Next to the Propagation of the Gospel by an Established Ministry everywhere, the fixed idea of Cromwell for his Home-Government, as we have had again and again to explain, was toleration of all varieties of religious opinion. Under this head little that is new presents itself in the part of his Protectorate with which we are now concerned. The Anti-Trinitarian Mr. John Biddle, who had been in custody in the Isle of Scilly since Oct. 1655 (ante p. 66), had moved for a writ of habeas corpus, and had been brought to London, apparently with an intention on Cromwell's part to set him at liberty. Nor had Cromwell lost sight of the poor demented Quaker, James Nayler. There is extant a long and confidential letter to his Highness from his private secretary Mr. William Malyn, giving an account of a visit Malyn had paid to Nayler in Bridewell expressly by his Highness's command. It is to the effect that he had found Nayler well enough in bodily health, but so mulishly obstinate or mad that he could not be coaxed in a long interview to speak even a single word, and that therefore, though Malyn did not like to "dissuade" his Highness from "a work of tenderness and mercy," he could hardly yet advise Nayler's release, but would carefully apply the money he had received from his Highness for Nayler's comfort. For the Quakers generally there was, we fear, no more specific protection than Cromwell's good-nature when a case of cruelty was distinctly brought within his cognisance. What shall we say, however, of one order or intention of Cromwell's Council in June 1658, which, if not against liberty of conscience in the general sense, was decidedly retrograde in respect of the specific liberty of the press? On the 22nd of that month, nine members being present, though not his Highness, it was agreed, on a report by Mr. Comptroller, i.e. by Lord Jones, from a Committee that had been appointed on the subject, to recommend to his Highness to issue a warrant with this preamble, "Whereas there are divers good laws, statutes, acts, and ordinances of Parliament in force, which were heretofore made and published against the printing of unlicensed, seditious, and scandalous books and pamphlets, and for the better regulating of printing, wherein several provisions are contained, sufficient to prevent the designs of persons disaffected to the State and Government of this Commonwealth, who have assumed to themselves and do continually take upon them a licentious boldness to write, print, publish, and disperse many dangerous, seditious, blasphemous, Popish, and scandalous pamphlets, books, and papers, to the high dishonour of God, the scorn and contempt of the Laws and of all good Order and Government; and forasmuch as it nearly concerns Us, in respect of the public peace and safety, to take care for a due execution of the said laws." What followed was a special charge to the Master and Wardens of the Stationers' Company, together with Henry Hills and John Field, his Highness's Printers, to see to the strict enforcement in future of the restrictions of certain cited Press Acts,—to wit, the ordinance of the Long Parliament of June 14, 1643 (that against which Milton had written his Areopagitica), the similar ordinance of the same Parliament of date Sept. 28, 1647, the Act of the Rump Parliament of Sept. 20, 1649 (Bradshaw's Press Act of the first year of the Commonwealth), and the renewal of the same Jan. 7, 1652-3. Had this been all, one might have inferred nothing more than one of those occasional panics about Press licentiousness from the recurrence of which even Milton's reasoning had never been able to free the Government with which he was connected. But at the same meeting it was referred to Lord Fleetwood, Lord Wolseley, Lord Pickering, Lord Jones, Lord Desborough, Lord Viscount Lisle, and Lord Strickland, or to any two of them, "to consider of fit persons to be added for licensing of books and to report the names of such persons to the Council." This was distinctly retrogressive; and the regret of Milton must have been none the less because four of the Committee that were to find the new licensers were men he had named in his Defensio Secunda as heroes of the Commonwealth, and because, as appears from a marginal jotting to the minute as it stands in the Council Order Books, the man thought of at once for one of the new licensers, or as the person fittest to be first consulted in the business, was Marchamont Needham. After all, it may have been, like some of the previous movements for press-regulation, only a push from Paternoster Row in defence of the legitimate book-trade, and the main intention of the Council itself may have been against pamphlets like Killing no Murder or publications of the indecent order.¹

