his successor.—Article II. provided for the calling of Parliaments of Two Houses once in three years at furthest.—Article III. stipulated for all Parliamentary privileges and the non-exclusion of any of the duly elected members except by judgment of the House of which they might be members.—Article IV., which was much the longest, determined the classes of persons who should be disqualified from being elected or voting in elections. Universally, all Roman Catholics were to be excluded, and all who had abetted the Irish Rebellion. Farther, in England, were to be excluded all who had been engaged in any war against Parliament since Jan. I, 1641-2, unless they had afterwards given "signal testimony" of their good affections, and all who, since the establishment of the Protectorate, had been engaged in any plot or insurrection against it. In Scotland were to be excluded all who had been in arms against the Parliament of England or against that of Scotland before April 1, 1648 (old Malignants and Montrosists), except such as had afterwards given "signal testimony," &c., and also all who, since April 1, 1648, had been in arms against the English Parliament or the Commonwealth (the Hamiltonians of 1648, and the Scottish Royalists of all varieties who had fought for Charles II. in 1650-51), except such as had since March 1, 1651-2, "lived peaceably"—but with the supplementary proviso, required by his Highness, that, while "having lived peaceably" since Worcester would suffice for the miscellaneous Royalists of 1650-51, who were indeed nearly the whole population of Scotland, the less pardonable Hamiltonians of 1648 would have to pass much stricter tests. In Ireland, though Protestants generally were to be qualified, there was to be like caution in admitting such as, though faithful before March 1, 1649-50, had afterwards opposed the Commonwealth or the Protector. These disqualifications affected both voting and eligibility; but eligibility was restricted still farther. Ineligible were to be all atheistic persons, scoffers at Religion, unbelievers in the divine authority of the Bible, or other execrable heretics, all profaners of the Lord's Day, all habitual drunkards or swearers, and all who had married Roman Catholics or allowed their children to marry such. For the rest, all persons of the voting sex, over the age of twenty-one, and "of known integrity, fearing God, and of good conversation," were to be eligible. One farther exception had been made in the original Petition and Advice; to wit, all in holy orders, all ministers or public preachers. "There may be some of us, it may be, who have been a little guilty of that, who would be loath to be excluded from sitting in Parliament," Cromwell had said laughingly while commenting on this clause; and it had accordingly been defined as excluding only regular pastors of congregations. He had procured an important modification of another clause of the same Article. It had been proposed that the business of examining who had been duly elected, and the power of suspending members till the House itself should decide, should be vested in a body of forty-one commissioners to be appointed by Parliament; but, Cromwell having pointed out that this would be a clumsy process, and that the commissioners themselves might be "uncertain persons," and might "keep out good men," it was agreed that the judgment of the House itself, with a fine of L1000 on every unqualified person that might take his seat, would fully answer the purpose.—Article V. related to the Second House of Parliament, called simply "the other House." It was to consist of not more than seventy nor fewer than forty persons, qualified as by the last Article, to be nominated by the Protector and approved by the Commons House, twenty-one to be a quorum, and no proxies allowed. Vacancies were to be filled up by nominations by the Protector, approved by the House itself. The powers of the House were also defined. They were to try no criminal cases whatsoever, unless on an impeachment sent up from the Commons, and only certain specified kinds of civil cases. All their final determinations were to be by the House itself, and not by delegates or Committees.—Article VI. ruled that all other particulars concerning "the calling and holding of Parliaments" should be by law and statute, and that there should be no legislation, or suspension, or abrogation of law, but by Act of Parliament.—Article VII. guaranteed a yearly revenue of L1,300,000, whereof L1,000,000 to be for the Army and Navy, and the remaining L300,000 for the support of the Government, the sums not to be altered without the consent of Parliament, and no part of them to be raised by a land-tax. There might also be "temporary supplies" over and above, to be voted by the Commons; but on no account was his Highness to impose any tax, or require any contribution, by his own authority. By Cromwell's request it was added that his expenditure of the Army and Navy money should be with the advice of his Council, and that accounts should be rendered to Parliament.—Article VIII. settled that his Highness's Privy Council should consist of not more than twenty-one persons, seven a quorum, to be approved by both Houses, and to be irremovable but by the consent of Parliament, though in the intervals of Parliament any of them might be suspended by the Protector. It was asked that the Government should always be with the advice of the Council, and stipulated that, after Cromwell's death, all appointments to the Commandership-in-chief, or to Generalships at land or sea, should be by the future Protectors with consent of the Council.—Article IX. required that the Lord Chancellor, or Lord Keeper, or Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal, the Lord Treasurer or Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, the Judges, and all the great State-officers in England, Scotland, or Ireland, should, in cases of future appointment by the Protector and his Council, be approved by Parliament.—Article X. congratulated the Protector on his Established Church, and begged him to punish, according to law, all open revilers of the same.—Article XI. related to Religion and Toleration. The Protestant Faith, as contained in the Old and New Testaments, and as yet to be formulated in a Confession of Faith to be agreed upon between his Highness and the Parliament, was to be the professed public Religion, and to be universally respected as such; but all believers in the Trinity and in the divine authority of the Scriptures, though they might dissent otherwise in doctrine, worship, or discipline from the Established Church, were to be protected in the exercise of their own religion and worship,—this liberty not to extend to Popery, Prelacy, or the countenancing of blasphemous publications. Ministers and Preachers agreeing in "matters of faith" with "the public profession," though differing in "matters of worship and discipline," were not to be excluded from the Established Church by that difference, but might have "the public maintenance appointed for the ministry" and promotion and employment in the Church according to their abilities. None but those whose difference extended to matters of faith need remain outside the Established Church. Dissenters from the Established Church, if sufficiently right in the faith, were to have equal admission with others to all civil trusts and appointments, subject only to any disqualification for civil office attached to the ministerial profession. His Highness was requested to agree to the repeal of all laws inconsistent with these provisions.—Article XII. required that all past Acts for disestablishing or disendowing the old Prelatic Church, and appropriating the revenues of the same, should hold good.—Article XIII. required that Old Malignants, and other such classes of persons as those disqualified for Parliament in Article IV., should be excluded also from other public trusts.—Article XIV. stipulated that nothing in the Petition and Advice should be construed as implying the dissolution of the present Parliament before such time as his Highness should independently think fit.—Article XV. provided that the Petition and Advice should not be construed as repealing or annulling any Laws or Ordinances already in force, not distinctly incompatible with itself.—Article XVI. protected in a similar way all writs, commissions, grants, law-processes, &c., issued and in operation already, even though the wording should seem a little past date.—Article XVII. and Last requested his Highness to be pleased to take an oath of office. A form of such oath appeared in the Additional Petition and Advice, with another form of oath for his Highness's Councillors in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and a third for the members of either House of Parliament. This last, besides a promise to uphold and promote the true Protestant Religion, contained a special promise of fidelity to the Lord Protector and his Government. Farther, by the same Additional Petition and Advice, the Lord Protector was requested and empowered to issue writs calling qualified persons to the other House in convenient time before the next session of Parliament, and such persons were empowered to meet and constitute the other House at the time and place appointed without requiring farther approbation from the present Single House.[1]

