After a brief Introduction, in which Milton remarks that the quarrel, which was originally for Liberty and the English People, has now dwindled into a poor personal one, he discusses afresh, as the first real point in dispute, the question of the authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor.  Morus’s denials, or seeming denials, go for nothing.  Any man may deny anything; there are various ways of denial; and he still maintains that Morus is, to all legal intents and purposes, responsible for the book.  “Unless I show this.” he says, “unless I make it plain either that you are the author of that most notorious book against us, or that you have given sufficient occasion for justly regarding you as the author, I do not object to the conclusion that I have been beaten by you in this controversy, and come out of it ignominiously, with disgrace and shame.”  How is this strong statement supported?  In the first place, there is reproduced the evidence of original, universal, and persistent rumour.  “This I say religiously, that through two whole years I met no one, whether a countryman of my own or a foreigner, with whom there could be talk about that book, but they all agreed unanimously that you were called its author, and they named no one for the author but you.”  To Morus’s assertion that he had openly, loudly, and energetically disowned the book, where suspected of the authorship, Milton returns a complex answer.  Partly he does not believe the assertion, on the ground that there were many who had heard Morus confessing to the book and boasting of it.  Partly he asks why such energetic repudiations were necessary, and why, in spite of them, intimate friends of Morus retained their former opinion.  Partly he admits that there may latterly have been such repudiations, but not till there was danger in being thought the author.  Any criminal will deny his crime in sight of the axe; and, apart from the punishment which Morus had reason to expect when he knew that Milton’s reply to the Regii Sanguinis Clamor was forthcoming, what had not the author of that book to dread after the Peace between the Dutch and the Commonwealth had been concluded?  By articles IX., X., and XI. of the Peace it was provided that no public enemy of the Commonwealth should have residence, shelter, living, or commerce, within the bounds of the United Provinces; and who more a public enemy of the Commonwealth than the author of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor?  No wonder that, after that Peace, Morus had trembled for the consequences of his handiwork.  The loss of his Amsterdam Professorship, instant ejection from Holland, and prohibition of return under pain of death, were what he had to fear.  Were not these powerful enough motives for denial to a man like Morus?  Had not Milton, when he learnt by letters from Durie in May 1654 that Morus was disowning—­the book, been entitled to remember these motives?  For what other evidence had been produced besides Morus’s own word?  His friend Hotton’s only; and that was no independent testimony, but only Morus’s at second hand.  And even now, after Morus’s repeated and studiously-worded denials in his Fides Publica, how did the case stand?