O how stable and grand seemed the Protectorate in the month of July 1658! Rebellion at home in all its varieties quashed once more, and now, as it might seem, for ever; the threatened invasion of the Spaniards and Charles Stuart dissipated into ridicule; a footing acquired on the Continent, and 6000 Englishmen stationed there in arms; Foreign Powers, with Louis XIV. at their head, obeisant to the very ground whenever they turned their gaze towards the British Islands, and dreading the next bolt from the Protector's hands; those hands evidently toying with several new bolts and poising them towards the parts of Europe for which they were intended; great schemes, besides, for England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Colonies, in that inventive brain! All this, we say, in July 1658, by which time also it was known that the Protector, so far from fearing to face a new Parliament, was ready to call one and would take all the chances. His immediate necessity, of course, was money. His second Parliament, at the close of its first and loyal session in June 1657, had provided ordinary supplies for three years; but there had been no new revenue-arrangements in the short second session, and the current expenses for the Flanders expedition, the various Embassies, the Court, and the whole conduct of the Government, far outran the voted income. The pay of the armies in England, Scotland, and Ireland was greatly in arrears; on all hands there were straits for money; and, whatever might be done by expedients and ingenuity meanwhile, the effective extrication could only be by a Parliament. Not for subsidies only, however, was Cromwell willing to resort again to that agency, with all its perils. He believed that, in consequence of what had passed since the Dissolution in January, any Parliament that should now meet him would be in a different mood towards himself from that he had recently encountered. Then might there not be proposals, in which he and such a Parliament might agree, for constitutional changes in advance of the Articles of the Petition and Advice, though in the same direction of orderliness and settled and stately rule? Was there not wide regret among the civilians that he had not accepted the Kingship; had his refusal of it been really wise; might not that question be reopened? With that question might there not go the question of the succession, whether by nomination for one life only as was now fixed, or by perpetual nomination, or by a return to the hereditary and dynastic principle which the lawyers and the civilians thought the best? Nor could the Second House of Parliament remain the vague thing it had been so far fashioned. It must be amended in the points in which its weakness had been proved; and all the evidence hitherto was that it must be made truly and formally a House of Lords, if even with the reinstitution of a peerage as part and parcel of the legislative system. Whether such a peerage should be hereditary or for life only might be in doubt; but there were symptoms that, even if the Legislative Peerage should be only for life, Cromwell had convinced himself of the utility, for general purposes, of at least a Social Peerage with, hereditary rank and titles. In his First Protectorate he had made knights only; in his Second he created a few baronets. Nay, besides favouring the courtesy appellation of "lords," as applied to all who had sat in the late Upper House and to the great officers of State, he had added at least two peers of his own making to the hereditary peerage as it had come down from the late reign.¹

As early as April the new Parliament had been thought of, and since June there had been a select committee of nine, precognoscing the chances, considering the questions to be brought up, and feeling in every way the public pulse. The nine so employed were Lords Fleetwood, Fiennes, Desborough, Pickering, Philip Jones, Whalley, Cooper, and Goffe, and Mr, Secretary Thurloe. There are a few glimpses of their consultations in the Thurloe correspondence, where also there is a hint of some hope of the compliance at last even of such old Republicans as Vane and Ludlow. But July 1658 had come, and no one yet knew when the Parliament would meet. It could not be expected then before the end of the year.¹

