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 L50,000 voted him by the Commons, L10,000 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 L10,000 and the Duke of Gloucester L5000, 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 L400 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 L19, 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 L221 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'etat] 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'etat]; 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