"These are to will and require you, out of such moneys as are or shall come into your hands, to pay unto the several persons whose names are endorsed the several sums of money to their names mentioned, making on the whole the sum of Three Thousand Six Hundred Eighty-two Pounds, Eight Shillings, and Six Pence: being so much due to them for their salaries and service to this Council unto the Two-and-twentieth day of this instant October. Hereof you are not to fail; and for so doing this shall be your sufficient warrant. Given at the Council of State at Whitehall this 25th day of October, 1659.
"B. WHITLOCKE, President.
A. JOHNSTON.
JAMES HARRINGTON.
CHARLES FLEETWOOD.
JA. BERRY.
"To GUALTER FROST, Esq.,
"Treasurer for the Council's Contingencies."
"The eighty-six persons to whom the payments are to be made are divided into groups in the Warrant, the particular sum due to each person appended to his name. The first five groups stand thus:—
£ s. d. Richard Deane 234 7 6 "At £500 per annum each Henry Scobell 234 7 6 William Robinson 83 0 0 At £1 per day Richard Kingdon 86 0 0 At £200 per annum each JOHN MILTON 86 12 0 ANDREW MARVELL 86 12 0 Gualter Frost 138 0 10 At 20s. per diem each Matthew Fairbank 139 0 0 Samuel Morland 88 0 0 Edward Dendy 169 0 0 Matthew Lea 56 6 8 At 6s. 8d. per diem each [Clerks] Thomas Lea 56 6 8 William Symon 56 6 8" Then follow the names of twenty-nine persons at 5s. per diem each: viz. Zachary Worth, David Salisbury, Peter Llewellen, Edward Cooke, Richard Stephens, Stephen Montague, Thomas Powell; Henry Symball, Joseph Butler, Thomas Pidcott, Richard Freeman, George Hussey, Roger Read, Edward Osbaldiston, William Feild, Robert Cooke (or his widow), Thomas Blagden, William Ledsom, Edward Cooke; Edward Tytan, Thomas Baker, John Bradley, Nicholas Hill, Anthony Compton, Joshua Leadbetter, Alexander Turner, Thomas Wright, William Geering, and Edward Bridges. The occupations of the first seven are not described, but they were probably under-clerks; the next twelve were "messengers"; the last ten "serjeant deputies" under Dendy as Serjeant-at-Arms. The sums ordered to be paid to them vary from £4 to £42 5s.—Forty-four more persons are added more miscellaneously, with the sums due to them respectively. Among these I may note the following:—"George Vaux, Housekeeper" (£69 9s. 8d.), "Mr. Nutt, the Barge-keeper" (£65), "Mr. Embrey, Surveyor" (£140 12s. 6d.), and "Mr. Kinnereley, Wardrobe-keeper" (£140 12s. 6d.).1
| £ | s. | d. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Richard Deane | 234 | 7 | 6 | |
| "At £500 per annum each | Henry Scobell | 234 | 7 | 6 |
| William Robinson | 83 | 0 | 0 | |
| At £1 per day | Richard Kingdon | 86 | 0 | 0 |
| At £200 per annum each | JOHN MILTON | 86 | 12 | 0 |
| ANDREW MARVELL | 86 | 12 | 0 | |
| Gualter Frost | 138 | 0 | 10 | |
| At 20s. per diem each | Matthew Fairbank | 139 | 0 | 0 |
| Samuel Morland | 88 | 0 | 0 | |
| Edward Dendy | 169 | 0 | 0 | |
| Matthew Lea | 56 | 6 | 8 | |
| At 6s. 8d. per diem each [Clerks] | Thomas Lea | 56 | 6 | 8 |
| William Symon | 56 | 6 | 8" |
1: From Warrant Book in Record Office. On comparing the list of persons in this warrant with that in the extract from the Order Books of Oliver's Council of date April 17, 1655 (pp. 177-179), and with lists in a former Council minute of date Feb. 3, 1653-4, and in a Money Warrant of Oliver of same date (Vol. IV. pp. 575-578), it will be seen that there had been changes in the staff meanwhile. Milton, Scobell, Gualter Frost, Serjeant Dendy, Housekeeper Vaux, Bargemaster Nutt, and about a dozen of the clerks, messengers, and serjeant-deputies remain (one of the former clerks, Matthew Fairbank, now promoted from his original 6s. 8d. a day to 20s. a day); but Thurloe, Jessop, Meadows, two younger Frosts, and a good many others are gone, while new men are Deane, Robinson, Kingdon, Morland, Marvell, and others. Morland, as we know, had been brought in a while ago to assist Thurloe; and his salary, we now see, was larger than Milton's.—When Milton's salary was reduced, in April 1655, it was arranged that it should be a life-pension, and payable out of the Exchequer; but the present warrant Directs payment to him, as to the rest, out of the Council's contingencies. It would seem, therefore, that Oliver's arrangement for him had not taken effect, or had been cancelled by the Rump, and that he was now not a life-pensioner, but once more a mere official at the Council's pleasure.