[Footnote 1: The original Petition and Advice is given in full in Scobell (378-383), Whitlocke (IV. 292-301), and in Parl. Hist. (III. 1502-1511); the Additional Petition and Advice in Scobell 450-452, and Whitlocke, IV. 306-310. But see also Cromwell's Speech XIII. with Mr. Carlyle's elucidations (Carlyle, III. 279 et seq.)]

Friday, June 26, 1657, was the last day of the present Single House, and a day of high ceremonial in London. The House, having met as usual in the morning, and transacted some overstanding business, rose about two o'clock to meet his Highness in the Painted Chamber. There, with the words "The Lord Protector doth consent," the Additional Petition and Advice, and therefore the whole new Constitution of the Protectorate, as just described, became law, and assent was given also to a number of Bills that had passed the House since the 9th. Among these was an "Act for convicting, discovering, and repressing of Popish Recusants," an "Act for the Better Observation of the Lord's Day," and an "Act for punishing such persons as live at high rates and have no visible estate, profession, or calling, answerable thereto." There were also two Money Bills for temporary supplies: viz. one for raising L15,000 from Scotland, to go along with the L180,000 from England, and the L20,000 from Ireland, voted for the three months just ended, and another general and prospective one, assessing England at L35,000 a month, Scotland at L6000 a month, and Ireland at L9000 a month, for the next three years. All these assents having been received, there was an adjournment to Westminster Hall for the solemn installation of his Highness in his Second Protectorate.—The Hall had been magnificently prepared, and contained a vast assemblage. The members of the House, the Judges in their robes, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen in their robes, and other dignitaries, were ranged in the midst round, a canopied chair of state. It was the royal chair of Scotland, with the mystic coronation-stone underneath it, brought for the purpose from the Abbey. In front of the chair was a table, covered with pink-coloured Geneva velvet fringed with gold; and on the table lay a large Bible, a sword, the sceptre, and a robe of purple velvet, lined with ermine. His Highness, having entered, attended by his Council, the great state officers, his son Richard, the French Ambassador, the Dutch Ambassador, and "divers of the nobility and other persons of great quality," stood, beside the chair under the canopy. The Speaker, assisted by the Earl of Warwick, Whitlocke, and others, then attired his Highness in the purple velvet robe; after which he delivered to him the richly-gilt Bible, girt him with the sword, and put the gold sceptre into his hand. His Highness then swore the oath of office, administered to him by the Speaker, After that, the Speaker addressed him in a well-turned speech. "You have no new name," he said, "but a new date now added to the old name: the 16th of December is now changed into the 26th of June." He explained that the robe, the Bible, the sword, and the sceptre were presents to his Highness from the Parliament, and dwelt poetically on the significance of each. "What a comely and glorious sight," he concluded, "it is to behold a Lord Protector in a purple robe, with a sceptre in his hand, a sword of justice girt about him, and his eyes fixed upon the Bible! Long may you prosperously enjoy them all, to your own comfort, and the comfort of the people of these three Nations!" His Highness still standing, Mr. Manton offered up a prayer. Then, the assemblage giving several great shouts, and the trumpets sounding, his Highness sat down in the chair, still holding the sceptre. Then a herald stood up aloft, and signalled for three trumpet-blasts, at the end of which, by authority of Parliament, he proclaimed the Protector. There were new trumpet-blasts, loud hurrahs through the Hall, and cries of "God save the Lord Protector." Once more there was proclamation, and once more a burst of applauses. Then, all being ended, his Highness, with his robe borne up by several young persons of rank, passed with his retinue from the Hall by the great gate, where his coach was in waiting. And so, with the Earl of Warwick seated opposite to him in the coach, his son Richard and Whitlocke on one side, and Viscount Lisle and Admiral Montague on the other, he was driven through the crowd to Whitehall, surrounded by his life-guards, and followed by the Lord Mayor and other dignitaries in their coaches.—There was a brief sitting of the House after the Installation. It was agreed to recommend to his Highness to "encourage Christian endeavours for uniting the Protestant Churches abroad," and also to recommend to him to take some effectual course "for reforming the government of the Inns of Court, and likewise for placing of godly and able ministers there"; and it was ordered that the Acts passed by the House should be printed collectively, and that every member should have a copy. Then, according to one of the Acts to which his Highness had that day assented, the House adjourned itself for seven months, i.e. to Jan. 20, 1657-8.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of June 26, 1657; Parl. Hist. III. 1514-1518 (Reprint of the authorized contemporary account of the Installation-Ceremony, which had a frontispiece by Hollar); Whitlocke, IV. 303-305; Guizot's Cromwell, II. 337-339 (where some of the particulars of the Installation seem to be from French eye-witnesses).]



