"Great grace may be
In a slight gift: all from a friend is precious."

I return you therefore my very best thanks, and pray Heaven to put it in my power to show my devoted appreciation of your merit. There are some pieces of news which I will not keep from you, because I am sure, from your kindness, they will be agreeable to you. The most Serene Grand Duke my master has been pleased to appoint me to the Chair and Lectureship of Humanity in the Florentine Academy, vacant by the death of the very learned Signor Giovanni Doni of Florence. This is a most honourable office, and has always been held by gentlemen and scholars of this country, as by Poliziano, the two Vettori, and the two Adriani, luminaries in the world of letters. Last week, on the death of the Most Serene Prince Lorenzo of Tuscany, uncle of the reigning Grand Duke, I made the funeral oration; when it is published, it shall be my care to send you a copy. I have on hand several works, such as, please God, may lead to a better opinion of me among my learned and kind friends. Signor Valerio Chimentelli has been appointed by his Highness to be Professor of Greek Literature in Pisa, and there are great expectations from him. Signors Frescobaldi, Coltellini, Francini, Galilei, and many others unite in sending you affectionate salutations; and I, as under more obligation to you than any of the others, remain ever yours to command. [No signature, but addressed on the outside, All Illmo. Signor e Pron Osso, Il Signor Giovanni Miltoni, Londra.] [Footnote: The Italian of this letter is printed in the Appendix to Mr. Mitford's Life of Milton prefixed to Pickering's edition of Milton's Works, and was communicated, I believe, by the late Mr. Watts of the British Museum from the original in that collection. It is doubtless the copy which Milton received. Of the Doni mentioned in the letter, as Dati's predecessor in the chair of Belles Lettres at Florence, we had a glimpse Vol. I. p. 746. He died, Mr. Watts says, in Dec. 1647, and left to Dati the charge of publishing his works. Frescobaldi, Coltellini, and Francini are already known (Vol. I. 725-9); the Galilei mentioned is not the great Galileo, who had died in 1642, but his natural son Vincenzo Galilei, also a man of talent.—As we take leave of Dati at this point, for some time at least, I may quote an interesting sentence, respecting one of his intentions in later life, from the notices of him in Salvini's Fasti Consolari dell' Accademia Fiorentina (1717): "He had particularly in view the publication of the letters which he had received from various literary men, such as John Milton, Isaac Vossius, Paganino Gaudenzio, Giovanni Rodio, Valerio Chimentelli, and Nicolas Heinsius: from the last he had a very large number." When he died, Jan. 11, 1675, a few months after Milton, he had not fulfilled this intention; but it is likely, as we have seen (antè, p.655), that there has survived from among his papers only the one letter of Milton to him which Milton himself published. ] Florence, Dec. 4, 1648.

While this letter was on its way to Milton, and possibly before it could have reached him, there had enacted itself, close within his view in High Holborn, that final catastrophe of a great political drama the boom of which was not to stop within the British Islands, but was to be heard in Italy itself and all the foreign world.

CHAPTER III.

THE TWO HOUSES IN THE GRASP OF THE ARMY: FINAL EFFORTS FOR THE KING: PRIDE'S PURGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES—THE KING BROUGHT FROM HURST CASTLE TO WINDSOR: ORDINANCE FOR HIS TRIAL PASSED BY THE COMMONS ALONE: CONSTITUTION OF THE COURT—THE TRIAL IN WESTMINSTER HALL: INCIDENTS OF THE SEVEN SUCCESSIVE DAYS: THE SENTENCE—LAST THREE DAYS OF CHARLES'S LIFE: HIS EXECUTION AND BURIAL.

In taking the King out of the Isle of Wight, and lodging him for a time in the solitary keep of Hurst Castle on the Hampshire coast, the Army had proclaimed their intention of bringing him to public justice, and it was that they might compel this result that they had marched into London with Fairfax at their head. As they desired that the proceedings should be regular, they had resolved that the two Houses of Parliament, or at least one of them, should conduct the business.

THE TWO HOUSES IN THE GRASP OF THE ARMY: THEIR FINAL EFFORTS FOR THE KING: PRIDE'S PURGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

