, and bring his fleet, or at least his own ship, home for use. There had been special devices also for bringing Monk into the confederacy. "I am confident that George Monk can have no malice in his heart against me, nor hath he done anything against me which I cannot easily pardon," Charles had written to Sir John Greenville on the 21st of July, authorizing him to treat with Monk, who was a distant relative of Greenville's, and to offer him whatever reward in lands and titles he might himself propose as the price of his adhesion. With this letter there had gone one to be conveyed by Greenville to Monk. "I cannot think you will decline my interest," Charles there said, adding various kind expressions, and offering to leave the time and manner of Monk's declaring for him entirely to Monk's own judgment. The letter had not yet been delivered, but much was expected from it. Meanwhile, as it was deemed essential to the success of the insurrection that Charles himself should come to England, he, Ormond, the Earl of Bristol, and one or two others, went, with all possible privacy, from Brussels to Calais. The Duke of York was to follow them thither, or to Boulogne; and all were to embark together.¹

As usual, there was great bungling. On the one hand, Thurloe's means of intelligence being still wonderfully goods, if only because the Royalist traitor Sir Richard Willis still maintained with him the curious compact made with Cromwell, and Thurloe's information being at the disposal of the Rump Government, there had been time for some precautions on their part, Through the whole of July 30 and July 31 the Council, with Whitlocke for President, were busy with examinations. On the other hand, and chiefly through the agency of Willis himself, doubts and hesitations had already arisen among the confederates. It had all along been Willis's good-natured policy to balance his treachery in revealing the Royalist plans by preventing his friends from running upon ruin by executing those plans; and this policy he had again been pursuing. Now, though Charles had by this time been made aware of Sir Richard's long course of treachery, and had privately informed Mordaunt of the extraordinary discovery, the fact had been too little divulged to destroy the effects of Sir Richard's counsels of wariness and delay, agreeable as these naturally were to men fearing for their lives and estates and remembering the failure of all previous insurrections. In short, whatever was the cause, August 1, which had been the day fixed for a simultaneous rising in many places, passed with far less demonstration than had been promised. Mordaunt and a few of his friends tried a rendezvous in Surrey, only to find it useless; in several other places those who straggled together dispersed themselves at once; in Gloucestershire, where Major-General Massey, Lord Herbert, and their associates, did appear more openly, the affair ended in the arrest or surrender of the leaders, Massey escaping after having been taken. Only in Cheshire, where Sir George Booth was the leader, did a considerable body rise in arms. Booth, the Earl of Derby, Colonel Egerton, and a number of others, having met at Warrington, issued a proclamation in which no mention was made of the King, but it was merely declared that certain "Lords, Gentlemen, and Citizens, Freeholders and Yeomen, in this once happy nation," tired of the existing anarchy and tyranny, had resolved to do what they could to recover liberty and free Parliamentary Government. Hundreds and hundreds flocking to their standard, they marched on Chester and took the city without opposition, though the castle held out. The agitation then extended itself into Flintshire, where the aged Sir Thomas Middleton distinguished himself by brandishing his sword in the market-place of Wrexham and proclaiming the King. Various castles and garrisons in the two counties fell in, and Presbyterian Lancashire was also in commotion. Sir George Booth found himself at the head of between 4000 and 5000 men, and it remained to be seen whether the movement he had begun so boldly in Cheshire, Flintshire, and Lancashire, might not spread itself northwards, eastwards, and southwards, and so do the work of the universal rising originally projected. It was hoped that his Majesty himself, instead of landing in the south of England, as had been proposed, would appear soon in the district that had so happily taken the initiative.¹

After some hesitations among the Rumpers in London on the question what officer should be sent against Sir George Booth, it was resolved to send Lambert. He set out on the 6th of August, with three regiments of horse, three of foot, one of dragoons, and a train of artillery; and orders were sent for other forces to join him on his march, and for bringing two regiments from Ireland and three from Flanders. Communications were to be kept up between Lambert and the Council at Westminster by messengers twice or thrice every day. Such incessant communication was very necessary. Over England, Scotland, and Ireland, the talk was of Sir George Booth's Insurrection, with much exaggeration of its dimensions, and speculation as to its chances. Old and new Royalists everywhere, and men who had not yet declared themselves Royalists, were waiting for news that might determine their course.—Above all, Monk at Dalkeith was looking southwards with interest, and timing the arrival of each post-bag In Edinburgh. He had then a visitor at Dalkeith, in the person of his brother, the Rev. Mr. Nicholas Monk, minister of Kilhampton parish in Cornwall, This gentleman had come to take home his daughter, who had been living with Monk, a suitable husband having now been found for her in England. But he had come on a little piece of business besides. His Cornish living had been given him, about a year before, by Sir John Greenville; and Sir John had thought him the very man to be employed in bringing round Monk to the King's interest. He had, accordingly, gone from Cornwall to London, had seen Greenville there and received instructions, and had also consulted Dr. Thomas Clarges, Monk's brother-in-law, and his trusty agent in London, Clarges, without committing himself on the special subject of the mission, easily procured a passage to Scotland by sea for Mr. Nicholas Monk. He sailed for Leith, Aug. 5. He had not run the risk of carrying with him the King's letters to Monk and Greenville; but he had got their substance by heart. And so, having first sounded Monk's domestic chaplain, Dr. John Price, who was of Royalist proclivities too, he had opened to Monk the fact that his sole purpose In coming was not to bring back his daughter. He told him of the King's commission to Greenville to treat with him, of the King's letter to himself, of the extent of the confederacy for the King in England, and of the hopes that Sir George Booth's rising in Cheshire would yet bring out the confederacy in its full strength. This was late at night in Dalkeith House, when the two brothers were by themselves. "The thinking silent General," we are told, listened and asked a few questions, but, as usual, said not a word expressing either assent or dissent. Through the next few days he and Dr. Price, with Dr. Thomas Gumble, the Presbyterian chaplain to the Council in Edinburgh, and Dr. Samuel Barrow, chief physician to the Army in Scotland, were much together in private over a Remonstrance or Declaratory Letter, to be sent to the ruling Junto in Westminster, "the substance of which was to represent to them their own and the nation's dissatisfaction at the long and continued session of this Parliament, desiring them to fill up their members, and to proceed in establishing such rules for future elections that the Commonwealth Government might be secured by frequent and successive Parliaments." The letter had been drafted by Dr. Price, agreed to at a meeting in Dr. Price's room on Sunday after evening sermon, and signed by the four and by Adjutant Jeremiah Smith; and Adjutant Smith was waiting for his horse to go into Edinburgh, taking the letter with him for the signatures of other likely officers, when Monk returned to the room and said it would be better to wait for the next post from England. Next day the post came, with such news that the letter was burnt and all concerned in it were enjoined to secrecy.—The news was that Sir George Booth's Insurrection had been totally and easily crushed by Lambert (August 17-19). Colonel Egerton and other prisoners of importance had been taken; Sir Thomas Middleton had capitulated; Sir George Booth himself and the Earl of Derby had escaped, but only to be taken a few days afterwards.¹

At Westminster, where the good news was received Aug. 20, and more fully Aug. 22 and Aug. 23, all was exultation. A jewel worth £1000 was voted to Lambert, and there were to be rewards to his officers and soldiers out of the estates of the delinquents. Since Lambert had gone, there had been farther searches after delinquents; and, through the rest of August and the whole of September, both the Council and the House proceeded with inquiries and examinations relating to the Insurrection. Among those committed to the Tower, besides Sir George Booth and Lord Herbert, were the Earl of Oxford, Sir William Waller ("upon suspicion of high treason," aggravated by his refusal to pledge his honour not to act against the Government), Lord Falconbridge (discharged on bail of £10,000, Oct. 8), and Sir Thomas Leventhorpe. The Earl of Derby, the Earl of Chesterfield, and Lord Willoughby of Parham, in custody in the country, were to be brought to London; proclamations were out against Mordaunt and Massey; and the Duke of Buckingham, Sir Henry Yelverton, the poet Davenant, the Earl of Stamford, Denzil Holies, and many others, including some Presbyterian ministers, were under temporary arrest or otherwise in trouble. Vane and Hasilrig conducted the inquiries as cautiously as possible, and with every desire not to multiply prosecutions too much. Thus, Admiral Montague, who had suddenly left the Baltic with his whole fleet, against the will and in spite of the remonstrances of his fellow-plenipotentiaries, Sidney, Honeywood, and Boone, and who arrived off the English coast Sept. 10, only to know that the Royalist revolt was at an end, and that any intentions he may have had in connexion with it must be concealed, was not called in question for his strange conduct. He came boldly to London, reported himself to the Council of State, explained that he had come back for provisions, &c., and was more or less believed.—For, in fact, the Council itself, and the House itself, contained more open culprits. Sir Horatio Townshend had shown himself in his true colours, and had been among the first apprehended; and, though the wily Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper cleared himself before a committee of the Council appointed to investigate a charge against him, strong suspicions remained. On the 8th of August, just after Lambert had marched against Booth, there had been a call of the House with the result that Mr. Peter Brooke and Mr, Edmund Dunch, two members who had never attended and about whom there were evil reports, were fined £100 each; and on the 13th of September, while Dunch's fine was remitted on explanations given, Brooke, who had actually been in arms with Booth, was brought to the bar of the House in custody, disabled from sitting in Parliament, and sent to the Tower on a charge of high treason. Again, on the 30th of September, there was a call of the House, when fines of £100 were inflicted on Henry Arthington (Rec., O²), John Carew (*Rec., B), Thomas Mackworth (Rec., O¹, O², R), Alexander Popham (O¹, O², R), Richard Norton (Rec., B, O¹, O², R), and John Stephens (Rec., R). These six, I imagine, were so punished as having never attended the House, and as notoriously contumacious or disaffected. But the House took the opportunity of punishing with smaller fines, ranging from £5 to £40, twenty-five members who had been attending of late too negligently; among whom were Lord Chief Justice St. John, Viscount Lisle, Lord Commissioner Lisle, Colonel Hutchinson, and Colonel Philip Jones. At the same time they made an example of Major-General Harrison (*Rec., O¹, R). He, of course, had never attended in the Restored Rump, for the very good reason that he had been Cromwell's chief aider and abettor in the dissolution of the Rump in April 1653. Remembering that fact, the House now ejected him altogether, and declared him incapable of ever sitting in a Parliament. There was, of course, no suspicion of his complicity with the Royalists, nor of the complicity of many that had been fined £5 or £20. The House, in its hour of triumph, was merely settling all scores together.—In what high spirits Lambert's victory had put the Rumpers appears from the fact that the House ordered the release of the Quaker James Nayler at last (Sept. 8), and from such half-jocular entries in the Order Books of the Council (Aug. 22 et seq.) as that Colonel Sydenham, Mr. Neville, or some other member of the Council, or Mr. Brewster, a member of the Parliament, should "have a fat buck of this season" out of the New Forest, Hampton Court Park, or some other deer-preserve of the Commonwealth. The attendances in the Council through August and September averaged from twelve to sixteen, and generally included Whitlocke, Vane, Bradshaw, Hasilrig, Scott, Johnstone of Warriston, Neville, Salway, Walton, Berry, and Sydenham. Fleetwood and Desborough were more rarely present.¹

Precisely in this time of triumph after Lambert's success did the Rumpers find leisure to address themselves to the question of the Form of Government they were to set up in the Commonwealth before retiring from the scene themselves. It was on the 8th of September that, after some previous debates in the House, it was referred to a committee of twenty-nine "to prepare something to be offered to the House in order to the settlement of the Government of this Commonwealth." The Committee was to sit from day to day, and to report on or before the 10th of October. Vane was named first on the Committee, which included also Hasilrig, Whitlocke, Marten, Neville, Fleetwood, Sydenham, Salway, Scott, Chief Justice St. John, Downes, Strickland, and Sir Gilbert Pickering. What a work for a Committee! It was predetermined, of course, that the Constitution they were to concoct was to be one suitable for a Free Commonwealth or Republic, without King, Single Person of any other denomination, or House of Lords; but, even within that prelimitation, what a range of possibilities! Nor were the Committee to be perplexed only by the varieties of their own inventiveness in the art of constitution-making. All the theorists and ideologists of England, Scotland, and Ireland, were on the alert to help them, Ludlow's summary of the various proposals made within the Committee itself, or pressed upon it from the outside, is worth quoting. "At this time," he says, "the opinions of men were much divided concerning a Form of Government to be established amongst us. The great officers of the Army, as I said before, were for a Select Standing Senate, to be joined to the Representative of the People. Others laboured to have the supreme authority to consist of an Assembly chosen by the People, and a Council of State to be chosen by that Assembly, to be vested with executive power, and accountable to that which should next succeed, at which time the power of the said Council should determine. Some were desirous to have a Representative of the People constantly sitting, but changed by a perpetual rotation. Others proposed that there might be joined to the Popular Assembly a select number of men in the nature of the Lacedæmonian Ephori, who should have a negative in things wherein the essentials of the Government should be concerned, such as the exclusion of a Single Person, touching Liberty of Conscience, alteration of the Constitution, and other things of the last importance to the State. Some were of opinion that it would be most conducive to the public happiness if there might be two Councils chosen by the People, the one to consist of about 300, and to have the power only of debating and proposing laws, the other to be in number about 1000, and to have the power finally to resolve and determine—every year a third part to go out and others to be chosen in their places." There were differences, Ludlow adds, as to the proper composition of the body that should consider and frame the new Constitution. Some were for referring the deliberation to twenty Parliament men and ten representatives of the Army, and proposed that, when these had agreed on a model, it should be submitted first to the whole Army in a grand rendezvous. Parliament, however, had settled the method of procedure so far by appointing the present Committee.¹

Of the varieties of political theorists glanced at by Ludlow the most famous at this time were the Harringtonians or Rota-men. Some account of them is here necessary.

Their chief or founder was James Harrington, quite a different person from the "Sir James Harrington" now of the Council of State. He was the "Mr. James Harrington" who had been one of the grooms of the bedchamber to Charles I. in his captivity at Holmby and in the Isle of Wight (Vol. III. p. 700). Even then he had been a political idealist of a certain Republican fashion, and it had been part of the King's amusement in his captivity to hold discourses with him and draw out his views.—After the King's death, Harrington, cherishing very affectionate recollections of his Majesty personally, had lived for some years among his books, writing verses, translating Virgil's Eclogues, and dreaming dreams. Especially he had been prosecuting those speculations in the science of politics which had fascinated him since his student days at Oxford. He read Histories; he studied and digested the political writings of Aristotle, Plato, Macchiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, and others; he added observations of his own, collected during his extensive travels in France, Germany, and Italy; he admired highly the constitution of the Venetian Republic, and derived hints from it; and, altogether, the result was that he came forth from his seclusion with a more perfect theory and ideal of a body-politic, as he believed, than had yet been explained to the world. He had convinced himself "that no government is of so accidental or arbitrary an institution as people are apt to imagine, there being in societies natural causes producing their necessary effects, as well as in the earth or the air"; and one of these natural causes he had discovered in the great principle or axiom "that Empire follows the Balance of Property." The troubles and confusions In England for the last few ages were to be attributed, he thought, not so much to faults in the governors or in the governed as to a change in the balance of property, dating from the reign of Henry VII., which had gradually shifted the weight of affairs from the King and Lords to the Commons. But all could be put right by adopting a true model. It must not be an arbitrary monarchy, or a mixed monarchy, or a mere democracy as vulgarly understood, or any other of the make-shift constitutions of the past, but something worthy of being called a Free and Equal Commonwealth, and yet conserving what was genuine and natural in rank or aristocracy. The basis must be a systematic classification of the community in accordance with facts and needs, and the arrangements such as to give full liberty to all, while distributing power among all in such ways and proportions as to keep the balance eternally even and make factions and contests impossible. These arrangements, as he had schemed them out, were to be very numerous and complicated, every kind of social assemblage or activity, from the most local and parochial to the most general and national, having an exact machinery provided for it; but two all-pervading principles were to be election by Ballot and rotation of Eligibility.—Harrington's ideal had been set forth in a thin folio volume, entitled The Commonwealth of Oceana, published in 1656, and dedicated to Cromwell. The book was in the form of a political romance, with high-flown dialogues, and a very fantastic nomenclature for his proposed dignities and institutions, throwing the whole into the air of poetic or literary whimsy. There was, however, an elaborate exposition of the system and process of the Ballot. Though too fantastic for direct effect, the book had been a good deal talked of, and had procured for the author not only a considerable reputation, but also some following of disciples. One of these, and his intimate friend, was the Republican free-thinker Henry Neville. There had also been some criticisms by opponents, Royalist and Republican; in answer to which Harrington, in 1658, had published a second treatise, called The Prerogative of Popular Government, re-interpreting and vindicating the doctrines of the Oceana, but more in a style of direct dissertation.—The Harringtonians were by this time pretty numerous. Besides Neville there were perhaps six or eight of them among the Rumpers themselves. Why, then, should there not be an effort to impregnate the "Good Old Cause," sadly in need of new impregnation of some kind, with a few of the essential Harringtonian principles? By Neville's means the effort had been actually made in the Parliament. On the 6th of July there had been presented a petition from "divers well-affected persons," to which the petitioners "might have had many thousand hands" besides their own, had they not preferred relying on the inherent strength of their case. The answer of the House, through the Speaker, had been most gracious. They perceived that this was a petition "without any private ends and only for public interest"; and they assured the petitioners that the business to which the petition referred, viz. the settlement of a Constitution for the Commonwealth, was one in which the House intended "to go forward." There is nothing in the Journals to indicate the nature of the petition; but it had been drawn up by Harrington and may be read in his Works. It abjured, in the strongest terms, Kingship or Single-Person Sovereignty in any form, and particularly "the interest of the late King's son"; but it represented the existing state of things as chaotic, and urged the adoption of a definite Constitution for England, the legislative part of which should consist of two Parliamentary Houses, both to be elected by the whole body of the People. One was to contain about 300 members, and was to have the power of debating and propounding laws; the other was to be much larger, and was to pass or reject the laws so propounded. Great stress was laid on Rotation in the elections to both. "There cannot," said the petitioners, "be a union of the interests of a whole nation in the Government where those that shall sometimes govern be not also sometimes in the condition of the governed"; and hence they proposed that annually a third part of each of the two Houses should wheel out of the House, not to be re-eligible for a considerable period, and their places to be taken by newly elected members. Thus every third year the stuff of each House would be entirely changed.—Not content with petitioning Parliament, the Harringtonians disseminated their ideas vigorously through the press. A Discourse showing that the spirit of a Parliament with a Council in the intervals is not to be trusted for a Settlement, lest it introduce Monarchy, was a pamphlet of Harrington's, published July 28; another, published Aug. 31, was entitled Aphorisms Political, and consisted of a series of brief propositions: e.g. "Nature is of God," "The Union with Scotland, as it is vulgarly discoursed of, is destructive both to the hopes of a Commonwealth and to Liberty in Scotland." There were to be other and still other publications, by Harrington or his disciples, through the rest of the year, including, for popular effect, a copper engraving of an Assembly in full session, watching the dropping of noble voting-balls into splendid urns. But this was not all. The Harringtonians set up their famous debating club, called The Rota. "In 1659, in the beginning of Michaelmas term," says Anthony Wood, "they had every night a meeting at the then Turk's Head in the New Palace Yard at Westminster (the next house to the stairs where people take water), called Miles's coffee-house—to which place their disciples and virtuosi would commonly then repair: and their discourses about Government and of ordering of a Commonwealth were the most ingenious and smart that ever were heard, for the arguments in the Parliament House were but flat to those. This gang had a balloting box, and balloted how things should be carried, by way of tentamens; which being not used or known in England before upon this account, the room every evening was very full. Besides our author and H. Neville, who were the prime men of this club, were Cyriack Skinner, ... (which Skinner sometimes held the chair), Major John Wildman, Charles Wolseley of Staffordshire, Rog. Coke, Will. Poulteney, afterwards a knight (who sometimes held the chair), Joh. Hoskyns, Joh. Aubrey, Maximilian Pettie of Tetsworth in Oxfordshire, a very able man in these matters, ... Mich. Mallet, Ph. Carteret of the Isle of Guernsey, Franc. Cradock a merchant, Hen. Ford, Major Venner, ... Tho. Marriett of Warwickshire, Henry Croone a physician, Edward Bagshaw of Christ Church, and sometimes Rob. Wood of Linc. Coll., and James Arderne, then or soon afterwards a divine, with many others, besides antagonists and auditors of note whom I cannot now name. Dr. Will. Petty was a Rota-man, and would sometimes trouble Ja. Harrington in his Club; and one Stafford, a gent. of Northamptonshire, who used to be an auditor, did with his gang come among them one evening very mellow from the tavern, and did much affront the junto, and tore in pieces their orders and minutes. The soldiers who commonly were there, as auditors and spectators, would have kicked them down stairs; but Harrington's moderation and persuasion hindered them. The doctrine was very taking, and the more because as to human foresight there was no possibility of the King's return. The greatest of the Parliament men hated this design of rotation and ballotting, as being against their power. Eight or ten were for it." By Wood's dating in this passage, the Harrington or Rota Club must have been in full operation shortly after the appointment, Sept. 8, of the great Committee of Parliament on the new Constitution. Neville was one of that Committee, and the popularity of the Club among the soldiers and citizens must have strengthened his hands in the Committee. Indeed for five months the Rota Club was to be one of the busiest and most attractive institutions in London, yielding more amusement of an intellectual kind than any such meetings as those of the few physicists left in London to be the nucleus of the future Royal Society. It is worthy of remark that Harrington and the chief Harringtonians looked with contempt on these physical philosophers. What were their occupations over drugs, water-tubs, and the viscera of frogs, compared with great researches into human nature and plans for the government of states? Dr. William Petty, who belonged to both bodies, seems to have taken pleasure in troubling the Rota with his doubts and interrogatives.¹

While the Rota was holding its first meetings, the Rump and the Wallingford-House Party were again in deadly quarrel. More and more the resolute proceedings of the pure Republicans for subjecting the Army completely to the Parliament had alienated the Army magnates. The reviewing by Parliament of all nominations for commissions, the discharging of this officer and the bringing in of that, the delivering out of the commissions by the Speaker to the officers individually, were brooded over as insults. What was the intrinsic worth of this little so-called Parliament, what were its rights, that it should so treat the Army that had set it up, and one company of which could turn it out of doors in five minutes? Though brooding thus, the Army chiefs had contented themselves with rare attendance in the House or the Council, and had made no active demonstration. They were perhaps doubtful whether the spirit of submission to the Parliament might not be now pretty general among the inferior officers, all with their bran-new commissions from the Speaker himself. But the insurrection of Sir George Booth, and the march of Lambert's brigade into Cheshire to quell it, and the quick and signal success of that enterprise, had given them the opportunity of testing the Army's real feelings. Had not the Array now again a title to remember that it ought to be something more than a mere instrument of the existing civil authority? Was it not still the old English Army, always doing the real hard work of the State, and entitled therefore to some real voice in State-affairs? Where would the Rump have been, where would the Republic have been, but for this service of Lambert's brigade? These were the questions asked in Lambert's brigade itself, more free to put such questions and to discuss them because of the distance from London; but there were communications between Lambert's brigade and the centre at Wallingford House, with arrangements for concerted action.

As was fitting, the first bolt came from Lambert's brigade. At a meeting of about fifty officers of that brigade, held at Derby on the 16th of September, it was agreed, after discussion, to appoint a small committee to draw up the sense of the meeting in due form. Lambert himself then came quietly to London, where he was on the 20th, with several of his leading officers. The issue of the committee left at Derby was a petition to Parliament in the name of "the Officers under the command of the Right Honourable the Lord Lambert in the late northern expedition." The petition was to be presented to Parliament when fully signed; but meanwhile a copy of it was sent up to Colonel Ashfield, Colonel Cobbet, and Lieutenant-Colonel Duckinfield, then in London, to be given, with a letter, to Fleetwood as Commander-in-chief, that so it might be brought before the General Council of Officers. On the 22nd the House, having heard of the nature of the Petition, required that the original document should be forthcoming for inspection, and that Fleetwood should at once produce his copy. The copy sufficed for all purposes of information. The Petition consisted of a Preamble and five Articles. It was full of a spirit of dissatisfaction, with complaints of the prevalence everywhere of "apostates, malignants, and neuters"; but its specific demands were two. One was that the semi-Cromwellian petition of the General Council of Officers at Wallingford House of date May 12, 1659 (ante pp. 449-450), "may not be laid asleep, but may have fresh life given unto it." The other was that Fleetwood, whose term of office was just expiring, should be fixed in the Commandership-in-chief, that Lambert should be made general officer and chief commander next under him, that Desborough should be third as chief officer of the Horse, and Monk fourth as chief commander of the Infantry. On the 23rd these demands, and the attitude which they signified, were discussed in the House, with shut doors, and in great excitement, Hasilrig leading the fury. Here was latent Cromwellianism, or threatened single-person Government over again, the soft Fleetwood to stop the gap meanwhile, but Lambert, once he was made general officer and nominally second, to emerge as the new Cromwell! This was what was felt, if not said; and it was resolved "That this House doth declare that to have any more general officers in the Army than are already settled by the Parliament is needless, chargeable, and dangerous to the Commonwealth." A motion for censoring the Petition was negatived by thirty-one to twenty-five (Neville and Scott telling for the minority); but it was ordered that Fleetwood should communicate the Resolution to the officers of the Army and admonish them of their irregular proceedings.¹

Wallingford House itself now took up the controversy, There were meetings and meetings of the General Conncil of the officers, cautious at first, but gradually swelling into a chorus of anger over the indignity put upon their brethren of Lambert's northern expedition. There were dissenters who wanted to wait and have Monk's advice, but they were overborne. On the 5th of October Desborough and some others were in the House with a petition signed by 230 officers then about London. It consisted of a long preamble and nine proposals. The preamble complained generally of the misrepresentation, by some, "to evil and sinister ends," of the petition and proposals of the faithful officers of Lambert's brigade, and avowed the continued fidelity of the Army officers to Commonwealth principles, their repudiation of single-person Government, and their desire to be at one with the Parliament. The articles did not repeat the exact demands of the petition of the Lambert brigade, but asked for an immediate settlement somehow of the Commandership-in-chief, for justice in all ways to the Army, and especially for a guarantee that no officer or soldier should be cashiered "without a due proceeding at a court-martial." The debate on this Petition was begun on the 8th of October. The House was still in a most resolute mood. They had received assurances from Monk of his decided sympathies with them rather than with the Wallingford-House Council, and they believed still in the disinclination of many of the officers in England to follow Lambert and Desborough to extremities. Accordingly, taking up the proposals of the Petition one by one, they formulated answers to the first and second on Oct. 10, and answers to the next three on the 11th, all in a strain of high Parliamentary authority. At this point, however, the House interrupted its consideration of the Petition to hurry through a Bill of very vital consequence at such a juncture. It was a Bill annulling, from and after May 7, 1659, all Acts, Orders, or Ordinances passed by any Single Person and His Council, or by any pretended Parliament or other pretended authority between the 19th of April 1653 (the day before Cromwell's dissolution of the Rump) and the 7th of May 1659 (the day of the Restoration of the Rump), except in so far as these had been confirmed by the present Parliament, and farther declaring it high treason for any person or persons, after Oct. 11, 1659, to assess, levy, collect, or receive, any tax, impost, or money contribution whatsoever, on or from the subjects of the Commonwealth, without their consent in Parliament, or as by law might have been done before Nov. 3, 1640. This comprehensive Act, calculated to overawe the Army Magnates by debarring them from all power of money-raising, had been hurried through because of signs that nothing less would avail, if even that would now suffice. Not only had copies of the Army Petition of the 5th been circulated in print, but there had been letters, with copies of the Petition, to various important officers away from London, Monk in chief, urging them to obtain subscriptions in their regiments, and forward the same immediately to Wallingford House. One such letter, signed by Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Kelsay, Ashfield, Cobbet, Packer, Barrow, and Major Creed, had been misdelivered by chance to Colonel Okey, now on the side of the Parliament; and Okey gave it to Hasilrig. The letter itself was one on which action might be taken, and an incident determined the House to very decisive action indeed. Precisely on that 11th of October when the House had formulated their answers to the Army Petition as far as to the fifth Article, and when they also passed the Bill so comprehensively asserting and guarding their own sole prerogative, Mr. Nicholas Monk arrived in London from Scotland, with powers from his brother to Dr. Clarges to let the Parliament know that he would stand by them against the Wallingford-House party, and would, if necessary, march into England for their support. Next morning, Oct. 12, this news was buzzed among the Republican leaders of the House, and with prodigious effect. The misdelivered letter was read and discussed; and, after a division, on the previous question, of fifty (Mildmay and Lister tellers) against fifteen (Colonel Rich and Alderman Pennington tellers), it was resolved "That the several commissions of these several persons, viz. Colonel John Lambert, Colonel John Desborough, Colonel James Berry, Colonel Thomas Kelsay, Colonel Richard Ashfield, Colonel Ealph Cobbet, Major Richard Creed, Colonel William Packer, and Colonel William Barrow, who have subscribed the said Letter, shall be, and are hereby, made null and void, and they and every of them be, and are hereby, discharged from all military employment." The House then vested the entire government of the Army in a commission of seven,—to wit, Fleetwood, Ludlow, Monk, Hasilrig, Colonel Walton, Colonel Morley, and Colonel Overton, any three to be a quorum; and, having ordered the regiments of Morley and Okey, and a part of that of Colonel Mosse, to be on guard in Westminster through the night, they rose with the consciousness of a bold day's work.¹

Next day, Thursday Oct. 13, there was no House at all. An entry in the Journals of the House, subsequently inserted, explains why. "This day," runs the entry, "the late Principal Officers of the Army, whose commissions were vacated, drew up forces in and about Westminster, obstructed all passages both by land and water, stopped the Speaker on his way, and placed and continued guards upon and about the doors of the Parliament House, and so interrupted the members from coming to the House and attending their service there." This is a very correct summary of the incidents of more than twelve hours. Lambert had resolved to do the feat, and he managed it in the manner described. Morley's regiment and Mosse's regiment were faithfully on guard round the House as ordered, and Okey would have been there too had not his men deserted him; but the House was to remain empty. Lambert had taken care of that by posting regiments in an outer ring round Morley's and Mosse's, so as to block all accesses. Speaker Lenthall, trying to pass in his coach, was stopped by Lieutenant-Colonel Duckinfield, and turned back with civility to his house in Covent Garden; and so with the members generally. A few did break through and get in, among whom was Sir Peter Wentworth, who had come by water with a stout set of boatmen. This was in the morning; and through the rest of the day Lambert was riding about, coming up now and then to Morley's men or Mosse's and haranguing them. Would they suffer nine of their old officers to be disgraced and ruined? There were waverings and slidings-off towards Lambert, perhaps a general tendency to him; but for some hours the opposed masses stood within pistol-shot of each other, Morley and Mosse refusing to yield their trust, and neither side willing to begin a battle. The citizens of London and Westminster waited the issue and had no desire to interfere. The Council of State, however, had met in Whitehall; all stray members of the House, though not of the Council, had been invited to join them; and there was thus a sufficient gathering of both parties to negotiate an agreement. Not till the evening was this finally arranged; but then orders were sent out, in the name of the Council of State, to the regiments on both sides to go peaceably to their quarters. The orders were most gladly obeyed. The information that went forth to the citizens, and that was circulated over the country in letters, was that the Council of Officers "had been necessitated to obstruct the sitting of the Parliament for the present," but would themselves take all necessary charge of the public peace till there should be a more regular authority. In fact, the Rump had been dissolved a second time after a restored session, of five months.¹

CHAPTER I.

Second Section (continued).

THE ANARCHY, STAGE II.: OR THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERREGNUM: OCT. 13, 1659-DEC. 26, 1659.

THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: ITS COMMITTEE OF SAFETY: BEHAVIOUR OF LUDLOW AND OTHER LEADING REPUBLICANS: DEATH OF BRADSHAW.—ARMY-ARRANGEMENTS OF THE NEW GOVERNMENT: FLEETWOOD, LAMBERT, AND DESBOROUGH THE MILITARY CHIEFS: DECLARED CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE RUMP BY MONK IN SCOTLAND: NEGOTIATIONS OPENED WITH MONK, AND LAMBERT SENT NORTH TO OPPOSE HIM: MONK'S MOCK TREATY WITH LAMBERT AND THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT THROUGH COMMISSIONERS IN LONDON: HIS PREPARATIONS MEANWHILE IN SCOTLAND: HIS ADVANCE FROM EDINBURGH TO BERWICK: MONK'S ARMY AND LAMBERT'S.—FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: TREATY BETWEEN FRANCE AND SPAIN: LOCKHART: CHARLES II. AT FONTARABIA: GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT OF HIS CHANCES IN ENGLAND.—DISCUSSIONS OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT AS TO THE FUTURE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH: THE VANE PARTY AND THE WHITLOCKE PARTY IN THESE DISCUSSIONS: JOHNSTONE OF WARRISTON, THE HARRINGTONIANS, AND LUDLOW: ATTEMPTED CONCLUSIONS.—MONK AT COLDSTREAM: UNIVERSAL WHIRL OF OPINION IN FAVOUR OF HIM AND THE RUMP: UTTER DISCREDIT OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE RULE IN LONDON: VACILLATION AND COLLAPSE OF FLEETWOOD: THE RUMP RESTORED A SECOND TIME.

For about a fortnight after Lambert's coup d'état, the Council of State of the Rump, having become in a manner a party to that action, still continued to sit in Whitehall, on an understanding with the General Council of the Officers meeting in Wallingford House. There are preserved minutes of their sitting's to the 25th of October, from which it appears that the Laird of Warriston was in the chair once or twice, but Whitlocke principally. Bradshaw, who was then a dying man, had appeared at one meeting, but only to protest that, "being now going to his God," he must leave his testimony against a compromise founded on perjury to the Republic. But on the 26th of October, after much consultation, the Council of State gave place to a new Supreme Executive, chosen by the Wallingford—House officers, and called The Committee of Safety. It consisted of twenty-three persons, as follows:—

Whitlocke (made also Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Nov. 1).

• Colonel Robert Bennett
• Colonel James Berry
• Henry Brandreth
• Colonel John Clerk
• Desborough
• Fleetwood
• Sir James Harrington
• Colonel Hewson
• Cornelius Holland
• Alderman Ireton
• Sir Archibald Johnstone of Wariston
• Lambert
• Henry Lawrence
• Colonel Robert Lilburne
• Ludlow
• Major Salway
• William Steele (Chancellor of Ireland)
• Walter Strickland
• Colonel William Sydenham
• Robert Thompson
• Alderman Tichbourne
• Sir Henry Vane.

The combination of persons is curious. Some were mere inserted ciphers, and others would not act. Whitlocke, who was earnestly pressed by the officers to give to the body the weight and reputation of his presence, had very considerable hesitations, but did consent, chiefly on the ground, as he tells us, that he might be able to counteract the extravagant communistic tendencies of Vane and Salway, and so prevent mischief. It is perhaps stranger to find Vane and Salway themselves on the list. Of late, however, Vane had been detaching himself from the group of more intense Parliamentarians and seeing prospects for his ideas from conjunction, rather with the Army-men. So with Salway, Ludlow had been nominated on the new body at a venture. Thinking he might be wanted to help the Rump in their struggle with the Army, he had returned from Ireland, leaving Colonel John Jones as his locum tenens there; and he had not heard the astonishing news of Lambert's action till his landing on the Welsh coast. He had then wavered for a while between going back to Ireland and coming on to London, but had decided for the latter. Before his arrival in town he had heard of his nomination to the Committee of Safety and resolved not to accept it. He was more willing than usual, however, to make the best of circumstances; he consented even to shake hands with Lambert when he first met him; and, though not concealing his opinion that Lambert's act had been utterly unjustifiable, and that a restitution of the Rump even yet was the only proper amends, he would not go entirely with those friends of his who were working for that end, as he thought, too wildly and boisterously, and too much with a view to mere revenge. These were Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, Morley, Walton, and their followers, among whom it is no surprise to find Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. They, of course, had been left out of the new Committee of Safety, as the open and irreconcileable enemies of the system of things Lambert had brought in. Bradshaw, who would have been with them, died on the 31st of October, five days after the constitution of the Committee, leaving surely a most troubled world.¹

Military arrangements had been made already (October 14-17) by the Wallingford-House Council. Fleetwood had been named Commander-in-chief of all the Armies; Lambert Major-General of the Forces in England and Scotland; Desborough Commissary-General of the Horse; and these three, with Vane, Berry, and Ludlow, were to be the Committee for nominations of all Army-officers. Though this, with the omission of Hasilrig, was the very committee the Rump had appointed for the same business, Ludlow could not make up his mind to act on it. Disaffected officers, such as Okey, Morley, and Alured, had been removed from their commands; Articles of War for maintaining discipline everywhere had been drawn out; and the Committee of nominations was to see that the officers throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland should be men under engagement to the newly-established order.—It was foreseen that in this there would be great difficulties. Even within England and Wales there might be many officers, besides those already discharged, whose adhesion to the Wallingford-House policy was dubious; and these had to be found out. There was still greater uncertainty about Ireland, where Ludlow had for some months been master for the Rump. Thither, accordingly, there was despatched Colonel Barrow, to be an agent for the Wallingford-House policy with Ludlow's deputy Colonel John Jones, and with the officers of the Irish Army. But it was from Scotland that the hurricane was expected. Monk, having offered to stand by the Rump against the Wallingford-House party while yet the two were in struggle, had necessarily been omitted from that fourth Generalship, after Fleetwood, Lambert, and Desborough, to which he would doubtless have been appointed, in conformity with one of the proposals of the Lambert Brigade Petition of the preceding month, but for that predeclaration of his hostility. It had been suggested, indeed, that such an honour might pacify him; but it had been thought best to wait for farther evidences of his state of mind, and merely to despatch Colonel Cobbet to Scotland to give explanations to Monk himself and to probe also the feelings of his officers and soldiers.—They had not to wait long. No sooner had Monk heard of Lambert's coup d'état than he repeated his former determination most emphatically, both by energetic procedure on his own Scottish ground and by letters to all the four winds. "I am resolved, by the grace and assistance of God, as a true Englishman," he wrote to Speaker Lenthall from Edinburgh October 20, "to stand to and assert the liberty and authority of Parliament; and the Army here, praised be God, is very courageous and unanimous." There were letters to the same effect to Fleetwood and Lambert, to Ludlow and his substitutes in Ireland, to the commanders of the Fleet, and to many private persons. Colonel Gobbet was not allowed to enter Scotland, but was seized at Berwick and put in prison. In short, before October 28, when the new Committee of Safety met for the first time in Whitehall, it was clear that Monk had constituted himself the antagonist-in-chief of their government, and the armed champion of the dismissed Rump. Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, and their comrades, were in exultation accordingly.¹

Two resolutions were immediately taken by the Committee of Safety. It was resolved to attempt even then a negotiation with Monk; and it was resolved to send Lambert north with a large force to prevent Monk's march into England if the negotiation should fail. On the night of the 28th of October, Monk's brother-in-law Dr. Clarges, and Colonel Talbot, one of Monk's favourite officers, then in London, were sent for by the Committee, and asked to undertake the mission of peace. They willingly consented, and set out on the 29th, to be followed within a few days by six other missionaries for the same purpose—Colonels Whalley and Goffe for the Wallingford-House officers, a Mr. Dean specially for Fleetwood, and three Independent ministers, Caryl, Barker, and Hammond, on a religious account. There were letters in plenty also from Fleetwood and others. Monk was to be reasoned with from all points of view. But, on the 3rd of November, Lambert also set out for York, to join Colonel Robert Lilburne there, and gather forces to block the north of England against the possibility of Monk's invasion.¹

Monk, on his part, when Clarges and Talbot arrived in Edinburgh (Nov. 2), and Clarges had held his first long private discourse with him, was very willing to seem to negotiate, and gave Clarges his reasons. Though he had represented his Army as unanimously with him, that was hardly the case. The re-modelling operations of the late Rump had perturbed his Army considerably, displacing or degrading officers he liked, and inserting or promoting officers he did not want. Fortunately, most of the new officers had not yet come to their posts, and the old ones were still available. But the regiments, or parts of regiments, in all their dispersed stations, at Edinburgh, Leith, Dalkeith. Stirling, Perth, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen, Ayr, Inverness, and the remoter Highland outposts, had to be manipulated, weeded of oppositionists, and pulled gradually together; and, as it turned out, there were about 140 oppositionists among Monk's own approved officers of all ranks. To get rid of these, and otherwise to shape the Army to his mind, would take six weeks at least. Then, as he told Clarges, he should be ready. His total force would consist of ten regiments of foot (his own, Talbot's, Wilkes's, Read's, Daniel's, Fairfax's, and those now called Overton's, Cobbet's, Sawrey's, and Smith's), with two regiments of horse (his own and Twistleton's) and one of dragoons (that of the redoubted Morgan, now absent in England). By recent careful economy, he had £70,000 in the bank: his credit with the Scots was such that he could have more on demand; he had but to give permission, and the Scots themselves would flock in arms to his standard. He had resolved, however, that the performance should be in substance wholly an English one, and that the Scots should be involved in it but indirectly and sparingly. Additional reasons for delay were furnished by the fact that the sympathy with Monk which he knew to exist in England and Ireland, had not yet had due development, In short, Monk and Clarges agreed that it would be best to fall in with the offer of negotiation, in order to gain time; and next day (Nov. 3), at a meeting of Monk's officers, Colonel Wilkes, Lieutenant-Colonel Clobery, and Major Knight, were deputed to go into England as Commissioners for a Treaty. They had certain instructions given them, in which Monk himself "invented matter to confound their debates." They were to insist on the restoration of the Rump, or, if the Rump would not be restored, then on a full and free new Parliament.¹

And so, having dispatched the commissioners, Monk continued his colloquies with Clarges, such privileged persons as the physician Dr. Barrow and the chaplain Dr. Gumble being admitted to some of them, but only Clarges fathoming Monk's intentions, and he but in part. When the Independent ministers and other envoys arrived, there was a conference at Holyrood House at which they made speeches, Monk listening, but keeping his own mouth shut. Once, indeed, when Mr. Caryl warned him that war and bloodshed, if begun, would be "laid at his door," he burst out against Lambert and his party, saying they had begun the war, and, if they continued in their course, he would "lay them on their backs." While the Independent ministers were yet in Edinburgh, doing their best, there was a more welcome advent in the person of Colonel Morgan (Nov. 8). He had been lying ill of gout at York, but had recovered so far as to be able to come to Edinburgh as a kind of messenger to Monk from Lambert. He delivered his message punctually enough, but told Monk he was glad to be with him again, and would follow him implicitly whatever he did, being "no statesman" himself. Monk was vastly pleased, looking on Morgan, it is said, as worth more than all the 140 officers he had lost. Morgan had, moreover, brought important communications from Yorkshire, which led Monk to dispatch Clarges and Talbot thither to establish an understanding with Lord Fairfax.¹

Meanwhile Monk's three Commissioners had arrived at York and been in parley with Lambert. Finding that the question of the restitution of the Rump was involved in their instructions, he passed them on to London, having stipulated for a truce till the result should be known. On the 12th of November the Commissioners were in London; and on the 15th, after three days of consultation at Wallingford House, a treaty of nine Articles was agreed to, and signed by them on the part of Monk and the Army in Scotland, and by Fleetwood on the part of the Wallingford-House Council. There was great delight in Whitehall over this result, and the Tower cannon proclaimed the happy reconciliation between Monk and the Government. But Monk's Commissioners had been too hasty, or had been outwitted; and Clarges, who arrived in London that day, had come too late to stop them and spin out the time. A pledge of both parties against Charles Stuart or any single-person Government was in the forefront of the Treaty; and the rest of the Articles simply admitted Monk and the officers of the Scottish Army to a share in the Government as then going on, and in certain arrangements which the Committee of Safety and the Wallingford-House Council had been already devising on their own account. Monk received the news at Haddington on the evening of Nov. 18; he returned to Edinburgh next day, "very silent and reserved"; but that day it was resolved by him, in consultation with some of his chief officers and with Dr. Barrow, to disown the Treaty—not, indeed, by actual rejection of any of the Articles, but on the plea that several things had been omitted and that there must be farther specification. For this purpose it was proposed that two Commissioners on Monk's part should be added to the former three, and that five Commissioners from the Army in England should meet these and continue the Treaty at Alnwick or some other indifferent place near Scotland. When this answer reached London, Whitlocke, who had all along, as he tells us, protested that Monk's object was delay only and "that the bottom of his design was to bring in the King," repeated more earnestly his former advice that Lambert should be pushed on to immediate action. "His advice was not taken," says Whitlocke, "but a new Treaty consented to by Commissioners on each part, to be at Newcastle." From about the 20th of November that was Lambert's headquarters, while Monk, having left a portion of his forces behind him for necessary garrison purposes in Scotland, came on from Edinburgh to establish himself at Berwick with the rest. He was there before the end of the month. In the beginning of December 1659, therefore, the two Armies were all but facing each other,—Monk's consisting now of about 6000 foot and 1400 horse and dragoons, and Lambert's of between 4000 and 5000 horse and about 3000 foot: the excess in horse giving Lambert a great superiority. At Monk's back, moreover, there was no effective support in case of failure, unless by that arming of the Scots which he was unwilling to risk, while to back Lambert there were about 20,000 more regulars in England, besides a militia of 30,000, not to speak of the forces in Ireland, and the regiments in Flanders. Between the two Armies all that intervened to prevent conflict was the Treaty to be resumed at Newcastle. Monk magnified the importance of that, but took great care to postpone it. Wilkes, Clobery, and Knight, had not returned from London, and were rather slow to do so and face Monk after their blunder; and the two new Commissioners had not yet been appointed. Meanwhile letters and messages passed between the two Armies, and there were desertions from the one to the other.¹

All this while the London Government of the Committee of Safety had been attending as well as they could to such general business as belonged to them in their double capacity of supreme executive and temporary deliberative. For, at the constitution of the body on the 26th of October, it had been agreed that they should not only exercise the usual powers of a Council of State, but should also prosecute that great question of the future form of the Government of the Commonwealth which had occupied the late Rump. They were to prosecute this question in conference, if necessary, with the chief Army officers and others; and, if they should not come to a conclusion within six weeks, the question was to return to the Wallingford-House Council itself.¹

