This speaker having ended with a comment on Mr. Milton's remark that

Christ himself had put "the brand of Gentilism" upon Kingship, "a

young gentleman made answer that your writings are best interpreted

by themselves, and that be remembered, in that book wherein you fight

with the King's Picture, you call Sir Philip Sidney's Princess

Pamela, who was born and bred of Christian parents in England, 'a

heathen woman,' and therefore he thought that by _Heathenish_

you meant _English_, and that in calling Kingship heathenish you

inferred it was the only proper and natural government of the English

nation, as it hath been proved in all ages. To which another objected

that such a sense was quite contrary to your purpose; to which he

immediately replied that it was no new thing with you to write that

which is as well against as for your purpose. After much debate, they

agreed to put it to the ballot; and the young gentleman carried it

without contradiction." Then another critic fell foul of Mr. Milton's

Divinity and Church notions,--one of which, he said, was "that the

Church of Christ ought to have no head upon earth, but the monster of

many heads, the multitude," and another "that any man may turn away

his wife, and take another as oft as he pleases": to which last

accusation is added the comment, "As you have most learnedly proved

upon the fiddle [_Tetrachordon_], and practised in your life and

conversation; for which you have achieved the honour to be styled the

founder of a sect." The audience by this time becoming weary, "a

worthy knight of this Assembly stood up and said that, if we meant to

examine all the particular fallacies and flaws in your writing, we

should never have done; he would therefore, with leave, deliver his

judgment upon the whole: which in brief was this:--That it is all

windy foppery from the beginning to the end, written, to the

elevation of that rabble and meant to cheat the ignorant; that you

fight always with the flat of your hand like a rhetorician, and never

contract the logical fist; that you trade altogether in universals,

the region of deceits and fallacy, but never come so near

particulars as to let us know which among divers things of the same

kind you would be at ... Besides this, as all your politics reach but

the outside and circumstances of things, and never touch at

realities, so you are very solicitous about _words_, as if they

were charms, or had more in them than what they signify; for no

conjuror's devil is more concerned in a spell than you are in a mere

word." This last speaker having moved that Mr. Harrington himself, in

conclusion, should deliver _his_ opinion on Mr. Milton's book,

the result was as follows:--

"I knew not (though unwilling) how to avoid it; and therefore I

told them, as briefly as I could, that that which I disliked most

in your treatise was that there is not one word of _The Balance

of Property_, nor the _Agrarian_, nor _Rotation_, in

it from the beginning to the end: without which (together with a

_Lord Archon_) I thought I had sufficiently demonstrated, not

only in my writings but public exercises in that coffee-house, that

there is no possible foundation of a free Commonwealth. To the

first and second of these,--that is, the _Balance_ and the

_Agrarian_,--you made no objection; and therefore I should not

need to make any answer. But for the third,--I mean

_Rotation_,--which you implicitly reject in your design to

perpetuate the present members, I shall only add this to what I

have already said and written on that subject: That a Commonwealth

is like a great top, that must be kept up by being whipt round, and

held in perpetual circulation; for, if you discontinue the

rotation, and suffer the Senate to settle and stand still, down it

falls immediately. And, if you had studied this point as carefully

as I have done, you could not but know there is no such way under

Heaven of disposing the vicissitudes of command and obedience, and

of distributing equal right and liberty among all men, as this of

_Wheeling_."...[1]

[Footnote 1: There is a reprint of this _Censure of the Rota_

in the Harleian Miscellany (IV. 179-186). I take the date of

publication from the Thomason copy of the original.]

How notoriously Milton had flashed forth as the chief militant

Republican of the crisis, how universally he had drawn upon himself

in that character the eyes of the Royalists and become the target for

their bitterest shafts, may appear from yet another probing among the

contemporary London pamphlets.----Perhaps the last formal and

collective appeal on behalf of the Republic to Monk and the others in

power was a small tract which appeared in the end of March, with this

title:--_Plain English to his Excellencie the Lord-General Monk and

the Officers of his Army: or a Word in Season, not onely to them, but

to all impartial Englishmen. To which is added a Declaration of the

Parliament in the year 1647, setting forth the grounds and reasons

why they resolved to make no further Address or Application to the

King. Printed at London in the year_ 1660. The first part of the

tract consists of eight pages addressed to Monk, in the form of a

letter dated "March 22," by some persons who do not give their names,

but sign themselves "your Excellency's most faithful friends and

servants in the common cause"; after which, in smaller type, comes a

reprint of the famous reasons of the Long Parliament for their total

rupture with Charles I. in January 1647-8 (Vol. III. pp. 584-585).

The letter begins thus:--"My Lord and Gentlemen,--It is written

_The prudent shall keep silence in the evil time_; and 'tis like

we also might hold our peace, but that we fear a knife is at the very

throat not only of our and your liberties, but of our persons also.

In this condition we hope it will be no offence if we cry out to you

for help,--you that, through God's goodness, have helped us so often,

and strenuously maintained the same cause with us against the return

of that family which pretends to the Government of these nations ...

We cannot yet be persuaded, though our fears and jealousies are

strong and the grounds of them many, that you can so lull asleep your

consciences, or forget the public interests and your own, as to be

returning back with the multitude to Egypt, or that you should with

them be hankering after the leeks and onions of our old bondage."

There follows an earnest invective against the Stuarts; but the tone

of respectfulness to Monk is kept up studiously throughout. There is

no sign of Milton in the language, and one guesses on the whole that

the tract was a concoction of a few of the City Republicans, with

Barebone among them, meeting privately perhaps in the back-parlour of

the Republican bookseller who ventured the publication anonymously;

but it is possible that Milton may have been consulted, or at least

have been cognisant of the affair. The reprinting of the reasons of

the Long Parliament for their No-Address Resolutions of January

1647-8 was an excellent idea, inasmuch as it reminded people of that

disgust with Charles I., that impossibility of dealing with him even

in his captive condition, which had driven the Parliamentarians to

the theory of a Republic a year before the Republic had been actually

founded; and this feature of the tract may have seemed good to

Milton.----The Tract must have annoyed Monk and the other

authorities, for it was immediately suppressed. This we learn from a

reply to it, which appeared on the 3rd of April, with the title

_Treason Arraigned, in answer to Plain English, being a Trayterous

and Phanatique Pamphlet which was condemned by the Counsel of State,

suppressed by Authority, and the Printer declared against by

Proclamation ... London, Printed in the year_ 1660. The reply

takes the very curious form of a reproduction of the condemned tract

almost textually, paragraph by paragraph, with a running comment of

vituperation upon the author or authors. The following sentences,

culled from the vituperative comment, will show that the writer

suspected Milton as the person chiefly responsible, and will

sufficiently represent the entire performance:--

"Some two days since came to my view a bold sharp pamphlet, called

_Plain English_, directed to the General and his Officers....

It is a piece drawn by no fool, and it deserves a serious answer.

By the design, the subject, malice, and the style, I should suspect

it for a blot of the same pen that wrote _Eikonoklastes_. It

runs foul, tends to tumult; and, not content barely to applaud the

murder of the King, the execrable author of it vomits upon his

ashes with a pedantic and envenomed scorn, pursuing still his

sacred memory. Betwixt him [Milton] and his brother Rabshakeh

[Needham?] I think a man may venture to divide the glory of it. It

relishes the mixture of their united faculties and wickedness....

Say, Milton, Needham, either or both of you, or whosoever else, say

where this worthy person [Monk] ever mixed with you.... Come, hang

yourself; beg right; here's your true method of begging:--'O, for

Tom Scott's sake, for Hasilrig's sake, for Robinson, Holland,

Mildmay, Mounson, Corbet, Atkins, Vane, Livesey, Skippon, Milton,

Tichbourne, Ireton, Gordon, Lechmere, Blagrave, Barebone, Needham's

sake, and, to conclude, for all the rest of our unpenitent

brethren's sake, help a company of poor rebellious devils[1].'"

[Footnote 1: The dates of the two pamphlets, and the extracts, are

from copies in the Thomason Collection. Such references to Milton in

the pamphlets of March--April 1660 might be multiplied. He was then

in all men's mouths.]

We are now, it is to be seen, in the mid-stream of those final forty

days which intervened between the self-dissolution of the last

fag-end of the Long Parliament and the meeting of the Full and Free

Parliament called for the conclusive settlement (March 16,

1659-60-April 25, 1660). Monk was Dictator; the Council of State,

with Annesley for President, was the body in charge, along with Monk,

keeping the peace; but all eyes were directed towards the coming

Parliament, the elections for which were going on. It was precisely

in the beginning of April that the popular current towards a

restoration of Charles Stuart and nothing else had acquired full

force and become a roaring and foaming torrent. They were shouting

for him, singing for him, treating his restoration as already

certain, though the precise manner and date of it must be left to the

Parliament. Only the chiefs, Monk, Annesley, Montague, and the other

Councillors, kept up an appearance as if the issue must not be

anticipated till the Parliament should have actually met. With

letters to and from Charles in their pockets, and each knowing or

guessing that the others had such letters, they were trying to look

as unpledged and as merely cogitative as they could. It was for the

multitude to roar and shout for Charles, and they had now full

permission. It was for the chiefs to be silent themselves, only

managing and manipulating, and watchful especially against any

outbreak of Republican fanaticism even yet that might interfere with

the plain course of things and baulk or delay the popular

expectation. Wherever they could perceive a likelihood of

disturbance, by act or by speech, there they were bound to curb or

suppress.

At least in one instance they found it necessary to curb a too hasty

and impetuous Royalist. This was Dr. Matthew Griffith, a clergyman

over sixty years of age, once a _protegé_ of the poet Donne.

Sequestered in the early days of the Long Parliament from his rectory

of St. Mary Magdalen, London, he had taken refuge with the King

through the civil wars, and had been made D.D. at Oxford, and one of

the King's chaplains. Afterwards, returning to London, he had lived

there through the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, one of those

that continued the use of the liturgy and other Anglican church-forms

by stealth to small gatherings of cavaliers, and that found

themselves often in trouble on that account. He had suffered, it is

said, four imprisonments. The near prospect of the return of Charles

II. at last had naturally excited the old gentleman; and, chancing to

preach in the Mercers' Chapel on Sunday the 25th of March, 1660, he

had chosen for his text _Prov._ XXIV. 21, which he translated

thus: "My son, fear God and the King, and meddle not with them that

be seditious or desirous of change." On this text he had preached a

very Royalist sermon. There would have been nothing peculiar in that,

as many clergymen were doing the like. But, not content with having

preached the sermon, Dr. Griffith resolved to publish it, in an

ostentatious manner and with certain accompaniments. "_The Fear of

God and the King. Press'd in a Sermon preach'd at Mercers Chappell on

the 25th of March, 1660. Together with a brief Historical Account of

the Causes of our unhappy distractions and the onely way to heal

them. By Matthew Griffith, D.D., and Chaplain to the late King.

London, Printed for Tho. Johnson at the Golden Key in St. Pauls

Churchyard_, 1660": such was the name of a duodecimo out in London

in the first days of April.[1] The volume consists of three

parts,--first, a dedicatory epistle "To His Excellency George Monck,

Captain-General of all the Land Forces of England, Scotland, and

Ireland, and one of the Generals of all the Naval Forces"; then the

sermon itself in fifty-eight pages; and then an addition, in the

shape of a directly political pamphlet, headed "_The Samaritan

Revived_." The gem is the dedication to Monk. The substance of

that is as follows:--

[Footnote 1: "April" only, without day, is the date in the Thomason

copy; but it was registered at Stationers' Hall, March 31, and there

is proof that the publication was immediate.]