Before that time Oliver Cromwell was to be out of the world. Though but in his sixtieth year, and with his prodigious powers of will, intellect, heart, and humour, unimpaired visibly in the least atom, his frame had for some time been giving way under the pressure of his ceaseless burden. For a year or two his handwriting, though statelier and more deliberate than at first, had been singularly tremulous, and to those closest about him there had been other signs of physical breaking-up. Not till late in July, however, or early in August, was there any serious cause for alarm, and then in consequence of the terrible effects upon his Highness of his close attendance on the death-bed of his second daughter, the much-loved Lady Claypole. She had been lingeringly ill for some time, of a most painful internal disease, aggravated by the death of her youngest boy, Oliver. Hampton Court had received her as a dying invalid, tortured by "frequent and long convulsion-fits"; and here, through a great part of July, the fond father had been hanging about her, broken-hearted and unfit for business. For his convenience the Council had transferred its meetings from Whitehall to Hampton Court; but, though he was present at one there on July 15, he avoided one on July 20, another on July 22, and a third on July 27. On the 29th, which was the fifth meeting at Hampton Court, he did look in again and take his place. Next day Lord and Lady Falconbridge arrived at Hampton Court, where already, besides the Protestor and the Lady Protectress, there were Lord Richard Cromwell, the widowed Lady Frances, and others of the family, all round the dying sufferer. After that meeting of the Council of July 29 which he had managed to attend, and an intervening meeting at Whitehall without him, the Council was again at Hampton Court on Thursday the 5th of August. At this meeting one of the resolutions was "That Mr. Secretary be desired to make a collection of such injuries received by the English from the Dutch as have come to his cognisance, and to offer the same to the Council on this day seven-night." This was a very important resolution, significant of a dissatisfaction with the conduct of the Dutch, and a desire to call them to account again, which had for some time been growing in Cromwell's mind; and there can be no doubt that he had suggested the subject to the Council. But his Highness did not appear in the meeting himself, and next day Lady Claypole lay dead. Before her death his grief had passed into an indefinite illness, described as "of the gout and other distempers"; and, though he was able to come to London on the 10th of August, on which night Lady Claypole's remains were interred in a little vault that had been prepared for them in Henry VIIth's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, he returned to Hampton Court greatly the worse. But, after four or five days of confinement, attended by his physicians—on one of which days (the 13th) Attorney General Prideaux and Solicitor General Ellis were made baronets—he was out again for an hour on the 17th; and thence till Friday the 20th he seemed so much better that Thurloe and others thought the danger past. From the public at large the fact of his illness had been hitherto concealed as much as possible; and hence it may have been that on two or three of those days of convalescence he showed himself as usual, riding with his life-guards in Hampton Court Park. It was on one of them, most probably Friday the 20th, that George Fox had that final meeting with him which he describes in his Journal. The good but obtrusive Quaker had been writing letters of condolence and mystical religious advice to Lady Claypole in her illness, and had recently sent one of mixed condolence and rebuke to Cromwell himself; and now, not knowing of Cromwell's own illness, he had come to have a talk with him about the sufferings of the Friends. "Before I came to him, as he rode at the head of his life-guard," says Fox, "I saw and felt a waft of death go forth, against him; and, when I came to him, he looked like a dead man." Fox, nevertheless, had his conversation with the Protector, who told him to come again, but does not seem to have mentioned the inquiry he had been making, through his secretary Mr. Malyn, about the state of Fox's fellow-Quaker, poor James Nayler. Next day, Saturday, Aug. 21, when Fox went to Hampton Court Palace to keep his appointment, he could not be admitted. Harvey, the groom of the bedchamber, told him that his Highness was very ill, with his physicians about him, and must be kept quiet. That morning his distemper had developed itself distinctly into "an ague"; which ague proved, within the next few days, to be of the kind called by the physicians "a bastard tertian," i.e. an ague with the cold and hot shivering fits recurring most violently every third day, but with the intervals also troublesome. Yet it was on this first day of his ague that he signed a warrant for a patent to make Bulstrode Whitlocke a Viscount. Whitlocke himself, though he afterwards declined the honour as inconvenient, is precise as to the date. The physicians thinking the London air better for the malady than that of Hampton Court, his Highness was removed to Whitehall on Tuesday the 24th. That was one of the intervals of his fever, and he seems to have come up easily enough in his coach, and to have been quite able to take an interest in what he found going on at Whitehall. Six days before (Aug. 18) the Duke of Buckingham, who had been for some time in London undisturbed, living in his mansion of York House with his recently wedded wife, and with Lord and Lady Fairfax in their society, had been apprehended on the high-road some miles from Canterbury; and, whether on the old grounds, or from new suspicions, the Council, by a warrant issued on the 19th, doubtless with Cromwell's sanction intimated from Hampton Court, had committed him to the Tower. On the very day of Cromwell's return to Whitehall this business of the Duke was again before the Council, in consequence of a petition from the young Duchess that he might be permitted to remain at York House on sufficient security. Fairfax himself had gone to Whitehall to urge his daughter's request and to tender the security, and Cromwell, though unable to be in the Council-room, gave him a private interview. According to the story in the Fairfax family, it must have been an unpleasant one. Cromwell could be stern on such a subject even at such a time and to his old commander, and so Fairfax "turned abruptly from him in the gallery at Whitehall, cocking his hat, and throwing his cloak under his arm, as he used to do when he was angry." Nor was this the last piece of public business of which the Protector, though never more in the Council-room, must have been directly cognisant. Whitlocke says he visited him and was kept to dine with him on the 26th, and that he was then able to discourse on business; but, as Whitlocke makes Hampton Court the place, there must be an error as to the day. The last baronetcy he conferred was made good on Saturday the 28th, four days after the interview with Fairfax; and even after that, between his fever-fits, he kept some grasp of affairs, and received and sent messages. But that Saturday of the last baronetcy was a day of marked crisis. The ague had then changed