In the matter of foreign relations the Committee of Safety had little to do, the arrangements of the late Rump for withdrawing from foreign entanglements still holding good for the present. Meadows, who had become tired of his agency with the two Scandinavian powers, no longer such an inspiring office as it had been under the Protectorate, had asked the Rump more than once to recall him. He had remained in the Baltic to as late as October, but was now back in London, anxious about his own future and about his arrears of salary. If the present Government should succeed, there might possibly be a revival of the Cromwellian policy of co-operation with Charles Gustavus, and then the services of Meadows might be again in request; but meanwhile Algernon Sidney and the other plenipotentiaries sent by the Rump into the Baltic, though checking the heroic Swede and scorned by him in return, might represent the only policy yet possible. Downing, though also much exercised by the rapid turns of affairs, and thinking of scoundrel-like means for securing himself, does not seem to have been so dissatisfied with his position at the Hague as Meadows was with his in the Baltic. He had come to London early in November; a sub-committee of the Committee of Safety had been appointed to receive his report on present relations with the United Provinces; and he was waiting for re-credentials. The Dutch Ambassador Nieuport, we may add, was still in London, as also the French Ambassador M. de Bordeaux, and other inferior foreign residents, but all meanwhile as mere on-lookers.—One inquires with most interest about Ambassador Lockhart. Since August, he had been at or near St. Jean de Luz, on the borders between France and Spain, charged, as Ambassador for the Rump, with the business of endeavouring to have the English Commonwealth included in the great Treaty then going on between Mazarin and the Spanish minister Don Luis de Haro, so that, when peace had been definitely concluded between France and Spain, there might be peace also between Spain and the Commonwealth. There he had been received, with the utmost respect by Mazarin and with all courtesy by Don Luis de Haro, both of them friendly enough to the purpose of his mission for reasons of their own. It was found, however, that the Peace between France and Spain was a matter of sufficient complication and difficulty in itself; and so, though it was not finally concluded and signed till the end of November, when it took the name of The Treaty of the Pyrenees, and secured, among many other things, the marriage of Louis XIV. with the Spanish Infanta, Lockhart, knowing all to be settled, had taken his farewell. He was in London on the 14th of November, in the very crisis of the negotiation between Monk and the new Government, but remained only a fortnight. Till Peace with Spain should be concluded by some means, his true place was at Dunkirk, for the recovery of which Spain would now certainly wrestle, while France would also bid high for the acquisition. He left London for Dunkirk on the 1st of December, the issue between Monk and the new Government still undecided.—While Lockhart was on the scene of the great negotiation between Mazarin and Luis de Haro on the Spanish border, there had been the surprise of the arrival there of no less a person than Charles II. himself. In August we left him waiting anxiously at Calais, ready to embark for England on the due explosion there of the great pre-arranged insurrection of the old Royalists and new Royalists. He had lingered about the French coast for some time; but, when the revolt of Sir George Booth had collapsed, the notion of a new residence in Brussels after another of his failures had become disagreeable to him. He did go to Brussels, but only to conceive the idea of a trip, half of pleasure, half of speculation, to the scene of the great diplomatic conferences. Might not his interests be considered in the Treaty? Mazarin, who had no wish to see him at the conferences, declined to give him a passport; but he risked the journey incognito, with Ormond, the Earl of Bristol, and one or two other attendants, going by a long and circuitous route, and finding much amusement by the way. As they approached their destination, there was an unlucky separation of the party into two, Ormond going on ahead for inquiries and appointing a place for their reunion. But for some days Charles and the Earl of Bristol were lost. Ormond, who had missed them at the appointed place, had gone on to Fontarabia, a small frontier town of Spain, and the residence of Don Luis de Haro during the Treaty, just as St. Jean de Luz, two or three miles off, but in the French territory, was the residence of Mazarin. Sir Henry Bennet, the Ambassador for Charles at the Spanish Court, was already there; and he, and Ormond, and Don Luis himself, were in no small anxiety. At length it appeared that the fugitives, on false information that the Treaty was already concluded, had gone into Spain on their own account, bound for Madrid itself, and had got as far as Saragossa. Fetched back to Fontarabia, they were received with all politeness and state by Don Luis. But, though they remained some time, the Treaty was so far settled that Charles found that nothing could be done for his interests through that means. Mazarin, indeed, resenting his intrusion, and his passage through France without leave, refused to see him, and gave orders also that Sir Henry Bennet should not be admitted. With only general assurances of good wishes from the Spanish minister, a present of 7000 gold pistoles for "the expenses of his journey," and promises of farther consideration of his case when there should be opportunity, Charles returned through France by Paris, and was back in Brussels in December, just about the time when Lockhart was back in Dunkirk. They had been crossing each other's paths and were again near neighbours.—Although the late Rump Government had taken some alarm at Charles's visit to Fontarabia, and had made remonstrances on the subject of his passage through France, it was now known that there was no danger of action for Charles either by France or by Spain. The danger, indeed, was of a more subtle and incalculable kind, and within the Commonwealth itself. We have seen how naturally the baulked Cromwellianism of the epoch of the dissolution of Richard's Parliament and the overthrow of his Protectorate tended to transmute itself into Stuartism, and how much of the strength of Sir George Booth's insurrection consisted of new Royalism so produced. What we have now to add is that every baulked or defeated cause in succession within the Commonwealth yielded in the same way potential capital for Charles. The cause of Charles was like an ultimate refuge for all the disappointed and destitute. Those who had not already been driven into it were ruefully or gladly looking forward to it. Even among the extreme Rumpers or pure Republicans, now maddened by Lambert's coup d'état, there were some, Colonel Herbert Morley for one, who were feeling cautiously for ways and means of forgiveness at Brussels. Nay, in the present Committee of Safety and in the Wallingford-House Council associated with it, there were some fully prepared, should this experiment also fail, to help in a restoration of the Stuarts rather than go back into the Republican grasp of Scott, Neville, and Hasilrig. There was a vague common cognisance of this convergence of so many separate currents to one final reservoir. It showed itself in mutual accusations of that very tendency of which all were conscious. Every party of Commonwealth's men accused every other party of a design to bring the King in, and every party so accused repudiated the charge with such strength of language as to beget the suspicion, "The Lady protests too much, methinks." On the other hand, the uneasy common consciousness disposed people to be practically somewhat tolerant. When no one knew what might happen to himself, why should he indict his neighbour for treason? On some such ground it may have been, as well as to try to win grace with the Presbyterians or new Royalists, that the present Government did not proceed with the trials of the lords and gentlemen committed for high treason for their concern in the late Insurrection, but released all or most of them. Lords Northampton, Falkland, Herbert, Howard, and others had been released November 1, and Sir George Booth himself was set at liberty on the 9th of December.¹

In the matter of a new Constitution for the future the procedure of the Committee of Safety had been not uninteresting. On the 1st of November they had referred the subject to a sub-committee, consisting of Vane, Whitlocke, Fleetwood, Ludlow, Salway, and Tichbourne; and on this sub-committee Ludlow did consent to act. In fact, however, the General Committee and the Wallingford-House Council kept along with the Sub-Committee in the great discussion.¹

The Kingship of Charles Stuart was, of course, an utterly forbidden idea in the deliberations. The idea of a revival of any form of the Protectorship, whether by the recall of Richard, or by the election of Fleetwood or Lambert, was equally forbidden, although there had been whispers of the kind about Wallingford House, and Richard was understood to be hovering near, in case he should be wanted. "Such a form of Government as may best suit and comport with a Free State and Commonwealth, without a Single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers," was what had been solemnly promised in the first public declaration of the present powers; and to that all stood pledged. This, of course, involved a Parliament. But what Parliament or what sort of Parliament? The late Rump reinstated at once with full authority, Ludlow was bound to say, and did say; but, as that was out of the question with all the rest, he could suppose himself outvoted on that, and go on. Richard's late Parliament had been the murmur of some outside, perhaps not the least sensible in the main; but the suggestion passed, as meaningless without Richard himself. The Long Parliament as it was before it became the Rump, i.e. with all the survivors of the illegally secluded members of 1642-1649 restored to their seats, was a third proposal, of more tremendous significance, that had been heard outside, and indeed had become a wide popular cry. Inasmuch as this meant the bringing back of the Parliament precisely as it had been before the King's trial and the institution of the Commonwealth, with all those Presbyterians and Royalists in it that it had been necessary to eject in mass in order to make the King's trial and a Commonwealth possible, little wonder that the present junto shuddered at the bare suggestion. A new Parliament, called by ourselves, was the conclusion in which they took rest. But here their debates only began. Should it be a Parliament of one House or of two Houses? If of two Houses, should the Second House be a select Senate of fifty or seventy, coordinate with the larger House, as the Army-chiefs had advised the Rumpers, or should it be a much larger body? What should be the size of the larger House, and what the powers and relations of the two? Then, whether of one or of two Houses, how should the Parliament be elected? To prevent the mere inrush of a Parliament of the old and ordinary sort, whose first act would probably be to subvert the Commonwealth, what qualifications should be established for suffrage and eligibility? Might it not even be advisable not to permit the people at first full choice of their representatives, with whatever prescribed qualifications, but to allow them only choice among nominees sent down to them by a higher power? Should Harrington's principle of Rotation be adopted, and, if so, to what extent? Farther, whatever was to be the structure of the Parliament, were any fundamentals to be laid down beforehand, as eternal principles of the Commonwealth, which even the Parliament should be bound not to touch? Must not the perpetuity of Republican Government itself, or non-return to Kingship or single Chief Magistracy of any kind, be one of these fundamentals, and Liberty of Conscience another? Nay, should a Church Establishment and Tithes be left open questions, or should there be some absolute pre-determination on that great subject? Finally, when the Sub-Committee and the Committee of Safety, and the Army officers round about, should have agreed upon all these questions, so far as to be able to draw out a Constitution or Form of Government sufficiently satisfactory to themselves, ought not that Constitution to be submitted to some wider representative authority for revision and ratification before being imposed on the People? If so, what should that intervening and ratifying authority be?¹

One can see that there were two parties among the debaters. Vane, in his strange position at last after his many vicissitudes, had come trailing clouds of his peculiar notions with him, and was regarded as the advocate of wild and impracticable novelties. Not merely absolute Liberty of Conscience and abolition of Tithes, in which Ludlow and others went with him, but certain Millenarian or Fifth Monarchy speculations, pointing to a glorious future over the trampled ruins of the Church-Establishment and of much besides, were ideas which he wanted to ingraft in some shape into the new Constitution. Here he represented a number of enthusiasts among the subalterns of the Army and among ex-Army men; and, indeed, it had been with some difficulty that Major-General Harrison, the head of the Millenarians, had been kept out of the Committee of Safety at its first formation, and so prevented from resuming public functions after his five years of disablement. Not having Harrison by his side, Vane could do little more than ventilate his Millenarianism, Communism, or whatever it was, though, as Whitlocke says, he "was hard to be satisfied and did much stick to his own apprehensions." The leader of the more moderate party, as against Vane, was Whitlocke himself. He represented the Lawyers, the Established Clergy, all the more sober and conservative spirits. Parliamentary use and wont, with no great new-fangled inventions, but only prudent modifications and precautions; preservation of the Established Church, the Universities, and the existing legal system; Liberty of Conscience certainly, but so guarded as not to give reins to Quakerism and other Sectarian excesses: these were the recommendations of Whitlocke. The Laird of Warriston, it appears, who was not on the Sub-Committee, took up a position of his own in the General Committee, which was neither Vane's nor Whitlocke's, but represented what Ludlow calls "the Scottish interest." One of its principles was that Liberty of Conscience should be very limited indeed. And so, through November, while Monk was consolidating his forces in Scotland, the discussion of the new Constitution had been straggling on in the Sub-Committee and Committee at Whitehall, and in less authorized assemblies in the same neighbourhood. Among these, besides a clerical conclave of Independent ministers, such as Owen and Nye, meeting at the Savoy and advising Whitlocke on the Church-question, one must specially remember Harrington's Rota Club at the Turk's Head in New Palace Yard. That institution was now in its full nightly glory, discussing all the questions that were discussed in Whitehall and many more. It had won by this time the crowning distinction of being a subject of daily jokes and witticisms. In a London squib of Nov. 12, 1659, laughing at Harrington and his Rota-men, the public were informed that among the last "decrees and orders of the Committee of Safety of the Commonwealth of Oceana" had been these three:—1. "That the politic casuists of the Coffee Club in Bow Street [had the Rota adjourned thither, or was this some other debating Club?] appoint some of their number to instruct the Committee of Safety at Whitehall how they shall find an invention to escape Tyburn, if ever the law be restored; 2. That Harrington's Aphorisms and other political slips be recommended to the English Plantation in Jamaica, to try how they will agree with that apocryphal purchase; 3. That a Levite and an Elder be sent to survey the Government of the Moon, and that Warriston Johnstone and Parson Peters be the men, as a couple of learned Rabbis in Lunatics." Heedless of such mockery, the Harringtonians did not cease to put forth their own pamphlets with all seriousness. Valerius and Publicola, or the True Form of a Popular Commonwealth extracted e puris naturalibus is the title of a dialogue of Harrington's, of Nov. 17, expounding his principles afresh.¹

Two conclusions at least had been arrived at in the Sub-Committee and Committee, and approved by the Wallingford-House Council of officers, before the middle of November, when they were actually embodied in the Treaty with Monk's Commissioners in London. One was as to the mode of determining Parliamentary qualifications. That duty was to be entrusted to a body of nineteen persons, ten of them named (Whitlocke, Vane, Ludlow, St. John, Warriston, &c.), and the other nine to be chosen by the Armies of England, Ireland, and Scotland, three by each. A still more important conclusion was as to the body, intermediate between the present powers and the People, to which the whole Constitution should be submitted for revision and ratification before being imposed upon the People. It was to be a great Representative Council of the Army and Navy, to be composed of delegates in the proportion of two commissioned officers from each regiment in England, Scotland, or Ireland, chosen by the commissioned officers of the regiments severally, together with ten naval officers to be chosen by the officers of the Fleet collectively. To Ludlow, approving only coldly of all that departed from his fixed idea of sheer restitution of the Rump, this arrangement seemed, nevertheless, a very fair one. It was settled, in fact, that the great Representative Council should meet at Whitehall on the 6th of December, by which time the complete draft of the Constitution would be ready.¹

The Army and Navy Council did meet on that day, and it is from their proceedings that we learn best the nature of the Constitution submitted to them. The meeting, indeed, was not the great one that had been expected. The delegates from Ireland had not arrived; none had come from Monk's army, though due intimation had been given to him and he was reckoned bound by the Treaty; and, of course, in the circumstances, delegates could not be spared from Lambert's. There was, however, a sufficient gathering, and Ludlow attended, by request, as one representative from Ireland. In a debate of five or six days all the questions that had been discussed in the Committee of Safety and its Sub-Committee were discussed over again, Ludlow and Colonel Rich fighting for the restitution of the Rump even yet as the one thing needful, others starting wild proposals even yet for a restoration of the Protectorate, but Fleetwood, Desborough, and the majority urging substantially the proposals that had come from the Committee of Safety, or rather a reduction of those, by the omission of such portions of them as were Vane's, to the moderate and conservative core which might be regarded as Whitlocke's. As Whitlocke himself was permitted to be present and advise in the Council, he was able to contribute much to this result by his lawyerly gravity and frequent mentions of the Great Seal. Altogether the Constitution as it passed the Council may be considered as his. And what was it? Nothing very alarming. A new Parliament, of a Single House, to be elected by the people very much as by use and wont, but in conformity with a well-considered scheme of "qualifications" for keeping out the dangerous; a separation, however, of the Executive from the Legislative, by the appointment, as heretofore, of a Supreme Council of State; maintenance of the Established Church, and that by Tithes till some other as ample provision should be devised; Toleration of Dissent and of free expression of religious belief, but still on this side of Quakerism and other anomalies, heresies, and extravagancies: such, after all, was the homely outcome. If Vane and the theorists of the Harringtonian Club were disappointed, Ludlow was even in worse despair; and at the last moment he proposed an extraordinary addition. If the late Rump was not to be restored, and if they were to adopt a Constitution which threatened, as he feared, to let in Charles, or to put all back under the power of the sword, let them at least try to avert such consequences by defining a few fundamentals which should be inviolable, and let them appoint, under the name of Conservators of Liberty, twenty-one men to be guardians of these fundamentals. He was humoured in this; and, three fundamentals having been agreed on—to wit, (1) Commonwealth in perpetuity, without King, Single Person, or House of Peers, (2) Liberty of Conscience, (3) Unalterability of the Army arrangements except by the Conservators—the Assembly proceeded to ballot on a list of persons named by Ludlow as suitable for the office of Conservators. All went as Ludlow wished for the first seven or eight on the list,—dexterously arranged by him so because, being all men of the Wallingford-House party except Vane and Salway, these two could hardly in decency be blackballed. But then the order of voting was broken; and, though Ludlow himself was elected, not another man of the Parliamentarian party was let in. Actually, the Laird of Warriston, who had declared publicly against Liberty of Conscience, and Tichbourne, who had proposed to restore Richard to the Protectorship, were preferred to such men as Hasilrig and Neville, and made guardians of fundamentals in which they did not believe. Ludlow then threw up the entire business in disgust, and resolved that it was high time for him to be back in Ireland. Nevertheless, his afterthought of the Fundamentals and their Conservators was incorporated into Whitlocke's Constitution as it went back to the Committee of Safety, with the ratification of the Council of Army and Navy officers, This was on the 14th of December. The next day the nature of the new Constitution was known to all who were interested, and there was a proclamation for a Parliament to meet in February.¹

Monk was now at Coldstream, on the Tweed, about nine miles from Berwick. On the 13th of December he had taken leave, at Berwick, of a deputation of Scottish nobles and gentlemen, headed by the Earls of Glencairn, Tullibardine, Rothes, Roxburgh, and Wemyss, who had come from Edinburgh with certain propositions and requests. As he was going into England, leaving Scotland garrisoned but by a poor residue of his soldiers, would he not permit the shires to raise small native forces for police purposes, or would he not at least restore to the Scottish nobility and gentry the privilege of wearing arms themselves and having their servants armed? Farther, might he not, a little while hence, sanction a general arming, so that Scotland might have the pleasure of putting 6000 foot and 1500 horse at his disposal? The minor requests were, within certain limits, granted easily; but against the last Monk was still very wary. To have granted it would have been to proclaim that he was taking the Scottish nation with him in his enterprise, and so give indubitable foundation to those rumours that "the King was at the bottom of it" which were flying about already, and which it was his first care to contradict. There must be no general arming of the Scots: he would march into England with his own little army only! Still, however, he did not move from Coldstream, but stuck there, exchanging messages with Lambert respecting the renewal of the Treaty. It was now dead winter, and the snow lay thick over the whole region between the two Generals. Monk's personal accommodations at Coldstream were much worse than Lambert's at Newcastle. He was quartered in a wretched cottage, with two barns, where, on the first night of his arrival, he could find nothing for supper, and had to munch more than his usual allowance of raw tobacco instead. But he had the means of paying his men and keeping them in good humour, while bad pay and the cold weather were demoralising Lambert's.¹

For the restitution of the Rump Parliament, Monk's march into England was to be quite unnecessary. His mere pertinacity in declaring himself the champion of the Rump and making preparations for the march had disintegrated all that seemingly coherent strength of the Wallingford-House party throughout England and Ireland on which Lambert could rely when he left London in the beginning of November. All over England and Ireland, for six weeks now, people had been talking of "Silent Old George," as Monk's own soldiers called him, though he was but in his fifty-second year, and speculating on his possible meaning, and on the chance that even Lambert might find him more than a match. And such mere gossip and curiosity everywhere, mingling with previous doubtings in some quarters, and with relics of positive partisanship with the Rump in others, had gradually induced a complete whirl of public feeling. By the middle of December, when the Wallingford-House Government put forth their proclamation of a new Parliament, this was so apparent that Whitlocke and his friends at the centre might well doubt whether that Parliament would ever meet. By that time, at all events, Lambert had begun to curse his own folly in not having fallen upon Monk at first, and in having let himself afterwards be deluded so long by the phantom of a renewed treaty at Newcastle. For what had been the news, and continued to be the news, post after post? Colonel Whetham, Governor of Portsmouth, formerly Monk's associate in the Scottish Council, now in declared cooperation with him, and holding the town for the Rump; Hasilrig, Morley, and Walton, gone to Portsmouth to turn the revolt to account; these and other members of the late Rump, such as Neville; Scott, and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, openly resuming their functions and issuing documents in which they declared General Monk, "the ablest and most experienced commander in these nations," to be "warranted in his present actings" by their express commission; risings or threatenings of risings in various parts of England, whether Royalist or Republican not known, but equally troublesome to the existing powers; Admiral Lawson and his Fleet actually in the Thames with an avowal at length of allegiance to the late Parliament only, and resisting all Vane's persuasions the other way; the Army in Ireland, which had seemed so safe, now in a confused ferment, with Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, Colonel Theophilus Jones, and others, promoting a general demonstration in Monk's behalf! Lambert's own Army was infected. That part of it which was called the Irish Brigade, as consisting of regiments that had been brought from Ireland at the time of Sir George Booth's insurrection, sympathised with Monk openly; the rest were dubious or listless. In the rear of Lambert in Yorkshire, though he can hardly yet have known the fact, Lord Fairfax was organising a movement, really with Royalist aims, but to take the form of a concerted combination with Monk as soon as Monk should advance. But it was in London itself, close round the powers at Whitehall, that their weakness had become most notorious and alarming. For some time the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council had been acting almost as an independent authority; the citizens were resolute against the payment of taxes, and had formed associations to resist their collection; all that was Cavalierish in the city was astir, with all that was Republican, in daily displays of contempt for the Wallingford-House junta and their soldiery. Hewson's regiment, marching through the city, had been jeered at by the apprentices and pelted with stones. In the centre of these London tumults, Fleetwood, the Commander-in-chief, and the honorary head of the Government, had shown himself incapable even of the local management. Of Fleetwood, all in all, indeed, one knows not, by this time, what to think. The combination of mild qualities which Milton had eulogised in him in 1654 did not now suit. Ever since Richard's fall, to which he had so largely contributed, Fleetwood had comported himself as a dignified and sweet-mannered man, more acceptable in the highest place than Lambert, but uneasy in his mind, and uncomfortable in his relations to Lambert. He was a deeply religious man, which Lambert was not; and it was observed that on late occasions in the Council of Officers, when bad news made some sudden resolution necessary, and Lambert would have been, ready with one, Fleetwood's one resource had been "Gentlemen, let us pray." One thinks of Fleetwood's brother-in-law, poor Henry Cromwell, and what he might have been in Fleetwood's place. He, the man of real fitness, was in seclusion in Cambridgeshire, rejected where he was most needed, and indeed, though he did not yet fully know it, foreclosed already, at the age of thirty-one, by his own honourable fidelity to his father's ashes, from all farther career or employment in any English world.¹

It was close on Christmas, and the anarchy in London had become indescribable. "I wished myself out of these daily hazards, but knew not how to get free of them," is Whitlocke's entry in his diary for Dec. 20; and, under Dec. 22, he writes, "Most of the soldiery about London declared their judgment to have the Parliament sit again, in honour, freedom, and safety; and now those who formerly were most eager for Fleetwood's party became as violent against them, and for the Parliament to sit again." In other words, the soldiers of Fleetwood's own London regiments were tired of being insulted and jeered at, and had come to the conclusion, with their brethren everywhere else, that Lambert's coup d'état of Oct. 13 had been a blunder and that the Rump must be reinstated.—In these circumstances, Whitlocke, after consultation with Lord Willoughby of Parham, the Presbyterian Major-General Browne, and others, thought himself justified in going to Fleetwood with a very desperate project. It was evident, Whitlocke told him, that Monk's design was to bring in the King; if so, the King's return was inevitable; and, if the King should return by Monk's means, the lives and fortunes of all in the Wallingford-House connexion were at the King's or Monk's mercy. Would not Fleetwood be beforehand with Monk, and himself be the agent of the unavoidable restoration? He might adopt either of two plans, an indirect or a direct. The indirect plan would be to fraternize with the City, declare for "a full and free Parliament"—not that Parliament for which Whitlocke was preparing writs, but the fuller and freer one, unfettered by Wallingford-House "qualifications," for which the Royalists had been astutely calling out,—and then either take the field with his forces under that banner, or else, if the forces he could rally proved too small, shut himself up in the Tower, and trust to the City itself till the effect were seen. The other way would be to dispatch an envoy to the King at once with offers and instructions. Whitlocke himself was equally willing to go into the Tower with Fleetwood or to be his envoy to Charles. After some rumination, Fleetwood, as Whitlocke understood, had concluded for the latter plan, and Whitlocke was taking leave of him, with that understanding, to prepare for his journey, when they found Vane, Desborough, and Berry, in the ante-chamber. At Fleetwood's request Whitlocke waited there, while the new comers and Fleetwood consulted in the other room. In less than a quarter of an hour, says Whitlocke, Fleetwood came out, telling him passionately "I cannot do it, I cannot do it." The reason he gave was that he had just been reminded that he was under a pledge to Lambert to take no such step without his consent. To Whitlocke's remonstrance that, Lambert being absent, and the matter being one of life or death, only instant action could prevent ruin to Fleetwood himself and his friends, the answer was "I cannot help it"; and so they parted.—This was on Thursday the 22nd of December. The next day, though Whitlocke had a call from Colonel Ingoldsby, Colonel Howard, and another, suggesting that, as Keeper of the Great Seal, he might fitly go to the King on his own account, he went on sealing writs, he tells us, for the new Wallingford-House Parliament. Meanwhile, the uproar in the City being at its maximum, such members of the late Council of the Rump as were in town met at Speaker Lenthall's house and issued orders for a rendezvous of Fleetwood's regiments in Lincoln's Inn Fields under the command of Okey, Alured, Markham, and Mosse. Fleetwood, applied to for the keys of the Parliament house, willingly gave them up and resigned all charge. On Saturday the 24th the mass of the soldiers were gladly at the appointed rendezvous, and were marched down Chancery Lane, where the Speaker came out to them at the Rolls, and was received with shouts of joy and repentance. On Monday the 26th all the members of the Rump who were at hand met the Speaker in the Council-Chamber at Whitehall, and walked thence to Westminster Hall, the mace carried before them, and the soldiers and populace cheering as they passed. They constituted the House and proceeded at once to business. They had been excluded two months and fourteen days.¹

CHAPTER I.

Second Section (continued).

THE ANARCHY, STAGE III.: OR SECOND RESTORATION OF THE RUMP, WITH MONK'S MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: DEC. 26, 1659—FEB. 21, 1659-60.

THE RUMP AFTER ITS SECOND RESTORATION: NEW COUNCIL OF STATE: PENALTIES ON VANE, LAMBERT, DESBOROUGH, AND THE OTHER CHIEFS OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERREGNUM: CASE OF LUDLOW: NEW ARMY REMODELLING: ABATEMENT OF REPUBLICAN FERVENCY AMONG THE RUMPERS: DISPERSION OF LAMBERT'S FORCE IS THE NORTH: MONK'S MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: STAGES AND INCIDENTS OF THE MARCH: HIS HALT AT ST. ALBAN'S AND MESSAGE THENCE TO THE RUMP: HIS NEARER VIEW OF THE SITUATION: HIS ENTRY INTO LONDON, FEB. 3, 1659-60: HIS AMBIGUOUS SPEECH TO THE RUMP, FEB. 6: HIS POPULARITY IN LONDON: PAMPHLETS AND LETTERS DURING HIS MARCH AND ON HIS ARRIVAL: PRYNNE'S PAMPHLETS ON BEHALF OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS: TUMULT IN THE CITY: TUMULT SUPPRESSED BY MONK AS SERVANT OF THE RUMP: HIS POPULARITY GONE: BLUNDER RETRIEVED BY MONK'S RECONCILIATION WITH THE CITY AND DECLARATION AGAINST THE RUMP: ROASTING OF THE RUMP IN LONDON, FEB. 11, 1659-60: MONK MASTER OF THE CITY AND OF THE RUMP TOO: CONSULTATIONS WITH THE SECLUDED MEMBERS: BILL OF THE RUMP FOR ENLARGING ITSELF BY NEW ELECTIONS: BILL SET ASIDE BY THE RESEATING OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS: RECONSTITUTION OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT UNDER MONK'S DICTATORSHIP.

The Rump, as restored the second time, never recovered even its former small dimensions. On a division taken the day after its restoration there were only thirty-seven present and voting, nor in any subsequent division did the number exceed fifty-three. This arose from the fact that Rumpers who had been conspicuous in the Wallingford-House defection now absented themselves. On the other hand, the Journals show an accession of at least five members not visible in the previous session: viz. Colonel Alexander Popham, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Colonel Henry Markham, Mr. John Lassell, and Mr. Robert Cecil (second son of the Earl of Salisbury). Ashley Cooper, not an original Rumper, came in by the recognition, Jan. 7, 1659-60, of his right to sit for Downton in Wilts. Lassell, whose name is not on the list of the Long Parliament, may have found a seat in the same way. Prynne and some others of the secluded members renewed their attempt to get into the House, but were again refused.¹

A new Council of State was, of course, appointed at once. It was to consist, as before, of twenty-one Parliamentaries and ten non-Parliamentaries, and to hold office from Jan. 1, 1659-60 to April 1, 1660. The following is the list, the order in each section being that of preference as shown by the numbers of votes obtained in the ballot, and the asterisk again denoting a Regicide.

PARLIAMENTARIES.

• Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Bart.
• Colonel Herbert Morley
• Robert Wallop
• *Colonel Valentine Walton
• *Thomas Scott
• Nicholas Love
• Chief Justice St. John
• Colonel William White
• John Weaver
• Robert Reynolds
• Sir James Harrington
• Sir Thomas Widdrington
• Colonel George Thompson
• *John Dixwell
• Henry Neville
• Colonel John Fagg
• John Corbet
• *Thomas Challoner
• *Henry Marten
• *William Say
• Luke Robinson (a tie between him and Carew Raleigh, decided by lot).

NON-PARLIAMENTARIES.

• Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart. (appointed before his election as M.P.)
• Josiah Berners
• General Monk
• Vice-Admiral Lawson
• Alderman Love
• Thomas Tyrrell
• Lord Fairfax
• Alderman Foote
• Robert Rolle
• Slingsby Bethell.¹

The proceeding's of the House for the first month showed no diminution of self-confidence by the late interruption. Hasilrig, who was now the chief man in the Parliament and in the Council, was in such a state of elevation that his friends were a little alarmed. Next in activity, and more a man of business, was Scott, whose merits were acknowledged by his appointment first to an informal Secretaryship of State (Jan. 10), and then to that office fully and formally, with charge of the foreign and domestic intelligence (Jan. 17). He was to be for the Rump government what Thurloe had been for the Protectorate.

A good deal of the first month's business consisted in votes of approbation for those who had been faithful during the interruption and votes condemning the Wallingford-House "usurpers" and their acts. Monk, of course, was the hero among the faithful. Messages of thanks were sent to him again and again, and on the 16th of January it was resolved to bestow on him and his heirs £1000 a year. But there were thanks as well to Admiral Lawson, Whetham, and Fairfax; to Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, Morley, Walton, and the other members of the Council of State who had laboured for the good old cause in the interim; and to Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, and Colonel Theophilus Jones, for what they had done in Ireland. In the censure of delinquents there was nothing very revengeful. The Committee of Safety was styled "the late pretended Committee of Safety," and all their doings were voted null; but an indemnity for life and estate was assured to the men themselves, and to all officers who had acted under them, on condition of present submission. This indemnity was not so complete but that a few of the late chief's might expect some punishment. Accordingly, on the 9th of January Vane was brought before the House, disabled from sitting there any longer, and ordered into private life at his estate of Raby in Durham; and on the same day it was voted that Colonels Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Ashfield, Kelsay, Cobbet, Barrow, Packer, and Major Creed, all of whom were still at large, should seclude themselves in whatever houses of theirs were farthest from London. Vane, Lambert, and the rest not having complied sufficiently, there were subsequent votes, with little or no effect, for apprehending and compelling them; and on the 18th of January Sydenham and Salway were added to the list of the reproved, the former by being expelled from the House and the latter by being suspended. Whitlocke and the Laird of Warriston, though unanimously regarded as among the prime culprits, escaped without punishment. Whitlocke even ventured to appear in the House, but was received so coolly that he soon withdrew into the country, leaving instructions to his wife to burn a quantity of his papers and to deliver the great seal to the Speaker. So far was Fleetwood from being in danger that they were considering whether he might not be retained as Commander-in-chief. Ludlow, much to his surprise, found himself among the accused. This, however, was not because of the middle course he had taken in London through the late interruption, though he had lost some credit by that with his Republican friends. He had unfortunately left London on his way back to Ireland on the very eve of that happy restitution of the Rump which he had despaired of seeing, and it was in Ireland that his enemies were most numerous and violent. He had hardly arrived among them and attempted to resume his command when he received notice from the House that he and Colonel John Jones, with Miles Corbet and Matthew Tomlinson, were required to come over to answer certain charges against them relating to their Irish government (Jan. 5). Ludlow and the others obeyed, and found, on their arrival in London in February, that Sir Charles Coote and other officers in Ireland had lodged an impeachment against them for nothing less than high treason.¹

Another business, natural in the circumstances, was the now too familiar one of "re-modelling." Men not now satisfactory had to be removed from all departments of the public service and more proper men substituted. Whitlocke's great seal was given into new keeping, and there were new judicial appointments. To supply vacancies caused by the removal of defaulting officers in regiments, there began again, too, on a considerable scale, that process of nomination for new commissions and of delivery of the commissions by the Speaker which had been so wearisome in the former session of the House. To Whetham, Walton, Morley, Okey, Mosse, Alured, Hasilrig, Rich, Eyre, Hacker, and others, retaining their former colonelcies, or promoted to farther military trusts, there were added Colonels Camfield, Streater, Smithson, Sanders, &c.; and now, as heretofore, one is puzzled by the appearance of many persons as "colonels" who had the title only from their places in the militia of their counties, or from the courtesy custom of designating a retired army-man by his former name of honour. Lambert, Desborough, and the eight others ordered into seclusion, were, of course, among the discharged; so also was Robert Lilburne; but Hewson seems to have been forgiven.¹

Through all these proceedings of the first month there had been signs of a curious abatement of that thorough-going Republican fervency which had characterized the House in its previous session. The essential Republican principle had indeed been at once re-proclaimed. It had been resolved that each member of the new Council of State, before assuming office, should take an oath renouncing "the pretended title or titles of Charles Stuart and the whole line of the late King James, and of every person, as a single person, pretending or which shall pretend," &c. The very next day, however, when Hasilrig brought in a Bill enacting that every member of the House itself, or of any succeeding House, should take the same oath, a minority, among whom were Ingoldsby, Colonel Hutchinson, Colonel Fielder, and Colonel Fagg, opposed very strongly. Not, of course, that they were other than sound Commonwealth's men; but that oaths were becoming frightfully frequent, and this one would be "a confining of Providence," &c.! The first reading of the Bill was carried only by a majority of twenty-four (Neville and Garland tellers) against fifteen (Colonel Hutchinson and Colonel Fagg tellers). The effect was that, after a second reading, the Bill went into Committee and remained there, the members meanwhile sitting on without any engagement. About a half of those nominated to the Council of State, including Fairfax, St. John, Morley, Weaver, and Fagg, remained out of the Council rather than submit to the qualification made essential in their case. This was symptomatic enough; but it was also evident that, on such important questions as Tithes, an Established Church, and Liberty of Conscience, the House was in no disposition to persevere in what had hitherto been believed to be radical and necessary articles of the Republican policy. The instructions given to a Committee on the 21st of January indicate very comprehensively the prevalence of a conservative temper in the House on these and other questions. The Committee were to prepare a declaration for the public "That the Parliament intends forthwith to proceed to the settlement of the government, and will uphold a learned and pious Ministry of the nation and their maintenance by Tithes: and that they will proceed to fill up the House as soon as may be, and to settle the Commonwealth without a King, Single Person, or House of Peers; and will promote the Trade of the nation; and will reserve due Liberty to tender consciences: and that the Parliament will not meddle with the executive power of the Law, but only in cases of mal-administration and appeals, &c." Such a declaration was adopted and ordered to be published on the 23rd. It was of a nature to conciliate the Presbyterian and Independent clergy of the Establishment and the conservative mass of the people generally, but to disappoint grievously those various sectarian enemies of the Church Establishment who had hitherto been the most enthusiastic exponents of the "good old cause." The very phrase "the good old cause," one observes, was now passing into disrepute, and the word "fanatics" as a name for its extreme supporters was coming into use within the circle of the Rump politicians themselves. Hasilrig, Neville, and the rest of the ultra-Republicans, mast have felt the power going from their hands.¹

While much of this cooling of the original Republican fervency was owing to the recent experience of the public fickleness and of the necessity of not "confining Providence" too much in the decision of what to-morrow should bring forth, there was a special cause in the relations now subsisting between the House and Monk.

The House having been restored by Monk's agency, but without that march to London which he had proposed for the purpose, the majority were by no means anxious to see him in London. Monk, on the other hand, to whom it had been a disappointment that the House had been restored without his presence to see it done, was resolved nevertheless that the march should take place. He was already within England when the news of the premature restitution of the Rump reached him, having advanced through the snow from Coldstream to Wooler in Northumberland on the 2nd of January, to fight Lambert at last. He was at Morpeth on the 4th, and at Newcastle on the 5th, to find that there was to be no necessity for fighting Lambert after all. Lambert's army had melted away with the utmost alacrity on orders from London, leaving their leader to submit and shift for himself. After remaining three days at Newcastle, Monk resumed his march, by Durham and Northallerton, receiving addresses and deputations by the way, and was at York on the 11th. Here he remained five days, besieged with more addresses and deputations, but having a conference also with Lord Fairfax, followed by a visit to his Lordship at his house of Nunappleton. Fairfax had been in arms to attack Lambert's rear, in accordance with the understanding he had come to with Monk; and it was part of Monk's business at York to reform the wreck of Lambert's forces, incorporating some of them with his own and putting the rest under the command of officers who had declared for Fairfax. He arranged also for leaving one of his own regiments at York and for sending Morgan back with two others to take charge of Scotland. By these changes his army for farther advance was reduced to 4000 foot and 1800 horse. Hitherto his march had been by his own sole authority; but at York he received orders from the Council of State to come on to London. Dreading what might happen from his conjunction with the great Fairfax, and not daring to order him back to Scotland, the Rump leaders had assented to what they could not avoid. From York, accordingly, he resumed his advance on the 16th, the country before him, like that he had left behind, still covered thick with snow. On the 18th, at Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, he met Dr. Gumble, whom he had sent on to London about ten days before with letters to the Parliament and the Council of State, and who had returned with valuable information. Next day, at Nottingham, his brother-in-law De Clarges also met him, bringing farther information for his guidance. On the 22nd, as he was approaching Leicester, Messrs. Scott and Robinson, who had been sent from London as Commissioners from the Rump to attend him in the rest of his march, made their appearance ceremoniously and were duly received. They had come really as anxious spies on Monk's conduct, and were very inquisitive and loquacious; but they relieved him thenceforth of much of the trouble of answering the deputations and addresses by which he was still beset on his route. They were with him at Northampton, where he was on the 24th; at Dunstable, where he was on the 27th; and at St. Alban's, where he arrived on the 28th. Here, twenty miles from London, he rested for five days, to see the issue of a very important message he had been secretly preparing for the Parliament and which he now sent on by Dr. Clarges. It was a request to the House to clear London of all but two of the regiments then in it, on the ground that, having so recently served Fleetwood and the Wallingford-House party in their usurpation, they were not to be trusted. The message was of a kind to surprise and perplex the House, and Monk had purposely reserved it to this late stage of his march that there might be the less time for discussion. While waiting at St. Alban's, he had to endure, we are told, "amongst the rest of his interruptions," a long fast-day sermon from Hugh Peters, who had come to his quarters, with two other ministers. Monk's chaplain, Dr. Price, who was present at the sermon, has left an account of it. The text was Psalm cvii. 7, "And He led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation"; and Peters, in discoursing on this text, drew from it the assurance of a happy settlement of the Commonwealth at last. "With his fingers on the cushion," says Dr. Price, "he measured the right way from the Red Sea, through, the Wilderness, to Canaan; told us it was not forty days' march, but God led Israel forty years through the Wilderness before they came thither; yet this was still the Lord's right way, who led his people crinkledum cum crankledum." Monk's present march was to be one of the last of the windings.¹

While Monk is at St. Alban's, we may inquire into his real intentions. They connect themselves with the purport of those addresses with which he had been troubled along his whole route. Not only had there been addresses from the inhabitants or authorities of the towns he passed through; but there had been letters to him at Morpeth from the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, of the City of London, followed by an address presented to him on the borders of Northamptonshire by a deputation of three commissioners from the City, two of them Aldermen. Now, almost all the addresses had been in one strain. Thanking Monk for what he had already done, they prayed him to earn the farther gratitude of his countrymen either by (1) securing that the present House should be converted into a real Parliament by the restoration of the secluded members of 1642-1648 to their seats and the filling up of other vacancies, or (2) securing that a full and free new Parliament should be called at once. Both these methods implied the restoration of Charles, though mention of that consequence, and by some even the thought of it, was most studiously avoided. A full and free new Parliament meant, in the present mood of the country, a recall of Charles rapidly and unhesitatingly. The filling up of the present Parliament by the restoration of the secluded members, and by new elections for other vacancies, meant the reconstituting of the Long Parliament entire, just as it had been while negotiations with Charles I. were going on, and before the Army, in order to stop these negotiations and bring in the Republic, ejected the Royalist and Presbyterian members. Such a reconstituted Parliament, if time were given it, would also inevitably recall Charles II., though it might do so after a preliminary compact with him on the basis of that Treaty of Newport which had been going on with his father late in 1648, and which might be regarded as still embodying the views of the Presbyterians respecting Royalty and its limits. Of the two methods the Cavaliers or Old Royalists naturally preferred that which would bring in Charles most speedily and with the fewest conditions; but, as they were outnumbered by the Presbyterians or New Royalists, they were willing to accept their method. To the genuine Rumpers, of course, either proposal was dreadful. To retain the power themselves, enlarging their House, if at all, only by new elections permitted by themselves, and not to part with their power unless to a new Parliament the qualifications for which should have been carefully pre-determined by themselves, was the only procedure by which they could hope to preserve the Commonwealth. Hence, on the one hand, their willingness to throw overboard all that was not absolutely essential to a Republican policy; but hence, on the other, their anxiety to enforce an oath among themselves abjuring Charles and the Stuarts utterly. It had been to feel Monk's inclinations in this matter of the abjuration oath, and also to watch his attitude to the deputations and their requests, that they had despatched their two commissioners, Scott and Robinson, to be in attendance on him. He had baffled them by his matchless taciturnity. Very probaby, his intention, when he first projected his march to London, had been to restore the Rump and to insist at the same time on the re-admission of the secluded members; and this had been recommended to him by Fairfax. But, now that the Rump was again sitting without the secluded members, and determined to keep them out, not even to Fairfax had he committed himself by a definite promise on that point. To the deputations he would reply only in curt generalities, or indeed, after Scott and Robinson had joined him, in generalities which would have been thought crusty and uncivil, had not Gumble, or Price, or the physician Dr. Barrow, been always at hand to explain privately to disappointed persons that the General's way was peculiar. Only in one matter was he explicit himself. He would not permit the least insinuation that he designed to bring in Charles. At York he had caned one of his officers for having said something imprudent to that effect.¹

On the 30th of January, with whatever reluctance, the House did comply with Monk's request, by issuing orders for the removal of Fleetwood's regiments from London; and on the 1st of February the way was farther cleared by the appointment of Clarges to be commissary-general of the musters for England and Scotland. There was a mutiny among Fleetwood's soldiers on account of the disgrace put upon them, and also on account of their dislike of country quarters after the pleasures of London; but the mutiny only quickened the desire to get rid of them. They were marched out by their officers; and on Friday the 3rd of February, Monk, who had come on to Barnet the day before, marched in with his army, by Gray's Inn Lane, Chancery Lane, and the Strand. They appeared to the citizens a very rough and battered soldiery indeed after their month's march through the English snows, the horses especially lean and ragged. That night, and all Saturday and Sunday, Monk was in quarters at Whitehall, receiving distinguished visitors. Though asked to take his seat in the Council of State on Saturday, he declined to do so till he should see his way more clearly on the disputed question of the abjuration oath.¹

On Monday, Feb. 6, the House was assembled in state to see Monk introduced into it by Messrs. Scott and Robinson. His designation among them was only "Commissioner Monk"; for, though he had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of all the Forces of England, Scotland, and Ireland, by a secret commission sent him by Hasilrig and a few other members of the old Council of State during the late interruption, that commission did not now hold, and he had really no other authority than that implied by his appointment before Lambert's coup d'état to be fellow-commissioner with Fleetwood, Ludlow, Hasilrig, Walton, and Morley for the regulation of the Army. The last three of these, as still acting in the commission, were nominally his equals. But every care was taken to testify to Monk the sense of his extraordinary services. A chair was set for him opposite the Speaker; at the back of which, as he declined the invitation to be seated, he stood while the Speaker addressed him in a harangue of glowing thanks. Then, with his hand on the chair, he spoke in return the speech he had carefully conned. "Sir, I shall not trouble you with large narratives," he said; "only give me leave to acquaint you that, as I marched from Scotland hither, I observed the people in most counties in great and earnest expectations of Settlement, and they made several applications to me, with numerous subscriptions. The chiefest heads of their desires were:—for a free and full Parliament, and that you would determine your sitting; a Gospel Ministry; encouragement of Learning and Universities; and for admittance of the members secluded before 1648, without any previous oath or engagement. To which I commonly answered, That you are now in a free Parliament, and, if there were any force remaining upon you, I would endeavour to remove it; and that you had voted to fill up your House, and then you would be a full Parliament also...; but, as for those gentlemen secluded in 1648, I told them you had given judgment in it and all people ought to acquiesce in that judgment; but to admit any members to sit in Parliament without a previous oath or engagement to secure the Government in being, it was never yet done in England. And, although I said it not to them, I must say it with pardon to you, that the less oaths and engagements are imposed (with respect had to the security of the common cause) your settlement will be the sooner attained to." He was now half through his speech; and the rest consisted of general recommendations of a policy in accordance with "the sober interest," with care that "neither the Cavalier nor Fanatic party" should have a share of the civil or military power. He ended with a glance at Ireland and Scotland, bespeaking particular attention to the Scots, as "a nation deserving much to be cherished," and sure to appreciate the late declaration in favour of a sober and conservative Church policy, inasmuch as no nation more dreaded "to be overrun with fanatic notions." Having thus delivered himself, Monk withdrew, leaving the House wholly mystified, but also a good deal distempered, by his ambiguities. It seems to have been on this occasion that Henry Marten vented that witty description of Monk which is one of the best even of his good sayings. "Monk," he said, "is like a man that, being sent for to make a suit of clothes, should bring with him a budget full of carpenter's tools, and, being told that such things were not at all fit for the work he was desired to do, should answer, 'It matters not; I will do your work well enough, I warrant you.'" Monk was now on the spot with his budget of carpenter's tools, and he meant to make a tolerable suit of clothes with them somehow.¹

There was no lack of advices for his direction. Through the month of his march and of the anxious sittings of the House in expectation of him, the London press had teemed with pamphlets for the crisis. The Rota, or a Model of a Free State or Equal Commonwealth was another of Harrington's, published Jan. 9, when Monk was between Newcastle and York; and on the 8th of February, when Monk had been five days in London, he was saluted by The Ways and Means whereby an Equal and lasting Commonwealth may be suddenly introduced, also by Harrington. A Coffin for the Good Old Cause was another, in a different strain; and there were others and still others, some of them in the form of letters expressly addressed to Monk. From the moment of his arrival at St. Alban's, indeed, he had become the universal target for letter-writers and the universal object of popular curiosity. The Pedigree and Descent of his Excellency General Monk was on the book-stalls the day before his entry into London, and his speech to the Parliament was in print the day after its delivery. All were watching to see what "Old George" would do. He did not yet know that himself, but was trying to find out. What occupied him was that question of the means towards a full and free Parliament which had been pressed upon him all along his march, and about which he had hitherto been so provokingly ambiguous. Of all the pamphlets that were coming out only those that could give him light on this question can have been of the least interest to his rough common sense. Now, as it happened, he could be under no mistake, after his arrival in London, as to the strength and massiveness of that current of opinion which had set in for a re-seating of the secluded members. Since the first restoration of the Rump in May 1659, Prynne had been keeping the case of the secluded members perpetually before the public in pamphlets; and Prynne, more than any other man, had created the feeling that now prevailed. "Conscientious, Serious, Theological and Legal Queries propounded to the twice dissipated, self-erected, Anti-Parliamentary Westminster Juncto"; "Six Important Queries proposed to the Re-sitting Rump of the Long Parliament"; "Seven Additional Queries in behalf of the Secluded Members"; "Case of the Old secured, secluded, and twice excluded Members"; "Three Seasonable Queries proposed to all those Cities, Counties, and Boroughs, whose respective citizens have been forcibly excluded," &c.; "Full Declaration of the true state of the Secluded Members' Case": such are the titles of those of Prynne's pamphlets, the last of a long series in one and the same strain, which were delighting or tormenting London when Monk arrived. Many of the secluded members were in town to await the issue, and the last-named of Prynne's pamphlets (published Jan. 30) contained an alphabetical list of the whole body of them. There were, it appears, 194 secluded members then alive, besides forty who had died since 1648. If Monk was to do anything at all, was not Prynne's way the safest and most popular? Practically, at all events, he could now see that the possible courses had reduced themselves to two,—(1) The Rump's own way, or self-enlargement of the present House by new writs, issued with all Republican precautions; (2) The City's way, or Prynne's way, which proposed to re-insert the secluded members into the present House, so as to make it legally the Long Parliament over again, with its rights and engagements precisely as they had been at the time of the last negotiations with Charles I. in 1648. For which of these two courses he should declare himself was the question Monk had to ponder.¹

He nearly blundered. The Rump, having him and his Army at hand, had become more firm in their determination to proceed in their own way. On the 4th of February, the day after Monk's arrival, they resolved that the present House should be filled up to the number of 400 members in all for England and Wales, and that the returning constituencies should be as in 1653; and, having referred certain details to a Committee, they proceeded on subsequent days to settle some of the qualifications for voting or eligibility. The Londoners, tumultuous already, were enraged beyond bounds by these new signs of the Rump's obstinacy. It was again debated in the Common Council "whether the City should pay the taxes ordered by the Government"; influential citizens urged the Lord Mayor to put himself at the head of a resistance to the Rump at all hazards; there were riots in the streets and skirmishes between the militia and the apprentices. Thus, instead of having time to deliberate, Monk found himself in the midst of such a clash between the House and the City that instant decision for the one or the other was imperative.—On the night of the 8th, two days after his speech in Parliament, he received orders from the Council of State to go into the City with his regiments and reduce it to obedience. He was to take away the posts and chains in the streets, unhinge the City gates, and wedge the portcullises; he was to use any force necessary for the purpose; and he was to arrest eleven citizens named, and others at his discretion. The orders, though addressed nominally to all the four Army-Commissioners, were really intended for Monk; and there was the utmost anxiety among the leaders of the Rump to see whether he would execute them. To the surprise of all, to the surprise of his own soldiers even, he did execute them. On the 9th the House had three sittings; and in the second of these it was announced that Monk had marched his regiments that morning into the City, that he was then at Guildhall, that he had nine of the eleven citizens already in custody, and that he had removed the posts and chains. All being now quiet, and the Lord Mayor and Aldermen having undertaken to hold a meeting of the Common Council and give the Parliament every satisfaction, he had thought it best not to incense the City by the extreme insult of unhinging the gates and wedging the portcullises. The Rumpers were in ecstasies. Monk had committed himself, and was irredeemably theirs. "All is our own: he will be honest," said Hasilrig to the friends beside him. In their triumph, they rose once more for a moment to the full height of Republican confidence. It happened that a deputation of London citizens, headed by Mr. Praise-God Barebone, had come to the House that day with a petition and address, signed by some thousands of "lovers of the good old cause," who were anxious to disclaim all connexion with the City tumults and with "the promoters of regal interest" in the City or elsewhere. The petitioners demanded nothing less than that the House should at once impose an oath abjuring Charles Stuart upon all clergymen and other persons in public employment; but even this did not prevent the House from thanking them cordially. As for the City generally, now that Monk had brought it to submission, the House would trample it under foot! The Lord Mayor, having behaved discreetly through the tumults, was to be thanked; but it was voted that the present Common Council should be dissolved and a new one elected by such citizens only as the House should deem worthy of the franchise. Nor was Monk to hesitate any longer about the city gates and portcullises. Orders were sent to him, not only to unhinge the gates and wedge the portcullises, as the Council had already ordered, but to break them in pieces. The City was to be overmastered utterly and finally, and Monk was to be the agent.—Not even yet did Monk rebel. The gates and portcullises were broken in pieces by his soldiers, and every other order was punctually carried out. The soldiers were in indignation over their base employment, and the citizens were stupefied. In vain were Clarges, Dr. Barrow, and others of Monk's friends going about and assuring the Lord Mayor and Aldermen that the General was a man of very peculiar ways and must not be too hastily judged. "Very peculiar ways indeed," thought the citizens, mourning for their honours lost, and their broken gates and portcullises. On the night of Friday, Feb. 10, when Monk returned to Whitehall, after his two days of rough work in the city, it was, as it seemed, with his reputation ruined for ever among the Londoners. A few days before he had been the popular demigod, the man on whom all depended, and who had all in his power. Now what was he but the slave and hireling of the Rump?¹

It was afterwards represented by Monk's admirers that his City proceedings of Feb. 9 and 10 were the effects of consummate judgment. He could not then have disobeyed the Rump without resigning his command; Hasilrig and Walton, two of his fellow-commissioners, would have executed the orders independently; though by a disagreeable process, he had felt the temper of his officers and soldiers, and ascertained that they were as disgusted with the Rump as he was himself! It may be doubted, however, whether he had not only been handling his carpenter's tools with too sluggish caution. Certain it is that he had returned to Whitehall in a sullen mood, and that, after a consultation overnight with his officers, his conclusion was that he must at once retrieve himself. That was a night of busy preparations between him and his officers. A letter was drafted, to be sent to the House next day; and a copy was taken, that it might be in the printer's hands before the House had received the original.