Here was their difficulty. On Dec. 2, 1648, when the Army took possession of London, there were nineteen Peers present in their places in the House of Lords: viz. the Earl of Manchester, as Speaker; the Earls of Pembroke, Rutland, Salisbury, Suffolk, Lincoln, Mulgrave, Middlesex, Stamford, Northumberland, and Nottingham; Viscount Save and Sele; and Lords Howard, Maynard, Dacres, Montague, North, Hunsdon, and Berkeley. From such a body the Army could not hope much. Three or four of them might be reckoned on as thorough-going; but to most a crisis had come which was too terrible. Ah! had they foreseen it six years before, had they then foreseen that their own order and all the pleasantness of their aristocratic lives would go down in the contest to which they were lending themselves, would their choice between the two sides have been the same? To have sat on through those six years, a mere residuary rag of the English Peerage, at variance with the King and the vast majority of their own order; to have figured through the struggle as nominally the superior House, but really the mere ciphers of the Commons; to have had to throw all their aristocratic dignity and all their permissible conservatism at last into the miserable form of partisanship with a despotic Presbyterianism and zeal for the suppression of Sects, Heresies, and Independency:—here was a retrospect for men of rank, men of ambition, men of pride in their pedigrees! And now to have an Army of these Independents, Sectaries, and Heretics, holding them by the throat, and prepared to dictate to them the alternative of their own annihilation or their assent to a deed of horror!—Such being the position of the Lords, how was it with the Commons? In that House about 260 members were still giving attendance, or were at hand to attend when wanted. On the 2nd of December there were 232 in the House. A staunch minority of these were Independents in league with the Army; but the decided majority were men of the Presbyterian party, full of regrets at the failure of the Treaty of Newport, but ready to resume negotiations with the King on the basis of the terms offered him in that Treaty, or indeed now on any other basis on which there could be agreement. Detestation of the Army was, therefore, the ruling feeling in this House too: but the detestation was mingled with dread. With regiments at their doors, with regiments posted here and there on the skirts of the City, all alert against any symptom of a rising of the Presbyterian Londoners, they could not hope now for any chance of seeing the Army overmastered for them by the only means left-popular tumult and a carnage in the streets. All that the Commons could do, therefore, was to be sullen, and offer a passive resistance. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of Dec. 2, 1648; and Records of Divisions in Commons Journals through the previous month. There were thirteen divisions in that month, showing an attendance ranging from 80 to 261.]

It was on Monday the 4th and Tuesday the 5th of December that the attitude which the two Houses meant to take towards the Army was definitely ascertained. On the first of these days, the news of the King's removal to Hurst Castle having meanwhile arrived, there was a fierce debate in the Commons over that act of the Army, the Presbyterians protesting against its "insolency," and at length carrying, by a majority of 136 votes to 102, a Resolution that it had been done "without the knowledge or consent" of the House. On the same day the House proceeded to a debate, continued all through the night, and till nine o'clock next morning, on the results of the Treaty of Newport. The Presbyterian speakers, such as Sir Robert Harley, Sir Benjamin Rudyard, Harbottle Grimstone, Sir Simonds D'Ewes, and Clement Walker, contended that the King's concessions were satisfactory; the negative was maintained by a succession of speakers, among whom were the two Vanes. The Presbyterians, having originally put the question in this form, "Whether the King's Answers to the Propositions of both Houses be satisfactory," did not risk a division on so wide an issue, but thought it more prudent to divide on the previous question, "Whether this question shall now be put." Having carried this in the negative by 144 to 93, they were enabled to shape the question in this likelier form, "That the Answers of the King to the Propositions of both Houses are a ground for the House to proceed upon for the Settlement of the Peace of the Kingdom;" and it was on the question in this form that the debate was protracted through the night of the 4th and into the 5th. The most extraordinary incident of the debate on the 5th was the appearance made by Prynne. He had been a member of the House only a month, having taken his seat for Newport in Cornwall on the 7th of November; and he now came forward, the poor indomitable man, with a speech of vast length and most elaborate composition, in favour of that sovereign whose reign had been to him of all men ruinous and horrible. With his face muffled to hide the scars of his old mutilations by the hangman's knife, he stood up, and, after a touching recitation of all that he had suffered, denounced the Army and its outrages on Parliamentary freedom, expounded his views of Presbyterianism and right constitutional government, and pleaded earnestly for a reconciliation with Charles. His speech, if it was actually delivered as it is printed, must have occupied four or five hours in the delivery; but one must suppose he gave only part of it and reserved the rest for the press. He was heard, he says, with great attention, and had the satisfaction not only of pleasing his own party, but also of making converts. At one time or another during the debate there had been, he says, as many as 340 members present; but many of these had been wearied out by the long night-sitting. Accordingly in the final vote on Tuesday morning there were 129 for the affirmative in the question, and only 83 for the negative: i.e. in a House of 212 there were three-fifths for a reconciliation with the King, and two-fifths for complying with the Army and bringing the King to justice. The concurrence of the Lords with the majority in the Commons was a matter of course. It was given the same day, nem. con., Manchester being in the chair, and only fourteen other Peers present. By way of tempering the whole result as much as possible, a Committee was appointed by the Commons to wait on Fairfax and his officers that afternoon, with a view to "the keeping and preserving a good correspondence" between Parliament and the Army. [Footnote: Commons and Lords Journals of the days named; Clement Walker's Hist, of Indep. Part. II. pp. 28, 29; and Parl. Hist. III. 1147-1239. Of these 92 closely printed columns of the Parl. Hist. 86 are taken up with a reprint of Prynne's speech, as published by himself in the end of Jan. 1648-9. The editor remarks on the fact that, with the exception of Clement Walker, none of the contemporary writers mention Prynne's speech at all. This confirms the supposition that it cannot have been so large in delivery as it is in print. Yet that it must have been very large appears not only from Prynne's own account, but also from who says: "This he held on the affirmative with so many strong and solid reasons, arguments, and precedents both out of Divinity, Law, History, and policy, and with so clear a confutation of the opposite argument, that no man took up the bucklers against him.">[