into a "double tertian," with two fits in the twenty-four hours, both extremely weakening. So Sunday passed, with prayers in all the churches; and then came that extraordinary Monday (Aug. 30, 1658) which lovers of coincidence have taken care to remember as the day of most tremendous hurricane that ever blew over London and England. From morning to night the wind raged and howled, emptying the streets, unroofing houses, tearing up trees in the parks, foundering ships at sea, and taking even Flanders and the coasts of France within its angry whirl. The storm was felt, within England, as far as Lincolnshire, where, in the vicinity of an old manor-house, a boy of fifteen years of age, named Isaac Newton, was turning it to account, as he afterwards remembered, by jumping first with the wind, and then against it, and computing its force by the difference of the distances. Through all this storm, as it shuddered round Whitehall, shaking the doors and windows, the sovereign patient had lain on, passing from fit to fit, but talking in the intervals with the Lady Protectress or with his physicians, while Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Sterry, or some other of the preachers that were in attendance, went and came between the chamber and an adjoining room. A certain belief that he would recover, which he had several times before expressed to the Lady Protectress and others, had not yet left him, and had communicated itself to the preachers as an assurance that their prayers were heard. Writing to Henry Cromwell at nine o'clock that night, Thurloe could say, "The doctors are yet hopeful that he may struggle through it, though their hopes are mingled with much fear." Even the next day, Tuesday, Aug. 31, Cromwell was still himself, still consciously the Lord Protector. Through the storm of the preceding day Ludlow had made a journey to London from Essex on family-business, beaten back in the morning by a wind against which two horses could not make way, but contriving late at night to push on as far as Epping. "By this means," he says, "I arrived not at Westminster till Tuesday about noon, when, passing by Whitehall, notice was immediately given to Cromwell that I was come to town. Whereupon he sent for Lieutenant General Fleet wood, and ordered him to enquire concerning the reasons of my coming at such haste and at such a time." If Cromwell could attend to such a matter that day, he must have been able also to prompt the resolution of his Council in Whitehall the same day in the case of the Duke of Buckingham. It was that the Duke, on account of his health, might be removed from the Tower to Windsor Castle, but must continue in confinement. At the end of the day, Fleetwood, writing to Henry Cromwell, reported, "The Lord is pleased to give some little reviving this evening: after few slumbering sleeps, his pulse is better." As near as can be guessed, it was that same night that Cromwell himself uttered the well-known short prayer, the words of which, or as nearly as possible the very words, were preserved by the pious care of his chamber-attendant Harvey. It is to the same authority that we owe the most authentic record of the religious demeanour of the Protector from the beginning of his illness. Very beautifully and simply Harvey tells us of his "holy expressions," his fervid references to Scripture texts, and his repetitions of some texts in particular, such repetitions "usually being very weighty and with great vehemency of spirit." One of them was "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Three times he repeated this; but the texts of promise and of Christian triumph had all along been more frequently on his lips. All in all, his single short prayer, which Harvey places "two or three days before his end," may be read as the summary of all that we need to know now of the dying Puritan in these eternal respects. "Lord," he muttered, "though I am a miserable and wretched creature, I am in covenant with Thee through grace, and I may, I will, come to Thee. For Thy people, Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good, and Thee service; and many of them have set too high a value upon me, though others wish and would be glad of my death. But, Lord, however Thou dost dispose of me, continue and go on to do good for them. Give them consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love; and go on to deliver them, and with the work of reformation; and make the name of Christ glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much upon Thy instruments to depend more upon Thyself; pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too; and pardon the folly of this short prayer, even for Jesus Christ's sake; and give us a good night, if it be Thy pleasure." Wednesday, Sept. 1, passes unmarked, unless it may be for the delivery to the Lady Protectress, in her watch over Cromwell, of a letter, dated that day, and addressed to her and her children, from the Quaker Edward Burrough. It was long and wordy, but substantially an assurance that the Lord had sent this affliction upon the Protector's house on account of the unjust sufferings of the Quakers. "Will not their sufferings lie upon you? For many hundreds have suffered cruel and great things, and some the loss of life (though not by, yet in the name of, the Protector); and about a hundred at this present day lie in holes, and dungeons, and prisons, up and down the nation." The letter, we may suppose, was not read to Cromwell, and the Wednesday went by. On Thursday, Sept. 2, there was an unusually full Council-meeting close to his chamber, at which order was given for the removal of Lords Lauderdale and Sinclair from Windsor Castle to Warwick Castle, to make more room at Windsor for the Duke of Buckingham. That night Harvey sat up with his Highness and again noted some of his sayings. One was "Truly, God is good; indeed He is; He will not—" He did not complete the sentence. "His speech failed him," says Harvey; "but, as I apprehended, it was 'He will not leave me.' This saying, that God was good, he frequently used all along, and would speak it with much cheerfulness and fervour of spirit in the midst of his pain. Again he said, 'I would be willing to live to be farther serviceable to God and His people; but my work is done.' He was very restless most part of the night, speaking often to himself. And, there being something to drink offered him, he was desired to take the same, and endeavour to sleep; unto which he answered, 'It is not my design to drink or to sleep, but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.' Afterwards, towards morning, using divers holy expressions, implying much inward consolation and peace, among the rest he spake some exceeding self-debasing words, annihilating and judging himself." This is the last. The next day, Friday, was his twice victorious Third of September, the anniversary of Dunbar and Worcester. That morning he was speechless; and, though the prayers in Whitehall, and in all London and the suburbs, did not cease for him, people in the houses and passers in the streets knew that hope was over and Oliver at the point of death. For several days there had been cautious approaches to him on the subject of the nomination of his successor, and either on the stormy Monday or later that matter had been settled somehow.¹