Next morning, Saturday Feb. 11, Monk and his regiments were again in the City, drawn up in Finsbury Fields. He had left the letter for the House, signed by himself, seven of his colonels, one lieutenant-colonel, and six majors, to be delivered to the House by two of the signing colonels, Clobery and Lydcott; and he had come to make his peace with the City. This was not very easy. The Lord Mayor, to whom Clarges had been sent to announce the return of the regiments, and to say that the General meant to dine with his Lordship that day, was naturally suspicious and distant; but, having taken counsel with some of the chief citizens, he could do no less than answer that he would expect the General. At the early dinner-hour, accordingly, Monk was at his Lordship's house in Leadenhall Street, coldly received at first, but gradually with more of curiosity and goodwill as his drift was perceived. He begged earnestly that his Lordship would send out summonses for an immediate meeting of the Common Council in Guildhall, notwithstanding the dissolution of that body by the Rump, saying he would accompany his Lordship thither and make certain public explanations. Dinner over, and the Lord Mayor and Common Council having met in Guildhall about five o'clock, Monk did surprise them. He apologised for his proceedings of the two preceding days, declaring that the work was the most ungrateful he had ever performed in his life, and that he would have laid down his power rather than perform it, unless he had seen that by such a step he would only have given advantage to the dominant faction. He was come now, however, to make amends. He had that morning sent a letter to the House, requiring them to issue out writs within seven days for the filling up of vacancies in their ranks, and also, that being done, to dissolve themselves by the 6th of May at latest, that they might be succeeded by a full and free Parliament! Till he should receive ample satisfaction in reply to these demands and otherwise, he meant to remain in the City of London with his regiments, making common cause with the faithful citizens! Guildhall rang with acclamations; and, as the news was dispersed thence through the City, confirmed by the printed copies of Monk's letter to the Rump that were by this time in circulation, the dejection of the two last days passed into a phrenzy of joy. Housewives ran out to Monk's soldiers, who had been standing all day under arms, carrying them food and drink without stint; crowds of apprentices danced everywhere like delirious demons; the bells of all the churches were set a-ringing; the houses of several "fanatics" were besieged, and the windows in Barebone's all smashed; and far into the night and into the Sunday morning the streets blazed with long rows of bonfires. Whatever piece of flesh, in butcher's stall or in family-safe, bore resemblance to a rump, or could be carved into something of that shape, was hauled to one of these bonfires to be flung in and burnt; and for many a day afterwards the 11th of February 1659-60 was to be famous in London as The Roasting of the Rump.¹

On receiving Monk's letter early in the forenoon of Saturday the House had temporized. They had sent Messrs. Scott and Robinson into the City after Monk, to thank him for his faithful service of the two previous days, and to assure him "that, as to the filling up of the House, the Parliament were upon the qualifications before the receipt of the said letter, and the same will be despatched in due time." But at an evening sitting, with candles brought in, the House, informed by that time of Monk's proceedings in the City, had shown their resentment by reconstituting the Commission for regulation of the Army. They did not dare to turn Monk out; but they negatived by thirty (Marten and Neville tellers) to fifteen (Carew Raleigh and Robert Goodwyn tellers) a proposal of his partisans to make Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper one of his colleagues. The colleagues they did appoint were Hasilrig, Morley, Walton, and Alured; and, in settling the quorum at three, they rejected a proposal that Monk should always be one of the quorum.—Through the following week, however, efforts were still made to come to terms with Monk. On Monday the 13th the Council of State begged him to return to Whitehall and assist them with his presence and counsels. His reply was that, so long as the Abjuration Oath was required of members of the Council, he would not appear in it, and that meanwhile there were sufficient reasons for his remaining in the City. Accordingly, he kept his quarters there, first at the Glass House in Broad Street, and then at Drapers' Hall in Throgmorton Street, holding levées of the citizens and city-clergy, and receiving also visits from Hasilrig and other members of the House. Even Ludlow, though one of the complaints in Monk's letter was that the House was allowing Ludlow to sit in it notwithstanding the charge of high treason lodged against him from Ireland, ventured to go into the den of the lion. He was shy at first, Ludlow tells us, but became very civil, and, when Ludlow had discoursed on the necessity of union to keep out Charles Stuart, "Yea," said he, "we must live and die together for a Commonwealth." The interest that was now pressing closest round Monk, however, was that of the Secluded Members. The applications on their behalf by the Presbyterians of the City and of the counties round were incessant. Monk even yet had his hesitations. On the one hand, to avert, if possible, the re-seating of the secluded among them, the Rumpers had been acting through the week in the spirit of their answer to Monk's letter. They had been pushing on their Bill of Qualifications, so that there might be no delay in the issue of writs for filling up their House to the number of 400, as formerly decided. They had, moreover, tried to pacify Monk in other ways. They had resolved (Feb. 14) that the engagement to be taken by members of Parliament should simply be, "I will be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England and the Government thereof in the way of a Commonwealth and Free State, without a King, Single Person, or House of Lords"; and they had resolved that this simple declaration should be substituted for the stronger abjuration oath even for members of the Council of State. They had also complied with Monk's demands that there should be more severe reprimand of the late Committee of Safety and especially of Vane and Lambert. All this was to induce Monk to accept the proffered Self-Enlargement of the present House, rather than yield to the popular and Presbyterian demand for the Long Parliament reconstituted. Nor were there wanting objections to the latter plan in Monk's own mind. If a House with the secluded members re-seated in it would confine itself to questions of present exigency and future political order, there might be no harm. But would it do so? With a Presbyterian majority in it, looking on all that had been done since 1648 as the illegal acts of pretended Governments, might it not be tempted to a revengeful revision of all those acts? Might it not thus unsettle those arrangements for the sale, purchase, gift, and conveyance of property upon which the fortunes of many thousands, including the Army officers and the soldiery in England, in Scotland, and especially in Ireland, now depended? Would Monk's own officers risk such a consequence? To come to some understanding with the secluded members on these points, Monk himself, and Clarges and Gumble for him, had been holding interviews with such of the secluded members as were in London; and matters had been so far ripened that at length, on Saturday the 18th, by Monk's invitation, there was a conference at his quarters between about a dozen of the leading Rumpers and as many representatives of the Secluded. Hasilrig was one of the Rumpers present; but, as most of the others were of the Monk party, the conference was not unamicable. Even the Rumpers who were favourable to the re-admission of the Secluded, however, could only speak for themselves, and the representatives of the Secluded could hardly undertake for their absent brethren; and so there was no definite agreement.——Monk then took the matter into his own hands. Having, in the course of the Sunday and Monday, secured the concurrence of his officers, and made a rough compact in writing with a few of the secluded members, he marched his Army out of the City on the morning of Tuesday the 21st; and, the secluded members having met him by appointment at Whitehall, to the number of about sixty, he made a short speech to them, caused a longer "Declaration" which he had taken the precaution of putting on paper to be read to them, and then sent them, under the conduct of Captain Miller and a sufficient guard, to the doors of the Parliament House. The incident had been expected; there were soldiers all round the House already; and the procession walked through cheering crowds of spectators. Monk remained at Whitehall himself, to hold a General Council of his officers later in the day.¹

The Rump, which had been still busy on Saturday with the Bill of Qualifications or "Disabling Bill," but whose sitting on Monday is marked only by a hiatus in the Journals, had not formed the House on Tuesday morning when the procession of secluded members, swelled to about eighty by stragglers on the way, entered and took their seats. A few of the Rumpers, seeing what had occurred, ruefully left the House, to return no more; but most remained and amalgamated themselves easily with the more numerous new comers. The reconstituted House then plunged at once into business thus:-"PRAYERS: Resolved, &c., That the Resolution of this House of the 18th of December, 1648, 'that liberty be given to the members of this House to declare their dissent to the vote of the 5th of December 1648 that the King's Answer to the Propositions of both Houses was a ground for this House to proceed upon for settlement of the Peace of the Kingdom,' be vacated, and made null and void, and obliterated." In other words, here was the Long Parliament, like a Rip Van Winkle, resuming in Feb. 1659-60 the work left off in Dec. 1648, and acknowledging not an inch of gap between the two dates. There were seven other similar Resolutions, cancelling votes and orders standing in the way; and these, with orders for the discharge of the citizens recently imprisoned by the Rump, and resolutions for annulling the late new Army Commission of the Rump, and for appointing Monk to be "Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief, under the Parliament, of all the land-forces of England, Scotland, and Ireland," and continuing Vice-Admiral Lawson, in his naval command, were the sum and substance of the business of the first sitting.¹

Before night Monk and his officers had drafted a Letter to all the regiments and garrisons of England, Scotland, and Ireland, explaining to them that, by the grace of God and good London management, they had passed through another revolution. The Letter began "Dear Brethren and Fellow-Soldiers," and bore Monk's signature, followed by those of Colonels Ralph Knight, John Clobery, Thomas Read, John Hubblethorn, Leonard Lydcott, Thomas Sanders, William Eyre, John Streater, Richard Mosse, William Parley, Arthur Evelyn, and sixteen inferior officers. It was vague, but intimated that the Government was still to be that of a Commonwealth, and that all disturbances of the peace "in favour of Charles Stuart or any other pretended authority" were to be put down. More explicit had been Monk's speech at Whitehall that morning to the secluded members on their way to the House, published copies of which were also distributed by Monk's authority. He had assured the secluded members, "and that in God's presence," that he had nothing before his eyes "but God's glory and the settlement of these nations upon Commonwealth foundations"; and he had pointed out the interest of the Londoners especially in the preservation of a Commonwealth, "that Government only being capable to make them, through the Lord's blessing, the metropolis and bank of trade for all Christendom." On the Church question he had been very precise. "As to a Government in the Church," he had said, "the want whereof hath been no small cause of these nations' distractions, it is most manifest that, if it be monarchical in the State, the Church must follow and Prelacy must be brought in—which these nations, I know, cannot bear, and against which they have so solemnly sworn; and indeed moderate, not rigid, Presbyterian Government, with a sufficient liberty for consciences truly tender, appears at present to be the most indifferent and acceptable way to the Church's settlement." It is not uninteresting to know that Monk's chief ecclesiastical adviser at this moment, and probably the person who had formulated for him the description of the kind of Church that would be most desirable, was Mr. James Sharp, from Crail in Scotland. He had followed Monk to London with a commission from the leaders of the Scottish Resolutioner clergy; and from his arrival there he had been, Baillie informs us, "the most wise, faithful, and happy counsellor" Monk had, keeping him from all wrong steps by his extraordinary Banffshire sagacity.¹

CHAPTER I.

Third Section.

MONK'S DICTATORSHIP, THE RESTORED LONG PARLIAMENT, AND THE DRIFT TO THE RESTORATION: FEB. 21, 1659-60—APRIL 25, 1660.

THE RESTORED LONG PARLIAMENT: NEW COUNCIL OF STATE: ACTIVE MEN OF THE PARLIAMENT: PRYNNE, ARTHUR ANNESLEY, AND WILLIAM MORRICE: MISCELLANEOUS PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARLIAMENT: RELEASE OF OLD ROYALIST PRISONERS: LAMBERT COMMITTED TO THE TOWER: REWARDS AND HONOURS FOR MONK: "OLD GEORGE" IN THE CITY: REVIVAL OF THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT, THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION OF FAITH, AND ALL THE APPARATUS OF A STRICT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH-ESTABLISHMENT: CAUTIOUS MEASURES FOR A POLITICAL SETTLEMENT: THE REAL QUESTION EVADED AND HANDED OVER TO ANOTHER PARLIAMENT: CALLING OF THE CONVENTION PARLIAMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE SAME: DIFFICULTY ABOUT A HOUSE OF LORDS: HOW OBVIATED: LAST DAY OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT, MARCH 16, 1659-60: SCENE IN THE HOUSE.—MONK AND THE COUNCIL OF STATE LEFT IN CHARGE: ANNESLEY THE MANAGING COLLEAGUE OF MONK: NEW MILITIA ACT CARRIED OUT: DISCONTENTS AMONG MONK'S OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS: THE RESTORATION OF CHARLES STILL VERY DUBIOUS: OTHER HOPES AND PROPOSALS FOR THE MOMENT: THE KINGSHIP PRIVATELY OFFERED TO MONK BY THE REPUBLICANS: OFFER DECLINED: BURSTING OF THE POPULAR TORRENT OF ROYALISM AT LAST, AND ENTHUSIASTIC DEMANDS FOR THE RECALL OF CHARLES: ELECTIONS TO THE CONVENTION PARLIAMENT GOING ON MEANWHILE: HASTE OF HUNDREDS TO BE FOREMOST IN BIDDING CHARLES WELCOME: ADMIRAL MONTAGUE AND HIS FLEET IN THE THAMES: DIRECT COMMUNICATIONS AT LAST BETWEEN MONK AND CHARLES: GREENVILLE THE GO-BETWEEN: REMOVAL OF CHARLES AND HIS COURT FROM BRUSSELS TO BREDA: GREENVILLE SENT BACK FROM BREDA WITH A COMMISSION FOR MONK AND SIX OTHER DOCUMENTS.—BROKEN-SPIRITEDNESS OF THE REPUBLICAN LEADERS, BUT FORMIDABLE RESIDUE OF REPUBLICANISM IN THE ARMY: MONK'S MEASURES FOR PARALYSING THE SAME: SUCCESSFUL DEVICE OF CLARGES: MONTAGUE'S FLEET IN MOTION: ESCAPE OF LAMBERT FROM THE TOWER: HIS RENDEZVOUS IN NORTHAMPTONSHIRE: GATHERING OF A WRECK OF THE REPUBLICANS FOUND HIM: DICK INGOLDSBY SENT TO CRUSH HIM: THE ENCOUNTER NEAR DAVENTRY, APRIL 22, 1660, AND RECAPTURE OF LAMBERT: GREAT REVIEW OF THE LONDON MILITIA, APRIL 24, THE DAY BEFORE THE MEETING OF THE CONVENTION PARLIAMENT: IMPATIENT LONGING FOR CHARLES: MONK STILL IMPENETRABLE, AND THE DOCUMENTS FROM BREDA RESERVED.

In the nomination of a new Council of State the House adhered to the now orthodox number of thirty-one. Monk was named first of all, by special and open vote, on the 21st of February; and the others were chosen by ballot, confirmed by open vote in each case, on the 23rd, when the number of members present and giving in voting-papers was 114. The list, in the order of preference, was then, as follows:—

General GEORGE MONK

• William Pierrepoint
• John Crewe
• Colonel Edward Rossiter (Rec.)
• Richard Knightley
• Colonel Alexander Popham
• Colonel Herbert Morley
• Lord Fairfax
• Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart.
• Sir Gilbert Gerrard, Bart.
• Lord Chief Justice St. John
• Lord Commissioner Widdrington
• Sir John Evelyn of Wilts
• Sir William Waller
• Sir Richard Onslow
• Sir William Lewis, Bart.
• Colonel (Admiral) Edward Montague (Rec.)
• Colonel Edward Harley (Sec.)
• Richard Norton (Rec.)
• Arthur Annesley (Rec.)
• Denzil Holles
• Sir John Temple (Rec.)
• Colonel George Thompson (Sec.)
• John Trevor (Rec.)
• Sir John Holland, Bart.
• Sir John Potts, Bart.
• Colonel John Birch (Rec.)
• Sir Harbottle Grimstone
• John Swinfen (Rec.)
• John Weaver (Rec.)
• Serjeant John Maynard.

With the exception of Monk and Fairfax, who were not members of the Parliament, and the latter of whom was absent in Yorkshire, these Councillors are to be imagined as also active in the business of the House. About nine of them were Residuary Rumpers who had accepted willingly or cheerfully the return of the secluded. The proportion of Residuary Rumpers in the whole House was even larger. Though it had been reported by Prynne that as many as 194 of the secluded were still alive, and a contemporary printed list gives the names of 177 as available,¹ the present House never through its brief session attained to a higher attendance than 150, the average attendance ranging from 100 to 120; and I have ascertained by actual counting that more than a third of these were Residuary Rumpers. It is strange to find among them such of the extreme Republicans as Hasilrig, Scott, Marten, and Robinson. They left the House for a time, but re-appeared in it, whereas Ludlow and Neville and others would not re-appear—Ludlow, as he tells us, making a practice of walking up and down in Westminster Hall outside, partly in protest, partly to show that he had not fled.² Actually six Regicides remained in the House: viz. Scott, Marten, Ingoldsby, Millington, Colonel Hutchinson, and Sir John Bourchier. The majority of the Residuary Rumpers, however,—represented by such men as Lenthall, St. John, Ashley Cooper, Colonel Thompson, Colonel Fielder, Carew Raleigh, Attorney-General Reynolds, Solicitor-General Ellis, and Colonel Morley, and even by two of the Regicides mentioned (Ingoldsby and Hutchinson),—were now in harmony with the Secluded, and by no means disposed to abet Hasilrig, Scott, and Marten in any farther contest for Rump principles. In other words, the House was now led really by the chiefs of the reinstated members. Prominent among these, besides Crewe, Knightley, Gerrard, Sir John Evelyn of Wilts, Sir William Waller, Sir William Lewis, Arthur Annesley, Sir Harbottle Grimston, and others named as of the Council, were Prynne, Sir Anthony Irby, Major-General Browne, Sir William Wheeler, Lord Ancram (member for a Cornish burgh), William Morrice, and some others, not of the Council.—Prynne, who ought to have been on the Council, if courage for the cause of the Secluded and indefatigable assiduity in pleading it were sufficient qualifications, had not been thought fit for that honour; but he was a very busy man in the House. He had taken his place there very solemnly the first day, with an old basket-hilt sword on; and he was much in request on Committees.—Of more aristocratic manners and antecedents, and therefore fitter for the Council, was Arthur Annesley, a man of whom we have not heard much hitherto, but who, from this point onwards, was to attract a good deal of notice. The eldest son of the Irish peer Viscount Valentia and Baron Mountnorris, he had come into the Long Parliament in 1640 as member for Radnorshire; he had gone with the King in the beginning of the Civil War; but he had afterwards done good service for the Parliament in Ireland during the Rebellion, and had at length conformed to the Commonwealth and the Protectorate. While the Protectorate lasted he had been really a Cromwellian; but, like so many other Cromwellians, he was now a half-declared Royalist. He had been one of the chief negotiators with Monk for the re-seating of the Secluded, and he took at once a foremost place among them, both in the House and in the Council. He was now about forty-fire years of age.—An accession to the House, after it had sat for a week or more, was Mr. William Morrice. He was a Devonshire man, like Monk, to whom he was related by marriage. He had been sent into the Long Parliament in 1645 as Recruiter for Devonshire, and had been afterwards secluded; and he had been returned to Oliver's two Parliaments and to Richard's. Living in Devonshire as a squire "of fair estate," he had acquired the character of an able and bookish man of enlightened Presbyterian principles; he had been of use to Monk in the management of his Devonshire property; there had been constant correspondence between them; and there was no one for whom Monk had a greater regard. Now, accordingly, at the age of about five and fifty, Morrice had left his books and come from Devonshire to London at Monk's request, not only to take his place in Parliament, but also to be a kind of private adviser and secretary to Monk, more in his intimacy than even Dr. Clarges.—To complete this view of the composition of the new Government, we may add that on Feb. 24 Thomas St. Nicholas was made Clerk of the Parliament, and that on the 27th the House appointed Thurloe and a John Thompson to be joint-secretaries of State. There was a division on Thurloe's appointment, but it was carried by sixty-five votes to thirty-eight. The tellers against Thurloe were Annesley and Sir William Waller, but he was supported by Sir John Evelyn of Wilts and Colonel Hutchinson. Thurloe's former subordinate, Mr. William Jessop, was now clerk to the Council of State.³

By the rough compact made with Monk, the House was to confine itself to the special work for which it was the indispensable instrument, and to push on as rapidly as possible, through that, to an act for its own dissolution. The majority was such that the compact was easily fulfilled. Six-and-twenty days sufficed for all that was required from this reinstated fag-end of the famous Long Parliament.

Naturally much of the work of the House took the form (1) of redress of old or recent injuries, and (2) of rewards and punishments. Almost the first thing done by the House was to restore the privileges of the City of London, release the imprisoned Common Council men and citizens, and issue orders for the repair of the broken gates and portcullises. The City and the Parliament were now heartily at one, and there was a loan from the City of £60,000 in token of the happy reconciliation. Sir George Booth, who had been recommitted to the Tower by the Rump, was finally released, though still on security. There were several other releases of prisoners and removals of sequestrations, and at length (Feb. 27) it was referred to a Committee to consider comprehensively the cases of all persons whatsoever then in prison on political grounds. On the 3rd of March particular orders were given for the discharge of the Earl of Lauderdale, the Earl of Crawford, and Lord Sinclair, from their imprisonment in Windsor Castle; and thus the last of the Scottish prisoners from Worcester Battle found themselves free men once more. Twelve days afterwards the House went to the extreme of the merciful process by ordering the release of poor Dr. Matthew Wren, the Laudian ex-Bishop, who had been committed by the Long Parliament early in 1641 along with Laud and Strafford, and who had been lying in the Tower, all but forgotten, through the intervening nineteen years. At the same time discretionary powers were given to the Council of State to discharge any political prisoners that might be still left.—In the article of punishments the House was very temperate indeed. Notorious Rumpers were removed, of course, from military and civil offices, and there were sharper inquiries after Colonel Cobbet, Colonel Ashfield, Major Creed, and others too suspiciously at large; but, with one exception, there seemed to be no thought of the serious prosecution of any for what had been done either under the Rump Government or during the Wallingford-House interruption. The exception was Lambert. Brought before the Council, and unable or unwilling to find the vast bail of £20,000 which they demanded for his liberty, he was committed by them to the Tower; and the House, on the 6th of March, confirmed the act, and ordered his detention for future trial. While Lambert was thus treated as the chief criminal, the rewards and honours went still, of course, mainly to Monk. To his Commandership-in-chief of all the Armies there was added the Generalship of the whole Fleet, though in this command, to Monk's disappointment, Montague was conjoined with him (March 2). He was also made Keeper of Hampton Court; and the £1000 a year in lands which the Rump had voted him was changed by a special Bill into £20,000 to be paid at once (March 16), As the Bill was first drafted, the reward was said to be "for his signal services"; but by a vote on the third reading the word "signal" was changed into "eminent." Perhaps Annesley, Sir William Waller, and the other new chiefs at Whitehall were becoming a little tired of the praises of so peculiar an Aristides. But he was still a god among the Londoners. From St. James's, which was now his quarters, he would go into the City every other day, to attend one of a series of dinners which they had arranged for him in the halls of the great companies, and at which he found himself so much at ease in his morose way that he would hardly ever leave the table "till he was as drunk as a beast." Ludlow, who tells us so, would not have told an untruth even about Monk; and Ludlow was then in London, knowing well what went on. Let us suppose, however, that he exaggerated a little, and that old George was the victim of circumstances.¹

A large proportion of the proceedings of the House and the Council may be described as simply a re-establishment of Presbyterianism. The secluded members being Presbyterians to a man, there was at once an enthusiastic recollection of the edicts of the Long Parliament between 1643 and 1648, setting up Presbytery as the national Religion, with a determination to revert in detail to those symbols and forms of the Presbyterian system which the triumph of Independency had set aside during the Commonwealth, and which had been allowed only partially, and side by side with their contraries, in the broad Church-Establishment of the Protectorate. The unanimity and rapidity of the House in their votes in this direction must have alarmed the Independents and Sectaries. It was on Feb. 29 that the House appointed a Committee of twenty-nine on the whole subject of Religion and Church affairs—Annesley, Ashley Cooper, Prynne, and Sir Samuel Luke (i.e. Butler's Presbyterian "Sir Hudibras") being of the number; and on the 2nd of March, on report from this Committee, the Westminster Assembly's Confession of Faith, as it had been under discussion in the Long Parliament in 1646 (Vol. III. p. 512), was again brought before the House, and passed bodily at once, with the exception of chapter 30, "Of Church Censures," and chapter 31, "Of Synods and Councils"—which two chapters it was thought as well to keep still in Committee. The same day there were other resolutions of a Presbyterian tenor. But the climax was on March 5, in this form: "Ordered, That the SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT be printed and published, and set up and forthwith read in every church, and also read once a year according to former Act of Parliament, and that the said SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT be also set up in this House." Thus, when the bones of Alexander Henderson had been for more than thirteen years in their tomb in Grey Friars churchyard in Edinburgh, was the great document which he had drafted in that city in August 1643, as a bond of religious union for the Three Kingdoms, and only the first fortunes of which he had lived to see, resuscitated in all its glory. What more could Presbyterianism desire? That nothing might be wanting, however, there followed, on the 14th of March, a Bill "for approbation and admittance of ministers to public benefices and lectures," one of the clauses of which prescribed means for the immediate division of all the counties of England and Wales into classical Presbyteries, according to those former Presbyterianizing ordinances of the Long Parliament which had never been carried into effect save in London and Lancashire. The Universities were to be constituted into presbyteries or inserted into such; and the whole of South Britain was to be patterned ecclesiastically at last in that exact resemblance to North Britain which had been the ideal before Independency burst in. What measures of "liberty for consciences truly tender" might be conceded did not yet appear. Anabaptists, Quakers, Fifth Monarchy enthusiasts, and Monk's "Fanatics" generally, might tremble; and even moderate and orthodox Independents might foresee difficulty In retaining their livings in the State Church. Indeed Owen was already (March 13) displaced from his Deanery of Christ Church, Oxford, by a vote of the House recognising a prior claim of Dr. Reynolds to that post.¹

In the matter of a political settlement the proceedings were equally rapid and simple. Celerity here was made possible by the fact that the House considered itself quite precluded from discussing the whole question of the future Constitution. Had they entered on that question, the probability is that they would have decided for a negotiation with Charles II., with a view to his return to England and assumption of the Kingship on terms borrowed from the old Newport Treaty with his father, or at all events on strictly expressed terms of some kind, limiting his authority and securing the Presbyterian Church-Establishment. Even this, however, was problematical. There were still Republicans and Cromwellians in the Parliament, and not a few of the Presbyterians members had been Commonwealth's men so long that it might well appear doubtful to them whether a return to Royalty now was worth the risks, or whether, if there must be a return to Royalty, it was in the least necessary to fix it again in the unlucky House of Stuart. Then the difficulties out of doors! No one knew what might be the effect upon Monk's own army, or upon the numerous Republican sectaries, of a sudden proposal in the present Parliament to restore Charles. On the other hand, the Old Royalists throughout the country had no wish to hear of such a proposal. They dreaded nothing so much, short of loss of all chance of the King's return, as seeing him return tied by such terms as the present Presbyterian House would impose. It was a relief to all parties, therefore, and a satisfactory mode of self-delusion to some, that the present House should abstain from the constitutional question altogether, and should confine itself to the one duty of providing another Parliament to which that question, with all its difficulties, might be handed over.—On the 22nd of February, the second day of the restored House, it was resolved that a new Parliament should be summoned for the 25th of April, and a Committee was appointed to consider qualifications. The Parliament was to be a "full and free" one, by the old electoral system of English and Welsh constituencies only, without any representation of Scotland or Ireland. But what was meant by "full and free"? On this question there was some light on the 13th of March, when the House passed a resolution annulling the obligation of members of Parliament to take the famous engagement to be faithful to "the Commonwealth as established, without King or House of Lords," and directing all orders enjoining that engagement to be expunged from the Journals. This was certainly a stroke in favour of Royalty, in so far as it left Royalty and Peerage open questions for the constituencies and the representatives they might choose; but, taken in connexion with the order, eight days before, for the revival of the Solemn League and Covenant—in which document "to preserve and defend the King's Majesty's person and authority" is one of the leading phrases—it was received generally as a positive anticipation of the judgment on these questions. There was yet farther light, however, between March 13 and March 16, when the House, on report from the Committee, settled the qualifications of members and electors. All Papists and all who had aided or abetted the Irish Rebellion were to be incapable of being members, and also all who, or whose fathers, had advised or voluntarily assisted in any war against the Parliament since Jan. 1, 1641-2, unless there had been subsequent manifestation of their good affections. This implied the exclusion of all the very conspicuous Royalists of the Civil Wars and the sons of such; and the present House, as the lineal representative of the Parliamentarians in those wars, could hardly have done less, especially as there was a saving-clause of which moderate Royalists would have the benefit, and as the electors were sure to interpret the saving-clause very liberally. For there was not even the same guardedness in the qualifications of the electors themselves. It was proposed, indeed, by the Committee to disfranchise all "that have been actually in arms for the late King or his son against the Parliament or have compounded for his or their delinquency" with an exception only in favour of manifest penitents; but this was negatived by the House by ninety-three votes (Lord Ancram and Mr, Herbert tellers) to fifty-six votes (Scott and Henry Marten tellers). Thus, active Royalists of the Civil Wars, if they might not be elected, might at least elect; and, as another regulation disqualified from electing or being elected all "that deny Magistracy or Ministry or either of them to be the Ordinances of God "—viz. all Fifth Monarchy men, extreme Anabaptists, and Quakers—the balance was still towards the Royalists. In short, as finally passed, the Bill was one tending to bring in a Parliament the main mass of which should consist of Presbyterians, though there might be a large intermixture of Old Royalists, Cromwellians, and moderate Commonwealth's men. To such a Parliament it might be safely left to determine what the future form of Government should be, whether Commonwealth continued, restored Kingship, or a renewal of the Protectorate. The present House had not itself decided anything. It had not decided against a continuance of the Commonwealth, should that seem best. It had only assumed that possibly that might not seem the best, and had therefore removed obstacles to the free deliberation of either of the other schemes. The revival of the Solemn League and Covenant might seem to imply more; but the phraseology of a document of 1643 might admit of re-interpretation in 1660.—A special perplexity of the present House was in the matter of the Other House or House of Lords. They were now sitting themselves as a Single House, notwithstanding that the Long Parliament, of which they professed themselves to be a continuation, consisted of two Houses. This was an anomaly in itself, nay an illegality; and there had been a hot-headed attempt of some of the younger Peers to remove it by bursting into the House of Lords at the same time that the secluded members took their seats in the Commons. Monk's soldiers had, by instructions, prevented that; and, with the full consent of all the older and wiser peers at hand, the management of the crisis had been left to the one reconstituted House. The anomaly, however, had been a subject of serious discussion in that House. On the one hand, they could not pass a vote for the restitution of the House of Peers without trenching on that very question of the future form of Government which they had resolved not to meddle with. On the other hand, absolute silence on the matter was impossible. How could the present single House, for example, even if its other acts were held valid, venture on, an Act for the dissolution of that Long Parliament whose peculiar privilege, wrung from Charles I. in May 1641, was that it should never be dissolved except by its own consent, i.e. by the joint-consent of the two component Houses? Yet this was the very thing—that had to be done before way could be made for the coming Parliament. The course actually taken was perhaps the only one that the circumstances permitted. When the House, at their last sitting, on Friday, March 16, did pass the Act dissolving itself and-calling the new Parliament, it incorporated with the Act a proviso in these words: "Provided always, and be it declared, that the single actings of this House, enforced by the pressing necessities of the present times, are not intended in the least to infringe, much less take away, the ancient native right which the House of Peers, consisting of those Lords who did engage in the cause of the Parliament against the forces raised in the name of the late King, and so continued until 1648, had and have to be a part of the Parliament of England." Here again there was not positive prejudgment so much as the removal of an obstacle.—It did seem, however, as if the House would not separate without passing the bounds it had prescribed for itself. It had already been debated in whose name the writs for the new Parliament should issue? "In King Charles's" had been the answer of the undaunted Prynne. He had been overruled, and the arrangement was that the writs should issue, as under a Commonwealth, "in the name of the Keepers of the Liberties of England." At the last sitting of the House, just as the vote for the dissolution was being put, the Presbyterian Mr. Crewe, provoked by some Republican utterance of Scott, moved that the House, before dissolving, should testify its abhorrence of the murder of the late King by a resolution disclaiming all hand in that affair. The untimely proposal caused a great excitement, various members starting up to protest that they at least had never concurred in the horrid act, while others, who had been King's judges or regicides, betrayed their uneasiness by prevarications and excuses. Not so Scott. "Though I know not where to hide my head at this time," he said boldly, "yet I dare not refuse to own that not only my hand, but my heart also, was in that action"; and he concluded by declaring he should consider it the highest honour of his existence to have it inscribed on his tomb: "Here lieth one who had a hand and a heart in the execution of Charles Stuart." Having thus spoken, he left the House, most of the Republicans accompanying him. The Dissolution Act was passed, and there was an end of the Long Parliament. Their last resolution was that the 6th of April should be a day of general fasting and humiliation.¹

Though the House was dissolved, the Council of State was to sit on, with full executive powers, till the meeting of the new Parliament. Annesley was now generally, if not habitually, the President of the Council, and in that capacity divided the principal management of affairs with Monk.

The Parliament having provided for expenses by an assessment of £100,000 a month for six months, the Council could give full attention to the main business of preserving the peace till the elections should be over. Conjoined with this, however, was the important duty of carrying out a new Militia Act which the Parliament had framed. It was an Act disbanding all the militia forces as they had been raised and officered by the Rump, and ordering the militia in each county to be reorganized by commissioners of Presbyterian or other suitable principles. The Act had given great offence to the regular Army, naturally jealous at all times of the civilian soldiery, but especially alarmed now by observing into what hands the Militia was going. It would be a militia of King's men, they said, and the Commonwealth would be undone! So strong was this feeling in the Army that Monk himself had remonstrated with the House, and the Militia Act, though passed on the 12th of March, was not printed till the House had removed his objections. This had been done by pointing to the clause of the Act which required that all officers of the new Militia should take an acknowledgment "that the war undertaken by both Houses of Parliament in their defence against the forces raised in the name of the late King was just and lawful." When Monk had professed himself satisfied, the re-organization of the Militia went on rapidly in all the counties. Monk was one of the Commissioners for the Militia of Middlesex, and to his other titles was added that of Major-General and Commander-in-chief of the Militia of London. Meanwhile the Council had issued proclamations over the country against any disturbance of the peace, and most of the active politicians had left town to look after their elections. The Harringtonian or Rota Club, one need hardly say, was no more in existence. After having been a five months' wonder, it had vanished, amid the laughter of the Londoners, as soon as the secluded members had added themselves to the Rump. Theorists and their "models" were no longer wanted.¹

Not even yet was there any positive intimation that the Commonwealth was defunct. No one could declare that authoritatively, and every one might hope or believe as he liked. The all but universal conviction, however, even among the Republicans, was that the Republic was doomed, and that, if the last and worst consummation in a return of Charles Stuart was to be prevented, it could only be by consenting to some single-person Government of a less fatal kind. O that Richard's Protectorate could be restored! The thing was talked of by St. John and others, but the possibility was past. But might not Monk himself be invested with the sovereignty? Hasilrig and others actually went about Monk with the offer, imploring him to save his country by this last means; and the chance seemed so probable that the French ambassador, M. de Bordeaux, tried to ascertain through Clarges whether Monk's own inclinations ran that way. Monk was too wary for either the Rumpers or the Ambassador. He declined the offers of Hasilrig and his friends, allowing Clarges privately to inform the Council that such had been made; and, though he received the Ambassador, it was but gruffly. "The French ambassador visited General Monk, whom he found no accomplished courtier or statesman," writes Whitlocke sarcastically under March 24; and the ambassador's own account is that he could get nothing more from Monk, in reply to Mazarin's polite messages and requests for confidence, than a reiterated statement that he had no information to give. And so, a Single Person being inevitable, and the momentary uncertainty whether it would be "Charles, George, or Richard again" being out of the way, the long-dammed torrent had broken loose. And what a torrent! "King Charles! King Charles! King Charles!" was the cry that seemed to burst out simultaneously and irresistibly over all the British Islands. Men had been long drinking his health secretly or half-secretly, and singing songs of the old Cavalier kind in their own houses, or in convivial meetings with their neighbours; openly Royalist pamphlets had been frequent since the abolition of Richard's Protectorate; and, since the appearance of the Presbyterian Parliament of the secluded members, there had been hardly a pretence of suppressing any Royalist demonstrations whatever. On the evening of the 15th of March, the day before the Parliament dissolved itself, some bold fellows had come with a ladder to the Exchange in the City of London, where stood the pedestal from which a statue of Charles I. had been thrown down, and had deliberately painted out with a brush the Republican inscription on the pedestal, "Exit tyrannus, Regum ultimus," a large crowd gathering round them and shouting "God bless Charles the Second" round an extemporized bonfire. That had been a signal; but for still another fortnight, though all knew what all were thinking, there had been a hesitation to speak out. It was in the end of March or the first days of April 1660, when the elections had begun, that the hesitation suddenly ceased everywhere, and the torrent was at its full. They were drinking Charles's health openly in taverns; they were singing songs about him everywhere; they were tearing down the Arms of the Commonwealth in public buildings, and putting up the King's instead.¹

Popular feeling having declared itself so unmistakeably for Charles, it was but ordinary selfish prudence in all public men who had anything to lose, or anything to fear, to be among the foremost to bid him welcome. No longer now was it merely a rat here and there of the inferior sort, like Downing and Morland,¹ that was leaving the sinking ship. So many were leaving, and of so many sorts and degrees, that Hyde and the other Councillors of Charles had ceased to count, on their side, the deserters as they clambered up. He received now, Hyde tells us, "the addresses of many men who had never before applied themselves to him, and many sent to him for his Majesty's approbation and leave to sit in the next Parliament." Between London and Flanders messengers were passing to and fro daily, with perfect freedom and hardly any disguise of their business. Annesley, the President of the Council of State, was in correspondence with the King; Thurloe, now back in the Secretaryship to the Council, was in correspondence with him, and by no means dishonourably; and in the meetings of the Council of State itself, though it was bound to be corporately neutral till the Parliament should assemble, the drift of the deliberations was obvious. The only two men whose resistance even now could have compelled a pause were Monk and Montague. What of them?——It was no false rumour that Montague, the Cromwellian among Cromwellians, the man who would have died for Cromwell or perhaps for his dynasty, had been holding himself free for Charles. Under a cloud among the Republicans since his suspicious return from the Baltic in September last, but restored to command by the recent vote of the Parliament of the secluded members making him joint chief Admiral with Monk, he was at this moment (i.e. from March 23 onwards) in the Thames with his fleet, in receipt of daily orders from the Council and guarding the sea-passage between them and Flanders. He had on board with him, as his secretary, a certain young Mr. Samuel Pepys, who had been with him already in the Baltic, had been meanwhile in a clerkship in the Exchequer office, but had now left his house in Axe Yard, Westminster, and his young wife there, for the pleasure and emoluments of being once more secretary to so kind and great a master. In cabin talk with the trusty Pepys the Lord Admiral made no secret of his belief that the King would come in; but it was only by shrewd observations of what passed on board, and of the strange people that came and went, that Pepys then guessed what he afterwards knew to be the fact. "My Lord," as Pepys always affectionately calls his patron, was pledged to the King, and was managing most discreetly in his interest.²—But the power of Montague, as Commander-in-chief of the Navy only, was nothing in comparison with Monk's. How was Monk comporting himself? Most cautiously to the last. Though it was the policy of his biographers afterwards, and agreeable to himself, that his conduct from the date of his march out of Scotland should be represented as a slow and continuous working on towards the one end of the King's restoration, the truth seems to be that he clung to the notion of some kind of Commonwealth longer than most people, and made up his mind for the King only when circumstances absolutely compelled him. With the Army, or a great part of it, to back him, he might resist and impede the restoration of Charles; but, as things now were, could he prevent it ultimately? Why not himself manage the transaction, and reap the credit and advantages, rather than leave it to be managed by some one else and be himself among the ruined? That he had been later than others in sending Charles his adhesion was no matter. He had gained consequence by the very delay. He was no longer merely commander of an Army in Scotland, but centre and chief of all the Armies; he was worth more for Charles's purposes than all the others put together; and Charles knew it! So Monk had been reasoning for some time; and it was on the 17th of March, the day after the dissolution of the Parliament of the Secluded Members, that his ruminations had taken practical effect. Even then his way of committing himself was characteristic. His kinsman, Sir John Greenville, the same who had been commissioned to negotiate with him when he was in Scotland, was again the agent. With the utmost privacy, only Mr. Morrice being present as a third party, Monk had received Greenville at St. James's, acknowledged his Majesty's gracious messages, and given certain messages for his Majesty in return. He would not pen a line; Greenville was to convey the messages verbally. They included such recommendations to his Majesty as that he should smooth the way for his return by proclaiming a pardon and indemnity in as wide terms as possible, a guarantee of all sales and conveyances of lands under the Commonwealth, and a liberal measure of Religious Toleration; but the most immediate and practical of them all was that his Majesty should at once leave the Spanish dominions, take up his quarters at Breda, and date all his letters and proclamations thence. For the rest, as there were still many difficulties and might be slips, the agreement between his Majesty and Monk was to be kept profoundly secret.³

Over the seas went Greenville, as fast as ship could carry him, with the precious messages he bore. At Ostend, where he arrived on the 23rd of March, he reduced them to writing; and the next day, and for several days afterwards, Charles, Hyde, Ormond, and Secretary Nicholas, were in joyful consultation over them in Brussels. The advice of an instant removal to Breda fitted in with their own intentions. Neither the Spanish territory nor the French was a good ground from which to negotiate openly with England; nor indeed was Spanish territory quite safe for Charles at a time when, seeing his restoration possible, Spain might detain him as a hostage for the recovery of Dunkirk and Mardike. To Breda, accordingly, as Monk advised, the refugees went. They went in the most stealthy manner, and just in time to avoid being detained by the Spanish authorities. Before they reached Breda, however, but when Greenville could say that he had seen them safe within Dutch territory, he left them, to post back to England with a private letter to Monk in the King's own hand, enclosing a commission to the Captaincy-General of all his Majesty's forces, and with six other documents, which had been drafted by Hyde, and were all dated by anticipation "At Our Court at Breda, this 4/14th of April 1660, in the Twelfth Year of Our Reign." One was a public letter "To our trusty and well-beloved General Monk," to be by him communicated to the President and Council of State and to the Army officers; another was to the Speaker of the House of Commons in the coming Parliament; a third was a general "Declaration" for all England, Scotland, and Ireland; a fourth was a short letter to the House of Lords, should there be one; a fifth was for Admirals Monk and Montague, to be communicated to the Fleet; and the sixth was to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Councilmen of the City of London. Besides the originals, copies of all were sent to Monk, that he might keep the originals unopened or suppress any of them.¹

It could be an affair now only of a few weeks, more or less. There, at Breda, was his swarthy, witty, good-humoured, utterly profligate and worthless, young Majesty, with his refugee courtiers round him; at home, over all Britain and Ireland, they were ready for him, longing for him, huzzahing for him, Monk and the Council managing silently in London; and between, as a moveable bridge, there was Montague and his fleet. When would the bridge move towards the Continent? That would depend on the newly-elected Parliament, which was to meet on the 25th. Could there be any mischance in the meantime?