CHAPTER II.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 1: Pro Se Def. (1655).]

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

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

[Footnote 1: Long ago, foreseeing the interest I should have in ULAC, I made notes in the State-Paper Office of some documents appertaining to him when he was a Bookseller in London. They do not quite correspond with Ulac's account of his reasons for leaving London. The documents, here arranged in what seems to be their chronological order, are as follows:—(1) Petition of Ulac, undated, to Sir John Lambe, Dean of the Arches, that he would intercede with Laud in Ulac's favour. His two years' licence for importing hooks is now almost expired; but many of the Greek books he had bought from the Royal Printers are still on his hands unsold, besides the whole impression of a Vita Christi which he had also bought from them after the London stationers would not look at it. It would be a great thing for him therefore to have his licence extended for a time; and, if this favour is obtained from his Grace, he promises to do all he can for the importation of learned Greek and Latin books of the kind his Grace likes. (2) Humble Petition to Laud by Richard Whittaker, Humphrey Robinson, George Thomason, and other London Booksellers, dated April 15, 1640, representing to his Grace that, contrary to decree in Star-Chamber, "one Adrian Ulacke, a Hollander, hath now lately imported and landed at the Custom House divers bales or packs of books, printed beyond seas, with purpose to vent them in this kingdom," and praying for the attachment of the said bales and the apprehension of Ulac. (3) Of the same date, Laud's order, or suggestion to the Lord Treasurer to join him in an order, to attach the goods in the Custom House accordingly. (4) Humble Petition of Ulac to Juxon, Bishop of London, of date April 1640, explaining the transaction for which he is in trouble. He had gone to Paris "upon the 5th of Dec. last," and had there sold a great many copies of Theophylact on Paul's Epistles, the Catena Patrum Graecorum in Jobum, Bishop Montague's De Vita Christi, Spelman's British Councils, &c., at the same time buying a number of books to be imported into England. Although these last had been sent off from Paris before January, "yet, by want of ships and winds, they could come no sooner"—i.e. not till after the 13th of April, 1640, when his two years' licence for importing had expired. He humbly beseeches Juxon that he may be allowed to "receive and dispose of the said books so sent freely without any trouble." (5) A note of Laud's, written by his secretary, but signed by himself, as follows:—"Had not the Petitioner offended in a high matter against the State in transporting bullion of the kingdom, I should have been willing to have given time as is here [i.e. in the last document] expressed. However, I desire Sir John Lambe to consider of his Petition, and do further therein as he shall find to be just and fitting, unless he find that the sentence in the Star-Chamber hath disabled him.—W. CANT. Apr. 21, 1640." (6) Humble Petition, undated, of Ulac, now "prisoner in the Fleet," to Sir John Lambe. The prisoner "was, the 24th of May last, censured by the Lords in the High Court of Star-Chamber in L1000 to his Majesty and imprisonment." He is in very great straits, owing above L500 to his Majesty's Printers for books, "much hindered by the deadness of trading," and by the return of many books on his hands. He is "a stranger, without any friends," and unless the fine of L1000 is mitigated "to a very low rate," he will be in "utter ruin and misery." He therefore prays Lambe's good word with Laud.—My only doubt is whether the document I have put here as No. 6, ought not to precede the others: i.e. whether Ulac's offence in the matter of the "bullion," with his fine and imprisonment, was not an affair of older date than his importation of books after time in April 1640, though then remembered against him. All the documents were together in the same bundle in the S. P. 0. when I examined them, and the published Calendars have not yet overtaken them.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A Protector! What's that? 'Tis a stately thing That confesseth itself but the ape of a King; A tragical Caesar acted by a clown, Or a brass farthing stamped with a kind of crown; A bauble that shines, a loud cry without wool; Not Perillus nor Phalaris, but the bull; The echo of Monarchy till it come; The butt-end of a barrel in the shape of a drum; A counterfeit piece that woodenly shows; A golden effigies with a copper nose; The fantastic shadow of a sovereign head; The arms-royal reversed, and disloyal instead; In fine, he is one we may Protector call,— From whom the King of Kings protect us all!"