CHAPTER II.

MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE SECOND PROTECTORATE.

MILTON STILL IN OFFICE: LETTER TO MR. HENRY DE BRASS, WITH MILTON'S OPINION OF SALLUST: LETTERS TO YOUNG RANELAGH AND HENRY OLDENBURG AT SAUMUR: MORUS IN NEW CIRCUMSTANCES: ELEVEN MOBE STATE-LETTERS OF MILTON FOR THE PROTECTOR (NOS. CI.-CXI.): ANDREW MARVELL BROUGHT IN AS ASSISTANT FOREIGN SECRETARY AT LAST (SEPT. 1657): JOHN DRYDEN NOW ALSO IN THE PROTECTOR'S EMPLOYMENT: BIRTH OF MILTON'S DAUGHTER BY HIS SECOND WIFE: SIX MORE STATE-LETTERS OF MILTON (NOS. CXII.-CXIII.): ANOTHER LETTER TO MR. HENRY DE BRASS, AND ANOTHER TO PETER HEIMBACH: COMMENT ON THE LATTER: DEATHS OF MILTON'S SECOND WIFE AND HER CHILD: HIS TWO NEPHEWS, EDWARD AND JOHN PHILLIPS, AT THIS DATE: MILTON'S LAST SIXTEEN STATE-LETTERS FOR OLIVER CROMWELL (NOS. CXVIII.-CXXXIII.), INCLUDING TWO TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS OF SWEDEN. TWO ON A NEW ALARM OF A PERSECUTION OF THE PIEDMONTESE PROTESTANTS, AND SEVERAL TO LOUIS XIV. AND CARDINAL MAZARIN: IMPORTANCE OF THIS LAST GROUP OF THE STATE-LETTERS, AND REVIEW OF THE WHOLE SERIES OF MILTON'S PERFORMANCES FOR CROMWELL: LAST DIPLOMATIC INCIDENTS OF THE PROTECTORATE, AND ANDREW MARVELL IN CONNEXION WITH THEM: INCIDENTS OF MILTON'S LITERARY LIFE IN THIS PERIOD: YOUNG GUNTZER'S DISSERTATIO AND YOUNG KECK'S PHALAECIANS: MILTON'S EDITION OF RALEIGH'S CABINET COUNCIL: RESUMPTION OF THE OLD DESIGN OF PARADISE LOST AND ACTUAL COMMENCEMENT OF THE POEM: CHANGE FROM THE DRAMATIC POEM TO THE EPIC: SONNET IN MEMORY OF HIS DECEASED WIFE.