It did not seem so. The late politicians of the Rump were dispersed and powerless. Hasilrig sat by himself in London, moaning "We are undone: we are undone"; Scott was in Buckinghamshire, if perchance they might elect him for Wycombe: Ludlow hid in Wiltshire and Somersetshire, also nominated for a seat, but careless about it; the rest absconded one knows not where. The "Fanatics," as the Republican Sectaries were now called collectively, were silenced and overwhelmed. Even Mr. Praise-God Barebone, tired of having his windows broken, was under written engagement to the Council to keep himself quiet. The same written engagement had been exacted from Hasilrig and Scott.—But what of the Army, the original maker of the Commonwealth, its defender and preserver through good report and bad report for eleven years, and with strength surely to maintain it yet, or make a stand in its behalf? The question is rather difficult. It may be granted that something of the general exhaustion, the fatigue and weariness of incessant change, the longing to be at rest by any means, had come upon the Army itself. Not the less true is it that Republicanism was yet the general creed of the Army, and that, could a universal vote have been taken through the regiments in England, Scotland, and Ireland, it would have kept out Charles Stuart. Nay, so engrained was the Republican feeling in the ranks of the soldiery, and so gloomily were they watching Monk, that, could any suitable proportion of them have been brought together, and could any fit leader have been present to hold up his sword for the Commonwealth, they would have rallied round him with acclamations. Precisely to prevent this, however, had been Monk's care. One remembers his advice from Scotland to Richard Cromwell nineteen months ago, when Richard was entering on his Protectorate. It was to cashier boldly. Not an officer in the Army, he had said, would have interest enough, if he were once cashiered, to draw two men after him in opposition to any existing Government. The very soul of Monk lies in that maxim, and he had been acting on it himself. Not only, as we have seen, had he reofficered his own army in Scotland with the utmost pains before venturing on his march into England; but, since his coming into England, he had still been discharging officers, and appointing or promoting others. He had done so while still conducting himself as the servant of the Restored Rump; and he had done so again very particularly after he had become Commander-in-chief for the Parliament of the Secluded Members. The consequence was most apparent in that portion of the Army which was more especially his own, consisting of the regiments he had brought from Scotland, and that were now round him in London. The officers—Knight, Read, Clobery, Hubblethorn, &c.—were all men accustomed to Monk, or of his latest choosing. His difficulty had been greater with the many dispersed regiments away from London, once Fleetwood's and Lambert's. Not only was there no bond of attachment between them and Monk; they were full of bitterness against him, as an interloper from Scotland who had put them to disgrace, and had turned some of them out of London to make room for his own men. But with these also Monk had taken his measures. Besides quartering them in the manner likeliest to prevent harm, he had done not a little among them too by discharges and new appointments. One of his own colonels, Charles Fairfax, had been left at York; Colonel Rich's regiment had been given to Ingoldsby; Walton's regiment to Viscount Howard; a Colonel Carter had been made Governor of Beaumaris, with command in Denbighshire; the Republican Overton had been removed from the Governorship of Hull; Mr. Morrice had been converted into a soldier, and made Governor of Plymouth; Dr. Clarges was Commissary General of the Musters for England, Scotland, and Ireland; and colonelcies were found for Montague, Rossiter, Sheffield, and Lord Falconbridge. When it is remembered that Fleetwood, Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Kelsay, and others of the old officers, Rumpers or Wallingford-House men, were already incapacitated, and either in prison or under parole to the Council of State, it will be seen that the English Army of April 1660 was no longer its former self. There were actually Royalists now among the colonels, men in negotiation with the King as Monk himself was. Still, if Monk and these colonels had even now gone before most of the regiments and announced openly that they meant to bring in the King, they would have been hooted or torn in pieces. Even in colloquies with the officers of his own London regiments Monk had to keep up the Republican phraseology. Suspicions having arisen among them, with meetings and agitations, his plan had been to calm them by general assurances, reminding them at the same time of that principle of the submission of the military to the civil authority which he and they had accepted. On this principle alone, and without a word implying desertion, of the Commonwealth, he prohibited any more meetings or agitations, and caused strict orders to that effect from the Council of State to be read at the head of every regiment. But an ingenious device of Clarges went further than such prohibitions. It was that as many of the officers as possible should be got to sign a declaration of their submission to the civil authority, not in general terms merely, but in the precise form of an engagement to agitate the question of Government no more among themselves, but abide the decision of the coming Parliament. Many who could not have been brought to declare for Charles Stuart directly could save their consciences by signing a document thus conditionally in his interest; and the device of Clarges was most successful. On the 9th of April a copy of the engagement signed by a large number of officers in or near London was in Monk's hands, and copies were out in England, Scotland, and Ireland, for additional signatures. As to the response from Scotland there could be little doubt. Morgan, the commander-in-chief in Scotland, had already reported the complete submission of the Army there to the order established by the Parliament of the Secluded Members. Only a single captain had been refractory, and he far away in the Orkneys. From Ireland, where Coote and Broghill were now managing, the report was nearly as good. Altogether, by the 9th of April, Monk could regard the Republicanism of the Army as but the stunned and paralysed belief of so many thousands of individual red-coats.—It was no otherwise with the Navy. Moored with his fleet in the Thames, or cruising with it beyond, Montague could assure Pepys in private that he knew most of his captains to be Republicans, and that he was not sure even of the captain of his own ship; and, studying a certain list which Montague had given him, Pepys could observe that the captains Montague was most anxious about were all or nearly all of the Anabaptist persuasion. Still there was no sign of concerted mutiny; and it was a great thing at such a time that Vice-Admiral Lawson, Montague's second in command, and the pre-eminent Republican of the whole Navy, had shown an example of obedience.¹

There was to be one dying flash for the Republic after all. Lambert had escaped from the Tower. It was on the night of April 9, the very day on which Monk was congratulating himself on the engagement of obedience signed by so many of his officers. For some days no one knew where the fugitive had gone, and Monk and the Council of State were in consternation. Proclamations against him were out, forbidding any to harbour him, and offering a reward for his capture. Meanwhile emissaries from Lambert were also out in all directions, to rouse his friends and bring them to a place of rendezvous in Northamptonshire. One of these emissaries, a Major Whitby, found Ludlow in Somersetshire, and delivered Lambert's message to him. Ludlow was not unwilling to join Lambert, but wanted to know more precisely what he declared for. With some passion, Whitby suggested that it was not a time to be asking what a man declared for; it was enough to know what he declared against. Ludlow demurred, and said it was always best to put forth a distinct political programme! He merely circulated the information; therefore, in Somersetshire and adjoining counties, and waited for further light. Along many roads, however, especially in the midland counties, others were straggling to the appointed rendezvous. Discharged soldiers, Anabaptists, Republican desperates of every kind, were flocking to Lambert.—Alas! before many of these could reach Lambert, it was all over. Hither and thither, wherever there were signs of disturbance, Monk had been despatching his most efficient officers; and, on the 18th of April, having received more exact information as to Lambert's whereabouts, he sent off Colonel Richard Ingoldsby to do his very best in that scene of action. There could not have been a happier choice. For this was honest Dick Ingoldsby, the Cromwellian, of whom his kinsman Richard Cromwell had said that, though he could neither preach nor pray, he could be trusted. He was also "Dick Ingoldsby, the Regicide," who had unfortunately signed the death-warrant of Charles I., to please Cromwell; and that recollection was a spur to him now. Since the abdication of Richard, he had been telling people that he would thenceforth serve the King and no one else, even though his Majesty, when he came home, would probably cut off his head. That consequence, however, was to be avoided if possible; and already, since the restoration of the secluded members, Ingoldsby had been doing whatever stroke of work for them might help towards earning his pardon. Now had come his most splendid opportunity, and he was not to let it slip.—On Sunday, the 22nd of April, being Easter Sunday, he came up with Lambert in Northamptonshire, about two miles from Daventry. Lambert had then but seven broken troops of horse, and one foot company; but Colonels Okey, Axtell, Cobbet, Major Creed, and several other important Republican ex-officers, were with him. Ingoldsby had brought his own horse regiment from Suffolk; Colonel Streater, with 500 men of a Northamptonshire foot-regiment, had joined him; the Royalist gentry round were sending in more horse; the country train-bands were up. The battle would be very unequal; was it worth while to fight? For some hours the two bodies stood facing each other, Lambert's in a ploughed field, with a little stream in his front, to which Ingoldsby rode up frequently, parleying with such of Lambert's troopers as were nearest, and so effectively as to bring some of them over. At last, Lambert showing no signs of surrender, Ingoldsby and Streater advanced, Ingoldsby ready to charge with his horse, but Streater marching the foot first with beat of drum to try the effect of a close approach. There was the prelude of a few shots, which hurt one or two of Lambert's troopers; but the orders were that the general fire should be reserved till the musketeers should see the pikemen already within push of the enemy. Then it was not necessary. Lambert's men had been wavering all the while; his troopers now turned the noses of their pistols downwards; one troop came off entire to Ingoldsby; the rest broke up and fled. But Lambert himself was Ingoldsby's mark. Dashing up to him, pistol in hand, he claimed him as his prisoner. There was a kind of scuffle, Creed and others imploring Ingoldsby to let Lambert go; and in the scuffle Lambert turned his horse and made off, Ingoldsby after him at full gallop. They were men of about the same age, neither over forty, but Ingoldsby the stouter and more fearless for a personal encounter. The two horses were abreast, or Ingoldsby's a little ahead, the rider turning round in his seat, with his pistol presented at Lambert, whom he swore he would shoot if he did not yield. Lambert pleaded yet a pitiful word or two, and then reined in and was taken.—On Tuesday, the 24th of April, Lambert was again in the Tower, with Cobbet, Creed, and other prisoners, though Okey and Axtell were not yet among them. There had been a great review of the City Militia that day in Hyde Park, at which the various regiments, red, white, green, blue, yellow, and orange, with the auxiliaries from the suburbs, made the magnificent muster of 12,000 men. The Parliament was to meet next day, and Monk and the Council of State had no farther anxiety. Among the measures they had taken after Lambert's escape had been an order that the engagement, already so generally signed by the Officers, pledging to agreement in whatever Parliament should prescribe as to the future form of government, should be tendered also to the private soldiers throughout the whole army. In the troops and companies of Fleetwood's old regiments, as many as a third of the soldiers, or in some cases a half, were leaving the ranks in consequence; but in Monk's own regiments from Scotland only two sturdy Republicans had stepped out.¹

So sure was the Restoration of Charles now that the only difficulty was in restraining impatience and braggartism among the Royalists themselves. The last argument of the Republican pamphleteers having been that the Royalists would be implacable after they had got back the king, and that nothing was to be then expected but the bloodiest and severest revenges upon all who had been concerned with the Commonwealth, and some of the younger Royalists having given colour to such representations by their wild utterances in private, there had been printed protests to the contrary by leading Royalists in London and in many of the counties. They desired no revenges, they said; they reflected on the past as the mysterious course of an all-wise Providence; they were anxious for an amicable reunion of all in the path so wonderfully opened up by the wisdom and valour of General Monk; they utterly disowned the indiscreet expressions of fools and "hot-spirited persons"; and they would take no steps themselves, but would confide in Monk, the Council of State, and the Parliament, The London "declaration" to this effect was signed by ten earls, four viscounts, five lords, many baronets, knights, and squires, with several Anglican clergymen, among whom was Jeremy Taylor. It was of no small use to Monk, who had equally to be on his guard against too great haste. They were crowding round him now, and asking why there should be any more delay, why the king should not be brought to England at once. His one reply still was that the Parliament alone could decide what was to be done, and that he and others were bound to leave all to the Parliament. Meanwhile Sir John Greenville had been back from his mission for some time, and had duly delivered to Monk the important documents from Breda. Monk had kept Charles's private letter, but had given Greenville back all the rest, including his own commission to be his Majesty's Captain-General. Not a soul was to know of their existence till the moment when they should be produced in the Parliament.¹

CHAPTER II.

First Section.

MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH RICHARD'S PROTECTORATE: SEPT. 1658-MAY 1659.

MILTON AND MARVELL STILL IN THE LATIN SECRETARYSHIP: MILTON'S FIRST FIVE STATE-LETTERS FOR RICHARD (NOS. CXXXIII.-CXXXVII.): NEW EDITION OF MILTON'S DEFENSIO PRIMA: REMARKABLE POSTSRCIPT TO THAT EDITION: SIX MORE STATE-LETTERS FOR RICHARD (NOS. CXXXVIII.-CXLIII.): MILTON'S RELATIONS TO THE CONFLICT OF PARTIES ROUND RICHARD AND IN RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT: HIS PROBABLE CAREER BUT FOR HIS BLINDNESS: HIS CONTINUED CROMWELLIANISM IN POLITICS, BUT WITH STRONGER PRIVATE RESERVES, ESPECIALLY ON THE QUESTION OF AN ESTABLISHED CHURCH: HIS REPUTATION THAT OF A MAN OF THE COURT-PARTY AMONG THE PROTECTORATISTS: HIS TREATISE OF CIVIL POWER IN ECCLESIASTICAL CAUSES: ACCOUNT OF THE TREATISE, WITH EXTRACTS: THE TREATISE MORE THAN A PLEA FOR RELIGIOUS TOLERATION: CHURCH-DISESTABLISHMENT THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEA: THE TREATISE ADDRESSED TO RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT, AND CHIEFLY TO VANE AND THE REPUBLICANS THERE: NO EFFECT FROM IT: MILTON'S FOUR LAST STATE-LETTERS FOR RICHARD (NOS. CXLIV.-CXLVII.): HIS PRIVATE EPISTLE TO JEAN LABADIE, WITH ACCOUNT OF THAT PERSON: MILTON IN THE MONTH BETWEEN RICHARD'S DISSOLUTION OF HIS PARLIAMENT AND HIS FORMAL ABDICATION: HIS TWO STATE-LETTERS FOR THE RESTORED RUMP (NOS. CXLVIII.-CXLIX.).

Milton and Marvell continued together In the Latin Secretaryship through the Protectorate of Richard Cromwell, The following were the first Letters of Milton for Richard:—

(CXXXIII.) To Louis XIV. OF FRANCE, Sept. 5, 1658:—"Most serene and most potent King, Friend and Confederate: As my most serene Father, of glorious memory, Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, such being the will of Almighty God, has been, removed by death on the 3rd of September, I, his lawfully declared successor in this Government, though in the depth of sadness and grief, cannot but on the very first opportunity inform your Majesty by letter of so important a fact, assured that, as you have been a most cordial friend to my Father and this Commonwealth, the sudden intelligence will be no matter of joy to you either. It is my business now to request your Majesty to think of me as one who has nothing more resolvedly at heart than to cultivate with all fidelity and constancy the alliance and friendship that existed between my most glorious parent and your Majesty, and to keep and hold as valid, with the same diligence and goodwill as himself, the treaties, counsels, and arrangements, of common interest, which he established with you. To which intent I desire that our Ambassador at your Court [Lockhart] shall be invested with the same powers as formerly; and I beg that, whatever he may transact with you in our name, you will receive it as if done by myself. Finally, I wish your Majesty all prosperity.—From our Court at Westminster."

(CXXXIV.) To Cardinal Mazarin, Sept. ⁵, 1658:—Dispatched with the last, and to the same effect. Knowing the reciprocal esteem between his late Father and his Eminence, Richard cannot but write to his Eminence as well as to the King.

(CXXXV.) To Charles Gustavus, King of Sweden. October 1658:—"Most serene and most potent King, Friend and Confederate: As I think I cannot sufficiently imitate my father's excellence unless I cultivate and desire to retain the same friendships which he sought, and acquired by his worth, and regarded in his singular judgment as most deserving to be cultivated and retained, there is no reason for your Majesty to doubt that it will be my duty to conduct myself towards your Majesty with the same attentiveness and goodwill which my Father, of most serene memory, made his rule in his relations to you. Wherefore, although in this beginning of my Government and dignity I do not find our affairs in such a position that I can at present reply to certain heads which your agents have propounded for negotiation, yet the idea of continuing, and even more closely knitting, the treaty established with your Majesty by my Father is exceedingly agreeable to me; and, as soon as I shall have more fully understood the state of affairs on both sides, I shall indeed be always most ready, as far as I am concerned, for such arrangements as shall be thought most advantageous for the interests of both Commonwealths. Meanwhile may God long preserve your Majesty, to His own glory and for the guardianship and defence of the Orthodox Church."—The peculiar state of the relations between the Swedish King and the English Government is here to be remembered. The heroic Swede, by his sudden recommencement of war with Denmark, had brought a host of enemies again around him; and the question, just before Oliver's death, was whether Oliver would consider himself disobliged by the rupture of the Peace with Denmark, which had been mainly of his own making, or whether he would stand by his brother of Sweden and think him still in the right. That the second would have been Oliver's course there can be little doubt. The question had now descended to Richard and his Council. They were anxious to adhere to the foreign policy of the late Protector in the Swedish as in all other matters; but there were difficulties.

(CXXXVI. AND CXXXVII.) To CHARLES GUSTAVUS OF SWEDEN, Oct. 1659:—Two more letters to his Swedish Majesty, following close on the last:—(1) In the first, dated "Oct. 13," Richard acknowledges a letter received from the King of Sweden through his envoy in London, and also a letter from the King to Philip Meadows, the English Resident at the Swedish Court, which Meadows has transmitted. He is deeply sensible of his Swedish Majesty's kind expressions, both of sorrowing regard for his great father's memory, and of goodwill towards himself. There could not be a greater honour to him, or a greater encouragement in the beginning of his government, than the congratulations of such a King. "As respects the relations entered into between your Majesty and Us concerning the common cause of Protestants, I would have your Majesty believe that, since I succeeded to this government, though our Affairs are in such a state as to require the extreme of diligence, care, and vigilance, chiefly at home, yet I have had and still have nothing more sacredly or more deliberately in my mind than not to be wanting, to the utmost of my power, to the Treaty made by my father with your Majesty. I have therefore arranged for sending a fleet into the Baltic Sea, with those commands which our Internuncio [Meadows], whom we have most amply instructed for this whole business, will communicate to your Majesty." This was the fleet of Admiral Lawson, which did not actually put to sea till the following month, and was then wind-bound off the English coast. See ante p. 428; where it is also explained that Sir George Ayscough was to go out with Lawson, to enter the Swedish service as a volunteer.—(2) The other letter to Charles Gustavus, though dated "Oct." merely in the extant copies, was probably written on the same day as the foregoing, and was to introduce this Ayscough. "I send to your Majesty (and cannot send a present of greater worth or excellence) the truly distinguished and truly noble man, George Ayscough, Knight, not only famous and esteemed for his knowledge of war, especially naval war, as proved by his frequent and many brave performances, but also gifted with probity, modesty, ingenuity, and learning, dear to all for the sweetness of his manners, and, what is now the sum of all, eager to serve under the banners of your Majesty, so renowned over the whole world by your warlike prowess." A favourable reception is bespoken for Ayscough, who is to bring certain communications to his Majesty, and who, in any matters that may arise out of these, is to be taken as speaking for Richard himself. It was not till the beginning of the following year that Ayscough did arrive in the Baltic.

These five letters were undoubtedly the most important diplomatic dispatches of the beginning of Richard's Protectorate. They refer to the two most momentous foreign interests bequeathed from Oliver: viz. the French Alliance against Spain, and the entanglement in Northern Europe round the King of Sweden. Milton, as having written all the previous state-letters on these great subjects, was naturally required to be himself the writer of the five in which Richard announced to France and Sweden his resolution to continue the policy of his father. Marvell's pen may have been used, then and afterwards, for minor dispatches.

To the month of October 1658, the month after that of Oliver's death, belongs also a new edition of Milton's Defensio Prima. It was in octavo size, in close and clear type, and bore this title: "Joannis Miltonii, Angli, Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio contra Claudii Anonymi, alias Salmasii, Defensionem Regiam. Editio correctior et auctior, ab Autore denuo recognita. Londini, Typis Newcombianis, Anno Dom. 1658" (John Milton's Defence, &c. "Corrected and Enlarged Edition, newly revised by the Author" London: from Newcome's press, &c.).¹ This edition seems to have escaped the notice to which it is entitled. As far as my examination has gone, the differences from the original edition through the body of the work can be but slight. There is, however, a very important postscript of two pages, which I shall here translate:—

"Having published this book, some years ago now [April 1651], in the hurried manner then required by the interests of the Commonwealth, but with the notion that, if ever I should have leisure to take it into my hands again, I might, as is customary, afterwards polish up something in it, or perchance cancel or add something, this I fancy I have now accomplished, though with fewer changes than I thought: a monument, as I see, whosoever has contrived it, not easily to perish. If there shall be found some one who will defend civil liberty more freely than here, yet certainly it will hardly be in a greater or more illustrious example; and truly, if the belief is that a deed of such arduous and famous example was not attempted and so prosperously finished without divine inspiration, there may be reason to think that the celebration and defence of the same with such applauses was also by the same aid and impulse,—an opinion I would much rather see entertained by all than have any other happiness of genius, judgment, or diligence, attributed to myself. Only this:—Just as that Roman Consul, laying down his magistracy, swore in public that the Commonwealth and that City were safe by his sole exertion, so I, now placing my last hand on this work, would dare assert, calling God and men to witness, that I have demonstrated in this book, and brought publicly forward out of the highest authors of divine and human wisdom, those very things by which I am confident that the English People have been sufficiently defended in this cause for their everlasting fame with posterity, and confident also that the generality of mankind, formerly deceived by foul ignorance of their own rights and a false semblance of Religion, have been, unless in as far as they may prefer and deserve slavery, sufficiently emancipated. And, as the universal Roman People, itself sworn in that public assembly, approved with one voice and consent that Consul's so great and so special oath, so I have for some time understood that not only all the best of my own countrymen, but all the best also of foreign men, sanction and approve this persuasion of mine by no silent vote over the whole world. Which highest fruit of my labours proposed for myself in this life I both gratefully enjoy and at the same time make it my chief thought how I may be best able to assure not only my own country, for which I have already done my utmost, but also the men of all nations whatever, and especially all of the Christian name, that the accomplishment of yet greater things, if I have the power—and I shall have the power, if God be gracious,—is meanwhile for their sakes my desire and meditation."

Perhaps one begins to be a little tired of this high-strained exultation for ever and ever on the subject of his success in the Salmasian controversy. The recurrence at this point, however, is not uninstructive. At the beginning of Richard's Protectorate, we can see Milton's defences of the English Republic were still regarded as the unparalleled literary achievements of the age, and Milton's European celebrity on account of them had not waned in the least. It was something for the blind man, seated by himself in his small home in Westminster, and sending his thoughts out over the world from which for six years now he had been so helplessly shut in, to know this fact, and to be able to imagine the continued recollection of him as still alive among the myriads moving in that vast darkness. This fruit of his past labours, he says, he would "gratefully enjoy," but with no vulgar satisfaction. He would not confess it even to be with any lingering in him now of the last infirmity of a noble mind. In his fiftieth year, and in his present state, he could feel himself superior to that, and could describe his consciousness as something higher. If he had done a great work already, as he himself believed, and as the voice of all the best of mankind acknowledged, had it not been because God had chosen and inspired him for the same, and might he not in that faith send out a message to the world that perhaps God had not yet done with him, and they might expect from him, blind and desolate though he was, something greater and better still? The closing sentence is exactly such a message, and one can suppose that Milton was there thinking of his progress in Paradise Lost.

Whatever was the amount of Marvell's exertion in the secretaryship, Milton was not wholly exempted from the duty of writing even the more ordinary letters for Richard and his Council. There is a vacant interval of three months, indeed, after the five last registered and the next; but in January 1658-9 the series is resumed, and there are six more letters of Milton for Richard between the end of that month and the end of February. Richard's Parliament, it is to be remembered, met on the 27th of January.

(CXXXVIII.) To CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, Jan. 27, 1658-9 (i.e. the day of the meeting of the Parliament):—Samuel Piggott, merchant of London, has complained to the Protector that two ships of his—the Post, Tiddy Jacob master, and the Water-dog, Garbrand Peters master—are detained somewhere in the Baltic by his Majesty's forces. They had sailed from London to France; thence to Amsterdam, where one had taken in ballast only, but the other a cargo of herrings, belonging in part to one Peter Heinsberg, a Dutchman; and, so laden, they had been bound for his Majesty's port of Stettin. Probably the Dutch ownership of part of the herring cargo was the cause of the detention of the ships; but Piggott was the lawful owner of the ships themselves and of the rest of the goods. His Majesty is prayed to restore them, and so save the poor man from ruin.

(CXXXIX.) To THE HIGH AND MIGHTY, THE STATES OF WEST FRIESLAND, Jan. 27, 1658-9:—A widow, named Mary Grinder, complains that Thomas Killigrew, a commander in the service of the States, has for eighteen years owed her a considerable sum of money, the compulsory payment of which he is trying now to evade by petitioning their Highnesses not to allow any suit against him in their Courts for debts due in England. "If I only mention to your Highnesses that she, whom this man tries to deprive of nearly all her fortunes, is a widow, that she is poor, the mother of many little children, I will not do you the injustice of supposing that with you, to whom I am confident the divine commandments, and especially those about not oppressing widows and the fatherless, are well known, any more serious argument will be needed against your granting this privilege of fraud to the man's petition."—The Thomas Killigrew here concerned may have been one of several well-known Killigrews, then refugee Royalists. Hence perhaps the earnestness of the letter.

(CXL.) To LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, Feb. 18, 1658-9:—"We have heard, and not without grief, that some Protestant churches in Provence were so scandalously interrupted by a certain ill-tempered bigot that the matter was thought worthy of severe notice by the magistrates of Grenoble, to whom the cognisance of the case belonged by law; but that a convention of the clergy, held shortly afterwards in, those parts, has obtained your Majesty's order that the whole affair shall be brought before your Royal Council in Paris, and that meanwhile, there being no decision there hitherto, these churches, and especially that of Aix, are prohibited from meeting for the worship of God." His Majesty is asked to remove this prohibition, and to see the author of the mischief properly censured. Such a missive proves that Richard and his Council kept to Oliver's rule of interference whenever there was persecution of Protestants, and also that they did not doubt their influence with Louis and Mazarin.

(CXLI.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, Feb. 19, 1658-9:¹—The Duchess-Dowager of Richmond, with her son, the young duke, is going into France, and means to reside there for some time. His Eminence is requested to show all possible attention to the illustrious lady and her son.

(CXLII.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, Feb. 22, 1658-9:¹—About eight months ago the case of Peter Pett, "a man of singular probity, and of the highest utility to us and the Commonwealth by his remarkable skill in naval affairs," was brought before his Eminence by a letter of the late Lord Protector (not among Milton's letters). It was to request that his Eminence would see to the execution of a decree of his French Majesty's Council, as far back as Nov. 4, 1647, that compensation should be made to Pett for the seizure and sale of a ship of his, called the Edward, by one Bascon, in the preceding year. His Eminence has doubtless attended to the request; but there is still some impediment. Will his Eminence see where it lies and remove it?—Since the time of Queen Mary there had been three Peter Petts in succession, ship-builders and masters of the Royal Dockyard at Deptford; and the present Peter was the father of the more celebrated Sir Peter Pett, who was fellow of the Royal Society after the Restoration.

(CXLIII.) To ALFONSO V., KING OF PORTUGAL, Feb. 23, 1658-9:¹—Congratulations to his Portuguese Majesty upon a victory he had recently obtained over "our common enemy the Spaniard," with acknowledgment of his Majesty's handsome behaviour, through his Commissioners in London, in the matter of satisfaction, according to an article in the League between Portugal and the English Commonwealth, to those English merchants who had let out their vessels to the Brazil Company. But there is still one such merchant unpaid—a certain Alexander Bence, whose ship, The Three Brothers, John Wilks master, had made two voyages for the Company. They refuse to pay him, though they have fully paid others who had made but one voyage; and "why this is done I do not understand, unless it be that in their estimation a person is more worthy of his hire who has earned it once than one who has earned it twice." Will his Majesty see that Bence receives his due?

These six letters belong to the first month of Richard's Parliament, with its very large and freely elected House of Commons representing England, Scotland, and Ireland, and its anomalous addition or excrescence of another or Upper House, consisting of the two or three scores of recently-created Cromwellian "Lords." The battle between the Republicans and the Protectoratists had begun in the Commons, Thurloe ably leading there for the Protectoratists; the Republicans had been beaten on the first great question by the recognition of the Single-Person principle and of Richard's title to the Protectorship; and the House had gone on to the question of the continued existence and functions of the other House, with every prospect that the Cromwillians would beat the Republicans on that question too. From January to April, not only in the Parliament, but also over the country at large, the all-engrossing interest, as we know, was this controversy between pure old Republicanism, desiring neither single sovereignty nor aristocracy, and that more conservative form of Commonwealth which had been set up by the Oliverian constitution. Over the country, no less than in the Parliament, the conservative policy was in favour, and the Cromwellians or Protectoratists, among whom the Presbyterians now ranked themselves, were far more numerous than the old Republicans. Royalism, or at least Stuart Royalism, was at its lowest ebb. Many that had been Royalists heretofore had accepted the constitutionalized Protectorate as the best substitute for Royalty that circumstances allowed, and saw no course left them but to cooperate with the majority of their countrymen in confirming Richard's rule.

How Milton stood related to this controversy is a matter rather of inference than of direct information. Having been a faithful adherent and official of Oliver through his whole Protectorate, and still holding his official place under Richard's Government, there is little doubt that, if he had been obliged to post himself publicly on either of the two sides, he would have gone among the Cromwellians. Nay, if he had been obliged to choose between the two subdivisions of this body, known as the Court Party (supporting Richard absolutely) and the Wallingford-House Party (supporting Richard's civil Protectorate, but wanting to transfer the military power to the Army-chiefs), there can be little doubt that he would have gone with the former. Had he been in the House of Commons, like his colleague Andrew Marvell, his duty there, like Marvell's, would have been that of a ministerial member, assisting Thurloe and voting with him in all the divisions. But for his blindness, we may here say, the chances are that he would long ere now have been a known Parliamentary man, and that, after having been a Cromwellian leader in Oliver's second Parliament, he might have been now in Thurloe's exact place in Richard's present Parliament, or beside Thurloe as a strangely different chief. This, or that other alternative of a foreign ambassadorship or residency, which must have suggested itself again and again to the reader in the course of our narrative, might have been the natural career of Milton through the rule of the Cromwells, had not blindness disabled him. For, if Meadows, his former mere assistant in the Foreign Secretaryship, had been for some time in the one career with increasing distinction, and if an opening had been easily found for Marvell in the other, why may not imagination trace either career, or a combination of the two, had physical infirmity not prevented, for the greater Cromwellian of whom these were but satellites? It is imagination only, and would not be worth while, were it not for one important biographical question which it brings forward. Had Milton remained capable of any such practical career under the Cromwells, would he have retained, to the same extent as he had done through his blindness, the necessary qualification of being an Oliverian or Cromwellian? How far was his present Cromwellianism the actual consequence of his blindness, the mere submissiveness of a blind man to what he had no power to disturb? It is partly an answer to this question to remember again his Defensio Secunda of 1654, with its great panegyric on Cromwell. Milton had been but two years blind when that was published, and had not lost aught of the vehemence of his Republican convictions. Not without deliberation, therefore, had he given up the first form of the Commonwealth, consisting in a single supreme House of Parliament and an annual Council of State chosen by the same, and accepted the later or Protectoral form, with Cromwell for its head, a permanent Council of State round Cromwell, and Parliaments on occasion. But, underneath this general adhesion to the Protectorate, there had been even then certain Miltonic reserves, and especially the reserve of a protest against the continuance of a State Church. Now, had Milton been in a condition to act the part of a practical statesman through Oliver's Protectorate, might not some extraordinary development have been given to those reserves? With his boundless courage and the non-conforming habits of his genius, would he ever have been the Parliamentary servant of a Government from which he differed at all,—from which he differed so vitally on the question of Church Establishment? Probably in nothing else had Cromwell wholly disappointed him. Through the Protectorate there had been all the toleration of religious differences that could be desired, or what shortcoming there had been had hardly been by Cromwell's own fault; the other interferences with liberty had hardly perhaps, in Milton's estimation, gone beyond the necessities of police; and in Cromwell's foreign policy, with its magnificent championship of Protestantism abroad, what man in England was more ardently at one with him than the draftsman of his great foreign despatches? At the time of the proposal of Cromwell's Kingship, and generally at the time of the transition out of his first Protectorate into his second, with the resuscitation then of so many aristocratic forms and the attempt to reinstitute a house of peers, there may have been, as we have already hinted, an uprising in Milton's mind of democratic objections, and the effect may have been that Milton before the end of Oliver's Protectorate was less of an Oliverian than he had been at the beginning. Still, precluded from any active concern in those constitutional changes, he may have reconciled himself to them easily enough, and also to the transmission of the Protectorship from Oliver to Richard. The one insuperable stumbling-block, I believe, had been and was Cromwell's Established Church. Even in his blindness he could theorize on that, and stiffen himself more and more in his intense Religious Voluntaryism, Conscious of his irreconcileable dissent from Cromwell's policy in this great matter, and knowing that Cromwell was aware of the fact, it may have been a satisfaction to him that he was not called upon to act a Parliamentary part, in which proclamation of the dissent and consequent rupture with Cromwell on the ecclesiastical question would have been inevitable. It may have been some satisfaction to him that he could go on faithfully and honestly as a servant of Cromwell in the special business of the Latin Secretaryship, and for the rest be a lonely thinker and take refuge in silence. It is worth observing, indeed, that nothing of a political kind had come from Milton's pen during the last three or four years of Oliver's Protectorate,—nothing even indirectly bearing on the internal politics of the Commonwealth since his Pro Se Defensio against Morus in 1655, and nothing directly bearing thereon since his Defensio Secunda of 1654. And so, if we conclude this inquiry by saying that, at the time of Richard's accession and the meeting of his Parliament, Milton was still a Cromwellian, but a Cromwellian with the old Miltonic reserves, and these strengthened of late rather than weakened, we shall be about right. To the public, however, in the present controversy between the Protectoratists and the pure Republicans, he was distinctly a Protectoratist, a Cromwellian, one of the Court-party, an official of Richard and his Council.

Since Cromwell's death, we have now to add, Milton had been re-mustering his reserves. Under a new Protector, and from the new Parliament of that new Protector, might he not have a hearing on points on which he had for some time been silent? On this chance, he had interrupted even his Paradise Lost, in order to prepare an address to the new Parliament. As might be expected, it was on the subject of the relations of Church and State. Meditating on this subject, and how it might be best treated practically at such a time, Milton, had concluded that it might be broken into two parts. "Two things there be which have been ever found working much mischief to the Church of God and the advancement of Faith,—Force on the one side restraining, and Hire on the other side corrupting, the Teachers thereof." He would, therefore, write one tract on the effects of Compulsion or State-restraint in matters of Religion and Speculation, and another on the effects of Hire or State-endowments in the same. The two would be interconnected, and would in fact melt into each other; but they might appear separately, and it might be well to begin with the first, as the least irritating. Accordingly, before the meeting of the Parliament he had prepared, and after it had met there was published, in the form of a very tiny octavo, a tract with this title-page: "A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes: Shewing that it is not lawfull for any power on Earth to compell in matters of Religion. The author J.M. London, Printed by Tho. Newcomb, Anno 1659." The tract consists of an address "To the Parlament of the Commonwealth of England with the Dominions thereof," occupying ten of the small pages, and signed "John Milton" in full, and then of eighty-three pages of text.¹

After intimating that this was but the first of two tracts and that the other would follow, and also that his argument is to be wholly and exclusively from Scripture, Milton propounds the argument itself under four successive heads or propositions.—The first is that, there being, by the fundamental principle of Protestantism, "no other divine rule or authority from without us, warrantable to one another as a common ground, but the Holy Scripture, and no other within us but the illumination of the Holy Spirit so interpreting that Scripture as warrantable only to ourselves and to such whose consciences we can so persuade," it follows that "no man or body of men in these times can be the infallible judges or determiners in matters of religion to any other men's consciences but their own." Having reasoned this at some length by quotations of Scripture texts and explanations of the same, he proceeds to "yet another reason why it is unlawful for the civil magistrate to use force in matters of Religion: which is, because to judge in those things, though we should grant him able, which is proved he is not, yet as a civil magistrate he hath no right." Under this second head, and also by means of Scripture quotations, there is an exposition of Milton's favourite idea of the purely spiritual nature of Christ's kingdom and of the instrumentalities it permits. The third proposition advances the argument by maintaining that not only is the civil magistrate unable, from the nature of the case, to determine in matters of Religion, and not only has he no right to try, but he also does positive wrong by trying. In arguing this, still Scripturally, Milton dilates on the meaning of the "Christian liberty" of the true believer, with the heights and depths which it implies in the renewed spirit, the superiority to "the bondage of ceremonies" and "the weak and beggarly rudiments." The fourth and last reason pleaded, still from Scripture, against the compulsion of the magistrate in Religion, is that he must fail signally in the very ends he proposes to himself; "and those hardly can be other than first the glory of God, next either the spiritual good of them whom he forces or the temporal punishment of their scandal to others." Far from attaining either of these ends, he can but dishonour God and promote profanity and hypocrisy.—"On these four Scriptural reasons as on a firm square." says Milton at the close, "this truth, the right of Christian and Evangelic Liberty, will stand immoveable against all those pretended consequences of license and confusion which, for the most part, men most licentious and confused themselves, or such as whose severity would be wiser than divine wisdom, are ever aptest to object against the ways of God."

Such is the plan of the little treatise, the literary texture of which is plain and homely, rather than rich, learned, or rhetorical. "Pomp and ostentation of reading," he expressly says, "is admired among the vulgar; but doubtless in matters of Religion he is learnedest who is plainest." It was, we may remember, his first considerable English dictation for the press since his blindness, and what one chiefly notices in the style is the strong grasp he still retains of his old characteristic syntax.¹ The following are a few of the more interesting individual passages or expressions:—

Blasphemy.—"But some are ready to cry out 'What shall then be done to Blasphemy?' Them I would first exhort not thus to terrify and pose the people with a Greek word, but to teach them better what it is: being a most usual and common word in that language to signify any slander, any malicious or evil speaking, whether against God or man or anything to good belonging."

Heresy and Heretic:—"Another Greek apparition stands in our way, 'Heresy and Heretic': in like manner also railed at to the people, as in a tongue unknown. They should first interpret to them that Heresy, by what it signifies in that language, is no word of evil note; meaning only the choice or following of any opinion, good or bad, in religion or any other learning."

A Wrested Text of Scripture:—"It hath now twice befallen me to assert, through God's assistance, this most wrested and vexed place of Scripture [Romans XIII, 'Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers,' &c.]: heretofore against Salmasius and regal tyranny over the State; now against Erastus and State-tyranny over the Church."

Are Popery and Idolatry to be Tolerated?—"But, as for Popery and Idolatry, why they also may not hence plead to be tolerated, I have much less to say. Their Religion, the more considered, the less can be acknowledged a Religion, but a Roman Principality rather, endeavouring to keep up her old universal dominion under a new name and mere shadow of a Catholic Religion; being indeed more rightly named a Catholic Heresy against the Scripture; supported mainly by a civil, and, except in Rome, by a foreign, power: justly therefore to be suspected, not tolerated, by the magistrate of another country. Besides, of an implicit faith, which they profess, the conscience also becomes implicit, and so, by voluntary servitude to man's law, forfeits her Christian liberty. Who, then, can plead for such a conscience as, being implicitly enthralled to man instead of God, almost becomes no conscience, as the will not free becomes no will? Nevertheless, if they ought not to be tolerated, it is for just reason of State more than of Religion; which they who force, though professing to be Protestants, deserve as little to be tolerated themselves, being no less guilty of Popery in the most Popish point. Lastly, for Idolatry, who knows it not to be evidently against all Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament, and therefore a true heresy, or rather an impiety; wherein a right conscience can have naught to do, and the works thereof so manifest that a magistrate can hardly err in prohibiting and quite removing at least the public and scandalous use thereof."

Christ's unique act of Compulsion:—"We read not that Christ ever exercised force but once; and that was to drive profane ones out of his Temple, not to force them in."

Concluding Recommendation to Statesmen and Ministers:—"As to those magistrates who think it their work to settle Religion, and those ministers or others who so oft call upon them to do so, I trust that, having well considered what hath been here argued, neither they will continue in that intention, nor these in that expectation from them, when they shall find that the settlement of Religion belongs only to each particular church by persuasive and spiritual means within itself, and that the defence only of the Church belongs to the magistrate. Had he once learnt not further to concern himself with Church affairs, half his labour might be spared and the Commonwealth better tended."

In this last extract there is a distinct outbreak of the intention which is rather covert through the rest of the tract. To a hasty reader the tract might seem only a plea for the amplest toleration, of religious dissent, a plea for full liberty, outside of the Established Church, not merely to Baptists, but also to Quakers, Anti-Trinitarians, and all other sects professing in any way to be Christians and believers in the Bible, Papists alone excepted, and they but partially and reluctantly. There would be no censure on Cromwell's policy, if that were all. But an acute reader of the tract would have detected that more was intended in it than a plea for Toleration, that the very existence of any Established Church whatever was condemned. In the passage last quoted it is clearly seen that this is the ultimate scope. It is a reflection on Cromwell, almost by name, for not having freed himself from the notion that the settlement of Religion is an affair of the Civil Magistrate, but on the contrary having made such a supposed settlement of Religion one of the passions of his Protectorate. It is a reflection on him, and on Owen, Thomas Goodwin, and all his ecclesiastical advisers and assessors, Independent or Presbyterian, for having busied themselves in maintaining and re-shaping any State-Church, on however broad a basis, and so having perpetuated the old distinction between Establishment and Dissent, Orthodoxy and Heresy, instead of abolishing that distinction utterly, and leaving all varieties of Christianity, equally unstamped and unfavoured, to organize themselves as they best could on the principle of voluntary association. For the future, statesmen and ministers are invited to cease from persevering in this delusion of the great and good Cromwell.

The tract was addressed, as we have said, to the Parliament of Cromwell's son. The preface, signed with Milton's name in full, is a recommendation of the doctrine to that body in particular. "I have prepared, Supreme Council, against the much expected time of your sitting," Milton there says, "this treatise; which, though to all Christian Magistrates equally belonging, and therefore to have been written in the common language of Christendom, natural duty and affection hath confined and dedicated first to my own nation, and in a season wherein the timely reading thereof, to the easier accomplishment of your great work, may save you much labour and interruption." Then, after having stated the main doctrine, he continues:—"One advantage I make no doubt of, that I shall write to many eminent persons of your number already perfect and resolved in this important article of Christianity: some of whom I remember to have heard often, for several years, at a Council next in authority to your own, so well joining religion with civil prudence, and yet so well distinguishing the different power of either, and this not only voting but frequently reasoning why it should be so, that, if any there present had been before of an opinion contrary, he might doubtless have departed thence a convert in that point, and have confessed that then both Commonwealth and Religion will at length, if ever, flourish, in Christendom, when either they who govern discern between Civil and Religious, or they only who so discern shall be admitted to govern." In other words, Milton's hopes of a favourable hearing for his doctrine in Richard's Parliament were founded (1) on the general ground that many members of the Parliament were old Commonwealth's men, of the kind that would have carried the abolition of Tithes and of a State-Church in the Barebones Parliament of 1653, had not Rous broken up that Parliament and resurrendered the power to Cromwell, and (2) on the special fact that some of them were men whom Milton had himself heard with admiration, in the Councils of State of the Commonwealth, when he first sat there as Foreign Secretary in attendance, avowing and expounding the principle of Voluntaryism in Religion, in its fullest possible extent. Among these last Milton must have had in view chiefly such members of the Commons House in Richard's Parliament as Vane, Bradshaw, Harrison, Neville, Ludlow, and Scott, all of whom had been members of one, or several, or all, of the Councils of State of the old Commonwealth; but he may have had in view also such members of the present Upper House as Fleetwood, St. John, and Viscount Lisle. Above all, Vane must have been in his mind,—Vane, on whom half of his eulogy in 1652 had been.

Might not Vane and his fellows move in the present Parliament for a reconsideration of that part of the policy of the Protectorate which concerned Religion? Might they not induce the Parliament to revert, in the matters of Tithes, a State Ministry, and Endowments of Religion, to the temper and determinations of the much-abused, but really wise and deep-minded, Barebones Parliament? Nothing less than this is the ultimate purport of Milton's appeal; and little wonder that he prefixed an intimation that he wrote now only as a private man, and without any official authority whatever. "Of Civil Liberty," he says in the conclusion of his preface, "I have written heretofore by the appointment, and not without the approbation, of Civil Power: of Christian Liberty I write now,—which others long since having done with all freedom under Heathen Emperors, I should do wrong to suspect that now I shall with less under Christian Governors, and such especially as profess openly their defence of Christian liberty, although I write this not otherwise appointed and induced than by an inward persuasion of the Christian duty which I may usefully discharge herein to the common Lord and Master of us all." The words imply just a shade of doubt whether he, a salaried servant of the Government, might not be called to account for having been so bold.

Altogether, Milton's Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes can be construed no otherwise than as an effort on his part, Protectoratist and Court-official though he was, to renew his relations with the old Republican party in the Parliament in the special interest of his extreme views on the religious question. Merely as a pleading against Religious Persecution, the treatise might have had some effect on the Parliament generally, where it was in fact much needed, in consequence of the presence of so much of the Presbyterian element, and the likelihood therefore of increased stringency against Quakers, Socinians, and other Non-Conformists. The treatise would have found many in the Parliament, besides the Republicans, quite willing to listen to its advices so far. But only or chiefly among the old Republicans can there have been any hope of an acceptance of its extreme definition of Christian Liberty, as involving Disestablishment and entire separation of Church and State.

The Treatise, so far as we can see, produced no effect whatever. So far as the Religious Question did appear in the Parliament, it was evident that the preservation of Cromwell's Church-Establishment, its perpetuation as an integral part of Richard's Protectorate, was a foregone conclusion in the minds of the vast majority. Any Disestablishment proposal, emanating from the Republican party, or from any individual member like Vane, would have been tramped out by the united strength of the Presbyterians, the Cromwellians of the Court, and the Wallingford-House Cromwellians. The danger even was that there might be a retrogression in the matter of mere Toleration, and that the presence and pressure of so many Presbyterians among the supporters of Richard might compel Richard's Government, against his own will and that of his Cromwellian Councillors, to a severer Church-discipline than had characterized the late Protectorate. But, indeed, it was not on the Religious Question in any form that the Republicans found time or need to try their strength. Their battles in the Parliament were on the two main constitutional questions:—first, the question of the Protectorate itself or Single-Person Government; and, next, the question of the Other House or House of Lords. On the first they were definitively beaten in February; and on the second they were beaten, no less definitively, and with more distressing incidents of defeat, before the end of March (ante pp. 432-435). Then, feeling themselves powerless as an independent party, they changed their tactics. No sooner had the Protectoratists or Cromwellians triumphed collectively under Thurloe's leadership than there had begun among them that fatal straggle between the two divisions of their body of which the beaten Republicans could not fail to take advantage. The Court party of the Cromwellians, still led by Thurloe in the Commons, desired to preserve the Protectorate unbroken and with full powers, reducing the Army, as in an orderly and well-constituted State, to its proper place and dimensions as the instrument of the civil authority; the Army Party, or Wallingford-House Party, represented by Fleetwood and Desborough in chief, wanted to leave Richard only the civil Protectorship, and to set up a co-ordinate military power. The differences between the two parties had been smouldering since Richard's accession, and had been too visible since the first meeting of the Parliament; but it was in April 1659, after their joint victory over the Republicans, that they turned against each other in deadly strife, the Republicans looking on. Through that month the ominous spectacle was that of two rival Parliaments in Westminster—Richard's regular Parliament, and the irregular Wallingford-House Parliament of Army officers—watching each other and interchanging threats and denunciations. It was on the 18th of the month that the regular Parliament passed their two courageous resolutions asserting their supreme authority. They were that the Wallingford Council of officers should be immediately dissolved and no more such meetings of officers permitted, and that all officers of the Army and Navy should take an engagement not to interrupt the established power (ante pp. 440-441). Then it was evident there would be a crash, but in what form was still unknown.

Precisely at this crisis in Richard's Protectorship comes the last batch of Milton's official letters for him. The letters are four in number:¹—

(CXLIV. and CXLV.) To FERDINAND, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY, April 19, 1659:—Two Letters to this Prince on the same day. (1) Sir John Dethicke, James Gold, John Limbery, and other London merchants, are owners of a ship called The Happy Entrance, which they sent out with merchandise for trade in the Mediterranean, under the command of a John Marvin. They can get no account from him, and have reason to fear he means to play the rogue with the ship and cargo and never return. It is believed that within two months he may put in at Leghorn; and the Protector requests the Grand Duke to give the merchants, in that case, facilities for the recovery of their property. (2) A James Modiford, merchant, complains to the Protector that certain goods of his, taken to Leghorn about 1652 by another English trader, Humphrey Sidney, were there seized by some Italian creditors of Sidney. Modiford has been unable to obtain redress; and the Grand Duke is now prayed to see his goods restored and any claims Sidney may have upon him referred to the English Courts.

(CXLVI.) To ALFONSO V., KING OF PORTUGAL, April 1659:¹—A Francis Hurdidge of London complains that a ship of his, called The Mary and John, cargo valued at 70,000 crowns, employed in the Brazil trade in 1649 and 1650, was seized by the Portuguese. The ship was afterwards taken from the Portuguese by the Dutch. The Treaty between the English Commonwealth and Portugal provides for such cases; and his Portuguese Majesty is requested to make compensation to Hurdidge to the extent of 25,000 crowns. The man is in great straits.

(CXLVII.) To CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, April 1659:—David Fithy, merchant, informs the Protector that, about a month ago, he contracted to supply to the Navy 150 sacks of hemp. He has the hemp now at Riga, and a ship ready to bring it thence for the use of the fleet—"part of which," the Protector skilfully adds, "has just sailed for the Baltic for your protection" (i.e. Montague's fleet, despatched this very month: see ante p. 435). It appears, however, that his Swedish Majesty has forbidden the exportation of hemp from his port of Riga without special permission. His Majesty is requested to give Fithy this permission, that he may be able to fulfil his contract. The Protector will consider himself much obliged by the kindness.

No more letters was poor Richard to write to crowned heads. On the very day on which the two first of the foregoing were written, he appeared in Wallingford House, and ordered the dissolution of the Council of Officers according to the edict of the Parliament. Next day it was known through all London that the question was between a dissolution of this Council of officers and a dissolution of the Parliament itself. The day after, Thursday, April 21, there was the famous double rendezvous of the two masses of soldiery round Whitehall to try the question, the rendezvous for Richard and the Parliament utterly failing, while that for Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other rebel chiefs, flooded the streets and St. James's Park. That night, quailing before the rough threats of Desborough, Richard and his Council yielded; and on Friday, the 22nd, the indignant Parliament knew itself to be dissolved, and Richard's Protectorate virtually at an end. Nominally, it dragged on for a month more.

On Thursday, April 21, the day of the dreadful double rendezvous, and of Desborough's stormy interview with Richard in Whitehall to compel the dissolution of the Parliament, Milton, in his house in Petty France, on the very edge of the uproar, was quietly dictating a private letter. It is that numbered 28 among his Epistoloe Familiares, and headed "Joanni Badioeo, Pastori Arausionensi," i.e. "To John Badiaeus, Pastor of Orange." With some trouble, I have identified this "Badiaeus" with a certain French JEAN LABADIE, who is characterized by Bayle as a "schismatic minister, followed like an apostle," and by another authority as "one of the most dangerous fanatics of the seventeenth century." The facts of his life, to the moment of our present concern with him, are given in the accepted French authorities thus:—Born in 1610 at Bourg-en-Guyenne, the son of a soldier who had risen to be lieutenant, he had received a Jesuit education at Bordeaux, had entered the Jesuit order at an early age, and had become a priest. For fifteen years he had remained in the order, preaching, and also teaching rhetoric and philosophy, reputed "a prodigy of talent and piety," but also a mystic and enthusiast, with fancies that he must found a new religious sect. While preaching orthodox Catholicism in public, he had been indoctrinating disciples in private with his peculiarities; and, when they were numerous enough, he wanted to leave the Jesuits. By reasonings and kindness, they managed to retain him for a while; but he grew more odd and visionary, fasting often, eating only herbs, and having divine revelations. After a dangerous illness, which brought him to death's door, he did obtain his dismissal from the Jesuit order in April 1639, and went over France propagandizing. The Bishop of Amiens, caught by his eloquence, made him prebendary of a collegiate church in that town; in connexion with which, and with the Bishop's approval, he founded a religious association of young women, called St. Mary Magdalene. All seemed to go well for a time; but at length there was a scandal about him and a girl in Abbeville, with a burst of similar scandals about his abuse of the confessional for vicious purposes. To avoid arrest, he absconded to Paris in August 1644, and thence to Bazas, where he lived under a feigned name. But the Bishop of Bazas took him up; he cleared himself to the Bishop and others, and defied his calumniators. Only for a time; for again there were scandals, and he was expelled the diocese. Going then to Toulouse, he gained the confidence of the Archbishop there, who gave him charge of a convent of nuns. In this post he developed more systematically his notions of the religious life, described as a compound of Quietism and Antinomianism, after the fashion of sects already known in France and Germany, but with sexual extravangances which, when divulged, raised an indignant storm. In November 1649, he had to abscond from Toulouse; and, after various wanderings, in which he called himself "Jean de Jesus Christ" and obtained popularity as a prophet, he came to Montauban, and there publicly abjured Roman Catholicism in October 1650. Elected minister of the Protestant church of that town in 1652, he lived there for some years in great esteem among the Protestants, but in deadly feud with the Roman Catholics. The schism was such that at last the magistrates had to banish him from the town as a disturber of the peace. Then he had found refuge in Orange; and he was in some kind of temporary Protestant pastorship in that town of south-east France when there was this communication between him and Milton.¹

TO JEAN LABADIE, MINISTER OF ORANGE.