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

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, III. 75-77, and 110-112; Council Order Book, July 3, 1656. Godwin, whose accuracy can very seldom be impeached, had not turned to the last-cited pages of Thurloe; and hence he leaves the doggrel lines as indubitably Overton's own (Hist. of Commonwealth, IV. 163). Guizot and others simply follow Godwin in this, as in most things else.—That Overton's disaffection was very serious indeed, and that Cromwell had had good reason for his suspicions of him even on the former occasion, appears from the fact that among the Clarendon Papers in the Bodleian there is a draft, in Hyde's hand, of a letter, dated April 1654, either actually sent, or meant to be sent, by Charles II. to Overton. The substance of the letter, as in Mr. Macray's abstract of it for the Calendar of the Clarendon Papers (II. 344), is as follows:—"The King to Col. Ov[erton]. Has received such information of his affection that he does not doubt it, and believes that he abhors those who, after all their pretences for the public, do now manifest that they have wholly intended to satisfy their own ambition. He has it in his power to redeem what he has heretofore done amiss; and the King is very willing to receive such a service as may make him a principal instrument of his restoration, for which whatsoever he or his family shall wish they shall receive, and what he shall promise to any of his friends who may concur with him shall be made good." If this letter was among those found among Overton's papers at Leith (which is not very likely), little wonder that Cromwell would not trust him at large a second time.]

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

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

[Footnote 1: No. 29 in Skinner Transcript (where exact date is given); No. 47 in Printed Collection and in Phillips (where month only is given).]