There is nothing in this warrant to show that Milton's services were transferred to the new Committee of Safety; but the fact seems to be that he did remain nominally in the Latin Secretaryship with Marvell through the whole duration of that body and of the Fleetwood-Lambert rule, i.e. to Dec. 26, 1659. Nominally only it must have been; for we have no trace of any official work of his through the period. There was very little to do for the Government at that time in the way of foreign correspondence, and for what there was Marvell must have sufficed.
Through the months of November and December Milton's thoughts, like those of other people, must have been much occupied with the negotiations going on between the new Government and their formidable opponent in Scotland. What would be the issue? Would Monk persevere in that championship of the ill-treated Rump which he had so boldly undertaken? Would he march into England to restore the Rump, as he had threatened; or would he yet be pacified and induced to accept the Wallingford-House order of things, with a competent share in the power? No one could tell. Lambert was in the north with his army, to beat and drive back Monk if he did attempt to invade England,—at York early in November, and at Newcastle from the 20th of November onwards; Monk was still in Scotland,—at Edinburgh or Dalkeith till the end of November, then at Berwick, but from the beginning of December at Coldstream. Between the two armies agents were passing and repassing; negotiators on the part of the London Government were round about Monk and reasoning with him; Monk's own Commissioners in London had concluded their Treaty of the 15th of November with Fleetwood and the Wallingford-House Council, and there had been rejoicings over what seemed then the happy end of the quarrel; but again the news had come from Scotland that Monk repudiated the agreement made by his Commissioners, and that the negotiation must be resumed at Newcastle. To that the Committee of Safety and the Wallingford-House Council had consented; but, through Monk's delays, the negotiation had not yet been resumed. Would it ever be, or would Monk's army and Lambert's come into clash at last? If so, for which ought one to wish the victory? So far as Milton was concerned, he was bound to wish the success of Monk. Was not Monk the champion of that little Restored Rump to which Milton had himself adhered, and the late suppression of which he had pronounced to be "illegal and scandalous"? Was not Monk also professing and proclaiming that very principle of the proper submission of the military power to the civil on which Milton himself had dilated? Would it not be only God's justice if Lambert, "the secret author and fomenter of these disturbances," should be disgraced and overthrown? Yet, on the other hand, who could desire even that consequence, or the Restoration of the Rump, at the expense of another civil war and bloodshed? Where would the process stop? And, besides, was Monk, with his Presbyterian notions, learnt among the Scots, the man from whose ascendancy Milton could hope anything but farther disappointment in the Church question? All in all, we are to imagine Milton anxious for a reconciliation.
No less interesting to Milton must have been the activity of the new Government meanwhile in their great business of inventing "such a Form of Government as may best suit and comport with a Free State and Commonwealth."——The Rump itself, as we know, had been busy with this problem through the last month of its sittings, having appointed on the 8th of September a great Committee on the subject, with Vane named first, but all the most eminent Rumpers included (ante p. 480). Through this Committee there had been an inburst into the Parliamentary mind, as Ludlow informs us, of the thousand and one competing proposals or models of a Commonwealth already devised by the Harringtonians and other theorists; and, in fact, while the Committee was sitting, there had started up for its assistance, close to the doors of Parliament, the famous Harrington or Rota Club, meeting nightly in Miles's Coffee-house, and including Neville and others of the Rumpers among its most constant members (ante pp. 484-486). That Milton knew already about Harrington and his "models" by sufficient readings of Harrington's books there can be no doubt. In the address to the Rump prefixed to his Considerations touching Hirelings in August last he had distinctly referred to the kind acceptance by the Rump of "new models of a Commonwealth" daily tendered to them in Petitions, and must have had specially in view the Petition of July 6, which had been drawn up by Harrington, and which proposed a constitution of two Parliamentary Houses, one of 300 members, the other much larger, on such a system of rotation as would change each completely every third year (ante pp. 483-484). His only criticism on the competing models then had been that, till his own notion of Church-disestablishment were carried into effect, "no model whatsoever of a Commonwealth, would prove successful or undisturbed." At that time, accordingly, Milton was so engrossed with his Church-disestablishment notion as to be comparatively careless about the general question of the Form of Government. But, two months later, as we have seen, in his Letter on the Ruptures of the Commonwealth occasioned by Lambert's assault on the Rump, he had abandoned this indifference, and had proposed a model Constitution of his own, adapted to the immediate exigencies. From that time, we may now report, though Church-disestablishment was never lost sight of, the question of the Form of Government had fastened itself on Milton's mind as after all the main one. From that time he never ceased to ruminate it himself, and he attended more to the speculations and theories of others on the same subject. If, once or twice in the winter months of 1659, Cyriack Skinner, the occasional chairman of the Rota Club, did not persuade Milton to leave his house in Petty France late in the evening, and be piloted through the streets to the Coffee-house in New Palace Yard to hear one of the great debates of the Club, and become acquainted with their method of closing the debate by a ballot, it would really be a wonder.