"If I answer you rather late, distinguished and reverend Sir, our common friend Durie, I believe, will not refuse to let me transfer the blame of the late answer from myself to him. For, now that he has communicated to me that paper which you wished read to me, on the subject of your doings and sufferings in behalf of the Gospel, I have not deferred preparing this letter for you, to be given to the first carrier, being really anxious as to the interpretation you may put upon my long silence. I owe very great thanks meanwhile to your Du Moulin of Nismes [not far from Orange], who, by his speeches and most friendly talk concerning me, has procured me the goodwill of so many good men in those parts. And truly, though I am not ignorant that, whether from the fact that I did not, when publicly commissioned, decline the contest with an adversary of such name [Salmasius], or on account of the celebrity of the subject, or, finally, on account of my style of writing, I have become sufficiently known far and wide, yet my feeling is that I have real fame only in proportion to the good esteem I have among good men. That you also are of this way of thinking I see plainly—you who, kindled by the regard and love of Christian Truth, have borne so many labours, sustained the attacks of so many enemies, and who bravely do such actions every day as prove that, so far from seeking any fame from the bad, you do not fear rousing against you their most certain hatred and maledictions. O happy man thou! whom God, from among so many thousands, otherwise knowing and learned, has snatched singly from the very gates and jaws of Hell, and called to such an illustrious and intrepid profession of his Gospel! And at this moment I have cause for thinking that it has happened by the singular providence of God that I did not reply to you sooner. For, when I understood from your letter that, assailed and besieged as you are on all hands by bitter enemies, you were looking round, and no wonder, to see where you might, in the last extremity, should it come to that, find a suitable refuge, and that England was most to your mind, I rejoiced on more accounts than one that you had come to this conclusion,—one reason being the hope of having you here, and another the delight that you should have so high an opinion of my country; but the joy was counterbalanced by the regret that I did not then see any prospect of a becoming provision for you among us here, especially as you do not know English. Now, however, it has happened most opportunely that a certain French minister here, of great age, died a few days ago. The persons of most influence in the congregation, understanding that you are by no means safe where you are at present, are very desirous (I report this not from vague rumour, but on information from themselves) to have you chosen to the place of that minister: in fact, they invite you; they have resolved to pay the expenses of your journey; they promise that you shall have an income equal to the best of any French minister here, and that nothing shall be wanting that can contribute to your pleasant discharge of the pastoral duty among them. Wherefore, take my advice, Reverend Sir, and fly hither as soon as possible, to people who are anxious to have you, and where you will reap a harvest, not perhaps so rich in the goods of this world, but, as men like you most desire, numerous, I hope, in souls; and be assured that you will be most welcome here to all good men, and the sooner the better. Farewell.

"Westminster: April 21, 1659."

It is clear from this letter that Milton had never heard of the scandals against M. Labadie's moral character, or, if he had, utterly disbelieved them, and regarded him simply as a convert from Roman Catholicism whose passionate and aggressive Protestant fervour had brought intolerable and unjust persecution upon him in France. Durie was his informant; and, for all we can now know, Milton's judgment about Labadie may have been the right one, and the traditional French account of him to this day may be wrong. It is certainly strange, however, to find Milton befriending with so much readiness and zeal this French Protestant minister, against whom there were exactly such scandals abroad as those which he had himself believed and blazoned about Morus, for the murder of Morus's reputation over Europe, and his ruin in the French Protestant Church in particular. Nor does the reported sequel of Labadie's life, in the ordinary accounts of him, lessen the wonder.—Labadie did not come to London, as Milton had hoped. When he received Milton's letter, he was on the wing for Geneva, where he arrived in June 1659, and where he continued his preaching. Here, in the very city where Morus had once been, there still were commotions round him; and, after new wanderings in Germany, we find him at Middleburg in Holland in 1666, thus again by chance in a town where Morus had been before him. At Middleburg he seems to have attained his widest celebrity, gathering a body of admirers and important adherents, the chief of whom was "Mademoiselle Schurmann, so versed in the learned languages." At length a quarrel with M. de Wolzogue, minister of the Walloon church at Utrecht, brought Labadie into difficulties with the Walloon Synod and with the State authorities, and he migrated to Erfurt, and thence to Altona, where he died in 1674, "in the arms of Mademoiselle Schurmann," who had followed him to the last. He left a sect called The Labadists, who were strong for a time, and are perhaps not yet extinct. Among the beliefs they inherited from him are said to have been these:—(1) That God may and does deceive man; (2) That Scripture is not necessary to salvation, the immediate action of the Spirit on souls being sufficient; (3) That there ought to be no Baptism of Infants; (4) That truly spiritual believers are not bound by law and ceremonies; (5) That Sabbath-observance is unnecessary, all days being alike; (6) That the ordinary Christian Church is degenerate and decrepit. One sees here something like a French Quakerism, but with ingredients from older Anabaptism. Had Milton's letter had the intended effect, the sect might have had its home in London.¹

Virtually at an end on the 22nd of April by the enforced dissolution of the Parliament, Richard's Protectorate was more visibly at an end on the 7th of May, when the Wallingford-House chiefs agreed with the Republicans in restoring the Rump. Eight days after that event Milton was called on to write two letters for the new Republican authorities. They were as follows:—

(CXLVIII.) TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, May 15, 1659:—"Most serene and most potent King, and very dear Friend: As it has pleased God, the best and all-powerful, with whom alone are all changes of Kingdoms and Commonwealths, to restore Us to our pristine authority and the supreme administration of English affairs, we have thought it good in the first place to inform your Majesty of the fact, and moreover to signify to you both our high regard for your Majesty, as a most potent Protestant prince, and also our desire to promote to the utmost of our power such a peace between you and the King of Denmark, himself likewise a very potent Protestant prince, as may not be brought about without our exertions and most willing good offices. Our pleasure therefore is that our internuncio extraordinary, Philip Meadows, be continued in our name in exactly the same employment which he has hitherto discharged with your Majesty for this Commonwealth; and to that end we, by these presents, give him the same power of making proposals and of treating and dealing with your Majesty which he had by his last commendatory letters. Whatever shall be transacted and concluded by him in our name, the same we pledge our promise, with God's good help, to confirm and ratify. May God long preserve your Majesty as a pillar and defence of the Protestant cause.—WILLIAM LENTHALL, Speaker of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England."

(CXLIX) To FREDERICK III., KING OF DENMARK, May 15, 1659:—The counterpart of the foregoing. His Danish Majesty, addressed as "most serene King and very dear Friend" is informed by Lenthall of the change in English affairs, and of the sympathy the present English Government feels with him in his adversity. They will do their utmost to secure a peace between him and the King of Sweden; and Philip Meadows, their Envoy Extraordinary to the King of Sweden, has full powers to treat with his Danish Majesty too for that end. "God grant to your Majesty, as soon as possible, a happy and joyful outcome from all those difficulties of your affairs in which you behave so bravely and magnanimously!"

On the 25th of May Richard sent in his reluctant abdication, leaving the Rump, which had already assumed the supreme authority, to exercise that authority without further challenge or opposition on his part. Most of the public officials remained in their posts, and Milton remained In his. After five years and five months of Secretaryship under a Single-Person Government, he found himself again Secretary under exactly such a Republican Government as he had served originally, consisting now of the small Parliament of the Restored Rumpers and of a Council of State appointed by that Parliament. In this Council of State were Bradshaw, Vane, Sir James Harrington, St. John, Hasilrig, Scott, Walton, and Whitlocke, who had been members of all the first five Councils of the Commonwealth, from that which had invited Milton to the Secretaryship in 1649 to that which Cromwell forcibly dissolved in 1653, besides Fairfax, Fleetwood, Ludlow, John Jones, Wallop, Challoner, Neville, Dixwell, Downes, Morley, Thompson, and Algernon Sidney, whom Milton had known as members of one or more of those five Councils, and Lambert and Desborough, who had not been in any of them, but were among his later acquaintances.

CHAPTER II.

Second Section.

MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE ANARCHY: MAY 1659—FEB. 1659-60.

FIRST STAGE OF THE ANARCHY, OR THE RESTORED RUMP (MAY—OCT. 1659):—FEELINGS AND POSITION OF MILTON IN THE NEW STATE OF THINGS: HIS SATISFACTION ON THE WHOLE, AND THE REASONS FOR IT: LETTER OF MOSES WALL TO MILTON: RENEWED AGITATION AGAINST TITHES AND CHURCH-ESTABLISHMENT: VOTES ON THAT SUBJECT IN THE RUMP: MILTON'S CONSIDERATIONS TOUCHING THE LIKELIEST MEANS TO REMOVE HIRELINGS OUT OF THE CHURCH: ACCOUNT OF THE PAMPHLET, WITH EXTRACTS: ITS THOROUGH-GOING VOLUNTARYISM: CHURCH-DISESTABLISHMENT DEMANDED ABSOLUTELY, WITHOUT COMPENSATION FOR VESTED INTERESTS: THE APPEAL FRUITLESS, AND THE SUBJECT IGNORED BY THE RUMP: DISPERSION OF THAT BODY BY LAMBERT.

SECOND STAGE OF THE ANARCHY, OR THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERRUPTION (OCT.—DEC. 1659):—MILTON'S THOUGHTS ON LAMBERT'S COUP D'ÉTAT IN HIS LETTER TO A FRIEND CONCERNING THE RUPTURES OF THE COMMONWEALTH: THE LETTER IN THE MAIN AGAINST LAMBERT AND IN DEFENCE OF THE RUMP: ITS EXTRAORDINARY PRACTICAL PROPOSAL OF A GOVERNMENT BY TWO PERMANENT CENTRAL BODIES: THE PROPOSAL COMPARED WITH THE ACTUAL ADMINISTRATION BY THE COMMITTEE OF SAFETY AND THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE COUNCIL OF OFFICERS: MILTON STILL NOMINALLY IN THE LATIN SECRETARYSHIP: MONEY WARRANT OF OCT. 25, 1659, RELATING TO MILTON, MARVELL, AND EIGHTY-FOUR OTHER OFFICIALS: NO TRACE OF ACTUAL SERVICE BY MILTON FOR THE NEW COMMITTEE OF SAFETY: HIS MEDITATIONS THROUGH THE TREATY BETWEEN THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT AND MONK IN SCOTLAND: HIS MEDITATIONS THROUGH THE COMMITTEE-DISCUSSIONS AS TO THE FUTURE MODEL OF GOVERNMENT: HIS INTEREST IN THIS AS NOW THE PARAMOUNT QUESTION, AND HIS COGNISANCE OF THE MODELS OF HARRINGTON AND THE ROTA CLUB: WHITLOCKE'S NEW CONSTITUTION DISAPPOINTING TO MILTON: TWO MORE LETTERS TO OLDENBURG AND YOUNG RANELAGH: GOSSIP FROM ABROAD IN CONNECTION WITH THESE LETTERS: MORUS AGAIN, AND THE COUNCIL OF FRENCH PROTESTANTS AT LOUDUN: END OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERRUPTION.

THIRD STAGE OF THE ANARCHY, OR THE SECOND RESTORATION OF THE RUMP (DEC. 1659-FEB. 1659-60):—MILTON'S DESPONDENCY AT THIS PERIOD: ABATEMENT OF HIS FAITH IN THE RUMP: HIS THOUGHTS DURING THE MARCH OF MONK FROM SCOTLAND AND AFTER MONK'S ARRIVAL IN LONDON: HIS STUDY OF MONK NEAR AT HAND AND MISTRUST OF THE OMENS: HIS INTEREST FOR A WHILE IN THE QUESTION OF THE PRECONSTITUTION OF THE NEW PARLIAMENT PROMISED BY THE RUMP: HIS ANXIETY THAT IT SHOULD BE A REPUBLICAN PARLIAMENT BY MERE SELF-ENLARGEMENT OF THE RUMP: HIS PREPARATION OF A NEW REPUBLICAN PAMPHLET: THE PUBLICATION POSTPONED BY MONK'S SUDDEN DEFECTION FROM THE RUMP, THE ROASTING OF THE RUMP IN THE CITY, AND THE RESTORATION OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS TO THEIR PLACES IN THE PARLIAMENT: MILTON'S DESPONDENCY COMPLETE.

With what feelings was it that Milton found himself once more in the employment of his old masters, the original Republicans or Commonwealth's-men? That there may have been some sense of awkwardness in the re-connexion is not unlikely. Had he not for six years been a most conspicuous Cromwellian? Had he not justified again and again in print Cromwell's coup d'état of 1653, by which the Rump had been turned out of power, and which the now Restored Rumpers, and especially such of their leaders as Vane, Scott, Hasilrig, and Bradshaw, were bound to remember as Cromwell's unpardonable sin, and the woeful beginning of an illegitimate interregnum? He had justified it, hardly anonymously, in his Letter to a Gentleman in the Country, published in May 1653, only a fortnight after the fact (Vol. IV. pp. 519-523). He had justified it a year later in his Defensio Secunda of 1654, published some months after the Protectorate had actually begun. In that famous pamphlet, he had, amid much else to the same effect, made special reference to Cromwell's Dissolution of the Rump in these words addressed to Cromwell himself: "When you saw delays being contrived, and every one more intent on his private interests than on the public good, and the people complaining of being cheated of their hopes and circumvented by the power of a few, you did what they themselves had so often declined to do when asked, and put an end to their Government" (Vol. IV. p. 604). Rumpers of tenacious memories cannot have forgotten such published utterances of Milton, while the fact that he had for some years past been an Oliverian, a Protectoratist, a Court-official for Oliver and Richard, was patent to all. Yet, now that the old Rumpers were restored to power, the survivors of the original "few" whose dissolution by Cromwell he had publicly praised and defended, here was Milton still in his secretaryship and writing the first foreign letters they required.

How was this? It is hardly a sufficient answer to say that it is quite customary for officials to remain in their places through changes of Government. On the one hand, Milton was not a man to remain in an element with which he could not conscientiously accord; and, on the other, the Rumpers were rather careful in seeking public servants of their own sort. Thurloe was out of the general Secretaryship; and one of the first acts of the restored House was to punish Mr. Henry Scobell, Clerk of the Parliament, for having entered, the fact of Cromwell's Dissolution of the House on April 20, 1653, in the Journals tinder that date. They ordered a Bill to be brought in for repealing the Act by which Scobell held the Clerkship.¹ The truth, then, is that Milton was not, on the whole, displeased by the return of his old friends to power. Though he had justified Cromwell's dissolution of the Rump and had become openly an Oliverian at the beginning of the Protectorate, he had never ceased to regard with admiration and affection such of the old Republicans as Vane, Bradshaw, and Overton. It had probably all along been a question with him whether the blame of their disablement under the Protectorate lay more with themselves or with Oliver. Then, as we have abundantly seen, there is reason for believing that before the end of the Protectorate his own Oliverianism or Cromwellianism had become weaker than at first. The Miltonic reserves, as we have called them, with which he had given his adhesion to the Protectorate even at first, had taken stronger and stronger development in his mind; and, whatever he found to admire in Cromwell's Government all in all, the whole course of that Government in Church matters had been a disappointment. Milton wanted to see Church and State entirely separated; Cromwell had mixed them, intertwined them, more than ever. Milton wanted to see the utter abolition in England of anything that could be called a clergy; Cromwell had made it one of the chief objects of his rule to maintain a clergy and extend it massively. Whether this policy might not yet be reversed had been one of Milton's first questions with himself after Cromwell's death; and his Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, addressed to Richard's Parliament, had been a challenge to that Parliament not to shrink from the great attempt. In that treatise, it is not too much to say, Milton had shaken hands again with the old Republican party. In the preface to it he had dwelt fondly on his former connexion with them, on his recollection especially of the speeches he had heard from some of them in the old Councils of State of the Commonwealth, when he had first the honour to sit there as Latin Secretary, and listen to their private debates. What clearness then, what decisiveness, in such men as Vane and Bradshaw, on that "important article of Christianity," the necessary distinctness of the Civil from the Religious! Ah! could those old days be back! He had written as if those days had not been satisfactory, as if the dispersion of his old masters of those days had been necessary; but, in so writing, had he not been too hasty? So he had been asking himself of late; and though, as Richard's Latin Secretary, and writing under his Protectorate, he had not said a word against the established Protectoral Government, he had expressed generally his conviction that England would never be right till either those charged with the Government should be men "discerning between Civil and Religious" or none but such should be charged with the Government. Now, however, in May 1659, he might speak more plainly. Richard's Government had been swept away;—Richard's Parliament, which he had addressed, was no more in being; and, by a revolution which he had not expected, and in which he had taken no part, the pure Republic, with the relics of the Parliament that had first created it, was again the established order. All round about him the men he respected most were exulting in the change, and calling it a revival of "the Good Old Cause." Without pronouncing on the change in all its aspects, he could join in the exultation for a special reason. Would not the restored Republican Parliament and their Councils of State see it to be part of their duty to assert at last the principle of absolute Religious Voluntaryism?

This representation of Milton's position at the time of the restoration of the Rump is confirmed by a private letter then addressed to him. The writer was a certain Moses Wall, of Causham or Caversham in Oxfordshire, a scholar and Republican opinionist of whom there are traces in Hartlib's correspondence and elsewhere.¹ Milton had recently written to him, sending him perhaps a copy of his Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes; and this is Wall's reply—written, it will be observed, the very day after Richard's abdication:—

"Sir,

"I received yours the day after you wrote, and do humbly thank you that you are pleased to honour me with your letters. I confess I have (even in my privacy in the country) oft had thoughts about you, and that with much respect for your friendliness to truth in your early years and in bad times. But I was uncertain whether your relation to the Court (though I think that a Commonwealth was more friendly to you than a Court) had not clouded your former light; but your last book resolved that doubt.

"You complain of the non-progressency of the nation, and of its retrograde motion of late, in liberty and spiritual truths. It is much to be bewailed; but, yet, let us pity human frailty. When those who had made deep protestations of their zeal for our liberty, both spiritual and civil, and made the fairest offers to be the asserters thereof, and whom we thereupon trusted,—when these, being instated in power, shall betray the good thing committed to them, and lead us back to Egypt, and by that force which we gave them to win us liberty hold us fast in chains,—what can poor people do? You know who they were that watched our Saviour's sepulchre to keep him from rising [soldiers! see Matthew XXVII. and XXVIII.]. Besides, whilst people are not free, but straitened in accommodations for life, their spirits will be dejected and servile; and, conducing to that end [of rousing them], there should be an improving of our native commodities, as our manufactures, our fishery, our fens, forests, and commons, and our trade at sea, &c.: which would give the body of the nation a comfortable subsistence. And the breaking that cursed yoke of Tithes would much help thereto. Also another thing I cannot but mention; which is that the Norman Conquest and Tyranny is continued upon the nation without any thought of removing it: I mean the tenure of land by copyhold, and holding for life under a lord, or rather tyrant, of a manor; whereby people care not to improve their land by cost upon it, not knowing how soon themselves or theirs may be outed it, nor what the house is in which they live, for the same reason; and they are far more enslaved to the lord of the manor than the rest of the nation is to a king or supreme magistrate.

"We have waited for liberty; but it must be God's work and not man's: who thinks it sweet to maintain his pride and worldly interest to the gratifying of the flesh, whatever becomes of the precious liberty of mankind. But let us not despond, but do our duty; God will carry on that blessed work, in despite of all opposites, and to their ruin if they persist therein.

"Sir, my humble request is that you would proceed, and give us that other member of the distribution mentioned in your book: viz. that Hire doth greatly impede truth and liberty. It is like, if you do, you shall find opposers; but remember that saying,'Beatius est pati quam frui,' or, in the Apostle's words, James V. 11. [Greek: Makarizomen tous hypomenontas] ['We count them happy that endure']. I have sometimes thought (concurring with your assertion) of that storied voice that should speak from heaven when Ecclesiastics were endowed with worldly preferments, 'Hodie venenum infunditur in Ecelesiam' ['This day is poison poured into the Church']; for, to use the speech of Gen. IV. ult., according to the sense which it hath in the Hebrew, 'Then began men to corrupt the worship of God.' I shall tell you a supposal of mine; which is this:—Mr. Durie has bestowed about thirty years' time in travel, conference, and writing, to reconcile Calvinists and Lutherans, and that with little or no success. But the shortest way were:—Take away ecclesiastical dignities, honours, and preferments on both sides, and all would soon be hushed; those ecclesiastics would be quiet, and then the people would come forth into truth and liberty. But I will not engage in this quarrel. Yet I shall lay this engagement upon myself,—to remain

"Your faithful friend and servant,

"M. Wall.¹

"Causham: May 26, 1659."

Here, from a man evidently after Milton's own heart on the Church question, we have Milton's welcome back into the ranks of the old Republicans. And more and more through the five months of the first Restoration of the Rump (May 7—Oct. 13) the friends of "the good old cause" had reason to know that Milton was again one of themselves. It happens, indeed, that we have no more letters of his for the Restored Rump Government than the two of May 15, already quoted, which he wrote for the restored House, and which were signed by Speaker Lenthall. Those two letters close the entire series of the known and extant State-Letters of Milton. He and Marvell, however, were still in their Secretaryship, drawing their salaries as before; and of the completeness of Milton's re-adherence to the Republican Government there is evidence more massive and striking than could have been furnished by any number of farther official letters by him for the Rump or its Council.

Milton, had not judged wrongly in supposing that the question of Church-disestablishment would now be made part and parcel of "the good old cause." We have already glanced at the facts (p. 466), but they may be given here more in detail:—Hardly had the Rump been reconstituted when petitions for Disestablishment, in the form of petitions for the abolition of Tithes, began to pour in upon it. One such, called "The Humble Representation and Petition of many well-affected persons in the counties of Somerset, Wilts, and some parts of Devon, Dorset, and Hampshire," was read in the House on the 14th of June. The petitioners were thanked, and informed that the House resolved "to give encouragement to a godly, preaching, learned ministry throughout the nation, and for that end to continue the payment of Tithes till they can find out some other more equal and comfortable maintenance for the ministry, and satisfaction of the people; which they intend with all convenient speed." That day, accordingly, in a division of thirty-eight Yeas (Carew Raleigh and Sir William Brereton tellers) to thirty-eight Noes (Hasilrig and Colonel White tellers) it was carried, by the Speaker's casting vote, to refer the question of some substitute for Tithes to a Grand Committee. On the 27th of June, there having been other petitions against Tithes in the meantime, signed by "many thousands," the House came to a more definite resolution, which they ordered to be printed and published by the Judges in their circuits. It was "That this Parliament doth declare that, for the encouragement of a godly, preaching, learned ministry throughout the nation, the payment of Tithes shall continue as now they are, unless this Parliament shall find out some other," &c. As the word unless had been, substituted for the word until without a division, it is evident that the House had gone back in their intentions in the course of the fortnight, and were less disposed to commit themselves to any serious interference with the Church Establishment as left by Cromwell. The disappointment to the petitioning thousands must have been great. Still, the question had been raised, and might be regarded as only adjourned. What was wanted was continued agitation out of doors, more petitioning and more pamphleteering.¹

It was in this last way that Milton could help. As advised by his friend Moses Wall, he had been busy over that second Disestablishment tract which he had promised; and in August 1659 it appeared in this form: "Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church. Wherein is also discourc'd of Tithes, Church-fees, Church Revenues; and, whether any maintenance of ministers can be settl'd by law. The author J.M. London, Printed by T.N. for L. Chapman at the Crown in Popes-head Alley, 1659." The volume is a very small octavo, and contains eighteen unnumbered pages of prefatory address to the Parliament in large open type, signed "John Milton" in full, followed by 153 pages of text.¹

The Address to the Parliament deserves particular notice. The following is the main portion of it, with two phrases Italicised:—

"Owing to your protection, Supreme Senate, this liberty of writing which I have used these eighteen years on all occasions to assert the just rights and freedoms both of Church and State, and so far approved as to have been trusted with the representment and defence of your actions to all Christendom against an adversary of no mean repute, to whom should I address what I still publish on the same argument but to you, whose magnanimous counsels first opened and unbound the age from a double bondage under Prelatical and Regal tyranny, above our own hopes heartening us to look up at last like Men and Christians from the slavish dejection wherein from father to son we were bred up and taught, and thereby deserving of these nations, if they be not barbarously ingrateful, to be acknowledged, next under God, the authors and best patrons of Religious and Civil Liberty that ever these Islands brought forth? The care and tuition of whose peace and safety, after a short but scandalous night of interruption, is now again, by a new dawning of God's miraculous Providence among us, revolved upon your shoulders. And to whom more appertain these Considerations which I propound than to yourselves, and the debate before you, though I trust of no difficulty, yet at present of great expectation, not whether ye will gratify, were it no more than so, but whether ye will hearken to the just petition of many thousands best affected both to Religion and to this your return, or whether ye will satisfy (which you never can) the covetous pretences and demands of insatiable Hirelings, whose disaffection ye well know hath to yourselves and your resolutions? That I, though among many others in this common concernment, interpose to your deliberations what my thoughts also are, your own judgment and the success thereof hath given me the confidence: which requests but this—that, if I have prosperously, God so favouring me, defended the public cause of this Commonwealth to foreigners, ye would not think the reason and ability whereon ye trusted once (and repent not) your whole reputation to the world either grown less by more maturity and longer study or less available in English than in another tongue: but that, if it sufficed, some years past, to convince and satisfy the unengaged of other nations in the justice of your doings, though then held paradoxal, it may as well suffice now against weaker opposition in matters (except here in England, with a spirituality of men devoted to their temporal gain) of no controversy else among Protestants."

This is, unmistakeably, a public testimony of Milton's re-adhesion to the Rumpers, with something like an expression of regret that he had ever parted from them. After all, he could call them "the authors and best patrons of religious and civil liberty that ever these Islands brought forth"; and, with this renewed conviction, and remembering also their former confidence in himself, especially in the Salmasian controversy, he could now congratulate them and the country on their return to power. But is not the Address also a recantation of his Oliverianism? To some extent, it must be so interpreted. It seems utterly impossible, indeed, that the phrase "a short but scandalous night of interruption" was intended to apply to the entire six years of the Cromwellian Dictatorship and Protectorship. That had not been a "short" interruption, for it had exceeded in length the whole duration of the Commonwealth it had interrupted; and it would be the most marvellous inconsistency on record if Milton could ever have brought himself to call it "scandalous." Who had written the panegyric on Cromwell and his actually established Protectorship in the Defensio Secunda? Who had been Oliver's Latin Secretary from first to last, and penned for him his despatches on the Piedmontese massacre and all his greatest besides? The likelihood, therefore, is that "the short but scandalous night of interruption" in Milton's mind was the fortnight or so of Wallingford-House usurpation which broke up Richard's Parliament and Protectorate, and from the continuance of which, with all the inconveniences of a mere military despotism, the restoration of the Rump had seemed a happy rescue. But, though this single phrase may be thus explained, the tone of the whole address intimates far less of gratitude to Oliver dead than there had been of admiration for Oliver living. And the reason at this point is most obvious. Was it not precisely because Cromwell had failed to fulfil Milton's expectation of him, in his sonnet of May 1652, that he would deliver the Commonwealth from the plague of "hireling wolves," calling themselves a Clergy—was it not because Cromwell from first to last had pursued a contrary policy—that it remained for Milton now, seven years after the date of that sonnet, to have to offer, as a private thinker, and on mere printed paper, his own poor Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church? It was not in a pamphlet on that subject, wherever else, that Milton could say his best for the memory of Cromwell.

After some preliminary observations connecting the present treatise with its forerunner; Milton opens his subject thus:—

"Hire of itself is neither a thing unlawful, nor a word of any evil note, signifying no more than a due recompense or reward, as when our Saviour saith, 'The labourer is worthy of his hire.' That which makes it so dangerous in the Church, and properly makes HIRELING a word always of evil signification, is either the excess thereof or the undue manner of giving and taking it. What harm the excess thereof brought to the Church perhaps was not found by experience till the days of Constantine; who, out of his zeal, thinking he could be never too liberally a nursing father of the Church, might be not unfitly said to have either overlaid it or choked it in the nursing. Which was foretold, as is recorded in Ecclesiastical traditions, by a voice heard from Heaven, on the very day that those great donations of Church-revenues were given, crying aloud, 'This day is poison poured into the Church' [Note the adoption of the anecdote from Mr. Wall's letter]. Which the event soon after verified, as appears by another no less ancient observation, that 'Religion brought forth wealth, and the Daughter devoured the Mother.' But, long ere wealth came into the Church, so soon as any gain appeared in Religion, HIRELINGS were apparent, drawn in long before by the very scent thereof [References to Judas as the first hireling, to Simon Magus as the second, and to various texts in the Acts and Epistles proving that among the early preachers of Christianity there were men who preached 'for filthy lucre's sake,' or made a mere trade of the Gospel] .... Thus we see that not only the excess of Hire in wealthiest times, but also the undue and vicious taking or giving it, though but small or mean, as in the primitive times, gave to hirelings occasion, though not intended yet sufficient, to creep at first into the Church. Which argues also the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, to remove them quite, unless every minister were, as St. Paul, contented to teach gratis: but few such are to be found. As therefore we cannot justly take away all Hire in the Church, because we cannot otherwise quite remove Hirelings, so are we not, for the impossibility of removing them all, to use therefore no endeavour that fewest may come in, but rather, in regard the evil, do what we can, will always be incumbent and unavoidable, to use our utmost diligence how it may be least dangerous. Which will be likeliest effected if we consider,—first what recompense God hath ordained should be given to ministers of the Church (for that a recompense ought to be given them, and may by them justly be received, our Saviour himself, from the very light of reason and of equity, hath declared, Luke X. 7, 'The labourer is worthy of his hire'); next, by whom; and, lastly, in what manner."

In this passage and in other passages throughout the Treatise it is clear that Milton's ideal was a Church in which no minister should take pay at all for his preaching or ministry, whether pay from the state or from his hearers, but every minister should, as St. Paul did, preach, absolutely and systematically gratis, deriving his livelihood and his leisure to preach from his private resources, or, if he had none such, then from the practice of some calling or handicraft apart from his preaching. Deep down in Milton's mind, notwithstanding his professed deference to Christ's words, "The labourer is worthy of his hire," we can see this conviction that it would be better for the world if religious doctrine, or in fact doctrine of any kind, were never bought or sold, but all spiritual teachers were to abhor the very touch of money for their lessons, being either gentlemen of independent means who could propagate the truth splendidly from high motives, or else tent-makers, carpenters, and bricklayers, passionate with the possession of some truth to propagate. This, however, having been acknowledged to be perhaps an impossibility on any great scale, he goes on to inquire, as proposed, what the legitimate and divinely-appointed hire of Gospel-ministers is, from whom it may come, and in what manner. The general result is as follows:—I. The Tithes of the old Jewish dispensation are utterly abolished under the Gospel. Nearly half the treatise is an argument to this effect, and consequently for the immediate abolition of the tithe-system in England. Here Milton lends his whole force to the popular current on this subject among the friends of "the good old cause," advocating those petitions to the Rump of which he has spoken in his preface. But he goes farther than the abolition of tithes. He will not allow of any statutory substitute for tithes, any taxation of the people in any form for the support of Religion. The only substitute for tithes which he discusses specifically is compulsory church-fees for ministerial offices, such as baptisms, marriages, and burials. These, as well as tithes, he utterly condemns; and he winds up this part of his inquiry thus: "Seeing, then, that God hath given to ministers under the Gospel that only which is justly given them (that is to say, a due and moderate livelihood, the hire of their labour), and that the heave-offering of Tithes is abolished with the Altar (yes, though not abolished, yet lawless as they enjoy them), their Melchizedekian right also trivial and groundless, and both tithes and fees, if exacted or established, unjust and scandalous, we may hope, with them removed, to remove Hirelings in some good measure." II. It is maintained that the lawful maintenance of the ministry can consist only in the voluntary offerings of those they instruct, whether tendered individually, or collected into a common treasury for distribution. The flocks ought to maintain their own pastors, and no others are bound to contribute for the purpose. But what of poor neighbourhoods that cannot maintain pastors and yet need them most sorely? Milton has unbounded confidence that these will be overtaken and provided for by the zeal of pious individuals, or by "the charity of richer congregations," taking the form of itinerant missions. "If it be objected that this itinerary preaching will not serve to plant the Gospel in those places unless they who are sent abide there some competent time, I answer that, if they stay there for a year or two, which was the longest time usually staid by the Apostles in one place, it may suffice to teach them who will attend and learn all the points of Religion necessary to salvation: then, sorting them into several congregations of a moderate number, out of the ablest and zealousest of them to create elders, who, exercising and requiring from themselves what they have learnt (for no learning is retained without constant exercise and methodical repetition), may teach and govern the rest: and, so exhorted to continue faithful and stedfast, they may securely be committed to the providence of God and the guidance of his Holy Spirit till God may offer some opportunity to visit them again and to confirm them." The only concession Milton will make is that, in cases of urgent necessity, application may be made to magistrates or other trustees of charitable funds for aid in these temporary and itinerant missions. For the rest, it will be seen, it is with difficulty that he allows the existence of a permanent pastorate anywhere. If there is to be a body of men in the community making a business of preaching, and if in towns and populous neighbourhoods congregations choose to retain the services, for life or for an indefinite period, of particular ministerial persons selected from this body, and to erect handsome buildings convenient for such services, well and good, or rather it cannot be helped; but the picture most to Milton's fancy is that of an England generally, or at all events of a rural England, without any fixed or regular parish pastors or parish-churches, but each little local cluster of believers meeting on Sundays or other days in chapel or barn for mutual edification, or to be instructed by such simple teaching elders as may easily, from time to time, be produced within itself. Add the itinerant agency of more practiced and professional preachers, circulating periodically among the local clusters, to rouse them or keep them alive; and nothing more would be needed. There would be plenty of preaching, and good preaching, everywhere; but, as most of it would be spontaneous by hard-handed men known among their neighbours, and working, like their neighbours, for their ordinary subsistence, the preaching profession, as a means of income, would be reduced to a minimum. In a Church so constituted there would still be hirelings, especially in large towns and where there were wealthy congregations; but the number of such would be greatly reduced. III. Under the third head of the "manner" of the recompense to ministers, where there is any recompense at all, the substance of Milton's remarks is that the purely voluntary character of the recompense must be studiously maintained. It must be purely an alms, an oblation of benevolence. Hence it should never take the form of a life-endowment, or even of a contract conferring a legal title to demand payment. The appearance of a minister of the Gospel in a law-court to sue for money supposed to be due to him for his ministerial services, even by promise or agreement, is spoken of with disgust. Were it the understood rule that there could be no recovery by a minister even of his promised salary, would not that also tend in some degree to keep Hirelings out of the Church?

The pamphlet, it will be seen, is more outspoken and thoroughgoing than its forerunner. It contains also more of those individual passages that represent Milton in his rough mood of sarcastic strength, though none of such beauty or eloquence as are to be found in his earlier pamphlets. The following are characteristic:—

Mr. Prynne's Defences of Tithes:—"To heap such unconvincing citations as these in Religion, whereof the Scripture only is our rule, argues not much learning nor judgment, but the lost labour of much unprofitable reading. And yet a late hot Querist for Tithes, whom ye may know, by his wits lying ever beside him in the margin, to be ever beside his wits in the text,—a fierce Reformer once, now rankled with a contrary heat,—would send us back, very reformedly indeed, to learn Reformation from Tyndarus and Rebuffas, two Canonical Promoters."¹

Marriages and Clerical Concern in the same:—"As for Marriages, that ministers should meddle with them, as not sanctioned or legitimate without their celebration, I find no ground in Scripture either of precept or example. Likeliest it is (which our Selden hath well observed I. II. c. 28. Ux. Heb.) that in imitation of heathen priests, who were wont at nuptials to use many rites and ceremonies, and especially judging it would be profitable and the increase of their authority not to be spectators only in business of such concernment to the life of man, they insinuated that marriage was not holy without their benediction, and for the better colour made it a Sacrament; being of itself a Civil Ordinance, a household contract, a thing indifferent and free to the whole race of mankind, not as religious, but as men. Best, indeed, undertaken to religious ends, as the Apostle saith (1 Cor. VII. 'In the Lord'); yet not therefore invalid or unholy without a minister and his pretended necessary hallowing, more than any other act, enterprise, or contract, of civil life,—which ought all to be done also in the Lord and to his glory,—all which, no less than marriage, were by the cunning of priests heretofore, as material to their profit, transacted at the altar. Our Divines deny it to be a Sacrament; yet retained the celebration, till prudently a late Parliament recovered the civil liberty of marriage from their encroachment, and transferred the ratifying and registering thereof from their Canonical Shop to the proper cognisance of Civil Magistrates" [The Marriages Act of the Barebones Parliament; in accordance with which had been Milton's own second marriage: see ante p. 281, and Vol. IV. p. 511].

Sitting under a Stated Minister:—"If men be not all their lifetime under a teacher to learn Logic, Natural Philosophy, Ethics, or Mathematics, ... certainly it is not necessary to the attainment of Christian knowledge that men should sit all their life long at the foot of a pulpited divine, while he, a lollard indeed over his elbow-cushion, in almost the seventh part of forty or fifty years, teaches them scarce half the principles of Religion, and his sheep ofttimes sit the while to as little purpose of benefiting as the sheep in their pews at Smithfield."

Congregations for mutual Edification:—"Notwithstanding the gaudy superstition of some devoted still ignorantly to temples, we may be well assured that He who disdained not to be laid in a manger disdains not to be preached in a barn, and that by such meetings as these, being indeed most apostolical and primitive, they will in a short time advance more in Christian knowledge and reformation of life than by the many years preaching of such an incumbent,—I may say such an incubus ofttimes,—as will be meanly hired to abide long in those places."

A Reflection on Cromwell for his Established Church:—"For the magistrate, in person of a nursing father, to make the Church his mere ward, as always in minority,-the Church to whom he ought as a Magistrate (Isaiah XLIS. 23) 'to bow down with his face toward the earth and lick up the dust of her feet,'—her to subject to his political drifts and conceived opinions by mastering her revenue, and so by his examinant Committees to circumscribe her free election of ministers,—is neither just nor pious: no honour done to the Church, but a plain dishonour."

University Education of Ministers:—State of the Facts: "They pretend that their education, either at School or University, hath been very chargeable, and therefore ought to be repaired in future by a plentiful maintenance: whereas it is well known that the better half of them, and ofttimes poor and pitiful boys, of no merit or promising hopes that might entitle them to the public provision but their poverty and the unjust favour of friends, have had the most of their breeding, both at School and University, by scholarships, exhibitions, and fellowships, at the public cost,—which might engage them the rather to give freely, as they have freely received. Or, if they have missed of these helps at the latter place, they have after two or three years left the course of their studies there, if they ever well began them, and undertaken, though furnished with little else but ignorance, boldness, and ambition, if with no worse vices, a chaplainship in some gentleman's house, to the frequent imbasing of his sons with illiterate and narrow principles. Or, if they have lived there [at the University] upon their own, who knows not that seven years' charge of living there,—to them who fly not from the government of their parents to the licence of a University, but come seriously to study,—is no more than, may be well defrayed and reimbursed by one year's revenue of an ordinary good benefice? If they had then means of breeding from their parents, 'tis likely they have more now; and, if they have, it needs must be mechanic and uningenuous in them to bring a bill of charges for the learning of those liberal Arts and Sciences which they have learnt (if they have indeed learnt them, as they seldom have) to their own benefit and accomplishment. But they will say 'We had betaken us to some other trade or profession, had we not expected to find a better livelihood by the Ministry.' This is what I looked for,—to discover them openly neither true lovers of Learning and so very seldom guilty of it, nor true ministers of the Gospel."

University Education of Ministers not Necessary: "What Learning, either human or divine, can be necessary to a minister may as easily and less chargeably be had in any private house ... Those theological disputations there held [i.e. at the Universities] by Professors and Graduates are such as tend least of all to the edification or capacity of the people, but rather perplex and leaven pure doctrine with scholastical trash than enable any minister to the better preaching of the Gospel. Whence we may also compute, since they come to reckonings, the charges of his needful library; which, though some shame not to value at £600 [equivalent to £2000 now], may be competently furnished for £60 [equivalent to £200 now]. If any man, for his own curiosity or delight, be in books further expensive, that is not to be reckoned as necessary to his ministerial either breeding or function. But Papists and other adversaries cannot be confuted without Fathers and Councils, immense volumes and of vast charges! I will show them therefore a shorter and a better way of confutation: Tit. I. 9; 'Holding fast the faithful Word as he hath been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and to convince gainsayers,'—who are confuted as soon as heard bringing that which is either not in Scripture or against it. To pursue them further through the obscure and entangled wood of antiquity, Fathers and Councils fighting one against another, is needless, endless, not requisite in a minister, and refused by the first Reformers of our Religion. And yet we may be confident, if these things be thought needful, let the State but erect in public good store of Libraries, and there will not want men in the Church who of their own inclinations will become able in this kind against Papists or any other Adversary."

No Parliament that England ever saw, not even the Barebones Parliament itself, could have entertained for a moment, with a view to practical legislation, these speculations of the blind Titan in all their length and breadth. Disestablishment, Disendowment, Abolition of a Clergy, had been the dream of the Anabaptists and Fifth Monarchy men of the Barebones Parliament. Even in that House, however, the battle practically, and on which the House broke up, was on the question of the continuance of Tithes, and it is dubious whether some in that half of the House which voted against Tithes would not have been for preserving a Church Establishment or Preaching Ministry by some other form of state-maintenance. Nor can one imagine, even in those eager and revolutionary times, an utter disregard of that principle of compensation for life-interests which any Parliament now, contemplating a scheme of Disestablishment, would consider binding in common equity. The old Bishops, and the Prelatic Clergy, indeed, had been disestablished without much consideration of life-interests; but the procedure in their case had been of a penal character, and it is unlikely that it would have been equally unceremonious with the new clergy of Presbyterians and Independents, allowed generally to be orthodox. From any hesitation on that score Milton is absolutely free. He sees no difficulties, takes regard of none. It is not with a flesh-and-blood world that he deals, a world of men, and their wives, and their families, and their yearly incomes, and their fixed residences and household belongings. It is with a world of wax, or of flesh and blood that must be content to be treated as wax. It is thought right to disestablish the Church: well, then, let the Clergy go! Abolish tithes; provide no substitute; proclaim that, after this day week, or the first day of the next year, not a penny shall be paid to any man by the State for preaching the Gospel, or doing any other act of the ministry: and what then? Why, there will be a flutter of consternation, of course, through some ten thousand or twelve thousand parsonages; ten thousand or twelve thousand clerical gentlemen will stare bewilderedly for a while at their wives' faces: but do not be too much concerned! They will all shift very well for themselves when they know they must; the best of them will find congregations where they are, or in other places, and will work all the harder; and, if the drones and dotards go threadbare and starve for the rest of their lives, that is but God's way with such since the beginning of the world! Be instant, be rapid, be decisive, be thoroughgoing, O ye statesmen! What are vested interests in the Church of Christ?

As the Restored Rumpers had already decreed that an Established Church should be kept up in England, and had gone no farther on the Tithes question than to say that Tithes must be paid, as by use and wont, until some substitute should be provided, it is not likely that, however long they had sat, Milton's views would have had much countenance from them. There were individuals among them of Milton's way of thinking on the whole; but he had probably made a mistake in fancying that he had materially improved his influence, or the chances of his notions of Church-polity, by his public re-adhesion to the Rump. In fact, the continued existence of the Rump was more precarious than he had thought. In August 1659, while his pamphlet was in circulation, Lambert was away in the north, suppressing the Cheshire Insurrection of Sir George Booth; in the next month discontent with the Rumpers and their rule was rife in Lambert's victorious northern Brigade; and in the beginning of October London was again in agitation with the rupture of the hasty alliance that had been patched up between the Republicans and the Wallingford-House Council of Army Officers. It was on the 12th of October that the Rump defied the Army by cashiering Lambert, Desborough, Berry, and six other officers; and on the 13th Lambert retaliated by his coup d'état, filling the streets with his soldiery, catching the Rumpers one by one as they went to the House, and informing them that it was the will of the Army that they should sit no more. Thus had begun that "Second Stage of the Anarchy" which we have called The Wallingford-House Interruption.

Of Milton's thoughts over the change effected by Lambert's coup d'état we have an authentic record in a letter of his, dated "October 20, 1659" (i.e. just a week after the coup d'état), and addressed to some friend with whom he had been conversing on the previous night. It appears in his works now with the title "A Letter to a Friend, concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth: Published from the Manuscript."¹ Who the Friend was does not appear; but the words of the Letter imply that he was some one very near the centre of affairs. "Sir," it begins, "upon the sad and serious discourse which we fell into last night, concerning these dangerous ruptures of the Commonwealth, scarce yet in her infancy, which cannot be without some inward flaw in her bowels, I began to consider more intensely thereon than hitherto I have been wont,—resigning myself [i.e. having hitherto resigned myself] to the wisdom and care of those who had the government, and not finding that either God or the Public required more of me than my prayers for those that govern. And, since you have not only stirred up my thoughts by acquainting me with the state of affairs more inwardly than I knew before, but also have desired me to set down my opinion thereof, trusting to your ingenuity, I shall give you freely my apprehension, both of our present evils, and what expedients, if God in mercy regard us, may remove them." At the close of the Letter he says, "You have the sum of my present thoughts, as much as I understand of these affairs, freely imparted, at your request and the persuasion you wrought in me that I might chance hereby to be some way serviceable to the Commonwealth in a time when all ought to be endeavouring what good they can, whether much or but little. With this you may do what you please. Put out, put in, communicate or suppress: you offend not me, who only have obeyed your opinion that, in doing what I have done, I might happen to offer something which might be of some use in this great time of need. However, I have not been wanting to the opportunity which you presented before me of showing the readiness which I have, in the midst of my unfitness, to whatever may be required of me as a public duty." The expressions might suggest that the friend who had been talking with Milton was Vane or some one else of those Councillors of the Rump who still sat on at Whitehall consulting with the Wallingford-House Chiefs as to the form of Government to be set up instead of the Rump (ante pp. 494-495). It may, however, have been some lesser personage, such as Meadows, back from the Baltic this very month. In any case, the letter was meant to be shown about, if not printed. It was, in fact, Milton's contribution, at a friend's request, to the deliberations going on at Whitehall.

He does not conceal his strong disapprobation of Lambert's coup d'état. Indeed he takes the opportunity of declaring, even more strongly than he had done two months before, how heartily he had welcomed the restoration of the Rump. Thus:—

"I will begin with telling you how I was overjoyed when I heard that the Army, under the working of God's holy Spirit, as I thought, and still hope well, had been so far wrought to Christian humility and self-denial as to confess in public their backsliding from the good Old Cause, and to show the fruits of their repentance in the righteousness of their restoring the old famous Parliament which they had without just authority dissolved: I call it the famous Parliament, though not the harmless, since none well-affected but will confess they have deserved much more of these nations than they have undeserved. And I persuade me that God was pleased with their restitution, signing it as He did with such a signal victory when so great a part of the nation were desperately conspired to call back again their Egyptian bondage [Lambert's victory over Sir George Booth]. So much the more it now amazes me that they whose lips were yet scarce closed from giving thanks for that great deliverance should be now relapsing, and so soon again backsliding into the same fault, which they confessed so lately and so solemnly to God and the world, and more lately punished in those Cheshire Rebels,—that they should now dissolve that Parliament which they themselves re-established, and acknowledged for their Supreme Power in their other day's Humble Representation: and all this for no apparent cause of public concernment to the Church or Commonwealth, but only for discommissioning nine great officers in the Army; which had not been done, as is reported, but upon notice of their intentions against the Parliament. I presume not to give my censure on this action,—not knowing, as yet I do not, the bottom of it. I speak only what it appears to us without doors till better cause be declared, and I am sure to all other nations,—most illegal and scandalous, I fear me barbarous, or rather scarce to be exampled among any Barbarians, that a paid Army should, for no other cause, thus subdue the Supreme Power that set them up. This, I say, other nations will judge to the sad dishonour of that Army, lately so renowned for the civilest and best-ordered in the world, and by us here at home for the most conscientious. Certainly, if the great officers and soldiers of the Holland, French, or Venetian forces should thus sit in council and write from garrison to garrison against their superiors, they might as easily reduce the King of France, or Duke of Venice, and put the United Provinces in like disorder and confusion."

He adds more in the same strain, and calls upon the Army, as one "jealous of their honour," to "manifest and publish with all speed some better cause of these their late actions than hath hitherto appeared, and to find out the Achan amongst them whose close ambition in all likelihood abuses their honest natures against their meaning to these disorders,"—in other words, to disown and denounce Lambert. But, having thus delivered his conscience on the subject of the second dismission of the Rump, he declares farther complaint to be useless, and proceeds to inquire what is now to be done.