Through the Second Protectorate Milton remained in office just as before. He was not, however, as had been customary before at the commencement of each new period of his Secretaryship, sworn in afresh. Thurloe was sworn in, both as General Secretary and as full Councillor, and Scobell and Jessop were sworn in as Clerks;¹ but we hear of no such ceremony in the case of Milton. His Latin Secretaryship, we infer, was now regarded as an excrescence from the Whitehall establishment, rather than an integral part of it. An oath may have been administered to him privately, or his old general engagement may have sufficed.

Our first trace of Milton after the new inauguration of Cromwell is in one of his Latin Familiar Epistles, addressed to some young foreigner in London, of whom I know nothing more than may be learnt from the letter itself:—

"To the Very Distinguished MR. HENRY DE BRASS.

"I see, Sir, that you, unlike most of our modern youth in their surveys of foreign lands, travel rightly and wisely, after the fashion of the old philosophers, not for ordinary youthful quests, but with a view to the acquisition of fuller erudition from every quarter. Yet, as often as I look at what you write, you appear to me to be one who has come among strangers not so much to receive knowledge as to impart it to others, to barter good merchandise rather than to buy it. I wish indeed it were as easy for me to assist and promote in every way those excellent studies of yours as it is pleasant and gratifying to have such help asked by a person of your uncommon talents.

"As for the resolution you say you have taken to write to me and request my answers towards solving those difficulties about which for many ages writers of Histories seem to have been in the dark, I have never assumed anything of the kind as within my powers, nor should I dare now to do so. In the matter of Sallust, which you refer to me, I will say freely, since you wish me to tell plainly what I do think, that I prefer Sallust to any other Latin historian; which also was the almost uniform opinion of the Ancients. Your favourite Tacitus has his merits; but the greatest of them, in my judgment, is that he imitated Sallust with all his might. As far as I can gather from what you write, it appears that the result of my discourse with you personally on this subject has been that you are now nearly of the same mind with me respecting that most admirable writer; and hence it is that you ask me, with reference to what he has said, in the introduction to his Catilinarian War—as to the extreme difficulty of writing History, from the obligation that the expressions should be proportional to the deeds—by what method I think a writer of History might attain that perfection. This, then, is my view: that he who would write of worthy deeds worthily must write with mental endowments and experience of affairs not less than were in the doer of the same, so as to be able with equal mind to comprehend and measure even the greatest of them, and, when he has comprehended them, to relate them distinctly and gravely in pure and chaste speech. That he should do so in ornate style, I do not much care about; for I want a Historian, not an Orator. Nor yet would I have frequent maxims, or criticisms on the transactions, prolixly thrown in, lest, by interrupting the thread of events, the Historian should invade the office of the Political Writer: for, if the Historian, in explicating counsels and narrating facts, follows truth most of all, and not his own fancy or conjecture, he fulfils his proper duty. I would add also that characteristic of Sallust, in respect of which he himself chiefly praised Cato,—to be able to throw off a great deal in few words: a thing which I think no one can do without the sharpest judgment and a certain temperance at the same time. There are many in whom you will not miss either elegance of style or abundance of information; but for conjunction of brevity with abundance, i.e. for the despatch of much in few words, the chief of the Latins, in my judgment, is Sallust. Such are the qualities that I think should be in the Historian that would hope to make his expressions proportional to the facts he records.

"But why all this to you, who are sufficient, with the talent you have, to make it all out, and who, if you persevere in the road you have entered, will soon be able to consult no one more learned than yourself. That you do persevere, though you require no one's advice for that, yet, that I may not seem to have altogether failed in replying correspondingly with the value you are pleased to put upon my authority with you, is my earnest exhortation and suggestion. Farewell; and all success to your real worth, and your zeal for acquiring wisdom.

"Westminster: July 15, 1657."