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

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

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



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

LETTER TO MILTON FROM LEO DE AITZEMA: MILTON'S REPLY: LETTER TO EZEKIEL SPANHEIM AT GENEVA: MILTON'S GENEVESE RECOLLECTIONS AND ACQUAINTANCES: TWO MORE OF MILTON'S LATIN STATE-LETTERS (NOS. LII., LIII.): SMALL AMOUNT OF MILTON'S DESPATCH-WRITING FOR CROMWELL HITHERTO.—REDUCTION OF OFFICIAL SALARIES, AND PROPOSAL TO REDUCE MILTON'S TO L150 A YEAR: ACTUAL COMMUTATION OF HIS L288 A YEAR AT PLEASURE INTO L200 FOR LIFE: ORDERS OF THE PROTECTOR AND COUNCIL RELATING TO THE PIEDMONTESE MASSACRE, MAY 1655: SUDDEN DEMAND ON MILTON'S PEN IN THAT BUSINESS: HIS LETTER OF REMONSTRANCE FROM THE PROTECTOR TO THE DUKE OF SAVOY, WITH TEN OTHER LETTERS TO FOREIGN STATES AND PRINCES ON THE SAME SUBJECT (NOS. LIV.—LXIV.): HIS SONNET ON THE SUBJECT.—PUBLICATION OF THE SUPPLEMENTUM TO MORE'S FIDES PUBLICA: ACCOUNT OF THE SUPPLEMENTUM, WITH EXTRACTS: MILTON'S ANSWER TO THE FIDES PUBLICA AND THE SUPPLEMENTUM TOGETHER IN HIS PRO SE DEFENSIO, AUG. 1655: ACCOUNT OF THAT BOOK, WITH SPECIMENS: MILTON'S DISBELIEF IN MORUS'S DENIALS OF THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE REGII SANGUINIS CLAMOR: HIS REASONS, AND HIS REASSERTIONS OF THE CHARGE IN A MODIFIED FORM: HIS NOTICES OF DR. CRANTZIUS AND ULAC: HIS RENEWED ONSLAUGHTS ON MORUS: HIS REPETITION OF THE BONTIA ACCUSATION AND OTHERS: HIS EXAMINATION OF MORUS'S PRINTED TESTIMONIALS: FEROCITY OF THE BOOK TO THE LAST: ITS EFFECTS ON MORUS.—QUESTION OF THE REAL AUTHORSHIP OF THE REGII SANGUINIS CLAMOR AND OF THE AMOUNT OF MORUS'S CONCERN IN IT: THE DU MOULIN FAMILY: DR. PETER DU MOULIN THE YOUNGER THE REAL AUTHOR OF THE REGII SANGUINIS CLAMOR, BUT MORUS THE ACTIVE EDITOR AND THE WRITER OF THE DEDICATORY EPISTLE: DU MOULIN'S OWN ACCOUNT OF THE WHOLE AFFAIR: HIS CLOSE CONTACT WITH MILTON ALL THE WHILE, AND DREAD OF BEING FOUND OUT.—CALM IN MILTON'S LIFE AFTER THE CESSATION OF THE MORUS-SALMASIUS CONTROVERSY: HOME-LIFE IN PETTY FRANCE: DABBLINGS OF THE TWO NEPHEWS IN LITERATURE: JOHN PHILLIPS'S SATYR AGAINST HYPOCRITES: FREQUENT VISITORS AT PETTY FRANCE: MARVELL, NEEDHAM, CYRIACK SKINNER, &C.: THE VISCOUNTESS RANELAGH, MR. RICHARD JONES, AND THE BOYLE CONNEXION: DR. PETER DU MOULIN IN THAT CONNEXION: MILTON'S PRIVATE SONNET ON HIS BLINDNESS. HIS TWO SONNETS TO CYRIACK SKINNER, AND HIS SONNET TO YOUNG LAWRENCE: EXPLANATION OF THESE FOUR SONNETS.—SCRIPTUM DOMINI PROTECTORIS CONTRA HISPANOS: THIRTEEN MORE LATIN STATE-LETTERS OF MILTON FOR THE PROTECTOR (NOS. LXV.—LXXVII.), WITH SPECIAL ACCOUNT OF COUNT BUNDT AND THE SWEDISH EMBASSY IN LONDON: COUNT BUNDT AND MR. MILTON.—INCREASE OF LIGHT LITERATURE IN LONDON: EROTIC PUBLICATIONS: JOHN PHILLIPS IN TROUBLE FOR SUCH: EDWARD PHILLIPS'S LONDON EDITION OF THE POEMS OF DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN: MILTON'S COGNISANCE OF THE SAME.—HENRY OLDENBURG AND MR. RICHARD JONES AT OXFORD: LETTERS OF MILTON TO JONES AND OLDENBURG.—THIRTEEN MORE STATE-LETTERS OF THE MILTON SERIES (NOS. LXXVIII.—XC.): IMPORTANCE OF SOME OF THEM.

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

[Footnote 1: See Article Aitzema in Bayle's Dictionary.]

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

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

"Your very obedient

"LEO AITZEMA[1]

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

[Footnote 1: Communicated by the late Mr. Thomas Watts of the British Museum, and published by the late Rev. John Mitford in Appendix to Life of Milton prefixed to Pickering's Edition of Milton's Works (1851).]

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

TO LEO VAN AITZEMA.

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

Westminster: Feb. 5, 1654-5.[1]

[Footnote 1: Epist. Fam. 16.]

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

[Footnote 1: Bayle, both in Article Spanheim and in Article Morus.]

TO EZEKIEL SPANHEIM OF GENEVA.

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

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

Westminster: March 24, 1654-5.[1]

[Footnote 1: Epist. Fam. 17.]