"Being now in anarchy, without a counselling and governing power, and the Army, I suppose, finding themselves insufficient to discharge at once both military and civil affairs, the first thing to be found out with all speed, without which no Commonwealth can subsist, must be a SENATE or GENERAL COUNCIL OF STATE, in whom must be the power first to preserve the public peace, next the commerce with foreign nations, and lastly to raise moneys for the management of these affairs. This must either be the [Rump] Parliament readmitted to sit, or a Council of State allowed of by the Army, since they only now have the power. The terms to be stood on are Liberty of Conscience to all professing Scripture to be the Rule of their Faith and Worship and the Abjuration of a Single Person. If the [Rump] Parliament be again thought on, to salve honour on both sides, the well-affected party of the City and the Congregated Churches may be induced to mediate by public addresses and brotherly beseechings; which, if there be that saintship among us which is talked of, ought to be of highest and undeniable persuasion to reconcilement. If the Parliament be thought well dissolved, as not complying fully to grant Liberty of Conscience, and the necessary consequence thereof, the Removal of a forced Maintenance from Ministers [Milton's own sole dissatisfaction with the Restored Rump], then must the Army forthwith choose a Council of State, whereof as many to be of the Parliament as are undoubtedly affected to these two conditions proposed. That which I conceive only able to cement and unite the Army either to the Parliament recalled or this chosen Council must be a mutual League and Oath, private or public, not to desert one another till death: that is to say that the Army be kept up and all these Officers in their places during life, and so likewise the Parliament or Councillors of State; which will be no way unjust, considering their known merits on either side, in Council or in Field, unless any be found false to any of these two principles, or otherwise personally criminous in the judgment of both parties. If such a union as this be not accepted on the Army's part, be confident there is a Single Person underneath. That the Army be upheld the necessity of our affairs and factions will [at any rate] constrain long enough perhaps to content the longest liver in the Army. And whether the Civil Government be an annual Democracy or a perpetual Aristocracy is not to me a consideration for the extremities wherein we are, and the hazard of our safety from our common enemy, gaping at present to devour us. That it be not an Oligarchy, or the Faction of a few, may be easily prevented by the numbers of their own choosing who may be found infallibly constant to those two conditions forenamed—full Liberty of Conscience and the Abjuration of Monarchy proposed; and the well-ordered Committees of their faithfullest adherents in every county may give this Government the resemblance and effects of a perfect Democracy. As for the Reformation of Laws and the Places of Judicature, whether to be here, as at present, or in every county, as hath been long aimed at, and many such proposals tending no doubt to public good, they may be considered in due time, when we are past these pernicious pangs, in a hopeful way of health and firm constitution. But, unless these things which I have above proposed, one way or other, be once settled, in my fear (which God avert!), we instantly ruin, or at best become the servants of one or other Single Person, the secret author and fomenter of these disturbances."

There is considerable boldness in these proposals of Milton, and yet a cast of practicality which is unusual with him. They prove again, if new proof were needed, that he was not a Republican of the conventional sort. He glances, indeed, at the possibility of an "Annual Democracy," i.e. a future succession of annual Parliaments, or at least of annual Plebiscites for electing the Government. But he rather dismisses that possibility from his calculations; and moreover, even had he entertained it farther, we know that the Parliaments or Plebiscites he would have allowed would not have been "full and free," but only guarded representations of the "well-affected" of the community,—to wit, the Commonwealth's-men. But the Constitution to which he looks forward with most confidence, and which he ventures to think might answer all the purposes of a perfect democracy, is one that should consist of two perpetual or life aristocracies at the centre,—one a civil aristocracy in the form of a largish Council of State, the other a military aristocracy composed of the great Army Officers,—these two aristocracies to be pledged to each other by oath, and sworn also to the two great principles of Liberty of Conscience and resistance to any attempt at Single Person sovereignty. What communication between the Central Government so constituted and the body of the People might be necessary for the free play of opinion might be sufficiently kept up, he hints, by the machinery of County Committees. The entire scheme may seem strange to those whose theory of a Republic refuses the very imagination of an aristocracy or of perpetuity of power in the same hands; but both, notions, and especially that of perpetuity of power in the same hands, had been growing on Milton, and were not inconsistent with his theory of a Republic. Nor was his present scheme, with all its strangeness, the least practical of the many "models" that theorists were putting forth. It would, doubtless, have failed in the trial,—for the conception of a perpetual Civil Council at Whitehall always in harmony with a perpetual Military Council in Wallingford House presupposed moral conditions in both bodies less likely to be forthcoming in themselves than in Milton's thoughts about them. But everything else would have failed equally, and some of the "models" perhaps more speedily. Since the subversion of Richard's Protectorate by Fleetwood and Desborough there had been no possible stop-gap against the return of the Stuarts.

The consulting authorities at Whitehall and Wallingford House did adopt a course having some semblance of that suggested by Milton. Before the 25th of October, or within six days after the date of Milton's letter, the relics of the Council of State of the Rump agreed to be transformed, with additions nominated by the Officers, into the new Supreme Executive called The Committee of Safety; and, as The Wallingford-House Council of Officers still continued to sit in the close vicinity of this new Council at Whitehall, the Government was then vested, in fact, in the two aristocracies, with Fleetwood, Lambert, Desborough, Berry, and others, as members of both, and connecting links between them. But the new Committee of Safety was not such a Senate or Council as Milton had imagined. For one thing, it consisted but of twenty-three persons (see the list ante p. 494), whereas Milton would have probably liked to see a Council of twice that size or even larger. For another, it was not composed of persons perfectly sound on Milton's two proposed fundamentals of Liberty of Conscience and Abjuration of any Single Person. Vane, to be sure, was on the Committee, and a host in himself for both principles; and there were others, such as Salway and Ludlow, that would not flinch on either. But Whitlocke, Sydenham, and the majority, were but moderately for Liberty of Conscience, and certainly utterly against that Miltonic interpretation of it which implied Church-disestablishment, while one at least, the Scottish Johnstone of Warriston, was positively against Liberty of Conscience beyond very narrow Presbyterian limits. Nor, though probably all would have assented at that time to an oath abjuring Charles Stuart, were they all without taint of the Single Person heresy in other forms. Some of them, including Whitlocke and Berry, would have liked to restore Richard; and Fleetwood and Lambert were not wrongly suspected of seeing the most desirable Single Person every morning in the looking-glass. Milton's former regard for Fleetwood must have suffered considerably by recent events; and he thought of Lambert as the very "Achan" to be dreaded. But, farther, even had the two aristocracies been of perfectly satisfactory composition, they had abandoned that idea of their own permanence which Milton had made all but essential. They had agreed that their chief work should consist in shaping out a fit constitution for the Commonwealth, and that the Committee of Safety should continue in power only till that should be done and the new Constitution should come into operation.

Such as it was, the new Government of the Wallingford-House Interruption had no objection to retaining Mr. Milton in the Latin Secretaryship if he cared to keep it. That he had held the post throughout the whole of the Government of the Restored Rump (though all but in sinecure, as we must conclude from the cessation of the series of his Latin Letters in the preceding May) appears from a very interesting document in the Record Office. The Council of State of the Rump, it is to be remembered, had not vanished with the Rump itself on Oct. 13, but had sat on for twelve days more, though with its number reduced by the secession of Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, and other very vehement Rumpers,—the object being to maintain the continuity of the public business and to make the most amicable arrangement possible with the Army-officers. That object having been accomplished by the institution, of the new Committee of Safety, the Council of the Rump, before demitting its powers to this new body, which was to meet on the 28th of October, held its own last meeting at Whitehall on the 25th. At such a last meeting it was but business-like to clear off all debts due by the Council; and, accordingly, this was done by the issue of the following comprehensive money-warrant, signed by Whitlocke as President, and by four others of those present.

"These are to will and require you, out of such moneys as are or shall come into your hands, to pay unto the several persons whose names are endorsed the several sums of money to their names mentioned, making on the whole the sum of Three Thousand Six Hundred Eighty-two Pounds, Eight Shillings, and Six Pence: being so much due to them for their salaries and service to this Council unto the Two-and-twentieth day of this instant October. Hereof you are not to fail; and for so doing this shall be your sufficient warrant. Given at the Council of State at Whitehall this 25th day of October, 1659.

"B. WHITLOCKE, President.
A. JOHNSTON.
JAMES HARRINGTON.
CHARLES FLEETWOOD.
JA. BERRY.

"To GUALTER FROST, Esq.,

"Treasurer for the Council's Contingencies."

"The eighty-six persons to whom the payments are to be made are divided into groups in the Warrant, the particular sum due to each person appended to his name. The first five groups stand thus:—

		£	s.	d.
	Richard Deane	234	7	6
"At £500 per annum each	Henry Scobell	234	7	6
	William Robinson	83	0	0
At £1 per day	Richard Kingdon	86	0	0
At £200 per annum each	JOHN MILTON	86	12	0
	ANDREW MARVELL	86	12	0
	Gualter Frost	138	0	10
At 20s. per diem each	Matthew Fairbank	139	0	0
	Samuel Morland	88	0	0
	Edward Dendy	169	0	0
	Matthew Lea	56	6	8
At 6s. 8d. per diem each [Clerks]	Thomas Lea	56	6	8
	William Symon	56	6	8"

Then follow the names of twenty-nine persons at 5s. per diem each: viz. Zachary Worth, David Salisbury, Peter Llewellen, Edward Cooke, Richard Stephens, Stephen Montague, Thomas Powell; Henry Symball, Joseph Butler, Thomas Pidcott, Richard Freeman, George Hussey, Roger Read, Edward Osbaldiston, William Feild, Robert Cooke (or his widow), Thomas Blagden, William Ledsom, Edward Cooke; Edward Tytan, Thomas Baker, John Bradley, Nicholas Hill, Anthony Compton, Joshua Leadbetter, Alexander Turner, Thomas Wright, William Geering, and Edward Bridges. The occupations of the first seven are not described, but they were probably under-clerks; the next twelve were "messengers"; the last ten "serjeant deputies" under Dendy as Serjeant-at-Arms. The sums ordered to be paid to them vary from £4 to £42 5s.—Forty-four more persons are added more miscellaneously, with the sums due to them respectively. Among these I may note the following:—"George Vaux, Housekeeper" (£69 9s. 8d.), "Mr. Nutt, the Barge-keeper" (£65), "Mr. Embrey, Surveyor" (£140 12s. 6d.), and "Mr. Kinnereley, Wardrobe-keeper" (£140 12s. 6d.).¹

There is nothing in this warrant to show that Milton's services were transferred to the new Committee of Safety; but the fact seems to be that he did remain nominally in the Latin Secretaryship with Marvell through the whole duration of that body and of the Fleetwood-Lambert rule, i.e. to Dec. 26, 1659. Nominally only it must have been; for we have no trace of any official work of his through the period. There was very little to do for the Government at that time in the way of foreign correspondence, and for what there was Marvell must have sufficed.

Through the months of November and December Milton's thoughts, like those of other people, must have been much occupied with the negotiations going on between the new Government and their formidable opponent in Scotland. What would be the issue? Would Monk persevere in that championship of the ill-treated Rump which he had so boldly undertaken? Would he march into England to restore the Rump, as he had threatened; or would he yet be pacified and induced to accept the Wallingford-House order of things, with a competent share in the power? No one could tell. Lambert was in the north with his army, to beat and drive back Monk if he did attempt to invade England,—at York early in November, and at Newcastle from the 20th of November onwards; Monk was still in Scotland,—at Edinburgh or Dalkeith till the end of November, then at Berwick, but from the beginning of December at Coldstream. Between the two armies agents were passing and repassing; negotiators on the part of the London Government were round about Monk and reasoning with him; Monk's own Commissioners in London had concluded their Treaty of the 15th of November with Fleetwood and the Wallingford-House Council, and there had been rejoicings over what seemed then the happy end of the quarrel; but again the news had come from Scotland that Monk repudiated the agreement made by his Commissioners, and that the negotiation must be resumed at Newcastle. To that the Committee of Safety and the Wallingford-House Council had consented; but, through Monk's delays, the negotiation had not yet been resumed. Would it ever be, or would Monk's army and Lambert's come into clash at last? If so, for which ought one to wish the victory? So far as Milton was concerned, he was bound to wish the success of Monk. Was not Monk the champion of that little Restored Rump to which Milton had himself adhered, and the late suppression of which he had pronounced to be "illegal and scandalous"? Was not Monk also professing and proclaiming that very principle of the proper submission of the military power to the civil on which Milton himself had dilated? Would it not be only God's justice if Lambert, "the secret author and fomenter of these disturbances," should be disgraced and overthrown? Yet, on the other hand, who could desire even that consequence, or the Restoration of the Rump, at the expense of another civil war and bloodshed? Where would the process stop? And, besides, was Monk, with his Presbyterian notions, learnt among the Scots, the man from whose ascendancy Milton could hope anything but farther disappointment in the Church question? All in all, we are to imagine Milton anxious for a reconciliation.

No less interesting to Milton must have been the activity of the new Government meanwhile in their great business of inventing "such a Form of Government as may best suit and comport with a Free State and Commonwealth."——The Rump itself, as we know, had been busy with this problem through the last month of its sittings, having appointed on the 8th of September a great Committee on the subject, with Vane named first, but all the most eminent Rumpers included (ante p. 480). Through this Committee there had been an inburst into the Parliamentary mind, as Ludlow informs us, of the thousand and one competing proposals or models of a Commonwealth already devised by the Harringtonians and other theorists; and, in fact, while the Committee was sitting, there had started up for its assistance, close to the doors of Parliament, the famous Harrington or Rota Club, meeting nightly in Miles's Coffee-house, and including Neville and others of the Rumpers among its most constant members (ante pp. 484-486). That Milton knew already about Harrington and his "models" by sufficient readings of Harrington's books there can be no doubt. In the address to the Rump prefixed to his Considerations touching Hirelings in August last he had distinctly referred to the kind acceptance by the Rump of "new models of a Commonwealth" daily tendered to them in Petitions, and must have had specially in view the Petition of July 6, which had been drawn up by Harrington, and which proposed a constitution of two Parliamentary Houses, one of 300 members, the other much larger, on such a system of rotation as would change each completely every third year (ante pp. 483-484). His only criticism on the competing models then had been that, till his own notion of Church-disestablishment were carried into effect, "no model whatsoever of a Commonwealth, would prove successful or undisturbed." At that time, accordingly, Milton was so engrossed with his Church-disestablishment notion as to be comparatively careless about the general question of the Form of Government. But, two months later, as we have seen, in his Letter on the Ruptures of the Commonwealth occasioned by Lambert's assault on the Rump, he had abandoned this indifference, and had proposed a model Constitution of his own, adapted to the immediate exigencies. From that time, we may now report, though Church-disestablishment was never lost sight of, the question of the Form of Government had fastened itself on Milton's mind as after all the main one. From that time he never ceased to ruminate it himself, and he attended more to the speculations and theories of others on the same subject. If, once or twice in the winter months of 1659, Cyriack Skinner, the occasional chairman of the Rota Club, did not persuade Milton to leave his house in Petty France late in the evening, and be piloted through the streets to the Coffee-house in New Palace Yard to hear one of the great debates of the Club, and become acquainted with their method of closing the debate by a ballot, it would really be a wonder.——Not in the Rota Club, however, but in the Committee of Safety at Whitehall and in the Wallingford-House Council, was the real and practical debate in progress. On the 1st of November the Committee had appointed their sub-committee of six to deliberate on the new Constitution; and through the rest of the month, both in the sub-committee and in the general committee, there had been that intricate discussion in which Vane led the extreme party, or party of radical changes, while Whitlocke stood for lawyerly use and wont in all things, and Johnstone of Warriston threw in suggestions from his peculiar Scottish point of view. So far as Milton was cognisant of the discussion, his hopes must have been in the efforts of his friend Vane. If any one could succeed in inducing his colleagues to insert articles for Church-disestablishment and full Liberty of Conscience into the new Constitution, who so likely as he who had held those articles as tenets of his private creed so much earlier and so much more tenaciously than any other public man? Seven years ago Milton had described him on this account as Religion's "eldest son," on whose firm hand she could lean in peace. Now that he was again in power, and that not merely as one of a miscellaneous Parliamentary body, but as one of a small committee of leaders drafting a Constitution de novo, what might he not accomplish? That Vane did battle in Committee for the notions he held in common with Milton, and for others besides, we already know; but we know also that the massive resistance of Whitlocke, backed outside by the lawyers and the Savoy clique of the clergy, was too much for Vane, and that the draft Constitution as it emerged ultimately was substantially Whitlocke's. It was on the 6th of December that this draft Constitution was submitted to the Convention of Army and Navy delegates at Whitehall; and it was on the 14th that, after modifications by this body tending to make it still more Whitlocke's than it had been, it went back to the Committee of Safety approved and ratified. A Single House Parliament of the customary sort to meet in February; a new Council of State of the customary sort to be appointed by that Parliament; the Established Church to be kept up, and by the system of Tithes until some other form of ample State-maintenance for the clergy should be provided; Liberty of Conscience for Nonconformists, but within limits: this and no more was the parturition after all. If Ludlow was in despair because no sufficient security had been taken that the new Parliament should be true to the Commonwealth, and if the theorists of the Rota were disappointed because none of their patent models had been adopted, Milton's regret can have been no less. Government after government, but all deaf alike to his teachings! Even this one, with Vane at the heart of it, unable to rise above the old conceits of a customary state-craft, and ending in a solemn vote for conserving a Church of Hirelings!

So in the middle of December. Then, for another week, the strange phenomenon, day after day, of that whirl of popular and army opinion which was to render all the long debate over the new Constitution nugatory, to upset the Wallingford-House administration, and stop Whitlocke in his issue of the writs for the Parliament that had just been announced. Monk's dogged persistency for the old Rump had done the work without the need of his advance from Coldstream to fight Lambert. All over England and Ireland people were declaring for Monk with increasing enthusiasm, and execrating Lambert's coup d'état and the Wallingford-House usurpation. Portsmouth had revolted; the Londoners were in riot; Lambert's own soldiery were falling away from him at Newcastle; Fleetwood's soldiery in London were growing ashamed of themselves and of their chief amid the taunts and insults of the populace. On the 20th of December appearances were such that Whitlocke and his colleagues were in the utmost perplexity.

One great Republican had not lived to see this return of public feeling to the cause of his heart. Bradshaw had died on the 22nd of November, all but despairing of the Republic. His will was proved on the 16th of December. It consisted of an original will, dated March 22, 1653, and two codicils, the second dated September 10, 1655. His wife having predeceased him, leaving no issue, the bulk of his extensive property went to his nephew, Henry Bradshaw; but there were various legacies, and among them the following in one group in the second codicil,—"To old Margarett ffive markes, to Mr. Marcham^t. Nedham tenne pounds, and to Mr. John Milton tenne poundes." There is nothing here to settle the disputed question of Milton's cousinship, on his mother's side, with Bradshaw.¹ The legacy was a trifling one, equivalent to £35 now; and, as Needham and Milton are associated on terms of equality, Bradshaw must have been thinking of them together as the two literary officials who had been so much in contact with each other, and with himself, in the days of his Presidency of the Council of State,—Needham as the appointed journalist of the Commonwealth, and Milton as its Latin champion, and for some time Needham's censor and supervisor. In Milton's case perhaps, as the codicil was drawn up fifteen months after the publication of the Defensio Secunda, the legacy may have been intended not merely as a small token of general respect and friendliness, but also as a recognition by Bradshaw of the bold eulogy on him inserted into that work at a critical moment of his relations to Cromwell.

More than two years had elapsed since Milton's last letters to Oldenburg and young Ranelagh (ante pp. 366-367). They were then at Sáumur in France, where they remained till March 1658; but since that time they had been travelling about, and from May 1659, if not earlier, they had been boarding in Paris. There are glimpses of them in letters from Oldenburg to Robert Boyle, and also in letters of Hartlib to Boyle, in which he quotes passages from letters he has received both from Oldenburg and from young Ranelagh. Thus, in a letter of Hartlib's to Boyle of April 12, 1659, there is this from Oldenburg's last: "I have had some discourse with an able but somewhat close physician here, that spoke to me of a way, though without particularizing all, to draw a liquor of the beams of the sun; which peradventure some person that is knowing and experienced (as noble Mr. Boyle) may better beat out than we can who want experience in these matters." Young Ranelagh seems to have fully acquired by this time the tastes for physical and experimental science which characterized his tutor; and his uncle Boyle may have read with a smile this from Hartlib of date October 22, 1659:—"This week Mr. Jones hath saluted me with a very kind letter, containing a very singular observation in these words: 'Concerning the generation of pearls I am of opinion that they are engendered in the cockle-fishes (I pray, Sir, give me the Latin word for it in your next) of the same manner as the stone in our body,—which I endeavour fully to show in a discourse of mine about the generation of pearls; which, when I shall have done it, shall wait upon you for my part in revenge of your observations. I heard lately a very remarkable story about margarites from a person of quality and honour in this town, which you will be glad, I believe, to hear. A certain German baron of about twenty-four years old, being in prison here at Paris, in the same chamber with a Frenchman (who told this, as having been eyewitness of it, to him that told it me), they having both need of money, the baron sent his man to a goldsmith to buy seven or eight ordinary pearls, of about twenty pence a piece, which he put a-dissolving in a glass of vinegar; and, being well dissolved, he took the paste and put it together with a powder (which I should be glad to know) into a golden mould, which he had in his pocket, and so put it a-warming for some time upon the fire; after which, opening the mould, they found a very great and lovely oriental pearl in it, which they sold for about two hundred crowns, although it was a great deal more worth. The same baron, throwing a little powder he had with him into a pitcher of water, and letting it stand about four hours, made the best wine that a man can drink.' Thus far the truly hopeful young gentleman, whereby he hath hugely obliged me. I wish he had the forementioned powder, that we might try whether we could make the like pearls and wine." From a subsequent letter of Hartlib's, dated Nov. 29, 1659, it appears that Oldenburg and Jones were both much interested in the optical instruments of a certain Bressieux, then in Paris, who had for two years been chief workman in that line for Descartes. They were anxious to make him a present of some good glass from London, because he was rather secretive about his workmanship, and such a present would go a great way towards mollifying him.¹

Very possibly with this last letter of Oldenburg's to Hartlib there had been enclosed a letter from Oldenburg, and another from young Ranelagh, to Milton. Two such letters, at all events, Milton had received, and undoubtedly through Hartlib, who was still the universal foreign postman for his friends. We can guess the substance of the two letters. Young Ranelagh does not seem to have troubled Milton with his speculations on the generation of pearls, or his story of the German baron and his alchemic powders, but only to have sent his dutiful regards, with excuses for long neglect of correspondence. Oldenburg had also sent his excuses for the same, but with certain pieces of news from abroad, and certain references to the state of affairs at home. Among the pieces of news were two of some personal interest to Milton. One was that the unfinished reply to his Defensio Prima, which Salmasius had left in manuscript at his death six years ago, was about to appear as a posthumous publication. The other was that there was to be a great Synod of the French Protestant Church, at which the case of Morus was to be again discussed. For, though it was more than two years since Morus had received his call to the collegiate pastorship of the Protestant Church of Paris or Charenton, the question of his admissibility to the charge had hung all that while between the Walloon Synods of the United Provinces and the French Protestant Church Courts, the latter on the whole favouring him, the former more and more bent on disgracing him. In April of the present year a Walloon Synod at Tergou had actually passed on him a sentence of suspension from the ministerial office and from the holy communion "until by a sincere repentance of his sins he shall have repaired so many scandals he has brought upon us." In spite of this, a French Provincial Synod, held at Ai in Champagne in the following month, had ordered his admission to be carried into effect, and the Parisian consistory had obeyed this order, though two members of it protested. There had since then been another Walloon Synod, held at Nimeguen in September, in which the former sentence of the Tergou Synod was confirmed, but, for the sake of peace between the Walloon Church and their brethren of the French Protestant Church, it was agreed to waive all farther jurisdiction over Morus in Holland and to "remit the whole cause unto the prudence, discretion, and charity of the National Assembly of the French churches to meet at Loudun." This was the Synod of whose approaching meeting Oldenburg had informed Milton—the Synod of Loudun in Anjou (Nov. 10, 1659—Jan. 10, 1660). It was to be a very important assembly indeed,—no mere Provincial Synod, but a national one, expressly allowed by Louis XIV., and to consist of deputies, clerical and lay, from all the Protestant churches of France, empowered to transact all business relating to those churches under certain royal regulations and restrictions, and in the presence of a royal Commissioner. As there had been no such National Protestant Synod in France for fifteen years, there was an accumulation of business for it, the case of Morus included. They were to examine that case de novo, and to pronounce finally whether Morus was guilty or not guilty, whether he should remain a minister of the French Church or not.¹

Milton's replies to the two letters will now be intelligible. He writes, it will be observed, in a gloomy mood, on the very day on which Whitlocke, for different reasons, was in a gloomy mood too and "wishing himself out of these daily hazards":—

TO HENRY OLDENBURG.

"That forgiveness which you ask for your silence you will give rather to mine; for, if I remember rightly, it was my turn to write to you. By no means has it been any diminution of my regard for you (of this I would have you fully persuaded) that has been the impediment, but only my employments or domestic cares; or perhaps it is mere sluggishness to the act of writing that makes me guilty of the intermitted duty. As you desire to be informed, I am, by God's mercy, as well as usual. Of any such work as compiling the history of our political troubles, which you seem to advise, I have no thought whatever [longe absum]: they are worthier of silence than of commemoration. What is needed is not one to compile a good history of our troubles, but one who can happily end the troubles themselves; for, with you, I fear lest, amid these our civil discords, or rather sheer madnesses, we shall seem to the lately confederated enemies of Liberty and Religion a too fit object of attack, though in truth they have not yet inflicted a severer wound on Religion than we ourselves have been long doing by our crimes. But God, as I hope, on His own account, and for His own glory, now in question, will not allow the counsels and onsets of the enemy to succeed as they themselves wish, whatever convulsions Kings and Cardinals meditate and design. Meanwhile, for the Protestant Synod of Loudun, which you tell me is so soon to meet [Milton does not seem to know that it had been sitting already for six weeks] I pray—what has never happened to any Synod yet—a happy issue, not of the Nazianzenian sort,¹ and am of opinion that the issue of this one will be happy enough if, should they decree nothing else, they should decree the expulsion of Morus. Of my posthumous adversary, as soon as he makes his appearance, be good enough to give me the earliest information. Farewell.

"Westminster: December 20, 1659."

TO THE NOBLE YOUTH, RICHARD JONES.

"For the long break in your correspondence with me your excuses are truly most modest, inasmuch as you might with more justice accuse me of the same fault; and, as the case stands, I am really at a loss to know whether I should have preferred your not having been in fault to your having apologised so finely. On no account let it ever come into your mind that I measure your gratitude, if anything of the kind is due to me from you, by your constancy in letter-writing. My feeling of your gratitude to me will be strongest when the fruits of those services of mine to you of which you speak shall appear not so much in frequent letters as in your perseverance and laudable proficiency in excellent pursuits. You have rightly marked out for yourself the path of virtue in that theatre of the world on which you have entered; but remember that the path is common so far to virtue and vice, and that you have yet to advance to where the path divides itself into two. And you ought now betimes to prepare yourself for leaving this common path, pleasant and flowery, and for being able the more readily, with your own will, though with labour and danger, to climb that arduous and difficult one which is the slope of virtue only. For this you have great advantages over others, believe me, in having secured so faithful and skilful a guide. Farewell.

"Westminster: December 20, 1659."

Two days after the date of these letters the uproar of execration round the Wallingford-House Government had reached such an extreme that Whitlocke made his desperate proposal to Fleetwood that they should extricate themselves from their difficulty by declaring for Charles and opening negotiations with him. Two days more, and Fleetwood's soldiery, under the command of officers of the Rump, were marching down Chancery Lane, cheering Speaker Lenthall and asking his forgiveness. Again two days more, and on the 26th of December, Fleetwood having given up the game and sent the keys of the Parliament House to Lenthall, the Rumpers were back in their old places. We have arrived, therefore, at that Third Stage of the Anarchy which may be called "The Second Restoration of the Rump."

Of Milton in this stage of the Anarchy we hear little or nothing directly; but there are means for tracing the course of his thoughts.

As may be inferred from the melancholy tone of his letter to Oldenburg, he had all but ceased to hope for any deliverance for the Commonwealth by any of the existing parties. Even the Second Restoration of the Rump, though it was what he was bound to approve, and had indeed suggested as possibly the best course, can have brought him but little increase of expectation. If, in its best estate, after its first restoration, the Rump had disappointed him, what could he hope from it now in its attenuated and crippled condition, with Vane expelled from it because of his actings during the Wallingford-House Interruption, with Salway out of it, who had worked so earnestly with Vane on the Church-question, and with others of the ablest also out of it, leaving a House of but about two scores of persons, to be managed by Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, and Henry Marten? Nay, not to be managed even by those undoubted Republicans, but to a great extent also by Ashley Cooper, Fagg, and others, whose Republicanism was of a very dubious character! For Milton cannot have failed to take note of the abatement in this session of the Rump of that Republican fervency which had characterized its former session. What had been his own two proposed tests of genuine Republicanism? Willingness of every one concerned with the Government to take a solemn oath of Abjuration of a Single Person, and willingness also of every such person to swear to the principle of Liberty of Conscience. How was it faring with these two tests in this renewed Session of the Rumpers? An abjuration oath of the kind indicated had been imposed indeed on the new Council of State; but nearly half of those nominated to the Council had remained out of that body rather than take the oath, and Hasilrig's proposal to require the same oath from all members of the House itself had been so strenuously resisted that it had fallen to the ground. Then, on the religious question, what was the deliberate offer of the House to the country in their heads for a public Declaration on the 21st of January 1659-60? "Due liberty to tender consciences" was promised; but that was a mere phrase of custom, implying little or nothing, and it was utterly engulphed, in Milton's estimate, by the accompanying engagement to "uphold a learned and pious ministry of the nation and their maintenance by Tithes." On the Church-disestablishment question the House had actually receded from its former self by announcing that it was not even to prosecute the inquiry as to a possible substitute for Tithes. Altogether, before the twice-restored Rump had sat a month, Milton must have seen that his ideal Commonwealth was just as far off as ever. All he could hope was that the wretched little Parliament would not prove positively treacherous.

With others, however, he must have been thinking more of Monk's proceedings and intentions than of those of the Parliament. Monk's march from Coldstream southwards on the 2nd of January; the vanishing of the residue of Lambert's forces before him; the addresses to him in the English counties all along his route; his answers or supposed answers to these addresses; his wary behaviour to the two Parliamentary Commissioners that had been sent to attach themselves to him and find out his disposition in the matter of the Abjuration Oath; his arrival at St. Alban's on the 28th of January; his message thence to the Parliament to clear all Fleetwood's regiments out of London and Westminster before his own entry; that entry itself on the 3rd of February, when he and his battered columns streamed in through Gray's Inn Lane; finally his first appearance in the House and speech, there:—of all this Milton had exact cognisance through the newspapers of his friend Needham and otherwise. It was very puzzling and by no means reassuring. If he had ever thought of Monk as by possibility such a saviour of the Commonwealth as he had been longing for, the study of the actually approaching physiognomy of Old George all the way from Scotland, and still more Old George's first deliverance of himself in the Parliament, must have undeceived him. The Abjuration Oath, it appeared, was not at all to Monk's mind. He would not take it himself in order to be qualified for the seat voted him in the Council of State, and he plainly intimated his opinion that the day for such oaths and engagements was past. Milton cannot have liked that rejection by the General of one of the tests on which he had himself placed so much reliance. But, further, what meant Monk's very ambiguous utterance respecting the three immediate courses one of which must be chosen? He had distinctly mentioned in the House that the drift of public opinion, as he could ascertain it from the addresses made to him along his march, was towards either an enlargement of the present House by the re-admission of the Secluded Members or a full and free Parliament by a new general election; and, though he had seemed to acquiesce in that third course which was proposed by the House itself, viz. the enlargement of the House by a competent number of new writs issued by itself under a careful scheme of qualification for electing or being eligible, he had left a very vague impression as to his real preference. Now to Milton, as to all other ardent Commonwealth's men, the vital question was which of these three courses was to be taken. To adopt either of the two first was to subvert the Commonwealth. To re-admit the secluded members into the present House was to convert it into a House with an overwhelming Presbyterian majority, and to bring back the days of Presbyterian ascendancy, with the prospect of a restoration of Royalty on merely Presbyterian terms. To summon what was called a new full and free Parliament was, all but certainly, to bring back Royalty by a more hurried process still. Only by the third method, the Rump's own method, did there seem a chance of preserving the Republican constitution; and yet Monk's assent to it had been but hesitating and uncertain. More ominous still had been his few words intimating his wishes in the matter of ecclesiastical policy. He could conceive nothing so good, on the whole, as the Scottish Presbyterianism he had been living amidst for the last few years, and he thought that the 'sober interest' in England, steering between the 'Cavalier party' on the one side and the 'Fanatic party' on the other, would be most secure by keeping to a moderate Presbytery in the State-Church. That Milton's views as to the merits of Scottish Presbytery were not Monk's is an old story, needing no repetition here. What must have concerned him was to see Monk not only at one with the great mass of his countrymen on the subject of a Church-Establishment, but actually retrograde on the question of the desirable nature of such an Establishment, inasmuch as he seemed to signal his countrymen back out of Cromwell's broad Church of mixed Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, into a Church more strictly on the Presbyterian model. Then another unpleasant novelty in Monk's case was his fondness for the phrases Fanatics, Fanatic Notions, the Fanatic Party. The phrases were not new; but Monk had sent them out of Scotland before him, and had brought them himself out of Scotland, with a new significance. Very probably they had been supplied to him out of the vocabulary of his Scottish clerical adviser Mr. James Sharp, or of the Scottish Resolutioner clergy generally. At all events, it is from and after the date of Monk's march into England that one finds the name Fanatics a common one for all those Commonwealth's men collectively who opposed a State-Church or the moderate Presbyterian or semi-Presbyterian form of it. Had Monk drawn out a list of his 'Fanatics,' he would have had to put Milton himself at the top of them, with Vane, Harrison, Barebone, and the leading Quakers.

Nevertheless, here was Monk, such as he was, the armed constable of the crisis, the one man who could keep the peace and let the Rumpers proceed in doing their best. That "best" as they had agreed specifically on the 4th of February, the day after Monk's arrival, was to be the recruiting of their own House up to a total of 400 members for England and Wales, such recruiting to be effected by the issue of a certain number of new writs, together with a scheme of qualifications calculated to bring in only sound Republicans, or persons likely to cooperate in farther measures with the present Rumpers. This being what was promised by the conjunction of Monk and the Rump, what could Milton do but acquiesce, be glad it was no worse, and contribute what advice he could? This, accordingly, is what he did. Pamphlets on the crisis, as we know, had been coming out abundantly—pamphlets for the good old cause of the Republic, pamphlets from Rota-men, pamphlets from Prynne and other haters of the Rump, pamphlets from crypto-Royalists, and pamphlets openly Royalist; and many of these had taken, and others were still to take, the form of letters addressed to Monk. It need be no surprise that Milton had his pamphlet in preparation. He had begun it just after Monk's arrival in London and the resolution, of the Rump to recruit itself; he had written it hurriedly and yet with some earnest care; and it seems to have been ready for the press about or not long after the middle of February. Before it could go to press, however, there had been another revolution, obliging him to hold it back. There had been the rebellion of the Londoners because of the resolution of the Rump to perpetuate itself by recruiting, instead of either readmitting the secluded members or calling a new free and full Parliament; there had been Monk's notorious two days in the City, by order of the Rump, quashing the rebellion, and breaking the gates and portcullises (Feb. 9-10); there had been his extraordinary return the third day, with his profession of regret before the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen and Common Council, and his announcement that he had dissolved his connexion with the Rump,—that third day wound up with yells of delight through all the City, the smashing of Barebone's windows, and the universal Roasting of the Rump in street-bonfires (Feb. 11); there had been the ten more days of Monk's continued residence in the City, the Rumpers vainly imploring reconciliation with him, and the Secluded Members and their friends gathering round him and negotiating; and, on Tuesday, Feb. 21, when he did remove from the City to Westminster, it was with the Secluded Members in his train, to be marched under military guard to their seats beside the Rumpers. The writs issued by the Rump for recruiting itself were now useless. It had been recruited in the way it least liked, by the sudden reappearance in it of the excluded Presbyterians and Royalists of the pre-Commonwealth period of the Long Parliament.

Far more than the mere stopping of his pamphlet was involved for Milton in the events of that fortnight. He could construe them no otherwise than as the breaking down of the inner rampart that defended the Commonwealth against Charles Stuart. The Roasting of the Rump in London was but a rough popular metaphor for "Down with the Republic"; and, had the tumult of that night extended from the City to Westminster and the breaking of the windows of "fanatics" become general, Milton's would not have escaped. Then, in the course of the negotiations with Monk through the fatal fortnight, had not the Rump itself quailed? Had they not offered to cancel the solemn Abjuration Oath, alike for the Councillors of State and for future members of Parliament, and to substitute only a general engagement to be faithful to the Commonwealth, without King, Single Person, or House of Lords? Hardly anywhere now did there seem to be that stern, bold, uncompromising opposition to Royalty which would register itself, as Milton wanted, in an oath before God and man, but only that feebler Republicanism which would pledge itself with the understood reservation of "circumstances permitting." But worst of all was the crowning fact that the Secluded Members had been restored. By that one stroke of Monk's all that had happened since the Commonwealth had been set up was put in question, and the power was given back into the hands of the very men who had protested and struggled against the setting up of the Commonwealth eleven years ago. How would these act? It might be hoped perhaps that some of the more prudent among them, having regard to the lapse of time and the change of circumstances, might not think it their duty to be as vehemently Royalist now as they had been in 1648, and also perhaps that the power of Monk, if Monk himself remained true, might restrain the rest. But would Monk remain true, or would his power avail long in restraining a Parliament the majority of which were Presbyterians and Royalists? Not to speak of the varied ability and subtlety of such of the new Parliamentary chiefs as Annesley, Sir William Waller, Denzil Holles, Ashley Cooper, and Harbottle Grimstone, what was to be expected from the remorseless obstinacy, the rhinoceros persistency, of such a Presbyterian as Prynne? How often had Milton jeered at Prynne and the margins of his endless pamphlets! It might be of some consequence to him now to remember that he had done so, and had therefore this virtual Attorney-General of the Secluded for his personal enemy. Altogether, Milton's despondency had never yet been so deep as it must have been at this beginning of the last phase of the long English Revolution, represented in the Parliament of the Secluded Members and in Monk's accompanying Dictatorship.

CHAPTER II.

Third Section.

MILTON THROUGH MONK'S DICTATORSHIP. FEB. 1659-60—MAY 1660.

FIRST EDITION OF MILTON'S READY AND EASY WAY TO ESTABLISH A FREE COMMONWEALTH: ACCOUNT OF THE PAMPHLET, WITH EXTRACTS: VEHEMENT REPUBLICANISM OF THE PAMPHLET, WITH ITS PROPHETIC WARNINGS: PECULIAR CENTRAL IDEA OF THE PAMPHLET, VIZ. THE PROJECT OF A GRAND COUNCIL OR PARLIAMENT TO SIT IN PERPETUITY, WITH A COUNCIL OF STATE FOR ITS EXECUTIVE: PASSAGES EXPOUNDING THIS IDEA: ADDITIONAL SUGGESTION OF LOCAL AND COUNTY COUNCILS OR COMMITTEES: DARING PERORATION OF THE PAMPHLET: MILTON'S RECAPITULATION OF THE SUBSTANCE OF IT IN A SHORT PRIVATE LETTER TO MONK ENTITLED PRESENT MEANS AND BRIEF DELINEATION OF A FREE COMMONWEALTH: WIDE CIRCULATION OF MILTON'S PAMPHLET: THE RESPONSE BY MONK AND THE PARLIAMENT OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS IN THEIR PROCEEDINGS OF THE NEXT FORTNIGHT: DISSOLUTION OF THE PARLIAMENT AFTER ARRANGEMENTS FOR ITS SUCCESSOR: ROYALIST SQUIB PREDICTING MILTON'S SPEEDY ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE HANGMAN AT TYBURN: ANOTHER SQUIB AGAINST MILTON, CALLED THE CENSURE OF THE ROTA UPON MR. MILTON'S BOOK: SPECIMENS OF THIS BURLESQUE: REPUBLICAN APPEAL TO MONK, CALLED PLAIN ENGLISH: REPLY TO THE SAME, WITH ANOTHER ATTACK ON MILTON: POPULAR TORRENT OF ROYALISM DURING THE FORTY DAYS OF INTERVAL BETWEEN THE PARLIAMENT OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS AND THE CONVENTION PARLIAMENT (MARCH 16, 1659-60—APRIL 25, 1660): CAUTION OF MONK AND THE COUNCIL OF STATE: DR. MATTHEW GRIFFITH AND HIS ROYALIST SERMON, THE FEAR OF GOD AND THE KING: GRIFFITH IMPRISONED FOR HIS SERMON, BUT FORWARD REPUBLICANS CHECKED OR PUNISHED AT THE SAME TIME: NEEDHAM DISCHARGED FROM HIS EDITORSHIP AND MILTON FROM HIS SECRETARYSHIP: RESOLUTENESS OF MILTON IN HIS REPUBLICANISM: HIS BRIEF NOTES ON DR. GRIFFITH'S SERMON: SECOND EDITION OF HIS READY AND EASY WAY TO ESTABLISH A FREE COMMONWEALTH: REMARKABLE ADDITIONS AND ENLARGEMENTS IN THIS EDITION: SPECIMENS OF THESE: MILTON AND LAMBERT THE LAST REPUBLICANS IN THE FIELD: ROGER L'ESTRANGE'S PAMPHLET AGAINST MILTON, CALLED NO BLIND GUIDES: LARGER ATTACK ON MILTON BY G.S., CALLED HE DIGNITY OF KINGSHIP ASSERTED: QUOTATIONS FROM THAT BOOK: MEETING OF THE CONVENTION PARLIAMENT, APRIL 25, 1660: DELIVERY BY GREENVILLE OF THE SIX ROYAL LETTERS FROM BREDA, APRIL 28—MAY 1, AND VOTES OF BOTH HOUSES FOR THE RECALL OF CHARLES; INCIDENTS OF THE FOLLOWING WEEK: MAD IMPATIENCE OVER THE THREE KINGDOMS FOR THE KING'S RETURN: HE AND HIS COURT AT THE HAGUE, PREPARING FOR THE VOYAGE HOME: PANIC AMONG THE SURVIVING REGICIDES AND OTHER PROMINENT REPUBLICANS: FLIGHT OF NEEDHAM TO HOLLAND AND ABSCONDING OF MILTON FROM HIS HOUSE IN PETTY FRANCE: LAST SIGHT OF MILTON IN THAT HOUSE.

The Parliament of the Secluded Members and Residuary Rumpers had been sitting for a few days, had confirmed Monk in the Dictatorship by formally appointing him Captain-General and Commander-in-chief (Feb. 21), and had also (Feb. 22) intimated their resolution to devolve all really constitutional questions on a new "full and free Parliament," when Milton did send forth the pamphlet he had written. It was a small quarto of eighteen pages with this title-page: "The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, and the Excellence therof compar'd with the inconveniences and dangers of readmitting kingship in this nation. The author J.M., London, Printed by T.N., and are to be sold by Livewell Chapman at the Crown in Popes-Head Alley. 1660." Copies seem to have been procurable before the end of February 1659-60, but Thomason's copy bears date "March 3."¹ That was the day of the order of Parliament for the release of the last remaining Scottish captives of Worcester Battle.

The pamphlet opens thus:—

"Although, since the writing of this treatise, the face of things hath had some change, writs for new elections [by the late Rump] have been recalled, and the members at first chosen [for the original Long Parliament] readmitted from exclusion to sit again in Parliament, yet, not a little rejoicing to hear declared the resolutions of all those who are now in power, jointly tending to the establishment of a Free Commonwealth, and to remove, if it be possible, this unsound humour of returning to old bondage instilled of late by some cunning deceivers, and nourished from bad principles and false apprehensions among too many of the people, I thought best not to suppress what I had written, hoping it may perhaps (the Parliament now sitting more full and frequent) be now much more useful than before: yet submitting what hath reference to the state of things as they then stood to present constitutions, and, so the same end be pursued, not insisting on this or that means to obtain it. The treatise was thus written as follows."

This is an attempt by Milton even yet to disguise his despondency. He had written the pamphlet while the late Rump was still sitting, while the conjunction between them and Monk was unbroken, and when the last news was that they had issued, or were about to issue, writs for the recruiting of their body by a large number of like-minded additional members; but he will assume that the pamphlet may yet answer its purpose, with hardly a change of phraseology. No longer, it is true, does the power lie with the Rump, recruited or unrecruited; it lies now in the unexpected Parliament of the Residuary Rumpers plus Monk's restored representatives of the pre-Commonwealth period of the Long Parliament. But he will suppose the best even after that surprise. There is, at any rate, a more "full and frequent" Parliament than before: and there has been no declaration hitherto of any intention to subvert the Commonwealth. On the contrary, had not Monk, both in his speech to the Secluded Members before readmitting them, and also in his Declaration or Address to the Army published after their re-admission, used the language of a true Commonwealth's-man, and even called God to witness that his only aim was "God's glory and the settlement of these nations upon Commonwealth foundations"? Had not the Secluded Members virtually made a compact with Monk upon these terms? Milton will not, for the present, suppose either Monk or the Parliament false in the main matter. He will only suppose that they have perceived, with himself, the infatuated drift of the popular humour towards a restoration of Royalty, and will themselves listen, and allow the country to listen, to what he had written on that subject two or three weeks ago.

The despondency which he disguises in the preface appears in the pamphlet itself. Or rather it is a despondency dashed with a sanguine remnant of faith that all might yet be well, and that the means of perpetuating a Republic, all contrary appearances notwithstanding, might yet be shown to be "ready and easy." The use of these two words in the title of such a pamphlet at such a time is very characteristic. It was the public theorist, however, that ventured on them, rather than the secret and real man. Throughout the pamphlet there is a sad and fierce undertone, as of one knowing that what he is prophesying as easy will never come to pass.

About half of the pamphlet consists of a declamation in general on the advantages of a Commonwealth Government over a Kingly Government, and on the dishonour, inconveniences, and dangers, to the British Islands in particular, if they should relapse into the one form of Government after having had so much prosperous experience of the other. In the following specimen of the declamation the reader will note the prophecy of actual events as far as to the Revolution of 1688:—

"After our liberty thus successfully fought for, gained, and many years possessed (except in those unhappy interruptions which God hath removed), ... to fall back, or rather to creep back, so poorly as it seems the multitude would, to their once abjured and detested thraldom of kingship, not only argues a strange degenerate corruption suddenly spread among us, fitted and prepared for new slavery, but will render us a scorn and derision to all our neighbours. And what will they say of us but scoffingly as of that foolish builder mentioned by our Saviour, who began to build a tower and was not able to finish it: 'Where is this goodly Tower of a Commonwealth, which the English boasted they would build to overshadow Kings and be another Rome in the West? The foundation indeed they laid gallantly; but fell into a worse confusion, not of tongues but of factions, than those at the Tower of Babel, and have left no memorial of their work behind them remaining but in the common laughter of Europe.' Which must needs redound the more to our shame if we but look on our neighbours THE UNITED PROVINCES, to us inferior in all outward advantages; who, notwithstanding, in the midst of great difficulties, courageously, wisely, constantly, went through with the same work, and are settled in all the happy enjoyments of a potent and flourishing Republic to this day.—Besides this, if we return to kingship, and soon repent (as undoubtedly we shall, when we begin to find the old encroachments coming on by little and little upon our consciences, which must needs proceed from King and Bishop united inseparably in one interest), we may be forced perhaps to fight over again all that we have fought and spend over again all that we have spent, but are never likely to attain, thus far as we are now advanced to the recovery of our freedom, never likely to have it in possession as we now have it,—never to be vouchsafed hereafter the like mercies and signal assistance from Heaven in our cause, if by our ingrateful backsliding we make these fruitless to ourselves, all His gracious condescensions and answers to our once importuning prayers against the tyranny which we then groaned under to become now of no effect, by returning of our own foolish accord, nay running headlong again with full stream wilfully and obstinately, into the same bondage: making vain and viler than dirt the blood of so many thousand faithful and valiant Englishmen, who left us in this liberty bought with their lives; losing by a strange after-game of folly all the battles we have won, all the treasure we have spent (not that corruptible treasure only, but that far more precious one of all our late miraculous deliverances), and most pitifully depriving ourselves the instant fruition of that Free Government which we have so dearly purchased,—a Free Commonwealth: not only held by wisest men in all ages the noblest, the manliest, the equalest, the justest Government, the most agreeable to all due liberty, and proportioned equality both human, civil, and Christian, most cherishing to virtue and true religion, but also, (I may say it with greatest probability) plainly commended or rather enjoined by our Saviour Himself to all Christians, not without remarkable disallowance and the brand of Gentilism upon Kingship [quotation here of Luke XXII. 25, 26]¹ ... And what Government comes nearer to this precept of Christ than a Free Commonwealth? Wherein they who are greatest are perpetual servants and drudges to the public at their own costs and charges,—neglect their own affairs, yet are not elevated above their brethren,—live soberly in their families, walk the streets as other men, may be spoken to freely, familiarly, friendly, without adoration: whereas a King must be adored like a demigod, with a dissolute and haughty Court about him, of vast expense and luxury, masques and revels, to the debauching of our prime gentry both male and female,—nor at his own cost, but on the public revenue,—and all this to do nothing but bestow the eating and drinking of excessive dainties, to set a pompous face upon the superficial actings of State, to pageant himself up and down in progress among the perpetual bowings and cringings of an abject people."