Henry Oldenburg, and his pupil Richard Jones, alias young Ranelagh, had left Oxford in April or May 1657, after about a year's stay there, and had gone abroad on a tour which was to extend over more than four years. It was an arrangement for the farther education of young Ranelagh in the way most satisfactory to his mother, Lady Ranelagh, and perhaps also to his uncle, Robert Boyle, neither of whom seems to have cared much for the ordinary University routine; and particulars had been settled by correspondence between Oldenburg at Oxford and Lady Ranelagh in Ireland.¹ Young Ranelagh, I find, took with him as his servant a David Whitelaw, who had been servant to Durie in his foreign travels: "my man, David Whitelaw," as Durie calls him.² The ever-convenient Hartlib was to manage the conveyance of letters to the travellers, wherever they might be.³

They went, pretty directly, to Saumur in the west of France, a pleasant little town, with a college, a library, &c., which they had selected for their first place of residence, rather than Paris. An Italian master was procured to teach young Jones "something of practical geometry and fortification"; and, for the rest, Oldenburg himself continued to superintend his studies, directing them a good deal in that line of physical and economical observation which might be supposed congenial to a nephew of Boyle, and which had become interesting to himself. "As for us here," wrote Oldenburg to Boyle from Saumur, Sept. 8, 1657, "we are, through the goodness of God, in perfect health; and, your nephew having spent these two or three months we have been here very well and in more than ordinary diligence, I cannot but give him some relaxation in taking a view of this province of Anjou during this time of vintage; which, though it be a very tempting one to a young appetite, yet shall, I hope, by a careful watchfulness, prove unprejudicial to his health."¹ A good while before Oldenburg wrote this letter to Boyle both he and his pupil had written to Milton, and Milton's replies had already been received. They are dated on the same day, but we shall put that to young Ranelagh first. It will be seen that Oldenburg must have had a sight of it from his pupil before he wrote the above to Boyle:—

"To the noble youth, RICHARD JONES.

"That you made out so long a journey without inconvenience, and that, spurning the allurements of Paris, you have so quickly reached your present place of residence, where you can enjoy literary leisure and the society of learned persons, I am both heartily glad, and set down to the credit of your disposition. There, so far as you keep yourself in bounds, you will be in harbour; elsewhere you would have to beware the Syrtes, the Rocks, and the songs of the Sirens. All the same I would not have you thirst too much after the Saumur vintage, with which you think to delight yourself, unless it be also your intention to dilute that juice of Bacchus, more than a fifth part, with the freer cup of the Muses. But to such a course, even if I were silent, you have a first-rate adviser; by listening to whom you will indeed consult best for your own good, and cause great joy to your most excellent mother, and a daily growth of her love for you. Which that you may accomplish you ought every day to petition Almighty God, Farewell; and see that you return to us as good as possible, and as cultured as possible in good arts. That will be to me, beyond others, a most delightful result.

"Westminster: Aug. 1, 1657."

The letter to Oldenburg contains matter of more interest:—

"To HENRY OLDENBURG.

"I am glad you have arrived safe at Saumur, the goal of your travel, as I believe. You are not mistaken in thinking the news would be very agreeable to me in particular, who both love you for your own merit, and know the cause of your undertaking the journey to be so honourable and praiseworthy.

"As to the news you have heard, that so infamous a priest has been called to instruct so illustrious a church, I had rather any one else had heard it in Charon's boat than you in that of Charenton; for it is mightily to be feared that whoever thinks to get to heaven under the auspices of so foul a guide will be a whole world awry in his calculations. Woe to that church (only God avert the omen!) where such ministers please, mainly by tickling the ears,—ministers whom the Church, if she would truly be called Reformed, would more fitly cast out than desire to bring in.

"In not having given copies of my writings to any one that does not ask for them, you have done well and discreetly, not in my opinion alone, but also in that of Horace:—

"A learned man, a friend of mine, spent last summer at Saumur. He wrote to me that the book was in demand in those parts; I sent only one copy; he wrote back that some of the learned to whom he had lent it had been pleased with it hugely. Had I not thought I should be doing a thing agreeable to them, I should have spared you trouble and myself expense. But,

"If chance my load of paper galls your back,

Off with, it now, rather than in the end

Dash down the panniers cursing.

