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
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 £288 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 £400 per annum granted to MR. GUALTER FROST as Treasurer for the Council's Contingencies be reduced to £300 per annum, and be continued to be paid after that proportion till further order.
"That the former yearly salary of MR. JOHN MILTON, of £288, &c., formerly charged on the Council's Contingencies, be reduced to £150 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 £45 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. René 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. René 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 £800 per annum; for the office of Mr. Philip Meadows, Secretary for the Latin Tongue, after the rate of £200 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 £1003 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 £500 per annum, Mr. Jessop £500 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 £365 per annum; for the salaries of his ten deputies at 3s. 4d. per diem a piece (which together amount to £608 6s. 8d.); amounting in the whole to £973 6 8
"To Richard Scutt, Usher of the Council Chamber:—For himself and his assistants at 13s. per diem, (being £237 5s, per annum); for Thomas Bennett's salary, keeper of the back-door of the Council Chamber, at 4s. per diem (being £73 per annum); for the salary of Robert Stebbin, fire-maker to the clerks, at 2s. per diem (being £36 10s. per annum): amounting in the whole to £346 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 £80 per annum; for Thomas Washborne, his assistant, for his salary, after £20 per annum; for the salaries of 25 watermen to attend his Highness's barge, at £4 per annum to each (amounting together to £100 per annum): amounting in the whole to £200 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 £365 a year to £500 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 £288 18s. 6d. a year, which had hitherto been its rate, to £150 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 £288 a year for his lighter and more occasional duties had doubtless been all along in fair proportion to the elder Frost's £600 a year, or Thurloe's £800, 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 £1000 a year, was struggling on in blindness after six years of service, and an extra officer at £700 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 £288 to £150 a year was, it ought to be noted, only part of the proposition; for, whereas the £288 a year had been at the Council's pleasure, it was now proposed that the £150 a year should be for life. In short, what was proposed was the conversion of a terminable salary of £288 a year, payable out of the Council's contingencies, into a life-pension of £150 a year, payable out of the Protector's Exchequer: which was as if in a corresponding modern case a terminable salary of over £1000 a year were converted into a life-pension of between £500 and £600. 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 £150 a year while Meadows, his former assistant, had the title of "Secretary for the Latin Tongue," with a higher salary of £200 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 £100 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 £50, "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 £150 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 £365 a year to £500 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 £500 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 £365 a year,4 The actual reduction, in his case, therefore, was not from £400 to £300, as had been proposed, but only from £400 to £365, 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 £200 a year, and not of £150 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 £200, 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 £150 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 £200 a year instead of his original £288.