Having thus expressed his belief that "a Free Commonwealth, without Single Person or House of Lords, is by far the best government, if it can be had," Milton glances at the objection that recent experience in England has shown such government to be practically unattainable. He denies this, alleging that all disappointment hitherto "may be ascribed with most reason to the frequent disturbances, interruptions, and dissolutions which the Parliament hath had, partly from the impatient or disaffected people, partly from some ambitious leaders in the Army"; and he declares that the present time is peculiarly favourable for one more vigorous effort. "Now is the opportunity, now the very season, wherein we may obtain a Free Commonwealth, and establish it for ever in the land without difficulty or much delay." He had written this when the Rump was sitting, and when he had in view the new elections that were to recruit that "small remainder of those faithful worthies who at first freed us from tyranny and have continued ever since through all changes constant to their trust"; but he lets it stand now, as not inapplicable to the new condition of things brought in by the sudden mixture of the Secluded with the Rumpers. The "Ready and Easy Way," however, has still to be explained; and to that he proceeds.

The central idea of the pamphlet, and practically its backbone, is One and the same Parliament in Perpetuity or Membership for Life. This may be a surprise, not only to those who, knowing that Milton was a Republican, conceive him therefore to have held necessarily the exact modern theory of Representative Government, but also to those who understand Milton better, and who may remember at this point his somewhat contemptuous estimates on previous occasions of the value of the bodies called Parliaments. If those previous passages of his writings are studied, however, it will be found that he is not now so inconsistent as he looks. He had always thought a broad general council of fit men in the centre of a nation the essential of good government; and his chief recommendation to Cromwell, even when approving of his exceptional Sovereignty, had been that he should keep round him such a general Council. Further, it will be found that permanence of the same men at the centre of affairs had always been his implied ideal, whether permanence of an exceptional Single-Person sovereignty surrounded by a Council, or permanence of a Council without a Single-Person sovereignty. His real objection to so-called Parliaments, it will be found, lay in the association with them of the ideas of shiftingness, interruptedness, successiveness, the turmoil and debauchery of successive general elections. So possessed was he with the notion of permanence of tenure as desirable in the governing agency, whatever it might be, that he had even modified the notion, as we have seen, to suit the anomalous conditions of that stage of the Anarchy which we have called the Wallingford-House Interruption, He had recommended then the experiment of a duality of life-aristocracies, one civil and the other military. And now, the turn of circumstances and of his speculations shutting him up once more to a single Civil Parliament of the ordinary size and kind, he will insist on the quality of permanence or perpetuity as that which alone will make it answer the purpose. But, the very name "Parliament" having been vitiated so as to make a permanent Parliament a difficult conception for most people, he would rather get rid of the name altogether, and call the central governing body simply THE GENERAL OR GRAND COUNCIL OF THE NATION.

All this appears in Milton's own words, as follows:—

"The ground and basis of every just and free Government (since men have smarted so oft for committing all to one person) is a GENERAL COUNCIL OF ABLEST MEN, chosen by the people to consult of public affairs from time to time for the common good. This Grand Council must have the forces by sea and land in their power, must raise and manage the public revenue, make laws as need requires, treat of commerce, peace, or war, with foreign nations; and, for the carrying on some particular affairs of State with more secrecy and expedition, must elect, as they have already, out of their own number and others, a Council of State, And, although it may seem strange at first hearing, by reason that men's minds are prepossessed with the conceit of successive Parliaments, I affirm that the GRAND OR GENERAL COUNCIL, being well chosen, should sit perpetual: for so their business is, and they will become thereby skilfullest, best acquainted with the people, and the people with them. The Ship of the Commonwealth is always under sail: they sit at the stern; and, if they steer well, what need is there to change them, it being rather dangerous? Add to this that the GRAND COUNCIL is both foundation and main pillar of the whole State, and to move pillars and foundations, unless they be faulty, cannot be safe for the building. I see not therefore how we can be advantaged by successive Parliaments, but that they are much likelier continually to unsettle rather than to settle a free Government, to breed commotions, changes, novelties, and uncertainties, and serve only to satisfy the ambition of such men as think themselves injured and cannot stay till they be orderly chosen to have their part in the Government. If the ambition of such be at all to be regarded, the best expedient will be, and with least danger, that every two or three years a hundred or some such number may go out by lot or suffrage of the rest, and the like number be chosen in their places (which hath been already thought on here, and done in other Commonwealths); but in my opinion better nothing moved, unless by death or just accusation.... [Farther argument for the permanence of the Supreme Governing Body, with illustrations from the Sanhedrim of the Jews, the Areopagus of Athens, the Senates of Lacedaemon and Home, the full Venetian Senate, and the States-General of the United Provinces]. I know not therefore what should be peculiar in England to make successive Parliaments thought safest, or convenient here more than in all other nations, unless it be the fickleness which is attributed to us as we are Islanders. But good education and acquisite wisdom ought to correct the fluxible fault, if any such be, of our watery situation. I suppose therefore that the people, well weighing these things, would have no cause to fear or murmur, though the Parliament, abolishing that name, as originally signifying but the parley of our Commons with their Norman King when he pleased to call them, should perpetuate themselves, if their ends be faithful and for a free Commonwealth, under the name of a GRAND OR GENERAL COUNCIL: nay, till this be done, I am in doubt whether our State will be ever certainly and thoroughly settled.... The GRAND COUNCIL being thus firmly constituted to perpetuity, and still upon the death or default of any member supplied and kept in full number, there can be no cause alleged why peace, justice, plentiful trade, and all prosperity, should not thereupon ensue throughout the whole land, with as much assurance as can be of human things that they shall so continue (if God favour us and our wilful sins provoke Him not) even, to the coming of our true and rightful and only to be expected King, only worthy as He is our only Saviour, the Messiah, the Christ, the only heir of his Eternal Father, the only by Him anointed and ordained, since the work of our redemption finished, Universal Lord of all mankind. The way propounded is plain, easy, and open before us, without intricacies, without the mixture of inconveniences, or any considerable objection to be made, as by some frivolously, that it is not practicable. And this facility we shall have above our next neighbouring Commonwealth (if we can keep us from the fond conceit of something like a Duke of Venice, put lately into many men's heads by some one or other subtly driving on, under that pretty notion, his own ambitious ends to a crown),¹ that our liberty shall not be hampered or hovered over by any engagement to such a potent family as the House of Nassau, of whom to stand in perpetual doubt and suspicion, but we shall live the clearest and absolutest free nation, in the world."

In effect, therefore, Milton's Ready and Easy Way, recommended to the mixed Parliament of Residuary Rumpers and their reseated Presbyterian half-brothers of March 1659-60, is that this Parliament, nailing the Republican flag to the mast, should make itself, or some enlargement of itself, the perpetual supreme power under the name of THE GRAND COUNCIL OF THE COMMONWEALTH, appointing a smaller Council of State, as heretofore, to be the working executive, but plainly intimating to the people that there are to be no more general Parliamentary elections, but only elections to vacancies as they may occur in the Grand Council by death or misdemeanour. He is himself against the adoption of Harrington's principle of rotation to any extent whatever; but, if it would reconcile people to his scheme, he would concede rotation so far as to let a portion of the Grand Council go out every second or third year to admit new men.

While expounding his main idea, Milton had intimated that he had another suggestion in reserve, which might help to reconcile reasonable men of democratic prepossessions to the seeming novelty of an irremovable apparatus of Government at the centre. This suggestion he brings forward near the end of the pamphlet. He arrives at it in the course of a demonstration in farther detail of certain superiorities of Commonwealth government over Regal. "The whole freedom of man," he says, "consists either in Spiritual or Civil Liberty." Glancing first at Spiritual Liberty, he contents himself with a general statement of the principle of Liberty of Conscience, as implying the absolute and unimpeded right of every individual Christian to interpret the Scripture for himself and give utterance and effect to his conclusions; and, though he does not conceal that in his own opinion such Liberty of Conscience cannot be complete without Church-disestablishment, he does not press that for the present. Enough that Liberty of Conscience, according to any endurable definition of it, is more safe in a Republic than in a Kingdom,—which, by various instances from history, he maintains to be a fact. Then, coming to Civil Liberty, he propounds his reserved suggestion, or the second real novelty of his pamphlet, thus:—

"The other part of our freedom consists in the civil rights and advancements of every person according to his merit: the enjoyment of those never more certain, and the access to these never more open, than in a free Commonwealth. And both in my opinion may be best and soonest obtained if every county in the land were made a Little Commonwealth, and their chief town a City if it be not so called already; where the nobility and chief gentry may build houses or palaces befitting their quality, may bear part in the [district or city] government, make their own judicial laws, and execute them by their own elected judicatures, without appeal, in all things of Civil Government between man and man. So they shall have justice in their own hands, and none to blame but themselves if it be not well administered. In these employments they may exercise and fit themselves till their lot fall to be chosen into THE GRAND COUNCIL, according as their worth and merit shall be taken notice of by the people. As for controversies that may happen between men of several counties, they may repair, as they now do, to the Capital City. They should have here also [i.e. in their own Cities and Counties] schools and academies at their own choice, wherein their children may be bred up in their own sight to all learning and noble education, not in grammar only, but in all liberal arts and exercises."

This is what would now be called a scheme of Decentralization or Systematic Local Government. The counties, with their chief cities, should be so many little independent communities, each with its legislative council, its law-courts, and its other institutions, employing and tasking the political energies and abilities of the citizens or inhabitants of the district. While this would be advantageous in itself, inasmuch as it would stimulate mental activity and social improvement everywhere, and would relieve the GRAND CENTRAL COUNCIL of much work more properly appertaining to municipalities, it would doubtless reconcile many to the existence of such a GRAND CENTRAL COUNCIL in perpetuity. Energetic and ambitious spirits would have scope and training in their own cities and neighbourhoods, and the hope of being elected to the Central Government when there should be a vacancy there would be a fine incitement to the best to qualify themselves to the utmost for national statesmanship.

The following is the closing passage of the whole pamphlet:—

"With all hazard I have ventured what I thought my duty, to speak in season and to forewarn my country in time; wherein I doubt not but there be many wise men in all places and degrees, but am sorry the effects of wisdom are so little seen among us. Many circumstances and particulars I could have added in those things whereof I have spoken; but a few main matters now put speedily into execution will suffice to recover us and set all right. And there will want at no time who are good at circumstances; but men who set their minds on main matters and sufficiently urge them in these most difficult times I find not many. What I have spoken is the language of the Good Old Cause: if it seem strange to any, it will not seem more strange, I hope, than convincing to backsliders. Thus much I should perhaps have said though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones, and had none to cry to but, with the Prophet, O Earth, Earth, Earth, to tell the very soil itself what God hath determined of Coniah and his seed for ever. But I trust I shall have spoken persuasion to abundance of sensible and ingenuous men,—to some perhaps whom God may raise of these stones to become Children of Liberty, and may enable and unite in their noble resolutions to give a stay to these our ruinous proceedings and to this general defection of the misguided and abused multitude."

To understand fully the tremendous daring of this peroration, one must turn to the passage of Hebrew prophecy which it cites and applies to Charles Stuart. It is Jeremiah XXII. 24-30, where woe is denounced upon Coniah, Jeconiah, or Jehoiachin, the worthless King of Judah, no better than his father Jehoiakim:—"As I live, saith the Lord, though Coniah, the son of Jehoiakim, King of Judah, were the signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck thee thence. And I will give thee into the hand of them that seek thy life, and into the hand of them whose face thou fearest, even into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon, and into the hand of the Chaldeans. And I will cast thee out, and thy mother that bare thee, into another country, where ye were not born; and there shall ye die. But to the land whereunto they desire to return, thither shall they not return. Is this man Coniah a despised broken idol? is he a vessel wherein is no pleasure? Wherefore are they cast out, he and his seed, and are cast into a land which they know not? O Earth, Earth, Earth, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord: Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days; for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David and ruling any more in Judah."

A curious supplement to Milton's Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth exists in the shape of a private letter which he addressed to General Monk. It was not published at the time, and bears no date, but must have been written immediately after the publication of the pamphlet, while the Parliament of the Secluded Members and Residuary Rumpers was still sitting. Milton, it would seem, had sent Monk a copy of the pamphlet; and this private letter is nothing but a brief summary of the suggestions of the pamphlet for the General's easier reading, should he think fit. It is entitled, in our present copies, "The Present Means and Brief Delineation of a Free Commonwealth, easy to be put in practice and without delay: In a Letter to General Monk."¹ The whole consists of less than three of the present pages. Believing that all endeavours must now be used "that the ensuing election be of such, as are already firm or inclinable to constitute a Free Commonwealth," Milton appeals to Monk to be himself the man to lead in these endeavours. "The speediest way," he says, "will be to call up forthwith [to London] the chief gentlemen out of every county, [and] to lay before them (as your Excellency hath already, both in your published Letters to the Army and your Declaration recited to the Members of Parliament), the danger and confusion of readmitting kingship in this land." Then let the gentlemen so charged return at once to their counties, and elect or cause to be elected, "by such at least of the people as are rightly qualified," a STANDING COUNCIL in every city and great town, all great towns henceforth to be called Cities. Let it be understood that these councils are to be permanent seats of district and local judicature and of political deliberation; but, while setting up such councils, let the gentlemen also see to the election of "the usual number of ablest knights and burgesses, engaged for a Commonwealth, to make up the PARLIAMENT, or, as it will from henceforth be better called, THE GRAND OR GENERAL COUNCIL OF THE NATION." The local or city councils having meanwhile been set up, and it having been intimated that on great occasions their assent will be required to measures proposed by the Grand Council of the nation, Milton does not anticipate that there will be much opposition "though this GRAND COUNCIL be perpetual, as in that book [his pamphlet] I proved would be best and most conformable to best examples"; but, should there be opposition, "the known expedient may at length be used of a partial rotation." This is all that Milton has to say, with one exception:—"If these gentlemen convocated refuse these fair and noble offers of immediate liberty and happy condition, no doubt there be enough in every county who will thankfully accept them, your Excellency once more declaring publicly this to be your mind, and having a faithful veteran Army so ready and glad to assist you in the prosecution thereof."—What Monk thought of Mr. Milton's Letter, if he ever took the trouble to read it, may be easily guessed. It was at this time that he was so often drunk or nearly so at the dinners given in the City, and that Sir John Greenville, on the part of Charles, was watching for an interview with him at St. James's.

Not one of Milton's pamphlets had a larger immediate circulation or provoked a more rapid fury of criticism than his Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth.

From the Parliament indeed the response was only indirect; but every atom of such indirect response was a dead and contemptuous negative. Though, when Milton published the pamphlet, he was entitled to assume that the compact between Monk and the Secluded Members whom he had restored guaranteed a continuance of the Commonwealth form of Government, the entire tenor of their proceedings during the five-and-twenty days to which they confined their sittings (Feb. 2l-March 16, 1659-60) was such as to undeceive him and others on that point, and to show that, though they abstained from abolishing the Commonwealth themselves, they meant to leave the succeeding full and free Parliament they had called at perfect liberty to do so. No other construction could be put upon their votes even in ecclesiastical matters. Hardly was Milton's pamphlet out when he knew that they had voted the revival of the Westminster Assembly's Confession of Faith as the standard of doctrine in the National Church (March 2), and the revival of the Solemn League and Covenant as a document of perpetual national obligation (March 5). Then followed (March 14) their vote for mapping out all England and Wales according to the strict pattern of the Scottish Presbyterian organization. But, that there might be no mistake, their votes predetermining the composition of the coming Parliament were also in the direction of the admission of Royalists and the exclusion of those that could be called Fanatics for the Republic. The engagement to be faithful to the Commonwealth without King or House of Lords was annulled (March 13); the clauses disqualifying even the active and conspicuous Royalists of the Civil Wars were far from stringent; and the very act by which the House dissolved itself contained a proviso saving the legal and constitutional rights of the old House of Lords and pointing to the restitution of the Peerage. How significant also that scene in the House on the last day of their sittings, Friday, March 16, when Mr. Crewe moved for a vote of execration on the Regicides, and poor Thomas Scott, standing up on the floor, and reckless though the words should seal his doom, declared himself to be one of the blood-stained band and claimed the fact as his highest earthly honour! What Scott did that day in the House Milton had done even more publicly a fortnight before in the daring peroration of his pamphlet. From March 16, 1659-60, Milton and Scott, whoever else, might regard themselves as in the list for the future hangman.

In the list for the future hangman! It is a strong expression, but true historically to the very letter. Read the following from a scurrilous pamphlet, of six pages in shabby print, called The Character of the Rump, which was out in London on Saturday the 17th of March, the day after the dissolution of the Parliament:—

"An ingenious person hath observed that Scott is the Rump's man Thomas; and they might have said to him, when he was so busy with the General,

"Peace, for the Lord's sake, Thomas! lest Monk take us,

And drag us out, as Hercules did Cacus.

"But John Milton is their goose-quill champion; who had need of a help-meet to establish anything, for he has a ram's head and is good only at batteries,—an old heretic both in religion and manners, that by his will would shake off his governors as he doth his wives, four in a fortnight. The sunbeams of his scandalous papers against the late King's Book is [sic] the parent that begot his late New Commonwealth; and, because he, like a parasite as he is, by flattering the then tyrannical power, hath run himself into the briars, the man will be angry if the rest of the nation will not bear him company, and suffer themselves to be decoyed into the same condition. He is so much an enemy to usual practices that I believe, when he is condemned to travel to Tyburn in a cart, he will petition for the favour to be the first man that ever was driven thither in a wheelbarrow. And now, John, you must stand close and draw in your elbows [the fancy is of Milton standing on the scaffold pinioned], that Needham, the Commonwealth didapper, may have room to stand beside you ... He [Needham] was one of the spokes of Harrington's Rota, till he was turned out for cracking. As for Harrington, he's but a demi-semi in the Rump's music, and should be good at the cymbal; for he is all for wheeling instruments, and, having a good invention, may in time find out the way to make a concert of grindstones."¹

Such was the popular verdict, in March 1660, on Milton and his last pamphlet, and all his deserts and accomplishments in the world he had lived in for one-and-fifty years. More of the like may be found on search; but I will pass to one retort on his Ready and Easy Way, of somewhat higher literary quality than the last, and which retains a certain celebrity yet.

It appeared on March 30, as a small quarto of sixteen pages, with this title: "The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton's Book, entituled 'The Ready and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth.'" On the title-page is the imprint, "London, Printed by Paul Giddy, Printer to the Rota, at the sign of the Windmill in Turne-againe Lane. 1660," and also a professed extract from the minutes of the Rota Club, "Die Luna 26 Martii 1660," certified by "Trundle Wheeler, Clerk to the Rota," authorizing and ordering Mr. Harrington, as Chairman of the Club, to draw up and publish a narrative of that day's debate of the Club over Mr. Milton's pamphlet, and to transmit a copy of the same to Mr. Milton. The thing, though it has been mistaken by careless people as actually a production of Harrington's, is in reality a clever burlesque by some Royalist, in which, under the guise of an imaginary debate in the Rota over Milton's pamphlet, Milton and the Rota-men are turned into ridicule together. The mock-names on the title-page (Paul Giddy, Trundle Wheeler, &c.) are part of the burlesque; and it is well kept up in the tract itself, which takes the form of a letter gravely addressed to Milton and signed with Harrington's initials, "J. H."¹

Mr. Harrington is supposed to begin by expressing his regret to Mr. Milton that his duty obliges him to make so unsatisfactory a report as to the reception of Mr. Milton's last pamphlet by the Club. "For, whereas it is our usual custom to dispute everything, how plain or obscure soever, by knocking argument against argument, and tilting at one another with our heads (as rams fight) till we are out of breath, and then refer it to our wooden oracle, the Box, and seldom anything, how slight soever, hath appeared without some person or other to defend it, I must confess I never saw bowling-stones run so unluckily against any boy, when his hand has been out, as the ballots did against you when anything was put to the question from the beginning of your book to the end." First, one gentleman had objected to the very name of the book, The Ready and Easy Way, &c., and had remarked that Mr. Milton was generally unlucky in his titles to his pamphlets, most of them having been absurd or fantastic. A second gentleman had been even more impolite. "He wondered you did not give over writing, since you have always done it to little or no purpose; for, though you have scribbled your eyes out, your works have never been printed but for the company of chandlers and tobaccomen, who are your stationers, and the only men that vend your labours. He said that he himself reprieved the whole Defence of the People of England for a groat,... though it cost you much oil and labour and the Rump £300 a year." Then a third gentleman, a member of the Long Robe, had been very severe and sarcastic on Mr. Milton's knowledge of Law; and a fourth, who had travelled much abroad, had followed with an equally severe criticism on Mr. Milton's knowledge of European history. This last speaker was beginning to be prosy, when fortunately some one came into the Club with news that Sir Arthur Hasilrig, "the Brutus of our Republic," had been nearly torn in pieces by a rabble of boys in Westminster Hall, just outside the Club, and had saved himself by taking to his heels. The laughter over this made the last gentleman forget what he was saying; which gave opportunity to a fifth gentleman to rise and discourse at some length on the sophistical and abominable character of Mr. Milton's Political Philosophy:—

"He was of opinion that you did not believe yourself, nor those reasons you give in defence of Commonwealth, but that you are swayed by something else, as either by a stork-like fate (as a modern Protector-Poet calls it, because that fowl is observed to live nowhere but in Commonwealths), or because you have unadvisedly scribbled yourself obnoxious, or else you fear such admirable eloquence as yours would be thrown away under a Monarchy.... All your politics are derived from the works of Declaimers, with which sort of writers the ancient Commonwealths had the fortune to abound ... All which you have outgone (according to your talent) in their several ways: for you have done your feeble endeavour to rob the Church, of the little which the rapine of the most sacrilegious persons hath left, in your learned work against Tithes; you have slandered the dead worse than envy itself, and thrown your dirty outrage on the memory of a murdered Prince, as if the Hangman were but your usher. These have been the attempts of your stiff formal eloquence, which you arm accordingly with anything that lies in your way, right or wrong,—not only begging but stealing questions, and taking everything for granted that will serve your turn. For you are not ashamed to rob O. Cromwell himself, and make use of his canting assurances from Heaven and answering condescensions: the most impious Mahometan doctrine that ever was vented among Christians."...

This speaker having ended with a comment on Mr. Milton's remark that Christ himself had put "the brand of Gentilism" upon Kingship, "a young gentleman made answer that your writings are best interpreted by themselves, and that be remembered, in that book wherein you fight with the King's Picture, you call Sir Philip Sidney's Princess Pamela, who was born and bred of Christian parents in England, 'a heathen woman,' and therefore he thought that by Heathenish you meant English, and that in calling Kingship heathenish you inferred it was the only proper and natural government of the English nation, as it hath been proved in all ages. To which another objected that such a sense was quite contrary to your purpose; to which he immediately replied that it was no new thing with you to write that which is as well against as for your purpose. After much debate, they agreed to put it to the ballot; and the young gentleman carried it without contradiction." Then another critic fell foul of Mr. Milton's Divinity and Church notions,—one of which, he said, was "that the Church of Christ ought to have no head upon earth, but the monster of many heads, the multitude," and another "that any man may turn away his wife, and take another as oft as he pleases": to which last accusation is added the comment, "As you have most learnedly proved upon the fiddle [Tetrachordon], and practised in your life and conversation; for which you have achieved the honour to be styled the founder of a sect." The audience by this time becoming weary, "a worthy knight of this Assembly stood up and said that, if we meant to examine all the particular fallacies and flaws in your writing, we should never have done; he would therefore, with leave, deliver his judgment upon the whole: which in brief was this:—That it is all windy foppery from the beginning to the end, written, to the elevation of that rabble and meant to cheat the ignorant; that you fight always with the flat of your hand like a rhetorician, and never contract the logical fist; that you trade altogether in universals, the region of deceits and fallacy, but never come so near particulars as to let us know which among divers things of the same kind you would be at ... Besides this, as all your politics reach but the outside and circumstances of things, and never touch at realities, so you are very solicitous about words, as if they were charms, or had more in them than what they signify; for no conjuror's devil is more concerned in a spell than you are in a mere word." This last speaker having moved that Mr. Harrington himself, in conclusion, should deliver his opinion on Mr. Milton's book, the result was as follows:—

"I knew not (though unwilling) how to avoid it; and therefore I told them, as briefly as I could, that that which I disliked most in your treatise was that there is not one word of The Balance of Property, nor the Agrarian, nor Rotation, in it from the beginning to the end: without which (together with a Lord Archon) I thought I had sufficiently demonstrated, not only in my writings but public exercises in that coffee-house, that there is no possible foundation of a free Commonwealth. To the first and second of these,—that is, the Balance and the Agrarian,—you made no objection; and therefore I should not need to make any answer. But for the third,—I mean Rotation,—which you implicitly reject in your design to perpetuate the present members, I shall only add this to what I have already said and written on that subject: That a Commonwealth is like a great top, that must be kept up by being whipt round, and held in perpetual circulation; for, if you discontinue the rotation, and suffer the Senate to settle and stand still, down it falls immediately. And, if you had studied this point as carefully as I have done, you could not but know there is no such way under Heaven of disposing the vicissitudes of command and obedience, and of distributing equal right and liberty among all men, as this of Wheeling."...¹

How notoriously Milton had flashed forth as the chief militant Republican of the crisis, how universally he had drawn upon himself in that character the eyes of the Royalists and become the target for their bitterest shafts, may appear from yet another probing among the contemporary London pamphlets.——Perhaps the last formal and collective appeal on behalf of the Republic to Monk and the others in power was a small tract which appeared in the end of March, with this title:—Plain English to his Excellencie the Lord-General Monk and the Officers of his Army: or a Word in Season, not onely to them, but to all impartial Englishmen. To which is added a Declaration of the Parliament in the year 1647, setting forth the grounds and reasons why they resolved to make no further Address or Application to the King. Printed at London in the year 1660. The first part of the tract consists of eight pages addressed to Monk, in the form of a letter dated "March 22," by some persons who do not give their names, but sign themselves "your Excellency's most faithful friends and servants in the common cause"; after which, in smaller type, comes a reprint of the famous reasons of the Long Parliament for their total rupture with Charles I. in January 1647-8 (Vol. III. pp. 584-585). The letter begins thus:—"My Lord and Gentlemen,—It is written The prudent shall keep silence in the evil time; and 'tis like we also might hold our peace, but that we fear a knife is at the very throat not only of our and your liberties, but of our persons also. In this condition we hope it will be no offence if we cry out to you for help,—you that, through God's goodness, have helped us so often, and strenuously maintained the same cause with us against the return of that family which pretends to the Government of these nations ... We cannot yet be persuaded, though our fears and jealousies are strong and the grounds of them many, that you can so lull asleep your consciences, or forget the public interests and your own, as to be returning back with the multitude to Egypt, or that you should with them be hankering after the leeks and onions of our old bondage." There follows an earnest invective against the Stuarts; but the tone of respectfulness to Monk is kept up studiously throughout. There is no sign of Milton in the language, and one guesses on the whole that the tract was a concoction of a few of the City Republicans, with Barebone among them, meeting privately perhaps in the back-parlour of the Republican bookseller who ventured the publication anonymously; but it is possible that Milton may have been consulted, or at least have been cognisant of the affair. The reprinting of the reasons of the Long Parliament for their No-Address Resolutions of January 1647-8 was an excellent idea, inasmuch as it reminded people of that disgust with Charles I., that impossibility of dealing with him even in his captive condition, which had driven the Parliamentarians to the theory of a Republic a year before the Republic had been actually founded; and this feature of the tract may have seemed good to Milton.——The Tract must have annoyed Monk and the other authorities, for it was immediately suppressed. This we learn from a reply to it, which appeared on the 3rd of April, with the title Treason Arraigned, in answer to Plain English, being a Trayterous and Phanatique Pamphlet which was condemned by the Counsel of State, suppressed by Authority, and the Printer declared against by Proclamation ... London, Printed in the year 1660. The reply takes the very curious form of a reproduction of the condemned tract almost textually, paragraph by paragraph, with a running comment of vituperation upon the author or authors. The following sentences, culled from the vituperative comment, will show that the writer suspected Milton as the person chiefly responsible, and will sufficiently represent the entire performance:—

"Some two days since came to my view a bold sharp pamphlet, called Plain English, directed to the General and his Officers.... It is a piece drawn by no fool, and it deserves a serious answer. By the design, the subject, malice, and the style, I should suspect it for a blot of the same pen that wrote Eikonoklastes. It runs foul, tends to tumult; and, not content barely to applaud the murder of the King, the execrable author of it vomits upon his ashes with a pedantic and envenomed scorn, pursuing still his sacred memory. Betwixt him [Milton] and his brother Rabshakeh [Needham?] I think a man may venture to divide the glory of it. It relishes the mixture of their united faculties and wickedness.... Say, Milton, Needham, either or both of you, or whosoever else, say where this worthy person [Monk] ever mixed with you.... Come, hang yourself; beg right; here's your true method of begging:—'O, for Tom Scott's sake, for Hasilrig's sake, for Robinson, Holland, Mildmay, Mounson, Corbet, Atkins, Vane, Livesey, Skippon, Milton, Tichbourne, Ireton, Gordon, Lechmere, Blagrave, Barebone, Needham's sake, and, to conclude, for all the rest of our unpenitent brethren's sake, help a company of poor rebellious devils¹.'"

We are now, it is to be seen, in the mid-stream of those final forty days which intervened between the self-dissolution of the last fag-end of the Long Parliament and the meeting of the Full and Free Parliament called for the conclusive settlement (March 16, 1659-60-April 25, 1660). Monk was Dictator; the Council of State, with Annesley for President, was the body in charge, along with Monk, keeping the peace; but all eyes were directed towards the coming Parliament, the elections for which were going on. It was precisely in the beginning of April that the popular current towards a restoration of Charles Stuart and nothing else had acquired full force and become a roaring and foaming torrent. They were shouting for him, singing for him, treating his restoration as already certain, though the precise manner and date of it must be left to the Parliament. Only the chiefs, Monk, Annesley, Montague, and the other Councillors, kept up an appearance as if the issue must not be anticipated till the Parliament should have actually met. With letters to and from Charles in their pockets, and each knowing or guessing that the others had such letters, they were trying to look as unpledged and as merely cogitative as they could. It was for the multitude to roar and shout for Charles, and they had now full permission. It was for the chiefs to be silent themselves, only managing and manipulating, and watchful especially against any outbreak of Republican fanaticism even yet that might interfere with the plain course of things and baulk or delay the popular expectation. Wherever they could perceive a likelihood of disturbance, by act or by speech, there they were bound to curb or suppress.

At least in one instance they found it necessary to curb a too hasty and impetuous Royalist. This was Dr. Matthew Griffith, a clergyman over sixty years of age, once a protegé of the poet Donne. Sequestered in the early days of the Long Parliament from his rectory of St. Mary Magdalen, London, he had taken refuge with the King through the civil wars, and had been made D.D. at Oxford, and one of the King's chaplains. Afterwards, returning to London, he had lived there through the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, one of those that continued the use of the liturgy and other Anglican church-forms by stealth to small gatherings of cavaliers, and that found themselves often in trouble on that account. He had suffered, it is said, four imprisonments. The near prospect of the return of Charles II. at last had naturally excited the old gentleman; and, chancing to preach in the Mercers' Chapel on Sunday the 25th of March, 1660, he had chosen for his text Prov. XXIV. 21, which he translated thus: "My son, fear God and the King, and meddle not with them that be seditious or desirous of change." On this text he had preached a very Royalist sermon. There would have been nothing peculiar in that, as many clergymen were doing the like. But, not content with having preached the sermon, Dr. Griffith resolved to publish it, in an ostentatious manner and with certain accompaniments. "The Fear of God and the King. Press'd in a Sermon preach'd at Mercers Chappell on the 25th of March, 1660. Together with a brief Historical Account of the Causes of our unhappy distractions and the onely way to heal them. By Matthew Griffith, D.D., and Chaplain to the late King. London, Printed for Tho. Johnson at the Golden Key in St. Pauls Churchyard, 1660": such was the name of a duodecimo out in London in the first days of April.¹ The volume consists of three parts,—first, a dedicatory epistle "To His Excellency George Monck, Captain-General of all the Land Forces of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and one of the Generals of all the Naval Forces"; then the sermon itself in fifty-eight pages; and then an addition, in the shape of a directly political pamphlet, headed "The Samaritan Revived." The gem is the dedication to Monk. The substance of that is as follows:—

"My Lord,—If you will be pleased to allow me to be a physician in the same sense that all moral divines do acknowledge the body-politic (consisting of Church and State) to be a patient, then I will now give your Highness a just account both how far and how faithfully I have practised upon it by virtue of my profession. When I first observed things to be somewhat out of order, by reason of a high distemper, which then appeared by some infallible indications, I thought it my duty to prescribe an wholesome electuary (out of the 122nd Psalm at the 6th verse, in a sermon which I was called to preach in the Cathedral Church of Saint Paul's, anno 1642, and soon after published by command under this title: A Pathetical Persuasion to pray for the Public Peace), to be duly and devoutly taken every morning next our hearts: hoping that, by God's blessing on the means, I should have prevented that distemper from growing into a formed disease. Yet, finding that my preventing physic did not work so kindly and take so good an effect as I earnestly desired, but rather that this my so tenderly beloved patient grew worse and worse, as not only being in process of time fallen into a fever and that pestilential, but also as having received divers dangerous wounds, which, rankling and festering inwardly, brought it into a spiritual atrophy and deep consumption, and the parts ill-affected (for want of Christian care and skill in such mountebanks as were trusted with the cure, while myself and most of the ancient orthodox clergy were sequestered and silent) began to gangrene: and, when some of us became sensible thereof, we took the confidence (being partly emboldened by the connivance of the higher powers that then were) to fall to the exercise of our ministerial functions again in such poor parishes as would admit us: Then I saw it was high time not only to prescribe strong purgative medicines in the pulpit (contempered of the myrrh of mortification, the aloes of confession and contrition, the rhubarb of restitution and satisfaction, with divers other safe roots, seeds, and flowers, fit and necessary to help to carry away by degrees the incredible confluence of ill humours and all such malignant matter as offended), but also to put pen to paper and appear in print (as in this imperfect and impolished piece, which as guilty of an high presumption here in all humility begs your Lordship's pardon) wherein my chief scope is to personate the Good Samaritan, that, as he cured the wounded traveller by searching his wounds with wine and suppling them with oil, so I have here both described the rise and progress of our national malady, and also prescribed the only remedy, that I might be in some kind instrumental, under God and your Highness, in the healing of the same ... My Lord, as it must needs grieve you to see these three distressed kingdoms lie like a body without a head, so it may also cheer you to consider that the Comforter hath empowered you (and in this nick of time you only) to make these dead and dry bones live. You may by this one act ennoble and eternize yourself more in the hearts and chronicles of these three kingdoms than by all your former victories and the long line of your extraction from the Plantagenets your ancestors ... It is a greater honour to make a king than to be one. Your proper name minds you of being St. George for England; you surname prompts you to stand for order: then let not panic fears, punctilios of human policy, or state formalities, beguile you (whom we look upon as Jethro's magistrate, who was a man of courage, fearing God, dealing truly, and hating covetousness) of that immarescible crown of glory due to you, whom we hope that God hath designed to be the repairer of the breach and the temporal redeemer of your native country."

Evidently Dr. Griffith was a silly person, more likely to make a cause ridiculous than to help it. There were things in his sermon and its accompaniments, however, that might harm the King's cause otherwise than by the bad literary taste of the defence. There was a tone of that revengeful spirit which it was the policy of all the more prudent Royalists to disown. Hence the publication annoyed even in that quarter. The unpardonable offence, however, was the address to Monk. He was studying to be as secret as the grave, had signified his leanings to the King by not a single public word, and indeed had hardly ceased to swear he stood for the Commonwealth. And here was an impudent Doctor of Divinity spoiling all by openly assuming and announcing the very thing to be concealed. Monk was excessively irritated; the Council of State sympathized with him; and so, "to please and blind the fanatical party" for the moment, Dr. Griffith was sent to Newgate.¹

It was more natural, however, for the General and the Council to take similar precautions against too violent expressions of anti-Royalism, too vehement efforts to stir up the Republican embers. Of their vigilance in this respect we have just seen an instance in their instant suppression of the Republican appeal to Monk and his Officers entitled Plain English, and their procedure by proclamation against the anonymous publisher of that tract. If I am not mistaken, he was Livewell Chapman, of the Crown in Pope's Head Alley, the publisher of Milton's Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church, and also of his more recent Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth. There was, at all events, a printed proclamation of the Council of State against this person, dated "Wednesday, 28 March, 1660," and signed "William Jessop, Clerk of the Council." It began in these terms:—"Whereas the Council of State is informed that Livewell Chapman, of London, Stationer, having from a wicked design to engage the nation in blood and confusion caused several seditious and treasonable books to be printed and published, doth, now hide and obscure himself, for avoiding the hand of justice"; and it ended with an order that Chapman should surrender himself within four days, and that none should harbour or conceal him, but all, and especially officers, try to arrest him. If he was the publisher of Plain English, there would be additional reason for suspecting that Milton had some cognisance of that anonymous appeal to Monk; but there can be no doubt that among the "seditious and treasonable books" the publication of which constituted Chapman's offence was Milton's own Ready and Easy Way. The authorities had not yet struck at Milton himself, but they were coming very near him. They had ordered the arrest of his publisher.

Within a few days after the order for the arrest of Milton's publisher, Livewell Chapman, the authorities signified their displeasure, though in a less harsh manner, with another Republican associate of Milton, his old friend Marchamont Needham.—Not without difficulty had this Oliverian journalist, the subsidized editor since 1655 of the bi-weekly official newspaper of the Protectorate (calling itself The Public Intelligencer on Mondays and Mercurius Politicus on Thursdays), been retained in the service of the Good Old Cause. His Oliverianism having been excessive, to the extent of defending not only Oliver's Established Church, but also all else in his policy that grated most on the pure Republicans, he had been discharged from his editorship on the 13th of May, 1659, by order of the Restored Rump, before it had been six days in power, the place going then to John Canne. But Needham's versatility was matchless, and on the 15th of August the Rump had thought it best to reappoint him to the editorship.¹ Since then, having already in succession been Parliamentarian, Royalist, Commonwealth's man or Rumper, and all but anti-Republican Protectoratist, the world had known him in his fifth phase of Rumper or pure Commonwealth's man again. Not only in his journals, but also in independent pamphlets, he had advocated the Good Old Cause. One such pamphlet, published with his name in August 1659, under the title of Interest will not lie,² had been in reply to some Royalist who had propounded "a way how to satisfy all parties and provide for the public good by calling in the son of the late King": against whom Needham's contention was "that it is really the interest of every party (except only the Papist) to keep him out." One can understand now why, in the Royalist squib lately quoted, Needham was named as "the Commonwealth didapper"³ along with Milton as "their goose-quill champion," and why the public were there promised the pleasure of soon seeing the two at Tyburn together.—But the final performance of Needham's, it is believed, was a tract called News from Brussels, in a Letter from a near attendant on his Majesty's person to a Person of Honour here. It purports to be dated at Brussels, March 10, 1659-60, English style, and was out in London on March 23. The publication is said to have been managed secretly by Mr. Praise-God Barebone; and, though the tract was anonymous, it was attributed at once to Needham. Being "fall of rascalities against Charles II. and his Court," as Wood says, and professing to give private information as to the terrible severities which they were meditating when they should be restored to England, the pamphlet was much resented by the Royalists; and John Evelyn roused himself from a sickbed to pen an instant and emphatic contradiction, called The late News or Message from Brussels unmasked. Needham's connexion, or supposed connexion, with so violent an anti-Royalist tract, and possibly also with the Republican manifesto called Plain English, which appeared in the same week, could not be overlooked; and, accordingly, in Whitlocke, under date April 9, 1660, we find this note: "The Council discharged Needham from writing the Weekly Intelligence and ordered Dury and Muddiman to do it." The Dury here mentioned was not our John Durie of European celebrity, but an insignificant Giles Dury. His colleague Muddiman, the real successor of Needham in the editorship, was Henry Muddiman, an acquaintance of Pepys, who certifies that he was "a good scholar and an arch rogue." He had been connected with the London press for some time (for smaller news-sheets had been springing up again beside the authorized Mercurius and Intelligencer), and had been writing for the Rumpers. He had just been, owning to Pepys, however, that he "did it only to get money," and had no liking for them or their politics.[4

If they turned Needham out of his editorship, they could hardly do less than turn Milton out of his Latin Secretaryship. About this time, accordingly, he did cease to hold the office which he had held for eleven years. Phillips's words are that he was "sequestered from his office of Latin Secretary and the salary thereunto belonging"; but, unfortunately, though he gives us to understand that this was shortly before the Restoration, he leaves the exact date uncertain.

Though the last of Milton's state-letters now preserved and known as his are the two, dated May 15, 1659, written for the Rump immediately after the subversion of Richard's Protectorate, we have seen him holding his office in sinecure, and drawing his salary of £200 a year, to as late at least as the beginning of the Wallingford-House Interruption in October 1659; and there is no reason for thinking that the Council or Committee of Safety of the Wallingford-House Government, his dissent from their usurpation notwithstanding, thought it necessary to dismiss him. Far less likely is it that the Republican Rumpers, when restored the second time in December 1659, would have parted with a man so thoroughly Republican and so respectful to themselves, even while they dared not adopt his Church-disestablishment suggestions. We may fairly assume, then, that Milton remained Marvell's nominal colleague till Monk's final termination of the tenure of the Rump by re-admitting the secluded members, i.e. till Feb. 21, 1659-60. Had he been then at once dismissed, it would have been no wonder. How could he, the Independent of Independents, the denouncer of every form of State-Church, the enemy and satirist of the Presbyterians, and moreover the author of the Divorce heresy and the founder of a sect of Divorcers, be retained in the service of a re-Presbyterianized Government, founding itself on the Westminster Confession and the Solemn League and Covenant? There is no proof, however, of any such instant dismissal of Milton by the new powers, but rather a shade of proof to the contrary in the phraseology of the preface to his Ready and Easy Way. The probability, therefore, is that it was after March 3, the date of the publication of that pamphlet, that Milton was sequestered, and that it was the pamphlet itself, added to the sum of his previous obnoxiousness to the new powers, that led to the sequestration. Yet, as the new powers were proceeding warily, and keeping up as long as they could the pretence of leaving the Commonwealth an open question, it is quite possible that they were in no haste to discharge Milton, All in all, the most probable time of his dismissal is some time after the dissolution of the Parliament of the Secluded Members on the 16th of March, 1659-60, when Monk and the Council of State were left in the management. As Milton had been originally appointed by the Council of State and not by Parliament, it was in the Council's pleasure to continue him or dismiss him. They were in a severe mood, virtually anti-Republican already, though not yet avowedly so, between March 28, when they ordered Livewell Chapman's arrest, and April 9, when they dismissed Needham; and that or thereabouts may be the date of Milton's discharge.¹

In office or out of office, it was the same to Milton. He had determined that he would not be suppressed, that he would not be silent, till they should tie his hands, or gag his mouth. There is no grander exhibition of dying resistance, of solitary and useless fighting for a lost cause, than in his conduct through April 1680. Alone he then stood, we may say, the last of the visible Republicans. Hasilrig, Scott, Ludlow, Neville, and Vane, had collapsed or were out of sight, the last under ban already by his former brothers of the Commonwealth; Needham was extinguished; most of the Cromwellians had gone over to the enemy, or were hastening to surrender. Blind Milton alone remained, the Samson Agonistes, On him, in the absence of others, the eyes of the Philistine mob, the worshippers of Dagon, had been turned from time to time of late as the Hebrew that could make them most efficient sport; and now it was as if they had all met, by common consent, to be amused by this single Hebrew's last exertions, and had sent to bring him on the stage. They laughed, they shouted, they shrieked, the gathered Philistine thousands:

The first of the feats of strength of Milton, thus alone on the stage, and knowing himself to be confronted and surrounded by a jeering multitude, was a somewhat puny and unnecessary one. It was an onslaught on Dr. Matthew Griffith for his Royalist sermon. He wanted some object of attack, and the very notoriety given to Dr. Griffith's performance by the rebuke of the Council of State recommended it for the purpose despite its intrinsic wretchedness. Accordingly, having had Dr. Griffith's Sermon and its accompaniments read over to him, he dictated what appeared some time in April with this title: "Brief Notes upon a late Sermon, titled 'The Fear of God and the King'; Preach'd, and since published, by Matthew Griffith, D.D., and Chaplain to the late King. Wherin many notorious wrestings of Scripture, and other falsities are observed."¹

The tract, which is very short, opens thus:—

"I affirmed, in the Preface of a late Discourse, entitled The Ready Way to establish a Free Commonwealth, and the Dangers of readmitting Kingship in this Nation, that 'the humour of returning to our old bondage was instilled of late by some deceivers': and, to make good that what I then affirmed was not without just ground, one of those deceivers I present here to the people, and, if I prove him not such, refuse not to be so accounted in his stead."

The greater part of the pamphlet consists of an examination of the sermon itself, with minute remarks on its wrestings or misinterpretations of Scripture texts, and on the poverty of the preacher's theology and scholarship generally. There is no actual disguise of the fact that Milton has the lowest opinion of the intellectual calibre of his antagonist, whom he once names "a pulpit-mountebank," and of whom he once says that "the rest of his preachment is mere groundless chat," Yet, on the other hand, he would evidently have Dr. Griffith taken as a fair enough specimen of the average Church-of-England clergyman. "O people of an implicit faith, no better than Romish if these be your prime teachers!" he once exclaims, as if Dr. Griffith were a man of some distinction.

The only portions of the Notes of interest now are those that bear on the historical situation at the moment. Thus, in the notice of the Dedicatory Epistle to Monk prefixed to Dr. Griffith's sermon, there is an evident struggle on Milton's part to speak as if one might still have faith in the General. It is possible that the censure of Dr. Griffith by the Council of State, intended as it was "to please and blind the fanatical party," may have had some such temporary effect on Milton. At all events, he refers to Monk as one "who hath so eminently borne his part in the whole action," and he characterizes one portion of the Dedicatory Epistle, where Monk is prayed "to carry on what he had so happily begun," as nothing less than "an impudent calumny and affront to his Excellence." It charges him, says Milton, "most audaciously and falsely, with the renouncing of his own public promises and declarations both to the Parliament and the Army; and we trust his actions ere long will deter such insinuating slanderers from thus approaching him for the future." Throughout the Notes, however, one sees that even this small lingering of confidence in Monk is forced, and that Milton is too sadly convinced of the probable predetermination of all now in power to fulfil the general expectation and bring in Charles. In the following passage there is a half-veiled intimation that, rather than see that ignominious conclusion, Milton would reconcile himself to Monk's own assumption of the Crown:—

"Free Commonwealths have been ever counted fittest and properest for civil, virtuous, and industrious nations, abounding with prudent men worthy to govern; Monarchy fittest to curb degenerate, corrupt, idle, proud, luxurious people. If we desire to be of the former, nothing better for us, nothing nobler, than a Free Commonwealth; if we will needs condemn ourselves to be of the latter, despairing of our own virtue, industry, and the number of our able men, we may then, conscious of our own unworthiness to be governed better, sadly betake us to our befitting thraldom: yet, choosing out of our own number one who hath best aided the people and best merited against tyranny, the space of a reign or two we may chance to live happily enough, or tolerably. But that a victorious people should give up themselves again to the vanquished was never yet heard of, seems rather void of all reason and good policy, and will in all probability subject the subduers to the subdued,—will expose to revenge, to beggary, to ruin and perpetual bondage, the victors, under the vanquished: than which what can be more unworthy?"

Of far more moment than the Brief Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon was a second and enlarged edition of the Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth.

