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