——Not in the Rota Club, however, but in the Committee of Safety at Whitehall and in the Wallingford-House Council, was the real and practical debate in progress. On the 1st of November the Committee had appointed their sub-committee of six to deliberate on the new Constitution; and through the rest of the month, both in the sub-committee and in the general committee, there had been that intricate discussion in which Vane led the extreme party, or party of radical changes, while Whitlocke stood for lawyerly use and wont in all things, and Johnstone of Warriston threw in suggestions from his peculiar Scottish point of view. So far as Milton was cognisant of the discussion, his hopes must have been in the efforts of his friend Vane. If any one could succeed in inducing his colleagues to insert articles for Church-disestablishment and full Liberty of Conscience into the new Constitution, who so likely as he who had held those articles as tenets of his private creed so much earlier and so much more tenaciously than any other public man? Seven years ago Milton had described him on this account as Religion's "eldest son," on whose firm hand she could lean in peace. Now that he was again in power, and that not merely as one of a miscellaneous Parliamentary body, but as one of a small committee of leaders drafting a Constitution de novo, what might he not accomplish? That Vane did battle in Committee for the notions he held in common with Milton, and for others besides, we already know; but we know also that the massive resistance of Whitlocke, backed outside by the lawyers and the Savoy clique of the clergy, was too much for Vane, and that the draft Constitution as it emerged ultimately was substantially Whitlocke's. It was on the 6th of December that this draft Constitution was submitted to the Convention of Army and Navy delegates at Whitehall; and it was on the 14th that, after modifications by this body tending to make it still more Whitlocke's than it had been, it went back to the Committee of Safety approved and ratified. A Single House Parliament of the customary sort to meet in February; a new Council of State of the customary sort to be appointed by that Parliament; the Established Church to be kept up, and by the system of Tithes until some other form of ample State-maintenance for the clergy should be provided; Liberty of Conscience for Nonconformists, but within limits: this and no more was the parturition after all. If Ludlow was in despair because no sufficient security had been taken that the new Parliament should be true to the Commonwealth, and if the theorists of the Rota were disappointed because none of their patent models had been adopted, Milton's regret can have been no less. Government after government, but all deaf alike to his teachings! Even this one, with Vane at the heart of it, unable to rise above the old conceits of a customary state-craft, and ending in a solemn vote for conserving a Church of Hirelings!
So in the middle of December. Then, for another week, the strange phenomenon, day after day, of that whirl of popular and army opinion which was to render all the long debate over the new Constitution nugatory, to upset the Wallingford-House administration, and stop Whitlocke in his issue of the writs for the Parliament that had just been announced. Monk's dogged persistency for the old Rump had done the work without the need of his advance from Coldstream to fight Lambert. All over England and Ireland people were declaring for Monk with increasing enthusiasm, and execrating Lambert's coup d'état and the Wallingford-House usurpation. Portsmouth had revolted; the Londoners were in riot; Lambert's own soldiery were falling away from him at Newcastle; Fleetwood's soldiery in London were growing ashamed of themselves and of their chief amid the taunts and insults of the populace. On the 20th of December appearances were such that Whitlocke and his colleagues were in the utmost perplexity.
One great Republican had not lived to see this return of public feeling to the cause of his heart. Bradshaw had died on the 22nd of November, all but despairing of the Republic. His will was proved on the 16th of December. It consisted of an original will, dated March 22, 1653, and two codicils, the second dated September 10, 1655. His wife having predeceased him, leaving no issue, the bulk of his extensive property went to his nephew, Henry Bradshaw; but there were various legacies, and among them the following in one group in the second codicil,—"To old Margarett ffive markes, to Mr. Marchamt. Nedham tenne pounds, and to Mr. John Milton tenne poundes." There is nothing here to settle the disputed question of Milton's cousinship, on his mother's side, with Bradshaw.1 The legacy was a trifling one, equivalent to £35 now; and, as Needham and Milton are associated on terms of equality, Bradshaw must have been thinking of them together as the two literary officials who had been so much in contact with each other, and with himself, in the days of his Presidency of the Council of State,—Needham as the appointed journalist of the Commonwealth, and Milton as its Latin champion, and for some time Needham's censor and supervisor. In Milton's case perhaps, as the codicil was drawn up fifteen months after the publication of the Defensio Secunda, the legacy may have been intended not merely as a small token of general respect and friendliness, but also as a recognition by Bradshaw of the bold eulogy on him inserted into that work at a critical moment of his relations to Cromwell.
1: Ormerod's Cheshire, III. 409; but I owe the verbatim extract from the codicil to the never-failing kindness of Colonel Chester.—By an inadvertence the date of Bradshaw's death has been given, ante p. 495, as Oct. 31, 1659, instead of Nov. 22.