Though it is announced distinctly and emphatically in the opening paragraph that this edition is a "revised and enlarged" one, not till after a careful comparison with the former edition is it seen how much the announcement implies. There are large additions; there are omissions; there are changes of phraseology in every page. The new pamphlet, were it nothing else, would be an interesting study of Milton's art in authorcraft, of the expertness he had acquired in recasting a composition of his, ingeniously dove-tailing passages into it without spoiling the connexion, and ejecting phrases that had ceased to be relevant or vital, all under the difficulties of his blindness, when his ear listening to some mouth beside him and his own mouth interrupting and replying were his sole instruments. But there is much more than this. The later edition is Milton about a month farther down the torrent than the first, a month nearer the falls; and the additions, omissions, and alterations, convey what had passed in his mind through that month. The second edition of the Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth is to be taken, in short, for Milton's Biography at least, as an important new publication. Only the essential additions and omissions can be here noticed.¹

Among the additions the most prominent is this motto (an extension of Juvenal I. 15, 16) prefixed to the whole:—

which may be translated:—

Had this been prefixed to the first edition, the inevitable conclusion would have been that Sulla stood for Oliver Cromwell, and that Milton meant that, having taken the liberty in his Defensio Secunda of tendering wholesome advices even to the great Protector in the height of his power, it might be allowed to him now to advise the general body of his countrymen. Much would have depended then on Milton's estimate of the character of the real or Roman Sulla. That seems to have been the ordinary and traditional one, for in one of the smaller insertions in the text of the present edition he speaks of the Roman People as having been brought, by their own infatuation, "under the tyranny of Sulla." Now, though we have seen that Milton had modified his opinion of the worth of Cromwell's Government all in all, we should have been shocked by an epithet of posthumous opprobrium applied to the man he had so panegyrized while living. Fortunately, we are spared the shock. Monk, not Cromwell, is the military dictator that Milton has in view in the metonymy Sulla. He is thinking of his Letter to Monk only the other day, containing that specific suggestion of a PERPETUAL NATIONAL COUNCIL in the centre and CITY COUNCILS in all the counties which he developes more at large in his pamphlet. Perhaps he is thinking also of the more recent remonstrance, called Plain English, addressed by some London Republicans, of whom he may have been one, to Monk and his Officers. He has now done with Monk; he knows that the suggestions have taken no effect in that quarter, perhaps have been rebuffed; he will therefore dedicate them afresh to the people at large, for whom they were first written. The translation, accordingly, may run definitely thus:—

In one or two of the added passages, or modifications of phraseology, we note reference to the course of events since the publication of the former edition. Compare, for example, the following portion of the prefatory paragraph with the corresponding portion of the same paragraph as it first stood (p. 645):—

... "I thought best not to suppress what I had written, hoping that it may now be of much more use and concernment to be freely published in the midst of our elections to a Free Parliament, or their sitting to consider freely of the Government; whom it behoves to have all things represented to them that may direct their judgment therein: and I never read of any state, scarce of any tyrant, grown so incurable as to refuse counsel from any in a time of public deliberation, much less to be offended. If their absolute determination be to enthral us, before so long a Lent of servitude they may permit us a little Shroving-time first, wherein to speak freely and take our leaves of Liberty, And, because in the former edition, through haste, many faults escaped, and many books were suddenly dispersed ere the note to mend them could be sent, I took the opportunity from this occasion to revise and somewhat to enlarge the whole discourse, especially that part which argues for a Perpetual Senate. The treatise, thus revised and enlarged, is as follows."

Again, the renewal of the Solemn League and Covenant by the late Parliament of the Secluded Members furnishes Milton with a fresh text. He does not, as might have been expected, and as he certainly would have done on another occasion, upbraid the Parliament with the fact, or denounce the return to Presbyterian strictness of which it was a signal: on the contrary, he presses the fact into his service as a new argument against the recall of Charles. The first of the following sentences had appeared in the former edition; but the rest is suggested by the revival of the Covenant in the interim:—

"What Liberty of Conscience can we then expect of others [even the good and great Queen Elizabeth, he has just said, had thought persecution necessary to preserve royal authority], far worse principled from, the cradle, trained up and governed by Popish and Spanish counsels, and on such depending hitherto for subsistence? Especially, what can this last Parliament expect, who, having revived lately and published the Covenant, hare re-engaged themselves never to readmit Episcopacy? Which no son of Charles returning but will most certainly bring back with him, if he regard the last and strictest charge of his father, to persevere in not the Doctrine only, but Government, of the Church of England, [and] not to neglect the speedy and effectual suppressing of Errors and Schisms,—among which he accounted Presbytery one of the chief. Or, if, notwithstanding that charge of his father, he submit to the Covenant, how will he keep faith to us with disobedience to him, or regard that faith given which must be founded on the breach of that last and solemnest paternal charge, and the reluctance, I may say the antipathy, which is in all kings against Presbyterian and Independent Discipline?"

Perhaps the most striking instance of omission in the new edition of matter that had appeared in the first is in the paragraph on the subject of Spiritual Liberty to which reference has been made at p. 653. He retains in that paragraph nearly all that related to Liberty of Conscience generally, but he carefully removes the two or three sentences in which he had intimated his individual opinion that there could be no perfect Liberty of Conscience without abolition of Church Establishments and dissolution of every form of connexion between Church and State. There was practical sagacity in this omission at the moment at which he was re-issuing his pamphlet. It was no time then to be obtruding upon the public, or upon the Presbyterians that were flocking in to the new Parliament, his peculiar Disestablishment notion, however precious it might be to himself. His real business was to stir up all, by any means, to the defence even yet of the Republican form of Government; in such an argument, addressed mainly to Presbyterians and other zealots for a State Church, the question of Disestablishment was rather to be avoided; nay, for himself, that question had faded into insignificance for the time in comparison with the vaster question whether the Republic should be preserved or the Stuarts brought back, and most willingly would he have been, assured of the preservation of the Republic even though a State Church should continue to be part and parcel of it, and the special battle of Disestablishment should have to be postponed. To keep out the Stuarts, to rouse dread and disgust even yet at the idea that the Stuarts should return, was the single all-including possibility, or impossibility, for which he was now striving. To this end it is that again and again in the course of the pamphlet he inserts new passages heightening the contrast between the glories and advantages of free Republican Government and the miseries and degradation of subjection to a Monarchy. Near the beginning there is an enlargement of this kind, to the extent of three pages, in which he reviews, in greater detail than before, the steps that had led to the establishment of the English Commonwealth; and appeals to his countrymen whether their experience of Commonwealth government had not been on the whole satisfactory. Had not the very speeches and writings of that period, he had asked in his first edition, "testified a spirit in this nation no less noble and well-fitted to the liberty of a Commonwealth than in the ancient Greeks or Romans"? In returning to that topic now, he cannot refrain from breaking out once more, though it should be the last time, in his characteristic vein of self-appreciation. "Nor was the heroic cause," he adds, "unsuccessfully defended to all Christendom against the tongue of a famous and thought invincible adversary, nor the constancy and fortitude that so nobly vindicated our liberty, our victory at once against two the most prevailing usurpers over mankind, Superstition and Tyranny, unpraised or uncelebrated in a written monument likely to outlive detraction, as it hath hitherto convinced or silenced not a few detractors, especially in parts abroad." Readers who may think that we are already too familiar with this strain may be reminded that Milton was here taking account of the contemptuous notices of his Defences of the Commonwealth in some of the recent Royalist pamphlets, and also that, as he dictated, the thought must have been passing in his mind that very probably his days were numbered, and those Defences of the Commonwealth would have to remain, after all, his last important bequest to the world.

There is proof that Milton had read the burlesque Censure of the Rota on the first edition. Not only are two or three sentences omitted or modified in consequence of remarks there made; but, in the considerable enlargements he thinks necessary for the support of his main notion of PERPETUITY OF THIS NATIONAL GREAT COUNCIL, he takes care to extend also his former references to Harrington's principle of Rotation and other doctrines. Of course, he was well aware that it was not Harrington himself that had complained of the slightness of the former references, but only some Royalist wit caricaturing Harrington together with himself. While disagreeing with Harrington, he shows his respect for him. The following are specimens of these particular enlargements:—

The Rotation Principle:—"But, if the ambition of such as think themselves injured that they also partake not of the Government, and are impatient till they be chosen, cannot brook the perpetuity of others chosen before them, or if it be feared that long continuance of power may corrupt sincerest men, the known expedient is, and by some lately propounded, that annually (or, if the space be longer, so much perhaps the better) the third part of Senators may go out, according to the precedence of their election, and the like number be chosen in their places, to prevent the settling of too absolute a power if it should be perpetual: and this they call Partial Rotation. But I could wish that this wheel or partial wheel in State, if it be possible, might be avoided, as having too much, affinity with the Wheel of Fortune. For it appears not how this can be done without danger and mischance of putting out a great number of the best and ablest; in whose stead new elections may bring in as many raw, unexperienced, and otherwise affected, to the weakening and much altering for the worse of public transactions. Neither do I think a Perpetual Senate, especially chosen and entrusted by the people, much in this land to be feared, where the well-affected, either in a Standing Army or in a Settled Militia, have their arms in their own hands. Safest therefore to me it seems, and of least hazard or interruption to affairs, that none of the Grand Council be moved, unless by death or just conviction of some crime; for what can be expected firm or stedfast from a floating foundation? However, I forejudge not any probable expedient, any temperament that can be found in things of this nature, so disputable on either side."

Contrast of Harrington's Model with Milton's, and a Suggestion for the mode of Elections:—"And this annual Rotation of a Senate to consist of 300, as is lately propounded, requires also another Popular Assembly upward of 1000, with an answerable Rotation. Which, besides that it will be liable to all those inconveniencies found in the foresaid remedies, cannot but be troublesome and chargeable, both in their motion and their session, to the whole land,—unwieldy with their own bulk: unable in so great a number to mature their consultations as they ought, if any be allotted to them, and that they meet not from so many parts remote to sit a whole year leaguer in one place, only now and then to hold up a forest of fingers, or to convey each man his bean or ballot into the box, without reason shown or common deliberation; incontinent of secrets, if any be imparted to them; emulous and always jarring with the other Senate. The much better way doubtless will be, in this wavering condition of our affairs, to defer the changing or circumscribing of our Senate, more than may be done with ease, till the Commonwealth be thoroughly settled in peace and safety and they themselves give us the occasion.... Another way will be to well qualify and refine Elections: not committing all to the noise and shouting of a rude multitude, but permitting only those of them who are rightly qualified to nominate as many as they will; and out of that number others of a better breeding to choose a less number more judiciously; till, after a third or fourth sifting and refining of exactest choice, they only be left chosen who are the due number, and seem by most voices the worthiest.... But, to prevent all mistrust, the People then will have their several Ordinary Assemblies (which will henceforth quite annihilate the odious power and name of Committees) in the chief towns of every County,—without the trouble, charge, or time lost, of summoning and assembling from so far, in so great a number, and so long residing from their own houses, or removing of their families,—to do as much at home in their several shires, entire or subdivided, towards the securing of their liberty, as a numerous Assembly of them all formed and convened on purpose with the wariest rotation."

Glance at some of Harrington's other notions:—"The way propounded [Milton's] is plain, easy, and open before us: without intricacies, without the introducement of new or obsolete forms or terms, or exotic models,—ideas that would effect nothing, but with a number of new injunctions to manacle the native liberty of mankind; turning all virtue into prescription, servitude, and necessity, to the great impairing and frustrating of Christian Liberty."

As if the very closeness of the vision of returning Royalty had rendered Milton's defiance of it more desperate and reckless, he inserts, wherever he can, some new expression of his contempt for Charles and all his family, and of his prophetic horror of the state of society they will bring in. Thus:—

"There will be a Queen of no less charge, in most likelihood outlandish and a Papist, besides a Queen-Mother, such already, together with both their Courts and numerous Train: then a Royal issue, and ere long severally their sumptuous Courts, to the multiplying of a servile crew, not of servants only, but of nobility and gentry, bred up then to the hopes not of public, but of court offices, to be Stewards, Chamberlains, Ushers, Grooms."

But the most terrific new passage in prediction of the Restoration and its revenges is the following: in which the reader will observe also the recognition, as in one spurn of boundless scorn, of the Royalist scurrilities against himself:—

"Admit that Monarchy of itself may be convenient to some nations; yet to us who have thrown it out, received back again, it cannot but prove pernicious. For Kings to come, never forgetting their former ejection, will be sure to fortify and arm themselves sufficiently for the future against all such attempts hereafter from the People; who shall be then so narrowly watched and kept so low that, though they would never so fain, and at the same rate of their blood and treasure, they never shall be able to regain what they now have purchased and may enjoy, or to free themselves from any yoke imposed upon them. Nor will they dare to go about it,—utterly disheartened for the future, if these their highest attempts prove unsuccessful: which will be the triumph of all Tyrants hereafter over any People that shall resist oppression; and their song will then be to others How sped the Rebellious English?, to our posterity How sped the Rebels your fathers?.... Yet neither shall we obtain or buy at an easy rate this new gilded yoke which thus transports us. A new Royal Revenue must be found, a new Episcopal,—for those are individual: both which, being wholly dissipated or bought by private persons, or assigned for service done, and especially to the Army, cannot be recovered without a general detriment and confusion to men's estates, or a heavy imposition on all men's purses,—benefit to none but to the worst and ignoblest sort of men, whose hope is to be either the ministers of Court riot and excess or the gainers by it. But, not to speak more of losses and extraordinary levies on our estates, what will then be the revenges and offences remembered and returned, not only by the Chief Person, but by all his adherents: accounts and reparations that will be required, suits, indictments, inquiries, discoveries, complaints, informations,—who knows against whom or how many, though perhaps neuters,—if not to utmost infliction, yet to imprisonment, fines, banishment, or molestation. If not these, yet disfavour, discountenance, disregard, and contempt on all but the known Royalist, or whom he favours, will be plenteous. Nor let the new-royalized Presbyterians persuade themselves that their old doings, though, now recanted, will be forgotten, whatever conditions be contrived or trusted on. Will they not believe this, nor remember the Pacification how it was kept to the Scots, how other solemn promises many a time to us? Let them but now read the diabolical forerunning libels, the faces, the gestures, that now appear foremost and briskest in all public places as the harbingers of those that are in expectation to reign over us; let them but hear the insolencies, the menaces, the insultings of our newly animated common enemies, crept lately out of their holes, their Hell I might say, by the language of their infernal pamphlets, the spew of every drunkard, every ribald: nameless, yet not for want of licence, but for very shame of their own vile persons; not daring to name themselves while they traduce others by name, and give us to foresee that they intend to second their wicked words, if ever they have power, with more wicked deeds. Let our zealous backsliders [the Presbyterians] forethink now with themselves how their necks, yoked with these tigers of Bacchus,—these new fanatics of not the preaching but the sweating tub, inspired with nothing holier than the venereal pox,—can draw one way, under Monarchy, to the establishing of Church-Discipline with these new-disgorged Atheisms. Yet shall they not have the honour to yoke with these, but shall be yoked under them: these shall plough on their backs. And do they among them who are so forward to bring in the Single Person think to be by him trusted or long regarded? So trusted they shall be and so regarded as by Kings are wont reconciled enemies,—neglected and soon after discarded, if not prosecuted for old traitors, the first inciters, beginners, and more than to the third part actors, of all that followed."

Milton, does not deny that the vast majority of the nation desire the restoration of the King. He admits the fact and scouts it. He asserts that by "the trial of just battle" the larger part of the population of England long ago "lost the right of their election what the form of Government shall be," and that, if even a majority of the rest would now vote for Kingship, their wishes must go for nothing. "Is it just or reasonable that most voices, against the main end of Government, should enslave the less number that would be free? More just it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel a greater to retain (which can be no wrong to them) their liberty than that a greater number, for the pleasure of their baseness, compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow-slaves." When he wrote this, he must have known well enough that he was writing in vain. He confesses as much in his peroration. He confesses it there even by that single modification of the language which might seem at first sight the only sign of prudential concession and anticipation of personal consequences throughout the whole pamphlet. In citing the prophecy of Jeremiah he omits the passage exulting in God's decree of exile against Coniah and his seed for ever (ante p. 654-655). But this is no prudential concession, no softening down in anticipation that the passage might be produced against him. Of that state of mind, of any fear of consequences whatever, there is not a trace throughout the recast of his pamphlet. He is defying and daring the worst, and has thrown in already every possible addition of matter of insult to the coming Charles. He omits the passage about Coniah precisely because its application to Charles is unfortunately no longer possible; and the peroration for the rest is modified by the sorrow that so it should be. He will exhort against the Restoration to his latest breath; but he is looking across the Restoration now, and sending his words on to an unknown posterity.

"What I have spoken is the language of that which is not called amiss The Good Old Cause: if it seem strange to any, it will not seem more strange, I hope, than convincing to backsliders. Thus much I should perhaps have said though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones, and had none to cry to but, with the Prophet, O Earth, Earth, Earth!, to tell the very soil itself what her perverse inhabitants are deaf to. Nay, though what I have spoken should happen (which Thou suffer not who didst create Mankind free, nor Thou next who didst redeem us from being servants of men!) to be the last words of our expiring Liberty. But I trust I shall have spoken persuasion to abundance of sensible and ingenuous men,—to some perhaps whom God may raise up of these stones to become children of reviving Liberty, and may reclaim, though they seem now choosing them a Captain back for Egypt, to bethink themselves a little and consider whither they are rushing; to exhort this torrent also of the people not to be so impetuous, but to keep their due channel; and, at length recovering and uniting their better resolutions, now that they see already how open and unbounded the insolence and rage is of our common enemies, to stay these ruinous proceedings, justly and timely fearing to what a precipice of destruction the deluge of this epidemic madness would hurry us, through the general defection of a misguided and abused multitude."

To exhort a torrent! The very mixture and hurry of the metaphors In Milton's mind are a reflex of the facts around him. Current, torrent, rush, rapid, avalanche, deluge hurrying to a precipice: mix and jumble such figures as we may, we but express more accurately the mad haste which London and all England were making in the end of April 1660 to bring Charles over from the Continent. Of the only important relic of opposition, the Republicanism of the Army, and how that had been already managed by Monk, and was still being managed by him, we have taken account. Its dying effort, as we saw, took the form of Lambert's escape from the Tower on the 9th of April, and his thirteen days of wild wandering and skulking on the chance of bringing the dispersed remains of Republicanism to a rendezvous. That was over on Easter-Sunday, April 22, when Dick Ingoldsby, with flushed face, and pistol in hand, collared the fugitive Lambert on his horse in a field near Daventry, and brought him back, with others, to his prison in the Tower. Strange that it should have been Lambert after all that Milton found maintaining last by arms the cause which he was himself maintaining last by the pen. Lambert was the Republican he least liked, hardly indeed a genuine Republican at all, though driven to a desperate attempt for Republicanism as his final shift, So it had happened, however. Milton and Lambert may be remembered together as the last opponents of the avalanche. Lambert had fronted it with a small rapier; Milton had wrestled with it in a grand exhortation.¹

The wrestlings now were ended. All that remained for the blind Samson was to listen, with bowed head, to the renewed burst of Philistine hissings, howlings, and execrations, against him, before they would let him retire. It came from all quarters; but at least two persons stepped out from the crowd to convert the mere inarticulate uproar into distinct invective and insult.

"No Blinde Guides: in answer to a seditious Pamphlet of J. Milton's entituled 'Brief Notes on a late Sermon, &c.' Addressed to the Author.—'If the Blinde lead the Blinde, both shall fall into the ditch.'—London, Printed for Henry Brome, April 20, 1660." This was the title of a tract, of fourteen small quarto pages, which was out on April 25. The author does not give his name; but he was Roger L'Estrange, the Royalist pamphleteer.¹ The following specimen will represent the rest:—

"Mr. Milton,

"Although in your life and doctrine you have resolved one great question, by evidencing that devils may indue human shapes and proving yourself even to your own wife an incubus, you have yet started another; and that is whether you are not of that regiment which carried the herd of swine headlong into the sea, and moved the people to beseech Jesus to depart out of their coasts. (This may be very well imagined from your suitable practices here.) Is it possible to read your Proposals of the benefits of a Free State without reflecting upon your tutor's 'All this will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me'? Come, come, Sir: lay the Devil aside; do not proceed with so much malice and against knowledge. Act like a man, that a good Christian may not be afraid to pray for you. Was it not you that scribbled a justification of the murder of the King against Salmasius, and made it good too thus: that murder was an action meritorious compared with your superior wickedness? 'Tis there (as I remember) that you commonplace yourself into set forms of railing, two pages thick; and, lest your infamy should not extend itself enough within the course and usage of your mother-tongue, the thing is dressed up in a travelling garb and language, to blast the English nation to the universe, and give every man a horror for mankind when he considers you are of the race. In this you are above all others; but in your Eikonoklastes you exceed yourself. There, not content to see that sacred head divided from the body, your piercing malice enters into the private agonies of his struggling soul, with a blasphemous insolence invading the prerogative of God himself (omniscience), and by deductions most unchristian and illogical aspersing his last pieties (the almost certain inspirations of the Holy Spirit) with juggle and prevarication. Nor are the words ill-fitted to the matter, the bold design being suited with a conform irreverence of language. But I do not love to rake long in a puddle. To take a view in particular of all your factious labours would cost more time than I am willing to afford them. Wherefore I shall stride over all the rest and pass directly to your Brief Notes upon a late Sermon ... Any man that can but read your title may understand your drift, and that you charge the royal interest and party through the Doctor's sides. I am not bold enough to be his champion in all particulars, nor yet so rude as to take an office most properly to him belonging out of his hand. Let him acquit himself in what concerns the divine; and I'll adventure upon the most material parts of the rest." [Extracts from Milton's Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon follow, with brief comments, of no interest, and showing no ability.

Almost immediately there followed "The Dignity of Kingship Asserted: in answer to Mr. Milton's 'Ready and Easie Way to establish a Free Commonwealth.' Proving that Kinqship is both in itself and in reference to these nations farre the most Excellent Government, and the returning to our former Loyalty or Obedience thereto is the only way under God to restore and settle these three once flourishing, now languishing, broken, and almost ruined nations. By G. S., a Lover of Loyalty. Humbly Dedicated and Presented to his most Excellent Majesty Charles the Second, of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, true Hereditary King. London, Printed by E.C. for H. Seile, over against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet-street, and for W. Palmer at the Palm-Tree over against Fetter-lane end in Fleet Street. 1660." It is a duodecimo volume, the dedication to Charles occupying twenty-one pages, and the main body of the text 177 pages, with a peroration in thirty-nine additional pages addressed to Monk and his Officers and to the two Houses of Parliament about to meet, and then three pages more of concluding address to his Majesty. Though the author does not give his name, he hints in the course of the volume that he may "be inquired after and perhaps soon found out." He says also that his profession "much differs from politics." Hence it may be doubted whether the conjecture is right which assigns the book to a George Searle, who had been an original member of the Long Parliament for Taunton, and had been one of the Secluded. One might venture rather on the query whether the author may not have been Dr. Gilbert Sheldon, soon to be Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury, but for the present waiting with anxiety for the certainty of Charles's recall, and doing all he could, with other divines, to hasten it.¹

Whoever wrote the book must have had a touch of scholarly candour in his nature. Though there is plenty of abuse of Milton, with the stereotyped allusions to his Divorce Doctrine and its effects, and with such occasional phrases as "your wind-mill brain," "the unpracticableness of these your fanatic state-whimsies," and though there is abuse also, in the coarse familiar strain, of the Rumpers and Commonwealths-men generally, and of "Oliver, the copper-nosed saint," we come upon such passages as the following, appreciative at least of Milton's literary power:—

"I am not ignorant of the ability of Mr. Milton, whom the Rump (which was well-stored with men of pregnant though pernicious wits) made choice of before others to write their Defence against Salmasius; one of the greatest learned men of this age, both for reality and reputation."

"... made choice of Mr. Milton to be their champion to answer Salmasius; who, as may be conceived, not vulgarly rewarded for this service, undertakes it with as much learning and performance as could be expected from the most able and acute scholar living: concerning whose answer thus much must be confessed,—that nothing could be therein desired which either a shrewd wit could prompt or a fluent elegant style express. And, indeed, to give him his due, in whatever he vomited out against his Majesty formerly, or now declaims against Monarchy in behalf of a Republic, he then did, and doth now, want nothing on his side but truth."

These are casual expressions in the course of the argumentation with Milton; and, as there is no need to exhibit the argumentation itself, a single quotation more will suffice. It is from the Dedication to Charles II. That, though coming first in the book, was probably written last, when the writer could exult in the idea that his Majesty was so soon to land on the British shores, and could have pleasure in being one of the first to address him ceremoniously and in public with all his royal titles. Let it be remembered that, by the introduction of Milton into this Dedication, not only prominently, but even singly and exclusively, it was as if pains were taken to remind Charles, just as he was preparing to step into the ship that was to convey him to England, of the name of that one man among his subjects who had done more to keep him out, and had attacked him and his more ferociously, more relentlessly, and more successfully, than any other living. Suppose that his Majesty, waiting at Breda, was curious to know already, for certain reasons, what person, not on the actual list of those who had signed his father's death-warrant, would be designated to him by universal opinion at home as the least pardonable traitor; and read this as the answer of G.S.:—

This detestable, execrable murder, committed by the worst of parricides, accompanied with the disclaiming of your whole royal stock, disinheriting your Majesty's self and the rest of the royal branches, driving you and them into exile, with endeavouring to expunge and obliterate your never-to-be-forgotten just title; tearing up and pulling down the pillars of Majesty, the Nobles; garbling and suspending from the place of power all of the Commons House that had anything of honesty or relenting of spirit toward the injured Father of three Nations and his royal posterity: acts horrible to be imagined, and yet with high hand most villainously, perfidiously, and perjuriously perpetrated by monsters of mankind, yet blasphemously dishonourers of God in making use of His name and usurping the title of Saints in their never-before-paralleled nor ever-sufficiently-to-be-lamented-and-abhorred villanies:—this Murder, I say, and these Villainies, were defended, nay extolled and commended, by one MR. JOHN MILTON, in answer to the most learned Salmasius, who declaimed against the same with most solid arguments and pathetical expressions; in which Answer he did so bespatter the white robes of your Royal Father's spotless life (human infirmities excepted) with the dirty filth of his satirical pen that to the vulgar, and those who read his book with prejudice, he represented him a most debauched, vicious man (I tremble, Royal Sir, to write it), an irreligious hater and persecutor of Religion and religious men, an ambitious enslaver of the nation, a bloody tyrant, and an implacable enemy to all his good subjects; and thereupon calls that execrable and detestable horrible Murder a just Execution, and commends it as an heroic action: and, in a word, whatever was done in prosecution of their malice toward your Royal Progenitor and his issue, or relations, or friends and assistants, he calls Restoring of the nation to its Liberty. Yea! to make your illustrious Father more odious in their eyes where he by any means could fix his scandals, he would not spare that incomparable piece of his writing, his Eikon Basilike, but in a scurrilous reply thereto, which he entitled Eikonoklastes, he would not spare his devout prayers (which no doubt the Lord hath heard and will hear): in all which he expressed, as his inveterate and causeless malice, so a great deal of wicked, desperate wit and learning, most unworthily misbestowed, abused, and misapplied, to the reviling of his Prince, God's vice-gerent on Earth, and the speaking ill of the Ruler of the People. Now, although your Majesty, nor your Royal Father, neither of you, need vindication (much less that elaborate work of his), nor doth anything he hath written in aspersion of his Sovereign deserve answer (absolutely considered), yet, forasmuch as he hath in both showed dangerous wit and wicked learning, which together with elegance in expression is always (in some measure at least) persuasive with some, and because in these last and worst days those dangerous times are come in which many account Treason to be Saintship, and the madness of the people, like the inundation of waters, hath for many years overflowed all the bounds, &c ... [The writer, in continuation, refers to the assiduity of the fanatical enemies of Charles, still working, though at the end of their wits, to keep him out.] Among many of whom MR. MILTON comes on the stage in post haste and in this juncture of time, that he may, if possible, overthrow the hopes of all good men, and endeavours what he can to divert those that at present sit at the helm, and by fair pretences and sophisticate arguments would, &c ... Which I taking notice of, and meeting with this forementioned pamphlet of MR. MILTON'S, and upon perusal of it finding it dangerously ensnaring, the fallacy of the arguments being so cunningly hidden as not to be discerned by any nor every eye,—observing also the language to be smooth and tempting, the expressions pathetical and apt to move the affections, ... I thought it my duty, &c.

Before this salutation of his returning Majesty was visible on the book-stalls the great event which it anticipated was as good as accomplished.

The two Houses of Parliament had met on Wednesday, the 25th of April. There was not only the "full and free" House of Commons for which writs had been issued, but a House of Lords also, assembled by its own will and motion. In the Commons, where Sir Harbottle Grimstone was elected Speaker, there were present over 400 out of the total of 500 and more that were actually due; in the Lords, where the Earl of Manchester was chosen Speaker pro tem., there were present on the first day only nine peers besides himself: viz. the Earls of Northumberland, Lincoln, Denbigh, and Suffolk, Viscount Say and Sele, and Lords Wharton, Hunsdon, Grey of Wark, and Maynard. It was for these two bodies to execute between them the task appointed.¹

The meetings of the first three days were but preliminary, and not a word passed in either House to signify what was coming. On Friday, the 27th of April, there was an adjournment of both Houses to Tuesday, the 1st of May. During that breathless interval it was as when a mine is ready, the gunpowder and other explosives all stored, the train laid, and what is waited for is the application of the lighted match. That duty fell to Sir John Greenville, and the mode in which it should be performed was settled privately between him and wary Old George.

On Saturday, April 28, the Council of State are met at Whitehall, Annesley in the chair as usual. Colonel Birch, one of the members, entering late, informs General Monk that there is a gentleman at the door who desires to speak with him. Monk goes to the door, finds Sir John Greenville there, and receives him as a perfect stranger, the guards looking on. Sir John delivers to him a letter, and tells him that he does so by command of his Majesty. Monk orders the guards to detain this gentleman, and returns to the Council-room with the letter. Having broken the seal, but not opened the letter, he hands it to the President, intimating from whom it has come. The superscription itself leaves no doubt on that point. The letter is one of the six, dated "At our Court at Breda this 4/14th of April 1660, in the twelfth year of Our Reign," which Sir John Greenville had brought over to be used by Monk at his discretion, and which Monk had given back into Greenville's custody till the proper moment for using them should arrive. It was that particular one of the six which was addressed to Monk himself, to be communicated by him to the Council of State and the Officers of the Army. There was much surprise in the Council, real or affected, Colonel Birch protesting that he knew nothing of the business, but had merely found a gentleman at the door inquiring for General Monk and had brought in his message to the General. That gentleman was sent for and asked how he came by the letter. "It was given to me by his Majesty with his own hand," said Sir John. Altogether the Council were at a loss how to act; but finally it was agreed that they dared not read the letter without leave from Parliament. There was some question of sending Greenville into custody meanwhile; but Monk said he was a kinsman of his and he would be answerable for his appearance. In short, this attempt to apply the match in the Council had not sufficiently succeeded, and Sir John knew that he must be forthcoming in the two Houses themselves.

Sir John was equal to the occasion. Early in the morning of Tuesday, the 1st of May, he was at the door of the House of Lords with that one of the six Letters from Breda which was addressed to their Lordships. There were now forty-two peers present. By one of these Greenville sent in his name to Speaker the Earl of Manchester, with an intimation of the nature of his message. The Earl had no sooner informed the House who and what were at the door than it was voted that the Earl should walk down the floor, all present attending him, to receive his Majesty's letter. Sir John having thus got rid of two of his documents, presented himself next at the door of the Commons, to try his chance with a third. He had already conveyed to Speaker Sir Harbottle Grimstone the fact that he was in attendance with a letter from his Majesty. He came now at the most fit moment, for the House had just received a report from the Council of State of what had happened at the sitting of the Council on the preceding Saturday. The scene will be best imagined from the record in the Journals of the House:—"Tuesday, May the 1st, 1660. PRAYERS. Mr. Annesley reports from the Council of State a Letter from the King, unopened, directed 'To our trusty and well-beloved General Monk, to be communicated to the President and Council of State, and to the Officers of the Armies under his command,' being received from the hands of Sir John Greenville. The House, being informed that Sir John Greenville, a messenger from the King, was at the door, Resolved, &c. That Sir John Greenville, a messenger from the King, be called in. He was called in accordingly, and, being at the bar, after obeisance made, said: 'Mr. Speaker, I am commanded by the King, my master, to deliver this Letter to You, and he desires that You will communicate it to the House.' The Letter was directed 'To Our trusty and well-beloved the Speaker of the House of Commons'; which, after the messenger was withdrawn, was read to the House by the Speaker." The bold Sir John had now got rid of three of his six documents. Nay, he had got rid of four; for in each of the three there had been enclosed a copy of his Majesty's general Declaration, or Letter to "all Our Loving Subjects of what degree or quality soever." It was for the Parliament to determine what should be done with this Declaration, as well as with the other two remaining Letters, one of them addressed to Generals Monk and Montague for communication to the Fleet, and the other to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of London. The train had been sufficiently fired already by the delivery of four of the Breda documents.¹

The explosion was over and the air cleared, and all pretence was at an end at last. In the Commons, a few minutes after Sir John Greenville had left the House, it was "RESOLVED, nemine contradicente, That an answer be prepared to his Majesty's Letter, expressing the great and joyful sense of this House of His gracious offers, and their humble and hearty thanks to his Majesty for the same, and with professions of their loyalty and duty to his Majesty." The Lords had already passed an equivalent resolution, and had recalled Sir John Greenville to receive their hearty thanks for his care in the discharge of his duty. The rest of that day was spent in a conference between the two Houses, and in farther resolutions and arrangements in each, subsidiary to those two resolutions of the forenoon which had virtually decreed the Restoration. Thus, in the Commons, still in the forenoon, "RESOLVED, nemine contradicente, that the sum of £50,000 be presented to the King's Majesty from this House," and "RESOLVED, nemine contradicente, that the Letters from His Majesty, both that to the House and that to the Lord General, and his Majesty's Declaration which came enclosed, be entered at large in the Journal Book of this House"; and, again, at an afternoon sitting, the conference with the Lords having meanwhile been held, "RESOLVED, That this House doth agree with the Lords, and do own and declare that, according to the ancient and fundamental laws of this kingdom, the Government is, and ought to be, by King, Lords, and Commons." The news of what was doing in Parliament was already rushing hither and thither among the Londoners; the day ended among them, of course, with bonfires and ringing of bells and the roar of rejoicing cannon; in the boom of the cannon, and in whatever form of rude telegraph or of horsemen at the gallop along the four great highways, London was shaking the message from itself in palpitations through all the land; nor among the galloping horsemen were those the least fleet that were spurring through Kent to the seaside to unmoor the packet-boats and convey the tidings to Charles. On the 1st of May, 1660, the English Commonwealth was no more.¹

Yet another week for the formalities of its burial. A few of the leading incidents of that week may be presented in abstract:—

May 2:—Ordered by the Lords "that the statues of the late King's Majesty be set up again in all the places from whence they were pulled down, and that the Arms of the Commonwealth be demolished and taken away wherever they are, and the King's Arms be put up in their stead." Same day in the Commons:—Leave given to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of London, to return an answer to his Majesty's Letter addressed to them. This was the fifth of the Breda documents. Also leave given to Dr. Clarges, a member of the House, to go at once to Breda, with Monk's answer to the letter he had received.

May 3:—Sir John Greenville brought into the House of Commons to receive thanks, and the information that the House had voted him £500 to buy a jewel. The Speaker, Sir Harbottle Grimstone, addressed him as follows:—"Sir John Greenville, I need not tell you with what grateful and thankful hearts the Commons now assembled in Parliament have received his Majesty's gracious Letter. Res ipsa loquitur: you yourself have been ocularis et auricularis testis de rei veritate: our bells and our bonfires have already proclaimed his Majesty's goodness and our joys. We have told the people that our King, the glory of England, is coming home again; and they have resounded it back again in our ears that they are ready, and their hearts open, to receive him. Both Parliament and People have cried aloud to the King of Kings in their prayers Long live King Charles the Second." The rest of the speech was compliment to Sir John himself.

Same day, in Montague's Fleet in the Downs:—His Majesty's letter to Monk and Montague, intended to be communicated to the Fleet, having been sent by express from Monk, reached Montague that morning on board his flagship the Naseby. His secretary Pepys describes what followed: "My Lord summoned a Council of War, and in the meantime did dictate to me how he would have the vote ordered which he would have pass this Council. Which done, the Commanders all came on board, and the Council sat in the coach [Council cabin], the first Council of War that had been in my time; where I read the Letter and Declaration; and, while they were discoursing upon it, I seemed to draw up a vote, which, being offered, they passed. Not one man seemed to say No to it, though I am confident many in their hearts were against it. After this was done, I went up to the quarterdeck with my Lord and the Commanders, and there read both the papers and the vote; which done, and demanding their opinion, the seamen did all of them cry out God save King Charles." Pepys then made a circuit of the other ships with the same great news. "Which was a very brave sight, to visit all the ships, and to be received with the respect and honour that I was on board them all, and much more to see the great joy that I brought to all men, not one through the whole fleet shewing the least dislike of the business. In the evening, as I was going on board the Vice-Admiral, the General began to fire his guns, which he did, all that he had in his ship, and so did all the rest of the Commanders; which was very gallant, and to hear the bullets go hissing over our heads as we were in the boat! This done, and finished my proclamation, I returned to the Naseby, where my Lord was much pleased to hear how all the fleet took it in a transport of joy, and shewed me a private letter of the King's to him, and another from the Duke of York, in such familiar style as their common friend, with all kindness imaginable. And I found by the letters, and so my Lord told me too, that there had been many letters passed between them for a great while, and I perceive unknown to Monk."

May 5. On report from the Council of State, a General Proclamation adopted by the Commons, with concurrence of the Lords, forbidding tumults, and instructing all in authority to continue in their respective offices and exercise the same thenceforth in his Majesty's name.

May 7. Sir George Booth, Lord Falkland, Mr. Denzil Holles, Sir John Holland, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Bruce, Sir Horatio Townshend, Lord Herbert, Lord Castleton, Lord Fairfax, Sir Henry Cholmley, and Lord Mandeville, chosen by the House of Commons to be the persons to carry to his Majesty the answer of the House to his Majesty's gracious Letter. The similar deputation from the Lords' House was to consist of the Earl of Oxford, the Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Middlesex, Viscount Hereford, Lord Berkley, and Lord Brooke. Same day, on receipt from Montague of a copy of his Majesty's letter addressed to Monk and himself, as Generals of the Fleet, with news of the reception of the same by the Fleet on the 3rd, Monk and Montague were authorized to answer that letter. Thus the sixth and last of the Breda documents was finally disposed of.—Resolved also that Thursday next should be a day of thanksgiving in London and Westminster for the happy reconciliation with his Majesty, and farther, "That all and every the ministers throughout the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, the Dominion of Wales, and the Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, do, and are hereby required and enjoined in their public prayers to, pray for the King's most excellent Majesty by the name of Our Sovereign Lord, Charles the Second, by the grace of God King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith."—Resolved also that the King be proclaimed to-morrow.

Tuesday, May 8. Proclamation of Charles accordingly in Westminster Hall, and at Whitehall, Temple Bar, Fleet Conduit, the Exchange, and other places, his reign to date from the death of his father. Copies of the Proclamation to be sent to all authorities over Great Britain and Ireland, that it may be repeated everywhere. Also "RESOLVED, nemine contradicente, that the King's Majesty be desired to make his speedy return to his Parliament and to the exercise of his Kingly Office."¹

And so all was settled between Charles and his Three Kingdoms. By this time, indeed, not only in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, but all over the main island from Land's End to Caithness and all over the lesser from Mizen Head to Malin Head, there was simply a universal impatience till it should be known that Montague's fleet had shot from the Downs towards the Dutch coasts, to bring his Majesty and his Court, on the decks of his own ships, within hail of the cheering from Dover cliffs. The delay was chiefly because of the necessity of certain upholstering and tailoring preparations on both sides. At home there had to be due preparations of a household for his Majesty, and of households for his two brothers, when they should arrive. There had to be got ready not only a new crown and sceptre, and new robes and ermines, but also the velvet bed, with the gold embroidery, the lining of satin or cloth of silver, the satin quilts, the fustian quilts to lie under the satin quilts, the down bolster, the fustian blankets, the Spanish blankets, the Holland sheets, with other accoutrements for his Majesty's own bedroom, besides similar furnishing for the bedrooms of the Dukes of York and Gloucester, a new coach for his Majesty, liveries for his coachmen, footmen, and other servants, and innumerable etceteras. Then, on the other side of the water, where his Majesty had meanwhile received with extraordinary satisfaction, through Sir John Greenville, the £50,000 voted him by the Commons, £10,000 of it in gold from England, and the rest in bank bills payable at sight in Amsterdam, and where the Duke of York had been promised another £10,000 and the Duke of Gloucester £5000, much of the money had to be converted into the apparel and other equipments required for the suitable appearance of the three royal personages and their retinues when they should present themselves in England. A great deal might be done at Breda, where already there was swarming round his Majesty a miscellany of private visitors, English, Scottish, and Irish, all anxious to be useful, and many of them with presents of money. But the final arrangements were to be at the Hague, the capital of the United Provinces, amid whatever stately ceremonial of congratulation and farewell the Dutch Government could now offer in atonement for previous neglect or indifference. There had been most pressing solicitations, indeed, from the Spanish authorities of Flanders, that Charles would return to Brussels and make his arrangements there; Mazarin too had sent a message at last, begging him to honour France by making Calais his port of departure; but Charles preferred the Hague. It was at the Hague, therefore, that the commissioners from the two Houses of Parliament, with deputations from the City of London and the London clergy, were to wait upon Charles; it was there that he was to confer his first large collective batch of English knighthoods, following the single knighthood conferred conspicuously already on Dr. Clarges at Breda; and it was thence that there was to be the great embarkation for Dover.¹

And what meanwhile of the chief Republican criminals at home, whether the Regicides or the scores of others that might count themselves in peril for more than mere place or property? Since the 1st of May, or before, such of them as could, such as were at liberty and had money, had absconded or been trying to abscond. Of the Regicides and some of the rest we shall hear enough in due course. For the present let us attend only to Needham and Milton.

Needham had absconded in good time. It had probably been in the very beginning of May, if not earlier; for on the 10th of May there was out in London, in the form of a printed squib, An Hue and Cry after Mercurius Politicus, giving a sketch of his career, and containing some doggrel verse about his escape, in this style:—

Our latest glimpse of Milton is on the 7th of May, the day before the public proclamation of Charles in London. On that day "John Milton, of the City of Westminster," transferred to his friend "Cyriack Skinner, of Lincoln's Inn, Gentleman," a Bond for £400 given by the Commissioners of the Excise in part security for money which Milton had invested in their hands. In the deed of conveyance, still extant, under the words at the end, "Witness my hand and seal thus," there follows the signature "JOHN MILTON," not in his own hand, but recognisably in the fine and peculiar hand of that amanuensis to whom he had dictated the sonnet in memory of his second wife about two years before. In yet another hand is the date "7th May, 1660"; but attached, to verify all, is Milton's family-seal of the double-headed eagle. Milton, we can see, wanted some money for sudden and urgent occasions, and his friend Cyriack advanced it. Cyriack and others had, doubtless, been already about him for some days, imploring him to hide himself, and devising the means; and that very night, or the next, as we are to fancy, he is conveyed furtively out of his house in Petty France to some obscure but suitable shelter. The three children he has parted with, the eldest not yet fourteen years old, the second not twelve, and the third just eight, are left under what tendence there may be, hardly knowing what has happened, but uncertain whether they shall ever again see their strange blind father. All is dark, and we may drop the curtain.¹

CORRIGENDA AND ADDENDA IN VOLS. IV. AND V.

Vol. IV. pp. 272-273:—From Mrs. Everett Green's Calendar of Domestic State Papers for the Third Year of the Commonwealth I learn that the first meeting of the Council of State for that year was on Feb. 17, 1650-51, and not on Feb. 19. There had been two meetings before that of the 19th, and at the first of these Bradshaw had been re-appointed President.

Vol. IV. pp. 416-418 and 423-424:—To Milton's Letter to the Oldenburg agent Hermann Mylius, translated and commented on pp. 416-418, and to the story, as told at pp. 423-424, of the Safeguard for the Count of Oldenburg's subjects obtained from the English Council of State by the joint exertions of Mylius and Milton, an interesting addition has turned up in the form of another Latin letter from Milton to Mylius, preserved "in a collection of autographs belonging to the Cardinal Bishop-Prince von Schwartzenberg." A copy was sent by Dr. Goll of Prague to Professor Alfred Stern of Bern, author of Milton und Seine Zeit; and Professor Stern communicated it to the Academy, where it appeared Oct. 13, 1877. It may be here translated:—"Yesterday, my most respected Hermann, after you had gone, there came to me a mandate of the Council, ordering me to compare the Latin copy [of the Safeguard] with the English, and to take care that they agreed with each other, and then to send both to Lord Whitlocke and Mr. Neville for revision; which I did, and at the same time wrote fully to Lord Whitlocke on the subject of the insertion you wanted made,—namely that there should be a clause in favour also of the successors and descendents of his Lordship the Count, and this in the formula which you yourself suggested: I added moreover the reasons you assigned why, unless that were done, the business would seem absolutely null. What happened in the Council in consequence I do not know for certain, for I was kept at home by yesterday's rain and was not present. If you write to the President of the Council [Concilii only in the copy, but one guesses that the word for 'President' has to be inserted], or, better still, if you send one of your people to Mr. Frost, you may yourself, I believe, hear from them; or, at all events, you shall know in the evening from me,—your most devoted JOHN MILTON. Feb. 13, 1651 [i.e. 1651-2]." The letter accords in every particular with the extract we have given from the minutes of the Council of State of Feb. 11, and enables us to see how the Safeguard for the Count of Oldenburg did emerge, in the desired form at last, in Parliament on Feb. 17. Professor Stern, in his communication to the Academy, adds that the Safeguard is "printed by J.J. Winkelmann in his Oldenburgische Friedens und der benachbarten Oerter Kriegshandlungen, p. 390, with the annotation, 'Hoc diploma ex Anglico originali in Latinum verbatim versum est. JOANNES MILTONIUS. Westmonasterii, 17 Febr., anno 1651-2" ('This diploma is turned verbatim into Latin from the English original. JOHN MILTON. Westminster, 17 Febr., in the year 1651-2'), I assume, but am not certain, that it is the same as that mentioned as given in Thurloe, i, 385-6.

Vol. IV. p. 560:—For the Earl of Airly, mentioned as one of the delinquent Scottish noblemen who were fined by Oliver's ordinance for Scotland of April 12, 1654, substitute the Earl of Ethie. He was Sir John Carnegie of Ethie, co. Forfar, Lord Lour since 1639, and created Earl of Ethie in 1647,—which title he exchanged, after the Restoration, for that of Earl of Northesk.

Vol. V. p. 227, in connexion with Vol. IV, pp. 487-494:—A paper found very recently by Mrs. Everett Green in the Record Office, and kindly communicated by her to me, in continuation of those for which I have already acknowledged my obligations to her, enables me to throw some further light on Milton's friend and correspondent Andrew Sandelands, and on that scheme of his for utilising the fir-woods of Scotland in which he sought Milton's assistance. The paper, which is in the handwriting of Sandelands, is dated "30 June, 1653," i.e. two months and ten days after Cromwell had dissolved the Rump and begun his Interim Dictatorship; it is addressed "For the Honor'ble. Sir Gilbert Pickering"—Pickering being then, it would seem, President of Cromwell's Interim Council of Thirteen (see Vol. IV. pp, 498-499); and it is headed "A Brief Narration of my Transactions concerning some Woods in Scotland." From this statement of Sandelands it appears that he had first broached his scheme of obtaining masts and tar for the English navy from the woods of Scotland to Cromwell himself in August 1652, and that it was in consequence of Cromwell's recommendation of the scheme to the Council of State then in power that the business had been referred to the Commander-in-chief in Scotland and Sandelands had gone to Scotland ("at my own charge," he says) and had the conferences with Major-General Dean and Colonel Lilburne described at pp. 490-491 of Vol. IV. The result had been that detailed written explanation of his scheme to Lilburne the substance of which has been quoted in the same pages—"the copy whereof," adds Sandelands, "now remains in Mr. Thurloe's hands." He means, of course, the copy he had enclosed to Milton in his letter of Jan. 15, 1652-3, and which Milton had duly delivered to the Council of State. More had come of the matter than we knew at that date; for Sandelands proceeds thus in his statement:—"The Council of State, having received this information (recommended by the Commander-in-chief), gave order that Colonel Lilburne should prosecute the design effectually. Upon receipt of which order, Colonel Lilburne was pleased to employ me to try whether the Earl of Tullibardine (who had an interest of the third part of the woods of Abernethy and Glencalvie) would sell his share; which I did, and brought with me an agreement under his hand that for £221 he would yield up all his interest in the former woods and all other be-north Tay, upon condition that the money should be paid before the 25th of March last [1653]; which Colonel Lilburne certified to the Council of State. But, their greater affairs [the discussions with Cromwell just before his coup d'état] obstructing this design, neither money nor orders were sent. Therefore I did entreat Colonel Lilburne to do me that justice to certify my diligence; which he did; and [having come to London meanwhile] I delivered it to his Excellency [Cromwell] the 12th of June [a month and three weeks after the coup d'état]; who was pleased immediately after to revive this motion to the Council of State [Cromwell's Interim Council of Thirteen], and they to refer it to Mr. Carew [one of the Thirteen]. Since which time I have given my daily attendance at Whitehall, expecting the event of the business." He ends by soliciting Pickering, as he had solicited Milton some months before, to bring the matter to some such conclusion as might reimburse him for his journey to Scotland and all his care and pains there at his own charge. From a note appended to the Statement, it appears that the whole business was referred by Cromwell's Interim Council to a Committee; but, as we have found Sandelands still in distress and in want of employment as late as April 1654 (Vol. V. p. 227), his renewed application can have had but small success.

End of Volume V