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

[Footnote 1: For mention of Jean Louis Calandrin, the Genevese merchant, see Letters between Pell and Thurloe in Vaughan's Protectorate (I. 302, 308, 354). He died at Geneva, in Feb. 1655-6, about a year after this mention of him by Milton. It is possible he may have been a relative of a "Caesar Calandrinus" mentioned by Wood as one of the many foreigners who had studied at Exeter College, Oxford, during the Rectorship of Dr. Prideaux (1612-1641), and who was afterwards "a Puritanical Theologist," intimate with Usher, a Rector in Essex, and finally minister of the parish of Peter le Poor in London, where he died in 1665, leaving a son named John. Wood speaks of him as a German (Wood, Ath. III. 269, and Fasti, I. 393-4); but the name is evidently Italian. Indeed I find that there had been an intermarriage in Italy between the Diodati family and a family of Calandrinis, bringing some of the Calandrinis also to Geneva about the year 1575. (Reprint, for private circulation, of a Paper on the Italian ancestry of Mr. William Diodate of New Haven, U.S., read before the New Haven Colony Historical Society, June 28, 1875, by Edward E. Salisbury, p. 13). By the kindness of Colonel Chester, whose genealogical researches are all-inclusive, I have a copy of the will of the above-named Caesar Calandrini of St. Peter le Poor, London. It is dated Aug. 4, 1665, when he was "three score and ten," and mentions two sons, Lewis and John, two daughters living, one of them married to a Giles Archer, and grandchildren by these children, besides nephews and nieces of the names of Papillon and Burlamachi. The son "John" in this will proved it in October 1665, and cannot have been the Calandrini of Milton's letter; but that Calandrini may have been of the same connexion.]

[Footnote 2: Bayle, Art. Francois Turretin.]

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

(LII.) TO THE PRINCE OF TARENTE, April 4, 1655[1]:—This Prince, one of the chiefs of the French nobility, but connected with Germany by marriage, was a Protestant by education, had been mixed up with the wars of the Fronde, and was altogether a very stirring man abroad. He had written to Cromwell invoking his interest in behalf of foreign, and especially of French, Protestantism. Cromwell expresses his satisfaction in having had such an address from so eminent a representative of the Reformed faith in a kingdom in which so many have lapsed from it, and declares that nothing would please him more than "to be able to promote the enlargement, the safety, or, what is most important, the peace, of the Reformed Church." Meanwhile he exhorts the Prince to be himself firm and faithful to his creed to the very last.—The Prince of Tarente, it may be mentioned, had interested himself much in the lawsuit between Morus and Salmasius. He had tried to act as mediator and induce Morus to withdraw his action—a condescension which Morus acknowledges, though he felt himself obliged, he says, to go on.

[Footnote 1: No. 32 in Skinner Transcript (which gives the exact date); also in Printed Collection and in Phillips.]

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

[Footnote 1: Undated in Printed Collection and in Phillips; dated "Aug. 1658" in the Skinner Transcript, but surely by mistake. Such a letter can hardly have been sent to the Archduke after Oct. 1655, when the war with Spain broke out. I have inserted it at this point by conjecture only, and may be wrong.]

In April 1655, when these two letters were written, Oliver was in the sixteenth month of his Protectorship. His first nine months of personal sovereignty without a Parliament, and his next four months and a half of unsatisfactory experience with his First Parliaments were left behind, and he had advanced two months and more into his period of compulsory Arbitrariness, when he had to govern, with the help of his Council only, by any means he could. Count all the Latin State-Letters registered by Milton himself as having been written by him for Cromwell during those first fifteen months and more of the Protectorate, and they number only nine (Nos. XLV.-XLVIII in Vol. IV. pp. 635-636, and Nos. XLIX.-LIII. in the present volume). These nine Letters, with the completion and publication of his Defensio Secunda, and now the preparation of a Reply to More's Fides Publica, and also perhaps occasional calls at Thurloe's office and occasional presences at interviews with ambassadors and envoys in Whitehall, were all he had been doing for fifteen months for his salary of L288 a year. The fact cannot have escaped notice. He had himself called attention to it, as if by anticipation, in that passage of his Defensio Secunda in which he spoke of the kind indulgence of the State-authorities in retaining him honourably in full office, and not abridging his emoluments on account of his disability by blindness. The passage may have touched Cromwell and some of the Councillors, and there was doubtless a general feeling among them of the worth, beyond estimate in money, of Milton's name to the Commonwealth, and of his past acts of literary championship for her. Economy, however, is a virtue easily recommended to statesmen by any pinch of necessity, and it so chanced that at the very time we have now reached, April 1655, the Protector and his Council, being in money straits, were in a very economical mood (see ante p. 35). Here, accordingly, is what we find in the Council Order Books under date April 17, 1655.

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

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

"Ordered:—

"That the salary of L400 per annum granted to MR. GUALTER FROST as Treasurer for the Council's Contingencies be reduced to L300 per annum, and be continued to be paid after that proportion till further order.

"That the former yearly salary of MR. JOHN MILTON, of L288, &c., formerly charged on the Council's Contingencies, be reduced to L150 per annum, and paid to him during his life out of his Highness's Exchequer.