"My Lord,--If you will be pleased to allow me to be a physician in

the same sense that all moral divines do acknowledge the

body-politic (consisting of Church and State) to be a patient,

then I will now give your Highness a just account both how far and

how faithfully I have practised upon it by virtue of my profession.

When I first observed things to be somewhat out of order, by reason

of a high distemper, which then appeared by some infallible

indications, I thought it my duty to prescribe an wholesome

electuary (out of the 122nd Psalm at the 6th verse, in a sermon

which I was called to preach in the Cathedral Church of Saint

Paul's, anno 1642, and soon after published by command under this

title: _A Pathetical Persuasion to pray for the Public

Peace_), to be duly and devoutly taken every morning next our

hearts: hoping that, by God's blessing on the means, I should have

prevented that distemper from growing into a formed disease. Yet,

finding that my preventing physic did not work so kindly and take

so good an effect as I earnestly desired, but rather that this my

so tenderly beloved patient grew worse and worse, as not only being

in process of time fallen into a fever and that pestilential, but

also as having received divers dangerous wounds, which, rankling

and festering inwardly, brought it into a spiritual atrophy and

deep consumption, and the parts ill-affected (for want of

Christian care and skill in such mountebanks as were trusted with

the cure, while myself and most of the ancient orthodox clergy were

sequestered and silent) began to gangrene: and, when some of us

became sensible thereof, we took the confidence (being partly

emboldened by the connivance of the higher powers that then were)

to fall to the exercise of our ministerial functions again in such

poor parishes as would admit us: Then I saw it was high time not

only to prescribe strong purgative medicines in the pulpit

(contempered of the myrrh of mortification, the aloes of confession

and contrition, the rhubarb of restitution and satisfaction, with

divers other safe roots, seeds, and flowers, fit and necessary to

help to carry away by degrees the incredible confluence of ill

humours and all such malignant matter as offended), but also to put

pen to paper and appear in print (as in this imperfect and

impolished piece, which as guilty of an high presumption here in

all humility begs your Lordship's pardon) wherein my chief scope is

to personate the Good Samaritan, that, as he cured the wounded

traveller by searching his wounds with wine and suppling them with

oil, so I have here both described the rise and progress of our

national malady, and also prescribed the only remedy, that I might

be in some kind instrumental, under God and your Highness, in the

healing of the same ... My Lord, as it must needs grieve you to see

these three distressed kingdoms lie like a body without a head, so

it may also cheer you to consider that the Comforter hath empowered

you (and in this nick of time you only) to make these dead and dry

bones live. You may by this one act ennoble and eternize yourself

more in the hearts and chronicles of these three kingdoms than by

all your former victories and the long line of your extraction from

the Plantagenets your ancestors ... It is a greater honour to

_make_ a king than to _be_ one. Your proper name minds

you of being St. George for England; you surname prompts you to

stand for order: then let not panic fears, punctilios of human

policy, or state formalities, beguile you (whom we look upon as

Jethro's magistrate, who was a man of courage, fearing God, dealing

truly, and hating covetousness) of that immarescible crown of glory

due to you, whom we hope that God hath designed to be the repairer

of the breach and the temporal redeemer of your native country."

Evidently Dr. Griffith was a silly person, more likely to make a

cause ridiculous than to help it. There were things in his sermon and

its accompaniments, however, that might harm the King's cause

otherwise than by the bad literary taste of the defence. There was a

tone of that revengeful spirit which it was the policy of all the

more prudent Royalists to disown. Hence the publication annoyed even

in that quarter. The unpardonable offence, however, was the address

to Monk. He was studying to be as secret as the grave, had signified

his leanings to the King by not a single public word, and indeed had

hardly ceased to swear he stood for the Commonwealth. And here was an

impudent Doctor of Divinity spoiling all by openly assuming and

announcing the very thing to be concealed. Monk was excessively

irritated; the Council of State sympathized with him; and so, "to

please and blind the fanatical party" for the moment, Dr. Griffith

was sent to Newgate.[1]

[Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. III. 711-713.--Hyde, writing from Breda,

April 16, 1660, says to a Royalist correspondent: "This very last

post hath brought over three or four complaints to the king of the

very unskillful passion and distemper of some of our divines in their

late sermons; with which they say that both the General and the

Council of State are highly offended, as truly they have reason to be

... One Dr. Griffith is mentioned." _Ibid._, note by Bliss.]

It was more natural, however, for the General and the Council to take

similar precautions against too violent expressions of

anti-Royalism, too vehement efforts to stir up the Republican embers.

Of their vigilance in this respect we have just seen an instance in

their instant suppression of the Republican appeal to Monk and his

Officers entitled _Plain English_, and their procedure by

proclamation against the anonymous publisher of that tract. If I am

not mistaken, he was Livewell Chapman, of the Crown in Pope's Head

Alley, the publisher of Milton's _Considerations touching the

likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church_, and also

of his more recent _Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free

Commonwealth_. There was, at all events, a printed proclamation of

the Council of State against this person, dated "Wednesday, 28 March,

1660," and signed "William Jessop, Clerk of the Council." It began in

these terms:--"Whereas the Council of State is informed that Livewell

Chapman, of London, Stationer, having from a wicked design to engage

the nation in blood and confusion caused several seditious and

treasonable books to be printed and published, doth, now hide and

obscure himself, for avoiding the hand of justice"; and it ended with

an order that Chapman should surrender himself within four days, and

that none should harbour or conceal him, but all, and especially

officers, try to arrest him. If he was the publisher of _Plain

English_, there would be additional reason for suspecting that

Milton had some cognisance of that anonymous appeal to Monk; but

there can be no doubt that among the "seditious and treasonable

books" the publication of which constituted Chapman's offence was

Milton's own _Ready and Easy Way_. The authorities had not yet

struck at Milton himself, but they were coming very near him. They

had ordered the arrest of his publisher.

Within a few days after the order for the arrest of Milton's

publisher, Livewell Chapman, the authorities signified their

displeasure, though in a less harsh manner, with another Republican

associate of Milton, his old friend Marchamont Needham.--Not without

difficulty had this Oliverian journalist, the subsidized editor since

1655 of the bi-weekly official newspaper of the Protectorate (calling

itself _The Public Intelligencer_ on Mondays and _Mercurius

Politicus_ on Thursdays), been retained in the service of the Good

Old Cause. His Oliverianism having been excessive, to the extent of

defending not only Oliver's Established Church, but also all else in

his policy that grated most on the pure Republicans, he had been

discharged from his editorship on the 13th of May, 1659, by order of

the Restored Rump, before it had been six days in power, the place

going then to John Canne. But Needham's versatility was matchless,

and on the 15th of August the Rump had thought it best to reappoint

him to the editorship.[1] Since then, having already in succession

been Parliamentarian, Royalist, Commonwealth's man or Rumper, and all

but anti-Republican Protectoratist, the world had known him in his

fifth phase of Rumper or pure Commonwealth's man again. Not only in

his journals, but also in independent pamphlets, he had advocated the

Good Old Cause. One such pamphlet, published with his name in August

1659, under the title of _Interest will not lie_,[2] had been in

reply to some Royalist who had propounded "a way how to satisfy all

parties and provide for the public good by calling in the son of the

late King": against whom Needham's contention was "that it is really

the interest of every party (except only the Papist) to keep him

out." One can understand now why, in the Royalist squib lately

quoted, Needham was named as "the Commonwealth didapper"[3] along

with Milton as "their goose-quill champion," and why the public were

there promised the pleasure of soon seeing the two at Tyburn

together.--But the final performance of Needham's, it is believed,

was a tract called _News from Brussels, in a Letter from a near

attendant on his Majesty's person to a Person of Honour here_. It

purports to be dated at Brussels, March 10, 1659-60, English style,

and was out in London on March 23. The publication is said to have

been managed secretly by Mr. Praise-God Barebone; and, though the

tract was anonymous, it was attributed at once to Needham. Being

"fall of rascalities against Charles II. and his Court," as Wood

says, and professing to give private information as to the terrible

severities which they were meditating when they should be restored to

England, the pamphlet was much resented by the Royalists; and John

Evelyn roused himself from a sickbed to pen an instant and emphatic

contradiction, called _The late News or Message from Brussels

unmasked_. Needham's connexion, or supposed connexion, with so

violent an anti-Royalist tract, and possibly also with the Republican

manifesto called _Plain English_, which appeared in the same

week, could not be overlooked; and, accordingly, in Whitlocke, under

date April 9, 1660, we find this note: "The Council discharged

Needham from writing the Weekly Intelligence and ordered Dury and

Muddiman to do it." The Dury here mentioned was not our John Durie of

European celebrity, but an insignificant Giles Dury. His colleague

Muddiman, the real successor of Needham in the editorship, was Henry

Muddiman, an acquaintance of Pepys, who certifies that he was "a good

scholar and an arch rogue." He had been connected with the London

press for some time (for smaller news-sheets had been springing up

again beside the authorized _Mercurius_ and

_Intelligencer_), and had been writing for the Rumpers. He had

just been, owning to Pepys, however, that he "did it only to get

money," and had no liking for them or their politics.[4]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates. As only the

_Intelligencer_ is named in the orders, one infers that Needham

retained the editorship of the _Mercurius_ during his three

months of suspension. He may have had more of a proprietary hold on

that paper.]

[Footnote 2: Thomason Catalogue: large quartos.]

[Footnote 3: _Didapper_: a duck that dives and reappears.]

[Footnote 4: Wood's Ath. III. 1180-1190; Whitlocke as cited; Pepys,

under date Jan. 9, 1659-60; Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 17, 1659-60 _et

seq._; Baker's Chronicle continued by Edward Phillips (ed. 1679),

pp. 699-700.--It is curious to read Phillips's remarks on the

"several seditious pamphlets" put forth by the Republican fanatics

"to deprave the minds of the people" and prevent the Restoration.

Though he must have remembered well that his uncle's were the chief

of these, he avoids naming him. He mentions, however, the _News

from Brussels_, and dilates on the great service done by Evelyn in

replying to it. Phillips had meanwhile (1663-1665) been in Evelyn's

employment as tutor to his son.]

If they turned Needham out of his editorship, they could hardly do

less than turn Milton out of his Latin Secretaryship. About this

time, accordingly, he did cease to hold the office which he had held

for eleven years. Phillips's words are that he was "sequestered from

his office of Latin Secretary and the salary thereunto belonging";

but, unfortunately, though he gives us to understand that this was

shortly before the Restoration, he leaves the exact date uncertain.