The Army had their own plan for bringing about a "good correspondence," and they put it in operation on the two following days, Dec. 6 and 7. Not troubling themselves with the Lords—who met for mere form on each of these days (only seven present on the first and eight on the other)—they applied their plan to the Commons. It consisted in what was called PRIDE'S PURGE, the style of which was as follows:—On the morning of the 6th, when the members were going into the House, they found all the entrances blocked by two or three regiments of soldiers, under the command of Colonels Pride, Hewson, and Sir Hardress Waller. Every member, as he came up, was scrutinized by these armed critics, and especially by Colonel Pride, who had a list of names in his hand, and some people about him to point out members he did not know. If a member passed this scrutiny, they let him in; if not, they begged him not to think of taking his place in the House, and, if he persisted, hauled him back, and locked him up in one of the empty law-courts conveniently near. Mr. Prynne, who made a conspicuous resistance, was locked up in this way; Sir Robert Harley, Sir William Waller, Sir Samuel Luke, Sir Robert Pye, General Massey, Clement Walker, Sir Simonds D'Ewes, Sir Benjamin Rudyard, and others and others, including even Nathaniel Fiennes, who had shown momentary weakness, were similarly disposed of; till at length the members who had presented themselves were sifted into two divisions—a goodly band regularly within the House, and forty-one fuming outside as prisoners in the law-courts. Messages passed and repassed between the two divisions, and the House made some faint show of protest and of anxiety for the release of the arrested. Any decided motion to this effect, however, was prevented by a communication to the House from Fairfax and his General Council of Officers. Colonel Axtell and some other officers, being admitted, announced the message verbally, and it was subsequently presented in writing by Colonel Whalley. Under the name of "Humble Proposals and Desires," this paper reminded the House of their former votes for expelling and disabling Denzil Holles, General Massey, and the rest of the Presbyterian Eleven impeached by the Army in 1647, and demanded that these members, irregularly and scandalously re-admitted to their places, should be again excluded and held to trial. It farther demanded that about 90 members, alleged to have been more or less in complicity with the Scots in their late invasion of England, should be disabled; it prayed for an immediate repeal of the Votes on which the Treaty of Newport had proceeded, and of the Vote of the previous day for reliance on that Treaty; and it begged all truly patriotic members to form themselves visibly into a phalanx, apart from the others, that they might be counted and known. In fact, the message not only adopted Pride's rough measure of that day as authorized by the whole Army, but represented it as only a friendly interposition, doing for the House in part what the House must be anxious to do more fully for itself. So the afternoon passed, the forty-one, still remaining in durance, visited by various persons who had Fairfax's or Pride's permission, and especially by Hugh Peters. He took a list of their names, discoursed with them, released Rudyard and Fiennes, and promised the rest that they should be removed to fit quarters for the night in Wallingford House. As night came on, however, and Wallingford House was not available, they were taken, under guard, to a common victualling-house near, jocularly called Hell; and here, some of them walking about, and others stretched on benches and chairs, or on the floor, in two upper rooms, they spent the night "reading and singing psalms to God." Next day there were again requests from the House to Fairfax for their release. It could not be granted; but they were marched through the streets to better accommodation in two inns in the Strand, called the Swan and the King's Head. Meanwhile Pride's watch at the doors of the House had been effectively continued. There were several new arrests on the 7th; many members, not arrested, were forcibly turned back; and many more, among whom was Denzil Holies, kept prudently out of the way. Altogether, the number of the arrested was 47, and that of the excluded 96. It was a purgation quite sufficient for the Army's purpose. This was proved by a vote actually taken in the House on the 7th, after the purgation was complete. "The question being propounded, That the House proceed with the Proposals of the Army," it was carried by 50 to 28 that the question should be put and the Proposals proceeded with. As most of the minority in this division withdrew in consequence, the House was reduced from that moment to just such a tight little Parliamentary body as the Army desired. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of days named; Rushw. VII. 1353-1356; Parl. Hist. III. 1240-1249 (a careful compilation of contemporary accounts).]