"To our Lawrence, as you bade me, I have given greetings in your name. For the rest, there is nothing I should wish you to do or care for more than see that yourself and your pupil get on in good health, and that you return to us as soon as possible with all your wishes fulfilled.

"Westminster: Aug. 1, 1657."

The books mentioned in the third paragraph as having been sent by Milton to Saumur in Oldenburg's charge must have been copies of the Defensio Secunda and of the Pro Se Defensio. The person mentioned with such loathing in the second paragraph was the hero of those performances, Morus. The paragraph requires explanation. For Morus, uncomfortable at Amsterdam, and every day under some fresh discredit there, a splendid escape had at length presented itself. He had received an invitation to be one of the ministers of the Protestant church of Charenton, close to Paris. This church of Charenton was indeed the main Protestant church of Paris itself and the most flourishing representative of French Protestantism generally. For the French law then obliged Protestants to have their places of worship at some distance from the cities and towns in which they resided, and the village of Charenton was the ecclesiastical rendezvous of the chief Protestant nobility and professional men of the capital, some of whom, in the capacity of lay-elders, were associated in the consistory of the church with the ministers or pastors. Of these, in the beginning of 1657, there had been five, all men of celebrity in the French Protestant world—viz. Mestrezat, Faucheur, Drelincourt, Daillé, and Gaches; but the deaths of the two first in April and May of that year had occasioned vacancies, and it was to fill up one of these vacancies that Morus had been invited from Amsterdam. Oldenburg, as we understand, had heard this piece of news, when passing through Paris on his way to Saumur, probably in June. He had heard it, seemingly, on board the Charenton boat—i.e. as we guess, on board the boat plying on the Marne between Paris and Charenton. Hence the punning phraseology of Milton's reply. He would rather that such a piece of news had been heard by anybody on board Charon's/ boat than by Oldenburg on board the Charenton wherry. Altogether the idea that Morus should be admitted as one of the pastors of the most important Protestant church in France was, we can see, horrible to him; and he hoped the calamity might yet be averted.—For the time it seemed likely that it would be. There had been ample enough knowledge in Paris of the coil of scandals about the character of Morus; and copies of Milton's two Anti-Morus pamphlets had been in circulation there long before Oldenburg took with him into France his new bundle of them for distribution. Accordingly, though there was a strong party for Morus, disbelieving the scandals, and anxious to have him for the Charenton church on account of his celebrity as a preacher, there were dissentients among the congregation and even in the consistory itself. One hears of Sieur Papillon and Sieur Beauchamp, Parisian advocates, and elders in the church, as heading the opposition to the call. The business of the translation of Morus from Amsterdam was, therefore, no easy one. In any case it would have brought those Protestant church courts of France that had to sanction the admission of Morus at Charenton into communication about him with those courts of the Walloon Church in Holland from whose jurisdiction he was to be removed; and one can imagine the peculiar complications that would arise in a case so extraordinary and involving so much inquiry and discussion. In fact, for more than two years, the business of the translation of Morus from Amsterdam to Paris was to hang notoriously between the Dutch Walloon Synods, who in the main wanted to disgrace and depose him before they had done with him, and the French Provincial Synods, now roused in his behalf, and willing in the main to receive him back into his native country as a man not without his faults, but more sinned against than sinning.¹—And so for the present (Aug. 1657) Morus was still in his Amsterdam professorship, longing to be in France, but uncertain whether his call thither would hold. How the case ended we shall see in time. Meanwhile it is quite apparent that Milton was not only willing, but anxious, that his influence should be imported into the affair, to turn the scale, if possible, against the man he detested. As he had not heard of the call of Morus to Charenton till the receipt of Oldenburg's letter, his motives originally for despatching a bundle of his Anti-Morus pamphlets into France with Oldenburg can have been only general; but one gathers from his reply to Oldenburg that he thought the pamphlets might now be of use specifically in the business of the proposed translation. Indeed, one can discern a tone of disappointment in Milton's letter with Oldenburg's report of what he had been able to do with the pamphlets hitherto. He might have spared himself the expense, he says, and Oldenburg the trouble. Oldenburg, as we know (Vol. IV. pp. 626-627), had never been very enthusiastic over Milton's onslaughts on Morus, The distribution of the Anti-Morus publications, therefore, may not have been to his taste. Milton seems to hint as much.