Though the last of Milton's state-letters now preserved and known as

his are the two, dated May 15, 1659, written for the Rump immediately

after the subversion of Richard's Protectorate, we have seen him

holding his office in sinecure, and drawing his salary of £200 a

year, to as late at least as the beginning of the Wallingford-House

Interruption in October 1659; and there is no reason for thinking

that the Council or Committee of Safety of the Wallingford-House

Government, his dissent from their usurpation notwithstanding,

thought it necessary to dismiss him. Far less likely is it that the

Republican Rumpers, when restored the second time in December 1659,

would have parted with a man so thoroughly Republican and so

respectful to themselves, even while they dared not adopt his

Church-disestablishment suggestions. We may fairly assume, then, that

Milton remained Marvell's nominal colleague till Monk's final

termination of the tenure of the Rump by re-admitting the secluded

members, i.e. till Feb. 21, 1659-60. Had he been then at once

dismissed, it would have been no wonder. How could he, the

Independent of Independents, the denouncer of every form of

State-Church, the enemy and satirist of the Presbyterians, and

moreover the author of the Divorce heresy and the founder of a sect

of Divorcers, be retained in the service of a re-Presbyterianized

Government, founding itself on the Westminster Confession and the

Solemn League and Covenant? There is no proof, however, of any such

instant dismissal of Milton by the new powers, but rather a shade of

proof to the contrary in the phraseology of the preface to his

_Ready and Easy Way_. The probability, therefore, is that it was

after March 3, the date of the publication of that pamphlet, that

Milton was sequestered, and that it was the pamphlet itself, added to

the sum of his previous obnoxiousness to the new powers, that led to

the sequestration. Yet, as the new powers were proceeding warily, and

keeping up as long as they could the pretence of leaving the

Commonwealth an open question, it is quite possible that they were in

no haste to discharge Milton, All in all, the most probable time of

his dismissal is some time after the dissolution of the Parliament of

the Secluded Members on the 16th of March, 1659-60, when Monk and the

Council of State were left in the management. As Milton had been

originally appointed by the Council of State and not by Parliament,

it was in the Council's pleasure to continue him or dismiss him. They

were in a severe mood, virtually anti-Republican already, though not

yet avowedly so, between March 28, when they ordered Livewell

Chapman's arrest, and April 9, when they dismissed Needham; and that

or thereabouts may be the date of Milton's discharge.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips's narrative of his uncle's dismissal is a

blotch of confused wording and pointing:--"It was but a little

before the King's Restoration that he wrote and published his book in

defence of a Commonwealth; so undaunted he was in declaring his true

sentiments to the world; and not long before his _Power of the

Civil Magistrate in Ecclesiastical Affairs_ and his _Treatise

against Hirelings,_ just upon the King's coming over; having a

little before been sequestered from his office of Latin Secretary and

the salary thereunto belonging, he was force," &c. This, as it

stands, defies interpretation. The _Treatise of Civil Power in

Ecclesiastical Causes_ appeared in April 1659, or eight months

before the same. There ought, I believe, to have been a full stop

after _Hirelings_, and the rest should have run on thus:--"Just

upon the King's coming over, having a little before been sequestered

from his office of latin Secretary and the salary therunto belonging,

he was force," &c.]

* * * * *

In office or out of office, it was the same to Milton. He had

determined that he would not be suppressed, that he would not be

silent, till they should tie his hands, or gag his mouth. There is no

grander exhibition of dying resistance, of solitary and useless

fighting for a lost cause, than in his conduct through April 1680.

Alone he then stood, we may say, the last of the visible Republicans.

Hasilrig, Scott, Ludlow, Neville, and Vane, had collapsed or were out

of sight, the last under ban already by his former brothers of the

Commonwealth; Needham was extinguished; most of the Cromwellians had

gone over to the enemy, or were hastening to surrender. Blind Milton

alone remained, the Samson Agonistes, On him, in the absence of

others, the eyes of the Philistine mob, the worshippers of Dagon, had

been turned from time to time of late as the Hebrew that could make

them most efficient sport; and now it was as if they had all met, by

common consent, to be amused by this single Hebrew's last exertions,

and had sent to bring him on the stage. They laughed, they shouted,

they shrieked, the gathered Philistine thousands:

"He, patient, but undaunted, where they led him

Came to the place."

The first of the feats of strength of Milton, thus alone on the

stage, and knowing himself to be confronted and surrounded by a

jeering multitude, was a somewhat puny and unnecessary one. It was an

onslaught on Dr. Matthew Griffith for his Royalist sermon. He wanted

some object of attack, and the very notoriety given to Dr. Griffith's

performance by the rebuke of the Council of State recommended it for

the purpose despite its intrinsic wretchedness. Accordingly, having

had Dr. Griffith's Sermon and its accompaniments read over to him, he

dictated what appeared some time in April with this title: "_Brief

Notes upon a late Sermon, titled 'The Fear of God and the King';

Preach'd, and since published, by Matthew Griffith, D.D., and

Chaplain to the late King. Wherin many notorious wrestings of

Scripture, and other falsities are observed._"[1]

[Footnote 1: Original copies of this pamphlet of Milton must be very

scarce. I could not find one in the British Museum, and I have

looked in vain elsewhere. Probably, at the date when it was

published, the Council of State had become very alert in

suppressing such things. I take the title and extracts from

Pickering's (1851) collective edition of Milton's Works, "printed

from the original editions."]

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

"I affirmed, in the Preface of a late Discourse, entitled _The

Ready Way to establish a Free Commonwealth, and the Dangers of

readmitting Kingship in this Nation_, that 'the humour of

returning to our old bondage was instilled of late by some

deceivers': and, to make good that what I then affirmed was not

without just ground, one of those deceivers I present here to the

people, and, if I prove him not such, refuse not to be so accounted

in his stead."

The greater part of the pamphlet consists of an examination of the

sermon itself, with minute remarks on its wrestings or

misinterpretations of Scripture texts, and on the poverty of the

preacher's theology and scholarship generally. There is no actual

disguise of the fact that Milton has the lowest opinion of the

intellectual _calibre_ of his antagonist, whom he once names "a

pulpit-mountebank," and of whom he once says that "the rest of his

preachment is mere groundless chat," Yet, on the other hand, he would

evidently have Dr. Griffith taken as a fair enough specimen of the

average Church-of-England clergyman. "O people of an implicit faith,

no better than Romish if these be your prime teachers!" he once

exclaims, as if Dr. Griffith were a man of some distinction.

The only portions of the _Notes_ of interest now are those that

bear on the historical situation at the moment. Thus, in the notice

of the Dedicatory Epistle to Monk prefixed to Dr. Griffith's sermon,

there is an evident struggle on Milton's part to speak as if one

might still have faith in the General. It is possible that the

censure of Dr. Griffith by the Council of State, intended as it was

"to please and blind the fanatical party," may have had some such

temporary effect on Milton. At all events, he refers to Monk as one

"who hath so eminently borne his part in the whole action," and he

characterizes one portion of the Dedicatory Epistle, where Monk is

prayed "to carry on what he had so happily begun," as nothing less

than "an impudent calumny and affront to his Excellence." It charges

him, says Milton, "most audaciously and falsely, with the renouncing

of his own public promises and declarations both to the Parliament

and the Army; and we trust his actions ere long will deter such

insinuating slanderers from thus approaching him for the future."

Throughout the _Notes_, however, one sees that even this small

lingering of confidence in Monk is forced, and that Milton is too

sadly convinced of the probable predetermination of all now in power

to fulfil the general expectation and bring in Charles. In the

following passage there is a half-veiled intimation that, rather than

see that ignominious conclusion, Milton would reconcile himself to

Monk's own assumption of the Crown:--

"Free Commonwealths have been ever counted fittest and properest

for civil, virtuous, and industrious nations, abounding with

prudent men worthy to govern; Monarchy fittest to curb degenerate,

corrupt, idle, proud, luxurious people. If we desire to be of the

former, nothing better for us, nothing nobler, than a Free

Commonwealth; if we will needs condemn ourselves to be of the

latter, despairing of our own virtue, industry, and the number of

our able men, we may then, conscious of our own unworthiness to be

governed better, sadly betake us to our befitting thraldom: yet,

choosing out of our own number one who hath best aided the people

and best merited against tyranny, the space of a reign or two we

may chance to live happily enough, or tolerably. But that a

victorious people should give up themselves again to the vanquished

was never yet heard of, seems rather void of all reason and good

policy, and will in all probability subject the subduers to the

subdued,--will expose to revenge, to beggary, to ruin and

perpetual bondage, the victors, under the vanquished: than which

what can be more unworthy?"

Of far more moment than the _Brief Notes on Dr. Griffith's

Sermon_ was a second and enlarged edition of the _Ready and Easy

Way to establish a Free Commonwealth_.

Though it is announced distinctly and emphatically in the opening

paragraph that this edition is a "revised and enlarged" one, not till

after a careful comparison with the former edition is it seen how

much the announcement implies. There are large additions; there are

omissions; there are changes of phraseology in every page. The new

pamphlet, were it nothing else, would be an interesting study of

Milton's art in authorcraft, of the expertness he had acquired in

recasting a composition of his, ingeniously dove-tailing passages

into it without spoiling the connexion, and ejecting phrases that had

ceased to be relevant or vital, all under the difficulties of his

blindness, when his ear listening to some mouth beside him and his

own mouth interrupting and replying were his sole instruments. But

there is much more than this. The later edition is Milton about a

month farther down the torrent than the first, a month nearer the

falls; and the additions, omissions, and alterations, convey what had

passed in his mind through that month. The second edition of the

_Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth_ is to be

taken, in short, for Milton's Biography at least, as an important new

publication. Only the essential additions and omissions can be here

noticed.[1]

[Footnote 1: The fact that there are two editions of the _Ready and

Easy Way_, though Milton calls express attention to it in the

second, seems to have escaped all the bibliographers. There is no

note of it in Lowndes. What is most curious, however, is that, while

it is the second or enlarged edition alone that is now accessible to

everybody in the collective editions of Milton's Prose Works, from

the so-called Amsterdam edition of 1898 to Pickering's and Bonn's,

yet original copies of this second edition seem, to have wholly

disappeared. There are several original copies of the _Ready and

Easy Way_ in the British Museum, but all of the first edition, not

one of the second; the Bodleian has no copy of the second; every

original copy of the tract that I have been able to see or hear of

anywhere else has always turned out to be one of the first edition.

In my perplexity, I began to ask myself whether this was to be

explained by supposing that Milton, after he had prepared the second

edition for the press, did not succeed in getting it published, and

so that it was not till 1698 that it saw the light, and then by the

accident that his enlarged press-copy had survived, and come (through

Toland or otherwise) into the hands of the printers of the Amsterdam

edition of the Prose Works. But, though several pieces in that

edition are expressly noted as "never before published" (see notes

ante, p. 617 and p. 656), there is no such editorial note respecting

_The Ready and Easy Way_, but every appearance of mere

reprinting from a previously published copy of 1660. On the whole,

therefore, I conclude that Milton did publish his second and enlarged

edition some time in April 1660; and I account for the rarity of

original copies of this second edition by supposing that either the

impression was seized before many copies had got about, or the

Restoration itself came so rapidly after the publication as to make

it all but abortive. Original copies of Milton's contemporary

_Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon_ seem, as I have mentioned (ante

p. 675, note), to be equally scarce with original copies of the

second edition of the _Ready and Easy Way_. They were the two

last utterances of Milton before the Restoration, and so close to

that event as perhaps to be sucked down in the whirlpool. Yet, as we

know for certain that the _Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon_ did

appear, there is no need for a contrary supposition respecting the

other. Very possibly original copies of both _have_ survived

somewhere; and I should be glad to hear of the fact. As it is, I have

had to take my descriptions of both from the copies in the collective

Prose Works. By the bye, it is an error in bibliographers and editors

to give only the titles of old books from the original title-pages,

without adding the imprints of the publishers. Much historical and

biographical information lies in such imprints. In the present

instance, for example, I should have liked very much to know whether

Livewell Chapman was nominally the publisher of the second edition as

well as of the first, or whether Milton was obliged to put forth the

second edition without any publisher's name.]

Among the _additions_ the most prominent is this motto (an

extension of Juvenal I. 15, 16) prefixed to the whole:--

"_Et nos_

_Consilium dedimus Syllæ: demus Populo nunc_";

which may be translated:--

"We have advised

Sulla himself: advise we now the People."