"That the yearly salaries hereafter mentioned, being formerly paid out of the Council's Contingencies,—that is to say L45 12s. 6d. per annum to Mr. Henry Giffard, Mr. Gualter Frost's assistant,—per annum to Mr. John Hall,—per annum to Mr. Marchamont Needham,—per annum to Mr. George Vaux, the house-keeper at Whitehall,—per annum for the rent of Sir Abraham Williams's house [for the entertainment of Ambassadors], and—per annum to M. Rene Angler,—be for the future retrenched and taken away.

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

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

* * * * *

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

"To John Thurloe, Esq., Secretary of State:—For his own office, after the proportion of L800 per annum; for the office of Mr. Philip Meadows, Secretary for the Latin Tongue, after the rate of L200 per annum; for the salaries of—clerks attending his [Thurloe's] office at 6s. 8d. per diem, a piece (which together amount to——); for the salaries of eleven messengers at 5s. per diem, apiece (which together amount to L1003 15s.): amounting in the whole to ——

"To Mr. Henry Scobell and Mr. William Jessop, Clerks to the Council, or to either of them:—For their own offices, viz. Mr. Scobell L500 per annum, Mr. Jessop L500 per annum; for the salaries of—clerks attending their office at 6s. 8d. per diem (which together amount to ——): amounting in the whole to ——

"To Mr, Edward Dendy, Serjeant at Arms attending the Council:—For his own office after the proportion of L365 per annum; for the salaries of his ten deputies at 3s. 4d. per diem a piece (which together amount to L608 6s. 8d.); amounting in the whole to L973 6 8

"To Richard Scutt, Usher of the Council Chamber:—For himself and his assistants at 13s. per diem, (being L237 5s, per annum); for Thomas Bennett's salary, keeper of the back-door of the Council Chamber, at 4s. per diem (being L73 per annum); for the salary of Robert Stebbin, fire-maker to the clerks, at 2s. per diem (being L36 10s. per annum): amounting in the whole to L346 15 0

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

"To Richard Nutt, master of his Highness's barge:—For his own office after L80 per annum; for Thomas Washborne, his assistant, for his salary, after L20 per annum; for the salaries of 25 watermen to attend his Highness's barge, at L4 per annum to each (amounting together to L100 per annum): amounting in the whole to L200 per ann.

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

Clearly the Council were in a mood of economy. Not only were certain salaries to be reduced, but a good many outlays were to be stopped altogether, including Needham's subsidy or pension for his journalistic services. But more appears from the document. In spite of the general tendency to retrenchment, the salaries of Scobell and Jessop, the two clerks of the Council, are to be raised from L365 a year to L500 a year. This alone would suggest that not retrenchment only, but an improvement also in the system of the Council's business, was intended. The document as a whole confirms that idea. It maps out the service of the Council more definitely than hitherto into departments. Thurloe, of course, is general head, styled now "Secretary of State"; but it will be observed that the department of Foreign Affairs, including the management of Intelligence from abroad, is spoken of as now wholly and especially his, and that Meadows, with the designation of "Secretary for the Latin Tongue," ranks distinctly under him in that department. Scobell and Jessop, as "Clerks to the Council," though under Thurloe too, are now important enough to be jointly at the head of a separate staff; the Bailiff or Constable department is separate from theirs, and under the charge of Mr. Sergeant-at-Arms Dendy; and minor divisions of service, nameable as Ushership and Barge-attendance, are under the charge of Messrs. Scutt and Nutt respectively. The payments of salaries are henceforward not to be vaguely through Mr. Gualter Frost, as Treasurer for the Council's Contingencies, but by warrants to the Treasury to pay regularly to the several heads the definite sums-total in their departments, their own salaries included.

