_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.

[Footnote 1: It was first published in the so-called Amsterdam

Edition of Milton's Prose Works (1698); and Toland, who gave it to

the publishers of that edition, informs us that it had been

communicated to him "by a worthy friend, who, a little after the

author's death, had it from his nephew"--i.e. from Phillips.]

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 20_s._ per diem each_ Matthew Fairbank 139 0 0

Samuel Morland 88 0 0

Edward Dendy 169 0 0

Matthew Lea 56 6 8

_At 6_s._ 8_d._ per diem each_ [Clerks] Thomas Lea 56 6 8

William Symon 56 6 8"

Then follow the names of _twenty-nine_ persons at 5_s._

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 5_s._--_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 9_s._ 8_d._), "Mr. Nutt, the

_Barge-keeper_" (£65), "Mr. Embrey, _Surveyor_" (£140

12_s._ 6_d._), and "Mr. Kinnereley,

_Wardrobe-keeper_" (£140 12_s._ 6_d._).[1]

[Footnote 1: From Warrant Book in Record Office. On comparing the

list of persons in this warrant with that in the extract from the

Order Books of Oliver's Council of date April 17, 1655 (pp. 177-179),

and with lists in a former Council minute of date Feb. 3, 1653-4, and

in a Money Warrant of Oliver of same date (Vol. IV. pp. 575-578), it

will be seen that there had been changes in the staff meanwhile.

Milton, Scobell, Gualter Frost, Serjeant Dendy, Housekeeper Vaux,

Bargemaster Nutt, and about a dozen of the clerks, messengers, and

serjeant-deputies remain (one of the former clerks, Matthew

Fairbank, now promoted from his original 6_s._ 8_d._ a day

to 20_s._ a day); but Thurloe, Jessop, Meadows, two younger

Frosts, and a good many others are gone, while new men are Deane,

Robinson, Kingdon, Morland, Marvell, and others. Morland, as we

know, had been brought in a while ago to assist Thurloe; and his

salary, we now see, was larger than Milton's.--When Milton's salary

was reduced, in April 1655, it was arranged that it should be a

life-pension, and payable out of the Exchequer; but the present

warrant Directs payment to him, as to the rest, out of the

Council's contingencies. It would seem, therefore, that Oliver's

arrangement for him had not taken effect, or had been cancelled by

the Rump, and that he was now not a life-pensioner, but once more a

mere official at the Council's pleasure.]

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.

[Footnote 1: Ormerod's Cheshire, III. 409; but I owe the verbatim

extract from the codicil to the never-failing kindness of Colonel

Chester.--By an inadvertence the date of Bradshaw's death has been

given, ante p. 495, as Oct. 31, 1659, instead of Nov. 22.]

* * * * *

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]

[Footnote 1: Letters of Oldenburg and Hartlib to Boyle in Boyle's

Works (1744), V. 280-296 and 300-302.]

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]

[Footnote 1: Bayle, Art. _Morus_, and Bruce's Life of Morus,

204-226.]

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."

[Footnote 1: The allusion seems to be to the great OEcumenical

Council of Constantinople in 381, which confirmed Gregory Nazianzen

in the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and in which Gregory presided

for some time and inefficiently.]

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.

[Footnote 1: In Wood's Fasti (I. 485) the pamphlet is mentioned as

"published in Feb." The publication, we learn from subsequent words

of Milton himself, was very hurried, and copies got about without his

press-corrections. I find no entry of the pamphlet in the Stationers'

Registers.--It is particularly necessary to remember that this was

but the _first edition_ of the pamphlet. Another was to follow.

In all the editions of Milton's collected works, from that of 1698

onwards, the reprint is from the later edition, without notice of the

first; but I hardly know a case in which the distinction between two

editions is more important.]

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."

[Footnote 1: This is one of Milton's very long sentences; and the

length shows, I think, the glow and rapidity of the dictation.]

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."

[Footnote 1: The allusion here is vague.]

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.

[Footnote 1: "_Published from the Manuscript_" is the addition

in all our present reprints. In other words, this Letter to Monk,

together with the previous _Letter to a Friend concerning the

Ruptures of the Commonwealth_, came into Toland's hands in the

manner described in Note p. 617, and was also given by Toland for

use in the 1698 edition of Milton's Prose Works.]

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]

[Footnote 1: Pamphlet, of title and date given, in the Thomason

Collection. I have mended the pointing, but nothing else.]

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]

[Footnote 1: The Rota Club, as we already know (ante p. 555), can

have had no meeting on the day supposed in the burlesque, having

disappeared, with all its appurtenances, ballot-box included, at or

immediately after the swamping of the old Rump by the readmission of

the secluded members. The last glimpses we have of it are these from

Pepys's Diary:--_Jan._ 10, 1659-60. "To the Coffee-house, where

were a great confluence of gentlemen: viz. Mr. Harrington, Poulteney

(chairman), Gold, Dr. Petty, &c.; where admirable discourse till 9 at

night."--_Jan._ 17. "I went to the Coffee Club, and heard very

good discourse. It was in answer to Mr. Harrington's answer, who said

that the state of the Roman government was not a settled government,

and so it was no wonder that the balance of property was in one hand

and the command in another, it being therefore always in a posture of

war; but it was carried by ballot that it was a steady government,

though it is true by the voices it had been carried before that it

was an unsteady government: so to-morrow it is to be proved by the

opponents that the balance lay in one hand and the government in

another."--_Feb._ 20 (day before Restitution of the Secluded).

"I to the Coffee-house, where I heard Mr, Harrington and my Lord

Dorset and another Lord talking of getting another place [for the

Club meetings] at the Cockpit, and they did believe it would come

to something." Had there been an express order for closing the

Club?]

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."...