Had this been prefixed to the first edition, the inevitable

conclusion would have been that Sulla stood for Oliver Cromwell, and

that Milton meant that, having taken the liberty in his _Defensio

Secunda_ of tendering wholesome advices even to the great

Protector in the height of his power, it might be allowed to him now

to advise the general body of his countrymen. Much would have

depended then on Milton's estimate of the character of the real or

Roman Sulla. That seems to have been the ordinary and traditional

one, for in one of the smaller insertions in the text of the present

edition he speaks of the Roman People as having been brought, by

their own infatuation, "under the tyranny of Sulla." Now, though we

have seen that Milton had modified his opinion of the worth of

Cromwell's Government all in all, we should have been shocked by an

epithet of posthumous opprobrium applied to the man he had so

panegyrized while living. Fortunately, we are spared the shock. Monk,

not Cromwell, is the military dictator that Milton has in view in the

metonymy _Sulla_. He is thinking of his Letter to Monk only the

other day, containing that specific suggestion of a PERPETUAL

NATIONAL COUNCIL in the centre and CITY COUNCILS in all the counties

which he developes more at large in his pamphlet. Perhaps he is

thinking also of the more recent remonstrance, called _Plain

English_, addressed by some London Republicans, of whom he may

have been one, to Monk and his Officers. He has now done with Monk;

he knows that the suggestions have taken no effect in that quarter,

perhaps have been rebuffed; he will therefore dedicate them afresh

to the people at large, for whom they were first written. The

translation, accordingly, may run definitely thus:--

"This advice we have given

Sulla himself: 'tis for the People now."

In one or two of the added passages, or modifications of phraseology,

we note reference to the course of events since the publication of

the former edition. Compare, for example, the following portion of

the prefatory paragraph with the corresponding portion of the same

paragraph as it first stood (p. 645):--

... "I thought best not to suppress what I had written, hoping that

it may now be of much more use and concernment to be freely

published in the midst of our elections to a Free Parliament, or

their sitting to consider freely of the Government; whom it behoves

to have all things represented to them that may direct their

judgment therein: and I never read of any state, scarce of any

tyrant, grown so incurable as to refuse counsel from any in a time

of public deliberation, much less to be offended. If their absolute

determination be to enthral us, before so long a Lent of servitude

they may permit us a little Shroving-time first, wherein to speak

freely and take our leaves of Liberty, And, because in the former

edition, through haste, many faults escaped, and many books were

suddenly dispersed ere the note to mend them could be sent, I took

the opportunity from this occasion to revise and somewhat to

enlarge the whole discourse, especially that part which argues for

a Perpetual Senate. The treatise, thus revised and enlarged, is as

follows."

Again, the renewal of the Solemn League and Covenant by the late

Parliament of the Secluded Members furnishes Milton with a fresh

text. He does not, as might have been expected, and as he certainly

would have done on another occasion, upbraid the Parliament with the

fact, or denounce the return to Presbyterian strictness of which it

was a signal: on the contrary, he presses the fact into his service

as a new argument against the recall of Charles. The first of the

following sentences had appeared in the former edition; but the rest

is suggested by the revival of the Covenant in the interim:--

"What Liberty of Conscience can we then expect of others [even the

good and great Queen Elizabeth, he has just said, had thought

persecution necessary to preserve royal authority], far worse

principled from, the cradle, trained up and governed by Popish and

Spanish counsels, and on such depending hitherto for subsistence?

Especially, what can this last Parliament expect, who, having

revived lately and published the Covenant, hare re-engaged

themselves never to readmit Episcopacy? Which no son of Charles

returning but will most certainly bring back with him, if he regard

the last and strictest charge of his father, _to persevere in not

the Doctrine only, but Government, of the Church of England, [and]

not to neglect the speedy and effectual suppressing of Errors and

Schisms_,--among which he accounted Presbytery one of the chief.

Or, if, notwithstanding that charge of his father, he submit to the

Covenant, how will he keep faith to _us_ with disobedience to

_him_, or regard that faith given which must be founded on the

breach of that last and solemnest paternal charge, and the

reluctance, I may say the antipathy, which is in all kings against

Presbyterian and Independent Discipline?"

Perhaps the most striking instance of _omission_ in the new

edition of matter that had appeared in the first is in the paragraph

on the subject of Spiritual Liberty to which reference has been made

at p. 653. He retains in that paragraph nearly all that related to

Liberty of Conscience generally, but he carefully removes the two or

three sentences in which he had intimated his individual opinion that

there could be no perfect Liberty of Conscience without abolition of

Church Establishments and dissolution of every form of connexion

between Church and State. There was practical sagacity in this

omission at the moment at which he was re-issuing his pamphlet. It

was no time then to be obtruding upon the public, or upon the

Presbyterians that were flocking in to the new Parliament, his

peculiar Disestablishment notion, however precious it might be to

himself. His real business was to stir up all, by any means, to the

defence even yet of the Republican form of Government; in such an

argument, addressed mainly to Presbyterians and other zealots for a

State Church, the question of Disestablishment was rather to be

avoided; nay, for himself, that question had faded into

insignificance for the time in comparison with the vaster question

whether the Republic should be preserved or the Stuarts brought back,

and most willingly would he have been, assured of the preservation of

the Republic even though a State Church should continue to be part

and parcel of it, and the special battle of Disestablishment should

have to be postponed. To keep out the Stuarts, to rouse dread and

disgust even yet at the idea that the Stuarts should return, was the

single all-including possibility, or impossibility, for which he was

now striving. To this end it is that again and again in the course of

the pamphlet he inserts new passages heightening the contrast between

the glories and advantages of free Republican Government and the

miseries and degradation of subjection to a Monarchy. Near the

beginning there is an enlargement of this kind, to the extent of

three pages, in which he reviews, in greater detail than before, the

steps that had led to the establishment of the English Commonwealth;

and appeals to his countrymen whether their experience of

Commonwealth government had not been on the whole satisfactory. Had

not the very speeches and writings of that period, he had asked in

his first edition, "testified a spirit in this nation no less noble

and well-fitted to the liberty of a Commonwealth than in the ancient

Greeks or Romans"? In returning to that topic now, he cannot refrain

from breaking out once more, though it should be the last time, in

his characteristic vein of self-appreciation. "Nor was the heroic

cause," he adds, "unsuccessfully defended to all Christendom against

the tongue of a famous and thought invincible adversary, nor the

constancy and fortitude that so nobly vindicated our liberty, our

victory at once against two the most prevailing usurpers over

mankind, Superstition and Tyranny, unpraised or uncelebrated in a

written monument likely to outlive detraction, as it hath hitherto

convinced or silenced not a few detractors, especially in parts

abroad." Readers who may think that we are already too familiar with

this strain may be reminded that Milton was here taking account of

the contemptuous notices of his Defences of the Commonwealth in some

of the recent Royalist pamphlets, and also that, as he dictated, the

thought must have been passing in his mind that very probably his

days were numbered, and those Defences of the Commonwealth would have

to remain, after all, his last important bequest to the world.

There is proof that Milton had read the burlesque Censure of the Rota

on the first edition. Not only are two or three sentences omitted or

modified in consequence of remarks there made; but, in the

considerable enlargements he thinks necessary for the support of his

main notion of PERPETUITY OF THIS NATIONAL GREAT COUNCIL, he takes

care to extend also his former references to Harrington's principle

of Rotation and other doctrines. Of course, he was well aware that it

was not Harrington himself that had complained of the slightness of

the former references, but only some Royalist wit caricaturing

Harrington together with himself. While disagreeing with Harrington,

he shows his respect for him. The following are specimens of these

particular enlargements:--

_The Rotation Principle_:--"But, if the ambition of such as

think themselves injured that they also partake not of the

Government, and are impatient till they be chosen, cannot brook the

perpetuity of others chosen before them, or if it be feared that

long continuance of power may corrupt sincerest men, the known

expedient is, and by some lately propounded, that annually (or, if

the space be longer, so much perhaps the better) the third part of

Senators may go out, according to the precedence of their election,

and the like number be chosen in their places, to prevent the

settling of too absolute a power if it should be perpetual: and

this they call _Partial Rotation_. But I could wish that this

wheel or partial wheel in State, if it be possible, might be

avoided, as having too much, affinity with the Wheel of Fortune.

For it appears not how this can be done without danger and

mischance of putting out a great number of the best and ablest; in

whose stead new elections may bring in as many raw, unexperienced,

and otherwise affected, to the weakening and much altering for the

worse of public transactions. Neither do I think a Perpetual

Senate, especially chosen and entrusted by the people, much in this

land to be feared, where the well-affected, either in a Standing

Army or in a Settled Militia, have their arms in their own hands.

Safest therefore to me it seems, and of least hazard or

interruption to affairs, that none of the Grand Council be moved,

unless by death or just conviction of some crime; for what can be

expected firm or stedfast from a floating foundation? However, I

forejudge not any probable expedient, any temperament that can be

found in things of this nature, so disputable on either side."

_Contrast of Harrington's Model with Milton's, and a Suggestion

for the mode of Elections_:--"And this annual Rotation of a

Senate to consist of 300, as is lately propounded, requires also

another Popular Assembly upward of 1000, with an answerable

Rotation. Which, besides that it will be liable to all those

inconveniencies found in the foresaid remedies, cannot but be

troublesome and chargeable, both in their motion and their session,

to the whole land,--unwieldy with their own bulk: unable in so

great a number to mature their consultations as they ought, if any

be allotted to them, and that they meet not from so many parts

remote to sit a whole year leaguer in one place, only now and then

to hold up a forest of fingers, or to convey each man his bean or

ballot into the box, without reason shown or common deliberation;

incontinent of secrets, if any be imparted to them; emulous and

always jarring with the other Senate. The much better way doubtless

will be, in this wavering condition of our affairs, to defer the

changing or circumscribing of our Senate, more than may be done

with ease, till the Commonwealth be thoroughly settled in peace and

safety and they themselves give us the occasion.... Another way

will be to well qualify and refine Elections: not committing all to

the noise and shouting of a rude multitude, but permitting only

those of them who are rightly qualified to nominate as many as they

will; and out of that number others of a better breeding to choose

a less number more judiciously; till, after a third or fourth

sifting and refining of exactest choice, they only be left chosen

who are the due number, and seem by most voices the worthiest....

But, to prevent all mistrust, the People then will have their

several Ordinary Assemblies (which will henceforth quite annihilate

the odious power and name of _Committees_) in the chief towns

of every County,--without the trouble, charge, or time lost, of

summoning and assembling from so far, in so great a number, and so

long residing from their own houses, or removing of their

families,--to do as much at home in their several shires, entire or

subdivided, towards the securing of their liberty, as a numerous

Assembly of them all formed and convened on purpose with the

wariest rotation."

_Glance at some of Harrington's other notions_:--"The way

propounded [Milton's] is plain, easy, and open before us: without

intricacies, without the introducement of new or obsolete forms or

terms, or exotic models,--ideas that would effect nothing, but with

a number of new injunctions to manacle the native liberty of

mankind; turning all virtue into prescription, servitude, and

necessity, to the great impairing and frustrating of Christian

Liberty."

As if the very closeness of the vision of returning Royalty had

rendered Milton's defiance of it more desperate and reckless, he

inserts, wherever he can, some new expression of his contempt for

Charles and all his family, and of his prophetic horror of the state

of society they will bring in. Thus:--

"There will be a Queen of no less charge, in most likelihood

outlandish and a Papist, besides a Queen-Mother, such already,

together with both their Courts and numerous Train: then a Royal

issue, and ere long severally _their_ sumptuous Courts, to the

multiplying of a servile crew, not of servants only, but of

nobility and gentry, bred up then to the hopes not of public, but

of court offices, to be Stewards, Chamberlains, Ushers, Grooms."