Milton's case was evidently treated as a peculiar one. It was certainly proposed that his allowance should be reduced from L288 18s. 6d. a year, which had hitherto been its rate, to L150 a year—i.e. by nearly one half. Most of us perhaps are disappointed by this, and would have preferred to hear that Milton's allowance had been doubled or tripled under the Protectorate,—made equal, say, to Thurloe's. Records must stand as they are, however, and must be construed coolly. Milton's L288 a year for his lighter and more occasional duties had doubtless been all along in fair proportion to the elder Frost's L600 a year, or Thurloe's L800, for their more vast and miscellaneous drudgery. Nor, if Milton had ceased to be able to perform the duties, and another salaried officer had been required in consequence, was there anything extraordinary, in a time of general revision of salaries, that the fact should come into consideration. The question was precisely as if now a high official under government, who had been in receipt of a salary of over L1000 a year, was struggling on in blindness after six years of service, and an extra officer at L700 a year had been for some time employed for his relief. In such a case, the official being a man of great public celebrity and having rendered extraordinary services in his post, would not superannuation on a pension or retiring-allowance be considered the proper course? But this was exactly the course proposed in Milton's case. The reduction from L288 to L150 a year was, it ought to be noted, only part of the proposition; for, whereas the L288 a year had been at the Council's pleasure, it was now proposed that the L150 a year should be for life. In short, what was proposed was the conversion of a terminable salary of L288 a year, payable out of the Council's contingencies, into a life-pension of L150 a year, payable out of the Protector's Exchequer: which was as if in a corresponding modern case a terminable salary of over L1000 a year were converted into a life-pension of between L500 and L600. On studying the document, I have no doubt that the intention was to relieve Milton from that moment from all duty whatsoever, putting an end to that anomalous Latin Secretaryship Extraordinary, into which his connexion with the Council had shaped itself since his blindness, and remitting him, as Ex-Secretary Milton, a perfectly free and highly-honoured man, to pensioned leisure in his house in Petty France. For it is impossible that the Council could have intended to retain. Milton in any way in the working Secretaryship at a reduced salary of L150 a year while Meadows, his former assistant, had the title of "Secretary for the Latin Tongue," with a higher salary of L200 a year. Perhaps one may detect Thurloe's notions of official symmetry in the proposed change. Milton's Latin Secretaryship Extraordinary or Foreign Secretaryship Extraordinary may have begun to seem to Thurloe an excrescence upon his own general Secretaryship of State, and he may have desired that Milton should retire altogether, and leave the Latin Secretaryship complete to Meadows as his own special subordinate in the foreign department.

The document, however, we have to add farther, though it purports to be an Order of Council, did not actually or fully take effect. I find, for example, that Needham's pension or subsidy of L100 a year, which is one of the outlays the document proposed to "retrench and take away," did not suffer a whit. He went on drawing his salary, sometimes quarterly and sometimes half-yearly, just as before, and precisely in the same form, viz. by warrant from President Lawrence and six others of the Council to Mr. Frost to pay Mr. Needham so much out of the Council's Contingencies. Thus on May 24, 1655, or five weeks after the date of the present Order, there was a warrant to Frost to pay Needham L50, "being for half a year's salary due unto him from the 15th of Nov. last to the 15th of this instant May"; and the subsequent series of warrants in Needham's favour is complete to the end of the Protectorate.[1] Again, Mr. George Vaux, whom our present order seems to discharge from his house-keepership of Whitehall, is found alive in that post and in receipt of his salary of L150 a year for it to as late as Oct. 1659.[2] There must, therefore, have been a reconsideration of the Order by the Council, or between the Council and the Protector, with modifications of the several proposals. The proposal to raise the salaries of Scobell and Jessop from L365 a year to L500 a year each must, indeed, have been made good,—for Scobell and Jessop's successor in the colleagueship to Scobell are found afterwards in receipt of L500 a year.[3] But, on the same evidence, we have to conclude that the reductions proposed in the cases of Mr. Gualter Frost and Milton were not confirmed, or were confirmed only partially. Frost is found afterwards distinctly in receipt of L365 a year,[4] The actual reduction, in his case, therefore, was not from L400 to L300, as had been proposed, but only from L400 to L365, or back to what his salary had been formerly (Vol. IV. 575-578). Milton again is found at the end of the Protectorate in receipt of L200 a year, and not of L150 only, as had been proposed In the Order.[5] The inference must be, therefore, that there had been a reconsideration and modification of the Order in his case also, ratifying the proposal of a reduction, but diminishing considerably the proposed amount of the reduction. One would like to know to what influence the modification was owing, and how far Cromwell himself may have interfered in the matter. On the whole, while one infers that the reconsideration of the Order generally may have been owing to direct remonstrances from those whom it affected injuriously, such as Frost, Vaux, and Needham, there is little difficulty in seeing what must have happened in Milton's particular. My belief is that he signified, or caused it to be signified, that he had no desire to retire on a life-pension, that it would be much more agreeable to him to continue in active employment for the State, that for certain kinds of such employment he found his blindness less and less a disqualification, that the arrangement as to salary might be as the Council pleased, but that his own suggestion would be that his salary should be reduced to L200, so that he and Mr. Meadows should henceforth be on an equality in that respect. Such, at all events, was the arrangement adopted; and we may now dismiss this whole incident in Milton's biography by saying that, though in April 1655 there was a proposal to superannuate him entirely on a life-pension of L150 a year, the proposal did not take effect, but he went on from that date, just as before, in the Latin Secretaryship Extraordinary, though at the reduced salary of L200 a year instead of his original L288.

[Footnote 1: My notes from the Money Warrant Books of the Council.]

[Footnote 2: Money Warrants of Feb. 15, 1658-9 and Oct. 25, 1659.]

[Footnote 3: Money Warrant of Oct. 25, 1659.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid.]

[Footnote 5: Ibid.]

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

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