But the most terrific new passage in prediction of the Restoration

and its revenges is the following: in which the reader will observe

also the recognition, as in one spurn of boundless scorn, of the

Royalist scurrilities against himself:--

"Admit that Monarchy of itself may be convenient to some nations;

yet to us who have thrown it out, received back again, it cannot

but prove pernicious. For Kings to come, never forgetting their

former ejection, will be sure to fortify and arm themselves

sufficiently for the future against all such attempts hereafter

from the People; who shall be then so narrowly watched and kept so

low that, though they would never so fain, and at the same rate of

their blood and treasure, they never shall be able to regain what

they now have purchased and may enjoy, or to free themselves from

any yoke imposed upon them. Nor will they dare to go about

it,--utterly disheartened for the future, if these their highest

attempts prove unsuccessful: which will be the triumph of all

Tyrants hereafter over any People that shall resist oppression; and

their song will then be to others _How sped the Rebellious

English?_, to our posterity _How sped the Rebels your

fathers?_.... Yet neither shall we obtain or buy at an easy rate

this new gilded yoke which thus transports us. A new Royal Revenue

must be found, a new Episcopal,--for those are individual: both

which, being wholly dissipated or bought by private persons, or

assigned for service done, and especially to the Army, cannot be

recovered without a general detriment and confusion to men's

estates, or a heavy imposition on all men's purses,--benefit to

none but to the worst and ignoblest sort of men, whose hope is to

be either the ministers of Court riot and excess or the gainers by

it. But, not to speak more of losses and extraordinary levies on

our estates, what will then be the revenges and offences remembered

and returned, not only by the Chief Person, but by all his

adherents: accounts and reparations that will be required, suits,

indictments, inquiries, discoveries, complaints,

informations,--who knows against whom or how many, though perhaps

neuters,--if not to utmost infliction, yet to imprisonment, fines,

banishment, or molestation. If not these, yet disfavour,

discountenance, disregard, and contempt on all but the known

Royalist, or whom he favours, will be plenteous. Nor let the

new-royalized Presbyterians persuade themselves that their old

doings, though, now recanted, will be forgotten, whatever

conditions be contrived or trusted on. Will they not believe this,

nor remember the Pacification how it was kept to the Scots, how

other solemn promises many a time to us? Let them but now read the

diabolical forerunning libels, the faces, the gestures, that now

appear foremost and briskest in all public places as the harbingers

of those that are in expectation to reign over us; let them but

hear the insolencies, the menaces, the insultings of our newly

animated common enemies, crept lately out of their holes, their

Hell I might say, by the language of their infernal pamphlets, the

spew of every drunkard, every ribald: nameless, yet not for want of

licence, but for very shame of their own vile persons; not daring

to name themselves while they traduce others by name, and give us

to foresee that they intend to second their wicked words, if ever

they have power, with more wicked deeds. Let our zealous

backsliders [the Presbyterians] forethink now with themselves how

_their_ necks, yoked with these tigers of Bacchus,--these new

fanatics of not the preaching but the sweating tub, inspired with

nothing holier than the venereal pox,--can draw one way, under

Monarchy, to the establishing of Church-Discipline with these

new-disgorged Atheisms. Yet shall they not have the honour to yoke

with these, but shall be yoked under them: these shall plough on

_their_ backs. And do they among them who are so forward to

bring in the Single Person think to be by him trusted or long

regarded? So trusted they shall be and so regarded as by Kings are

wont reconciled enemies,--neglected and soon after discarded, if

not prosecuted for old traitors, the first inciters, beginners, and

more than to the third part actors, of all that followed."

Milton, does not deny that the vast majority of the nation desire the

restoration of the King. He admits the fact and scouts it. He asserts

that by "the trial of just battle" the larger part of the population

of England long ago "lost the right of their election what the form

of Government shall be," and that, if even a majority of the rest

would now vote for Kingship, their wishes must go for nothing. "Is it

just or reasonable that most voices, against the main end of

Government, should enslave the less number that would be free? More

just it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel

a greater to retain (which can be no wrong to them) their liberty

than that a greater number, for the pleasure of their baseness,

compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow-slaves." When he

wrote this, he must have known well enough that he was writing in

vain. He confesses as much in his peroration. He confesses it there

even by that single modification of the language which might seem at

first sight the only sign of prudential concession and anticipation

of personal consequences throughout the whole pamphlet. In citing the

prophecy of Jeremiah he omits the passage exulting in God's decree of

exile against Coniah and his seed for ever (ante p. 654-655). But

this is no prudential concession, no softening down in anticipation

that the passage might be produced against him. Of that state of

mind, of any fear of consequences whatever, there is not a trace

throughout the recast of his pamphlet. He is defying and daring the

worst, and has thrown in already every possible addition of matter of

insult to the coming Charles. He omits the passage about Coniah

precisely because its application to Charles is unfortunately no

longer possible; and the peroration for the rest is modified by the

sorrow that so it should be. He will exhort against the Restoration

to his latest breath; but he is looking across the Restoration now,

and sending his words on to an unknown posterity.

"What I have spoken is the language of that which is not called

amiss _The Good Old Cause_: if it seem strange to any, it will

not seem more strange, I hope, than convincing to backsliders. Thus

much I should perhaps have said though I were sure I should have

spoken only to trees and stones, and had none to cry to but, with

the Prophet, _O Earth, Earth, Earth!_, to tell the very soil

itself what her perverse inhabitants are deaf to. Nay, though what

I have spoken should happen (which Thou suffer not who didst create

Mankind free, nor Thou next who didst redeem us from being servants

of men!) to be the last words of our expiring Liberty. But I trust

I shall have spoken persuasion to abundance of sensible and

ingenuous men,--to some perhaps whom God may raise up of these

stones to become children of reviving Liberty, and may reclaim,

though they seem now choosing them a Captain back for Egypt, to

bethink themselves a little and consider whither they are rushing;

to exhort this torrent also of the people not to be so impetuous,

but to keep their due channel; and, at length recovering and

uniting their better resolutions, now that they see already how

open and unbounded the insolence and rage is of our common enemies,

to stay these ruinous proceedings, justly and timely fearing to

what a precipice of destruction the deluge of this epidemic madness

would hurry us, through the general defection of a misguided and

abused multitude."

To exhort a torrent! The very mixture and hurry of the metaphors In

Milton's mind are a reflex of the facts around him. Current, torrent,

rush, rapid, avalanche, deluge hurrying to a precipice: mix and

jumble such figures as we may, we but express more accurately the mad

haste which London and all England were making in the end of April

1660 to bring Charles over from the Continent. Of the only important

relic of opposition, the Republicanism of the Army, and how that had

been already managed by Monk, and was still being managed by him, we

have taken account. Its dying effort, as we saw, took the form of

Lambert's escape from the Tower on the 9th of April, and his thirteen

days of wild wandering and skulking on the chance of bringing the

dispersed remains of Republicanism to a rendezvous. That was over on

Easter-Sunday, April 22, when Dick Ingoldsby, with flushed face, and

pistol in hand, collared the fugitive Lambert on his horse in a field

near Daventry, and brought him back, with others, to his prison in

the Tower. Strange that it should have been Lambert after all that

Milton found maintaining last by arms the cause which he was himself

maintaining last by the pen. Lambert was the Republican he least

liked, hardly indeed a genuine Republican at all, though driven to a

desperate attempt for Republicanism as his final shift, So it had

happened, however. Milton and Lambert may be remembered together as

the last opponents of the avalanche. Lambert had fronted it with a

small rapier; Milton had wrestled with it in a grand exhortation.[1]

[Footnote 1: As the date of the second edition of Milton's _Ready

and Easy Way_ is a matter of real interest, it may be well to note

here the evidence on the point furnished by the extracts that have

been made. In the second extract the phrase "_What can this last

Parliament expect, who, having revived lately and published the

Covenant &c.?_" seems distinctly to certify that Milton was

writing after the 16th of March, when the Parliament of the Secluded

Members had dissolved itself. The first extract, giving the new and

enlarged form of the opening paragraph, farther indicates that, while

Milton was writing, the country was in the midst of the elections for

the new "free and full" Parliament which had been called,--i.e. what

is now known as The Convention Parliament. He thinks that his

pamphlet, as modified, "_may now be of much more use and

concernment to be freely published in the midst of our elections to a

Free Parliament or their sitting to consider freely of the

Government_." Now, the elections went on from the end of March to

about the 20th of April, and Milton's words almost imply that he

expected them to be pretty well advanced before his second edition

was in circulation, so that the effect of that new edition, if it had

any, would rather be on the Parliament itself after its meeting on

April 25. The passages referring to Harrington, and which seem to

imply that Milton had read the _Censure of the Rota_ on his

first edition, would also bring the second edition into the month of

April, inasmuch as the _Censure_ was not out till March 30.

Finally, the whole tone of the added passages implies, as we have

already said, that Milton was at least a month farther down the

stream towards the Restoration than when the first edition appeared,

and the fact that in this second edition he utterly cancels and

withdraws the small lingering of faith in Monk which he had expressed

in his _Notes to Dr. Griffith's Sermon_ seems more particularly

to certify that those _Notes_ preceded the new edition of the

_Ready and Easy Way_ by a week or more. On the whole, I do not

think I am wrong in regarding the new edition as Milton's very last

performance before the Restoration, and in dating it somewhere

between April 9, the day of Lambert's escape from the Tower, and

April 24, when Lambert was brought back a prisoner to London and the

members of the Convention Parliament were already gathered in town.

As Thomason's copy of the first edition is marked "March 3," this

would make the interval between the two editions about a month and a

half.]

The wrestlings now were ended. All that remained for the blind Samson

was to listen, with bowed head, to the renewed burst of Philistine

hissings, howlings, and execrations, against him, before they would

let him retire. It came from all quarters; but at least two persons

stepped out from the crowd to convert the mere inarticulate uproar

into distinct invective and insult.

"_No Blinde Guides: in answer to a seditious Pamphlet of J.

Milton's entituled 'Brief Notes on a late Sermon, &c.' Addressed to

the Author_.--'If the Blinde lead the Blinde, both shall fall into

the ditch.'--_London, Printed for Henry Brome, April_ 20, 1660."

This was the title of a tract, of fourteen small quarto pages, which

was out on April 25. The author does not give his name; but he was

Roger L'Estrange, the Royalist pamphleteer.[1] The following

specimen will represent the rest:--

[Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. III. 712. The date of the actual appearance

of the tract is from the Thamason copy.]

"Mr. Milton,

"Although in your life and doctrine you have resolved one great

question, by evidencing that devils may indue human shapes and

proving yourself even to your own wife an incubus, you have yet

started another; and that is whether you are not of that regiment

which carried the herd of swine headlong into the sea, and moved

the people to beseech Jesus to depart out of their coasts.

(_This_ may be very well imagined from your suitable practices

_here_.) Is it possible to read your _Proposals of the

benefits of a Free State_ without reflecting upon your tutor's

'All this will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me'?

Come, come, Sir: lay the Devil aside; do not proceed with so much

malice and against knowledge. Act like a man, that a good Christian

may not be afraid to pray for you. Was it not you that scribbled a

justification of the murder of the King against Salmasius, and made

it good too thus: that murder was an action meritorious compared

with your superior wickedness? 'Tis there (as I remember) that you

commonplace yourself into set forms of railing, two pages thick;

and, lest your infamy should not extend itself enough within the

course and usage of your mother-tongue, the thing is dressed up in

a travelling garb and language, to blast the English nation to the

universe, and give every man a horror for mankind when he considers

_you_ are of the race. In this you are above all others; but

in your _Eikonoklastes_ you exceed yourself. There, not

content to see that sacred head divided from the body, your

piercing malice enters into the private agonies of his struggling

soul, with a blasphemous insolence invading the prerogative of God

himself (omniscience), and by deductions most unchristian and

illogical aspersing his last pieties (the almost certain

inspirations of the Holy Spirit) with juggle and prevarication. Nor

are the words ill-fitted to the matter, the bold design being

suited with a conform irreverence of language. But I do not love to

rake long in a puddle. To take a view in particular of all your

factious labours would cost more time than I am willing to afford

them. Wherefore I shall stride over all the rest and pass directly

to your _Brief Notes upon a late Sermon_ ... Any man that can

but read your title may understand your drift, and that you charge

the royal interest and party through the Doctor's sides. I am not

bold enough to be his champion in all particulars, nor yet so rude

as to take an office most properly to him belonging out of his

hand. Let him acquit himself in what concerns the divine; and I'll

adventure upon the most material parts of the rest." [Extracts from

Milton's _Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon_ follow, with brief

comments, of no interest, and showing no ability.]

Almost immediately there followed "_The Dignity of Kingship

Asserted: in answer to Mr. Milton's 'Ready and Easie Way to establish

a Free Commonwealth.' Proving that Kinqship is both in itself and in

reference to these nations farre the most Excellent Government, and

the returning to our former Loyalty or Obedience thereto is the only

way under God to restore and settle these three once flourishing,

now languishing, broken, and almost ruined nations. By G. S., a Lover

of Loyalty. Humbly Dedicated and Presented to his most Excellent

Majesty Charles the Second, of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland,

true Hereditary King. London, Printed by E.C. for H. Seile, over

against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet-street, and for W. Palmer at

the Palm-Tree over against Fetter-lane end in Fleet Street._ 1660."

It is a duodecimo volume, the dedication to Charles occupying

twenty-one pages, and the main body of the text 177 pages, with a

peroration in thirty-nine additional pages addressed to Monk and his

Officers and to the two Houses of Parliament about to meet, and then

three pages more of concluding address to his Majesty. Though the

author does not give his name, he hints in the course of the volume

that he may "be inquired after and perhaps soon found out." He says

also that his profession "much differs from politics." Hence it may

be doubted whether the conjecture is right which assigns the book to

a George Searle, who had been an original member of the Long

Parliament for Taunton, and had been one of the Secluded. One might

venture rather on the query whether the author may not have been Dr.

Gilbert Sheldon, soon to be Bishop of London and Archbishop of

Canterbury, but for the present waiting with anxiety for the

certainty of Charles's recall, and doing all he could, with other

divines, to hasten it.[1]

[Footnote 1: The Thomason copy gives "May," without any day, as the

date of publication; but I find the book entered in the Stationers'

Registers as early as March 31, 1660. The writing had been then

begun, and the printing of the book had been going on through April.

There is internal evidence that the new Parliament had not met, or

at least that the Restoration was not positively resolved on, when

the book was finished. Both in the dedication and in the peroration,

the parts last written, the event is spoken of as only in near

prospect.--Sheldon, though a man of public distinction in his time,

has left hardly any writings by which his style could be

ascertained. I think the guess worth risking that the present

performance may have been his, if only because the offer of the guess

may lead to its confutation. George Searle is the man proposed by the

bibliographers (see Bohn's _Lowndes_, Art. Milton, and note p.

108 of Todd's Life of Milton, edit. 1852); but I know not on what

authority except that his initials are "G.S." and that he was "a

writer."--As far as I have observed, it was the first edition of

Milton's pamphlet only that G.S. had before him as he wrote.]

Whoever wrote the book must have had a touch of scholarly candour in

his nature. Though there is plenty of abuse of Milton, with the

stereotyped allusions to his Divorce Doctrine and its effects, and

with such occasional phrases as "your wind-mill brain," "the

unpracticableness of these your fanatic state-whimsies," and though

there is abuse also, in the coarse familiar strain, of the Rumpers

and Commonwealths-men generally, and of "Oliver, the copper-nosed

saint," we come upon such passages as the following, appreciative at

least of Milton's literary power:--

"I am not ignorant of the ability of Mr. Milton, whom the Rump

(which was well-stored with men of pregnant though pernicious wits)

made choice of before others to write their _Defence against

Salmasius;_ one of the greatest learned men of this age, both for

reality and reputation."

"... made choice of Mr. Milton to be their champion to answer

Salmasius; who, as may be conceived, not vulgarly rewarded for this

service, undertakes it with as much learning and performance as

could be expected from the most able and acute scholar living:

concerning whose answer thus much must be confessed,--that nothing

could be therein desired which either a shrewd wit could prompt or

a fluent elegant style express. And, indeed, to give him his due,

in whatever he vomited out against his Majesty formerly, or now

declaims against Monarchy in behalf of a Republic, he then did, and

doth now, want nothing on his side but truth."

These are casual expressions in the course of the argumentation with

Milton; and, as there is no need to exhibit the argumentation itself,

a single quotation more will suffice. It is from the Dedication to

Charles II. That, though coming first in the book, was probably

written last, when the writer could exult in the idea that his

Majesty was so soon to land on the British shores, and could have

pleasure in being one of the first to address him ceremoniously and

in public with all his royal titles. Let it be remembered that, by

the introduction of Milton into this Dedication, not only

prominently, but even singly and exclusively, it was as if pains were

taken to remind Charles, just as he was preparing to step into the

ship that was to convey him to England, of the name of that one man

among his subjects who had done more to keep him out, and had

attacked him and his more ferociously, more relentlessly, and more

successfully, than any other living. Suppose that his Majesty,

waiting at Breda, was curious to know already, for certain reasons,

what person, not on the actual list of those who had signed his

father's death-warrant, would be designated to him by universal

opinion at home as the least pardonable traitor; and read this as the

answer of G.S.:--

This detestable, execrable murder, committed by the worst of

parricides, accompanied with the disclaiming of your whole royal

stock, disinheriting your Majesty's self and the rest of the royal

branches, driving you and them into exile, with endeavouring to

expunge and obliterate your never-to-be-forgotten just title;

tearing up and pulling down the pillars of Majesty, the Nobles;

garbling and suspending from the place of power all of the Commons

House that had anything of honesty or relenting of spirit toward

the injured Father of three Nations and his royal posterity: acts

horrible to be imagined, and yet with high hand most villainously,

perfidiously, and perjuriously perpetrated by monsters of mankind,

yet blasphemously dishonourers of God in making use of His name and

usurping the title of Saints in their never-before-paralleled nor

ever-sufficiently-to-be-lamented-and-abhorred villanies:--this

Murder, I say, and these Villainies, were defended, nay extolled

and commended, by one MR. JOHN MILTON, in answer to the most

learned Salmasius, who declaimed against the same with most solid

arguments and pathetical expressions; in which Answer he did so

bespatter the white robes of your Royal Father's spotless life

(human infirmities excepted) with the dirty filth of his satirical

pen that to the vulgar, and those who read his book with prejudice,

he represented him a most debauched, vicious man (I tremble, Royal

Sir, to write it), an irreligious hater and persecutor of Religion

and religious men, an ambitious enslaver of the nation, a bloody

tyrant, and an implacable enemy to all his good subjects; and

thereupon calls that execrable and detestable horrible Murder a

just Execution, and commends it as an heroic action: and, in a

word, whatever was done in prosecution of their malice toward your

Royal Progenitor and his issue, or relations, or friends and

assistants, he calls Restoring of the nation to its Liberty. Yea!

to make your illustrious Father more odious in their eyes where he

by any means could fix his scandals, he would not spare that

incomparable piece of his writing, his _Eikon Basilike_, but

in a scurrilous reply thereto, which he entitled

_Eikonoklastes_, he would not spare his devout prayers (which

no doubt the Lord hath heard and will hear): in all which he

expressed, as his inveterate and causeless malice, so a great deal

of wicked, desperate wit and learning, most unworthily misbestowed,

abused, and misapplied, to the reviling of his Prince, God's

vice-gerent on Earth, and the speaking ill of the Ruler of the

People. Now, although your Majesty, nor your Royal Father, neither

of you, need vindication (much less that elaborate work of his),

nor doth anything he hath written in aspersion of his Sovereign

deserve answer (absolutely considered), yet, forasmuch as he hath

in both showed dangerous wit and wicked learning, which together

with elegance in expression is always (in some measure at least)

persuasive with some, and because in these last and worst days

those dangerous times are come in which many account Treason to be

Saintship, and the madness of the people, like the inundation of

waters, hath for many years overflowed all the bounds, &c ... [The

writer, in continuation, refers to the assiduity of the fanatical

enemies of Charles, still working, though at the end of their wits,

to keep him out.] Among many of whom MR. MILTON comes on the stage

in post haste and in this juncture of time, that he may, if

possible, overthrow the hopes of all good men, and endeavours what

he can to divert those that at present sit at the helm, and by fair

pretences and sophisticate arguments would, &c ... Which I taking

notice of, and meeting with this forementioned pamphlet of MR.

MILTON'S, and upon perusal of it finding it dangerously ensnaring,

the fallacy of the arguments being so cunningly hidden as not to be

discerned by any nor every eye,--observing also the language to be

smooth and tempting, the expressions pathetical and apt to move the

affections, ... I thought it my duty, &c.

Before this salutation of his returning Majesty was visible on the

book-stalls the great event which it anticipated was as good as

accomplished.

The two Houses of Parliament had met on Wednesday, the 25th of April.

There was not only the "full and free" House of Commons for which

writs had been issued, but a House of Lords also, assembled by its

own will and motion. In the Commons, where Sir Harbottle Grimstone

was elected Speaker, there were present over 400 out of the total of

500 and more that were actually due; in the Lords, where the Earl of

Manchester was chosen Speaker _pro tem._, there were present on

the first day only nine peers besides himself: viz. the Earls of

Northumberland, Lincoln, Denbigh, and Suffolk, Viscount Say and Sele,

and Lords Wharton, Hunsdon, Grey of Wark, and Maynard. It was for

these two bodies to execute between them the task appointed.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals and Parl. Hist., for the opening of the

Convention Parliament.]

The meetings of the first three days were but preliminary, and not a

word passed in either House to signify what was coming. On Friday,

the 27th of April, there was an adjournment of both Houses to

Tuesday, the 1st of May. During that breathless interval it was as

when a mine is ready, the gunpowder and other explosives all stored,

the train laid, and what is waited for is the application of the

lighted match. That duty fell to Sir John Greenville, and the mode in

which it should be performed was settled privately between him and

wary Old George.

On Saturday, April 28, the Council of State are met at Whitehall,

Annesley in the chair as usual. Colonel Birch, one of the members,

entering late, informs General Monk that there is a gentleman at the

door who desires to speak with him. Monk goes to the door, finds Sir

John Greenville there, and receives him as a perfect stranger, the

guards looking on. Sir John delivers to him a letter, and tells him

that he does so by command of his Majesty. Monk orders the guards to

detain this gentleman, and returns to the Council-room with the

letter. Having broken the seal, but not opened the letter, he hands

it to the President, intimating from whom it has come. The

superscription itself leaves no doubt on that point. The letter is

one of the six, dated "_At our Court at Breda this 4/14th of April

1660, in the twelfth year of Our Reign_," which Sir John

Greenville had brought over to be used by Monk at his discretion, and

which Monk had given back into Greenville's custody till the proper

moment for using them should arrive. It was that particular one of

the six which was addressed to Monk himself, to be communicated by

him to the Council of State and the Officers of the Army. There was

much surprise in the Council, real or affected, Colonel Birch

protesting that he knew nothing of the business, but had merely

found a gentleman at the door inquiring for General Monk and had

brought in his message to the General. That gentleman was sent for

and asked how he came by the letter. "It was given to me by his

Majesty with his own hand," said Sir John. Altogether the Council

were at a loss how to act; but finally it was agreed that they dared

not read the letter without leave from Parliament. There was some

question of sending Greenville into custody meanwhile; but Monk said

he was a kinsman of his and he would be answerable for his

appearance. In short, this attempt to apply the match in the Council

had not sufficiently succeeded, and Sir John knew that he must be

forthcoming in the two Houses themselves.

Sir John was equal to the occasion. Early in the morning of Tuesday,

the 1st of May, he was at the door of the House of Lords with that

one of the six Letters from Breda which was addressed to their

Lordships. There were now forty-two peers present. By one of these

Greenville sent in his name to Speaker the Earl of Manchester, with

an intimation of the nature of his message. The Earl had no sooner

informed the House who and what were at the door than it was voted

that the Earl should walk down the floor, all present attending him,

to receive his Majesty's letter. Sir John having thus got rid of two

of his documents, presented himself next at the door of the Commons,

to try his chance with a third. He had already conveyed to Speaker

Sir Harbottle Grimstone the fact that he was in attendance with a

letter from his Majesty. He came now at the most fit moment, for the

House had just received a report from the Council of State of what

had happened at the sitting of the Council on the preceding Saturday.

The scene will be best imagined from the record in the Journals of

the House:--"_Tuesday, May the 1st_, 1660. PRAYERS. Mr. Annesley

reports from the Council of State a Letter from the King, unopened,

directed 'To our trusty and well-beloved General Monk, to be

communicated to the President and Council of State, and to the

Officers of the Armies under his command,' being received from the

hands of Sir John Greenville. The House, being informed that Sir

John Greenville, a messenger from the King, was at the door,

_Resolved_, &c. That Sir John Greenville, a messenger from the

King, be called in. He was called in accordingly, and, being at the

bar, after obeisance made, said: 'Mr. Speaker, I am commanded by the

King, my master, to deliver this Letter to You, and he desires that

You will communicate it to the House.' The Letter was directed 'To

Our trusty and well-beloved the Speaker of the House of Commons';

which, after the messenger was withdrawn, was read to the House by

the Speaker." The bold Sir John had now got rid of three of his six

documents. Nay, he had got rid of four; for in each of the three

there had been enclosed a copy of his Majesty's general

_Declaration_, or Letter to "all Our Loving Subjects of what

degree or quality soever." It was for the Parliament to determine

what should be done with this Declaration, as well as with the other

two remaining Letters, one of them addressed to Generals Monk and

Montague for communication to the Fleet, and the other to the Lord

Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of London. The train

had been sufficiently fired already by the delivery of four of the

Breda documents.[1]

[Footnote 1: Lords and Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist. IV.

10-25; Phillips (continuation of Baker), 701-705; Skinner's Life of

Monk, 297-302; Whitlocke, IV. 409-411.]

The explosion was over and the air cleared, and all pretence was at

an end at last. In the Commons, a few minutes after Sir John

Greenville had left the House, it was "RESOLVED, _nemine

contradicente_, That an answer be prepared to his Majesty's

Letter, expressing the great and joyful sense of this House of His

gracious offers, and their humble and hearty thanks to his Majesty

for the same, and with professions of their loyalty and duty to his

Majesty." The Lords had already passed an equivalent resolution, and

had recalled Sir John Greenville to receive their hearty thanks for

his care in the discharge of his duty. The rest of that day was spent

in a conference between the two Houses, and in farther resolutions

and arrangements in each, subsidiary to those two resolutions of the

forenoon which had virtually decreed the Restoration. Thus, in the

Commons, still in the forenoon, "RESOLVED, _nemine

contradicente_, that the sum of £50,000 be presented to the King's

Majesty from this House," and "RESOLVED, _nemine

contradicente_, that the Letters from His Majesty, both that to

the House and that to the Lord General, and his Majesty's Declaration

which came enclosed, be entered at large in the Journal Book of this

House"; and, again, at an afternoon sitting, the conference with the

Lords having meanwhile been held, "RESOLVED, That this House doth

agree with the Lords, and do own and declare that, according to the

ancient and fundamental laws of this kingdom, the Government is, and

ought to be, by King, Lords, and Commons." The news of what was doing

in Parliament was already rushing hither and thither among the

Londoners; the day ended among _them_, of course, with bonfires

and ringing of bells and the roar of rejoicing cannon; in the boom of

the cannon, and in whatever form of rude telegraph or of horsemen at

the gallop along the four great highways, London was shaking the

message from itself in palpitations through all the land; nor among

the galloping horsemen were those the least fleet that were spurring

through Kent to the seaside to unmoor the packet-boats and convey the

tidings to Charles. On the 1st of May, 1660, the English Commonwealth

was no more.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals and Parl. Hist. of dates; Whitlocke,

IV. 411.]

Yet another week for the formalities of its burial. A few of the

leading incidents of that week may be presented in abstract:--

_May_ 2:--Ordered by the Lords "that the statues of the late

King's Majesty be set up again in all the places from whence they

were pulled down, and that the Arms of the Commonwealth be

demolished and taken away wherever they are, and the King's Arms be

put up in their stead." _Same day in the Commons_:--Leave

given to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City

of London, to return an answer to his Majesty's Letter addressed to

them. This was the fifth of the Breda documents. Also leave given

to Dr. Clarges, a member of the House, to go at once to Breda, with

Monk's answer to the letter _he_ had received.

_May_ 3:--Sir John Greenville brought into the House of

Commons to receive thanks, and the information that the House had

voted him £500 to buy a jewel. The Speaker, Sir Harbottle

Grimstone, addressed him as follows:--"Sir John Greenville, I need

not tell you with what grateful and thankful hearts the Commons now

assembled in Parliament have received his Majesty's gracious

Letter. _Res ipsa loquitur_: you yourself have been

_ocularis et auricularis testis de rei veritate_: our bells

and our bonfires have already proclaimed his Majesty's goodness and

our joys. We have told the people that our King, the glory of

England, is coming home again; and they have resounded it back

again in our ears that they are ready, and their hearts open, to

receive him. Both Parliament and People have cried aloud to the

King of Kings in their prayers _Long live King Charles the

Second_." The rest of the speech was compliment to Sir John

himself.

_Same day, in Montague's Fleet in the Downs_:--His Majesty's

letter to Monk and Montague, intended to be communicated to the

Fleet, having been sent by express from Monk, reached Montague that

morning on board his flagship the Naseby. His secretary Pepys

describes what followed: "My Lord summoned a Council of War, and in

the meantime did dictate to me how he would have the vote ordered

which he would have pass this Council. Which done, the Commanders

all came on board, and the Council sat in the coach [Council

cabin], the first Council of War that had been in my time; where I

read the Letter and Declaration; and, while they were discoursing

upon it, I seemed to draw up a vote, which, being offered, they

passed. Not one man seemed to say _No_ to it, though I am

confident many in their hearts were against it. After this was

done, I went up to the quarterdeck with my Lord and the Commanders,

and there read both the papers and the vote; which done, and

demanding their opinion, the seamen did all of them cry out _God

save King Charles_." Pepys then made a circuit of the other

ships with the same great news. "Which was a very brave sight, to

visit all the ships, and to be received with the respect and honour

that I was on board them all, and much more to see the great joy

that I brought to all men, not one through the whole fleet shewing

the least dislike of the business. In the evening, as I was going

on board the Vice-Admiral, the General began to fire his guns,

which he did, all that he had in his ship, and so did all the rest

of the Commanders; which was very gallant, and to hear the bullets

go hissing over our heads as we were in the boat! This done, and

finished my proclamation, I returned to the Naseby, where my Lord

was much pleased to hear how all the fleet took it in a transport

of joy, and shewed me a private letter of the King's to him, and

another from the Duke of York, in such familiar style as their

common friend, with all kindness imaginable. And I found by the

letters, and so my Lord told me too, that there had been many

letters passed between them for a great while, _and I perceive

unknown to Monk_."

_May_ 5. On report from the Council of State, a General

Proclamation adopted by the Commons, with concurrence of the Lords,

forbidding tumults, and instructing all in authority to continue in

their respective offices and exercise the same thenceforth in his

Majesty's name.

_May_ 7. Sir George Booth, Lord Falkland, Mr. Denzil Holles,

Sir John Holland, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Bruce, Sir

Horatio Townshend, Lord Herbert, Lord Castleton, Lord Fairfax, Sir

Henry Cholmley, and Lord Mandeville, chosen by the House of Commons

to be the persons to carry to his Majesty the answer of the House

to his Majesty's gracious Letter. The similar deputation from the

Lords' House was to consist of the Earl of Oxford, the Earl of

Warwick, the Earl of Middlesex, Viscount Hereford, Lord Berkley,

and Lord Brooke. Same day, on receipt from Montague of a copy of

his Majesty's letter addressed to Monk and himself, as Generals of

the Fleet, with news of the reception of the same by the Fleet on

the 3rd, Monk and Montague were authorized to answer that letter.

Thus the sixth and last of the Breda documents was finally disposed

of.--Resolved also that Thursday next should be a day of

thanksgiving in London and Westminster for the happy reconciliation

with his Majesty, and farther, "That all and every the ministers

throughout the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, the

Dominion of Wales, and the Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, do, and are

hereby required and enjoined in their public prayers to, pray for

the King's most excellent Majesty by the name of Our Sovereign

Lord, Charles the Second, by the grace of God King of England,

Scotland, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith."--Resolved

also that the King be proclaimed to-morrow.

_Tuesday, May_ 8. Proclamation of Charles accordingly in

Westminster Hall, and at Whitehall, Temple Bar, Fleet Conduit, the

Exchange, and other places, his reign to date from the death of his

father. Copies of the Proclamation to be sent to all authorities

over Great Britain and Ireland, that it may be repeated everywhere.

Also "RESOLVED, _nemine contradicente_, that the King's

Majesty be desired to make his speedy return to his Parliament and

to the exercise of his Kingly Office."[1]

[Footnote 1: These Notes, except the extract from Pepys, are compiled

from the Commons Journals and the Parliamentary History for the week

between May 1 and May 8, with references to Whitlocke and Phillips.]

And so all was settled between Charles and his Three Kingdoms. By

this time, indeed, not only in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, but all

over the main island from Land's End to Caithness and all over the

lesser from Mizen Head to Malin Head, there was simply a universal

impatience till it should be known that Montague's fleet had shot

from the Downs towards the Dutch coasts, to bring his Majesty and his

Court, on the decks of his own ships, within hail of the cheering

from Dover cliffs. The delay was chiefly because of the necessity of

certain upholstering and tailoring preparations on both sides. At

home there had to be due preparations of a household for his Majesty,

and of households for his two brothers, when they should arrive.

There had to be got ready not only a new crown and sceptre, and new

robes and ermines, but also the velvet bed, with the gold embroidery,

the lining of satin or cloth of silver, the satin quilts, the fustian

quilts to lie under the satin quilts, the down bolster, the fustian

blankets, the Spanish blankets, the Holland sheets, with other

accoutrements for his Majesty's own bedroom, besides similar

furnishing for the bedrooms of the Dukes of York and Gloucester, a

new coach for his Majesty, liveries for his coachmen, footmen, and

other servants, and innumerable etceteras. Then, on the other side of

the water, where his Majesty had meanwhile received with

extraordinary satisfaction, through Sir John Greenville, the £50,000

voted him by the Commons, £10,000 of it in gold from England, and the

rest in bank bills payable at sight in Amsterdam, and where the Duke

of York had been promised another £10,000 and the Duke of Gloucester

£5000, much of the money had to be converted into the apparel and

other equipments required for the suitable appearance of the three

royal personages and their retinues when they should present

themselves in England. A great deal might be done at Breda, where

already there was swarming round his Majesty a miscellany of private

visitors, English, Scottish, and Irish, all anxious to be useful, and

many of them with presents of money. But the final arrangements were

to be at the Hague, the capital of the United Provinces, amid

whatever stately ceremonial of congratulation and farewell the Dutch

Government could now offer in atonement for previous neglect or

indifference. There had been most pressing solicitations, indeed,

from the Spanish authorities of Flanders, that Charles would return

to Brussels and make his arrangements there; Mazarin too had sent a

message at last, begging him to honour France by making Calais his

port of departure; but Charles preferred the Hague. It was at the

Hague, therefore, that the commissioners from the two Houses of

Parliament, with deputations from the City of London and the London

clergy, were to wait upon Charles; it was there that he was to confer

his first large collective batch of English knighthoods, following

the single knighthood conferred conspicuously already on Dr. Clarges

at Breda; and it was thence that there was to be the great

embarkation for Dover.[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 906-910; Pepys's Diary, from the 8th of May

onwards.]

And what meanwhile of the chief Republican criminals at home, whether

the Regicides or the scores of others that might count themselves in

peril for more than mere place or property? Since the 1st of May, or

before, such of them as could, such as were at liberty and had money,

had absconded or been trying to abscond. Of the Regicides and some of

the rest we shall hear enough in due course. For the present let us

attend only to Needham and Milton.

Needham had absconded in good time. It had probably been in the very

beginning of May, if not earlier; for on the 10th of May there was

out in London, in the form of a printed squib, _An Hue and Cry

after Mercurius Politicus_, giving a sketch of his career, and

containing some doggrel verse about his escape, in this style:--

"But, if at Amsterdam you meet

With one that's purblind in the street,

Hawk-nosed, turn up his hair,

And in his ears two holes you'll find;

And, if they are, not pawned behind,

Two rings are hanging there.

"His visage meagre is and long,

His body slender," &c.[1]

[Footnote 1: "_O. Cromwell's Thankes to the Lord General faithfully

presented by Hugh Peters in another Conference, together with an Hue

and Cry after Mercurius Politicus: London, Printed by M.T._"

("1660, May 10" in the Thomason copy).]

Our latest glimpse of Milton is on the 7th of May, the day before the

public proclamation of Charles in London. On that day "John Milton,

of the City of Westminster," transferred to his friend "Cyriack

Skinner, of Lincoln's Inn, Gentleman," a Bond for £400 given by the

Commissioners of the Excise in part security for money which Milton

had invested in their hands. In the deed of conveyance, still extant,

under the words at the end, "_Witness my hand and seal thus_,"

there follows the signature "JOHN MILTON," not in his own hand, but

recognisably in the fine and peculiar hand of that amanuensis to whom

he had dictated the sonnet in memory of his second wife about two

years before. In yet another hand is the date "7th May, 1660"; but

attached, to verify all, is Milton's family-seal of the double-headed

eagle. Milton, we can see, wanted some money for sudden and urgent

occasions, and his friend Cyriack advanced it. Cyriack and others

had, doubtless, been already about him for some days, imploring him

to hide himself, and devising the means; and that very night, or the

next, as we are to fancy, he is conveyed furtively out of his house

in Petty France to some obscure but suitable shelter. The three

children he has parted with, the eldest not yet fourteen years old,

the second not twelve, and the third just eight, are left under what

tendence there may be, hardly knowing what has happened, but

uncertain whether they shall ever again see their strange blind

father. All is dark, and we may drop the curtain.[1]

[Footnote 1: Sotheby's _Ramblings in Elucidation of Milton's

Autograph_, p. 129, and plate after p. 124. The document mentioned

was purchased in Aug. 1858, for £19, by Mr. Monckton Milnes (now

Lord Houghton), apparently under the impression that the signature

was Milton's own.]

CORRIGENDA AND ADDENDA IN VOLS. IV. AND V.

_Vol. IV. pp._ 272-273:--From Mrs. Everett Green's Calendar of

Domestic State Papers for the Third Year of the Commonwealth I learn

that the first meeting of the Council of State for that year was on

Feb. 17, 1650-51, and not on Feb. 19. There had been two meetings

before that of the 19th, and at the first of these Bradshaw had been

re-appointed President.

_Vol. IV. pp._ 416-418 _and_ 423-424:--To Milton's Letter

to the Oldenburg agent Hermann Mylius, translated and commented on

pp. 416-418, and to the story, as told at pp. 423-424, of the

Safeguard for the Count of Oldenburg's subjects obtained from the

English Council of State by the joint exertions of Mylius and Milton,

an interesting addition has turned up in the form of another Latin

letter from Milton to Mylius, preserved "in a collection of

autographs belonging to the Cardinal Bishop-Prince von

Schwartzenberg." A copy was sent by Dr. Goll of Prague to Professor

Alfred Stern of Bern, author of _Milton und Seine Zeit_; and

Professor Stern communicated it to the _Academy_, where it

appeared Oct. 13, 1877. It may be here translated:--"Yesterday, my

most respected Hermann, after you had gone, there came to me a

mandate of the Council, ordering me to compare the Latin copy [of the

Safeguard] with the English, and to take care that they agreed with

each other, and then to send both to Lord Whitlocke and Mr. Neville

for revision; which I did, and at the same time wrote fully to Lord

Whitlocke on the subject of the insertion you wanted made,--namely

that there should be a clause in favour also of the successors and

descendents of his Lordship the Count, and this in the formula which

you yourself suggested: I added moreover the reasons you assigned

why, unless that were done, the business would seem absolutely null.

What happened in the Council in consequence I do not know for

certain, for I was kept at home by yesterday's rain and was not

present. If you write to the President of the Council

[_Concilii_ only in the copy, but one guesses that the word for

'President' has to be inserted], or, better still, if you send one of

your people to Mr. Frost, you may yourself, I believe, hear from

them; or, at all events, you shall know in the evening from me,--your

most devoted JOHN MILTON. Feb. 13, 1651 [i.e. 1651-2]." The letter

accords in every particular with the extract we have given from the

minutes of the Council of State of Feb. 11, and enables us to see how

the Safeguard for the Count of Oldenburg did emerge, in the desired

form at last, in Parliament on Feb. 17. Professor Stern, in his

communication to the _Academy_, adds that the Safeguard is

"printed by J.J. Winkelmann in his _Oldenburgische Friedens und der

benachbarten Oerter Kriegshandlungen_, p. 390, with the

annotation, '_Hoc diploma ex Anglico originali in Latinum verbatim

versum est._ JOANNES MILTONIUS. _Westmonasterii, 17 Febr.,

anno_ 1651-2" ('This diploma is turned verbatim into Latin from

the English original. JOHN MILTON. Westminster, 17 Febr., in the year

1651-2'), I assume, but am not certain, that it is the same as that

mentioned as given in Thurloe, i, 385-6.

_Vol. IV. p._ 560:--For the Earl of Airly, mentioned as one of

the delinquent Scottish noblemen who were fined by Oliver's ordinance

for Scotland of April 12, 1654, substitute the Earl of Ethie. He was

Sir John Carnegie of Ethie, co. Forfar, Lord Lour since 1639, and

created Earl of Ethie in 1647,--which title he exchanged, after the

Restoration, for that of Earl of Northesk.

_Vol. V. p. 227, in connexion with Vol. IV, pp._ 487-494:--A

paper found very recently by Mrs. Everett Green in the Record Office,

and kindly communicated by her to me, in continuation of those for

which I have already acknowledged my obligations to her, enables me

to throw some further light on Milton's friend and correspondent

Andrew Sandelands, and on that scheme of his for utilising the

fir-woods of Scotland in which he sought Milton's assistance. The

paper, which is in the handwriting of Sandelands, is dated "30 June,

1653," i.e. two months and ten days after Cromwell had dissolved the

Rump and begun his Interim Dictatorship; it is addressed "For the

Honor'ble. Sir Gilbert Pickering"--Pickering being then, it would

seem, President of Cromwell's Interim Council of Thirteen (see Vol.

IV. pp, 498-499); and it is headed "_A Brief Narration of my

Transactions concerning some Woods in Scotland_." From this

statement of Sandelands it appears that he had first broached his

scheme of obtaining masts and tar for the English navy from the woods

of Scotland to Cromwell himself in August 1652, and that it was in

consequence of Cromwell's recommendation of the scheme to the Council

of State then in power that the business had been referred to the

Commander-in-chief in Scotland and Sandelands had gone to Scotland

("at my own charge," he says) and had the conferences with

Major-General Dean and Colonel Lilburne described at pp. 490-491 of

Vol. IV. The result had been that detailed written explanation of his

scheme to Lilburne the substance of which has been quoted in the same

pages--"the copy whereof," adds Sandelands, "now remains in Mr.

Thurloe's hands." He means, of course, the copy he had enclosed to

Milton in his letter of Jan. 15, 1652-3, and which Milton had duly

delivered to the Council of State. More had come of the matter than

we knew at that date; for Sandelands proceeds thus in his

statement:--"The Council of State, having received this information

(recommended by the Commander-in-chief), gave order that Colonel

Lilburne should prosecute the design effectually. Upon receipt of

which order, Colonel Lilburne was pleased to employ me to try whether

the Earl of Tullibardine (who had an interest of the third part of

the woods of Abernethy and Glencalvie) would sell his share; which I

did, and brought with me an agreement under his hand that for £221 he

would yield up all his interest in the former woods and all other

be-north Tay, upon condition that the money should be paid before the

25th of March last [1653]; which Colonel Lilburne certified to the

Council of State. But, their greater affairs [the discussions with

Cromwell just before his _coup d'état_] obstructing this design,

neither money nor orders were sent. Therefore I did entreat Colonel

Lilburne to do me that justice to certify my diligence; which he did;

and [having come to London meanwhile] I delivered it to his

Excellency [Cromwell] the 12th of June [a month and three weeks after

the _coup d'état_]; who was pleased immediately after to revive

this motion to the Council of State [Cromwell's Interim Council of

Thirteen], and they to refer it to Mr. Carew [one of the Thirteen].

Since which time I have given my daily attendance at Whitehall,

expecting the event of the business." He ends by soliciting

Pickering, as he had solicited Milton some months before, to bring

the matter to some such conclusion as might reimburse him for his

journey to Scotland and all his care and pains there at his own

charge. From a note appended to the Statement, it appears that the

whole business was referred by Cromwell's Interim Council to a

Committee; but, as we have found Sandelands still in distress and in

want of employment as late as April 1654 (Vol. V. p. 227), his

renewed application can have had but small success.

End of Volume V